Spider Woman

It's hard to process if you have no drive,
when the cold brain transmits an error code,
some file not found, some data overload.
Without an integrated system, life
becomes a long down-time, a system scan
that goes for weeks and seeks the reason why
the network's crashed, corrupted code inside
somewhere, no one knows where, so the broadband
secure connection to the world goes dead
and she goes down and can't boot up, just lies
in bed in her pajamas, staring up
at cobwebs in the corner, and can't stop
her brain from spinning, spinning, spinning like
a spider given acid, a mad web.

Copyright © 2005 Tony Barnstone All rights reserved
from Sad Jazz
Sheep Meadow Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission