Skip to main content

Password Poem (A Rant )

 I've been pondering my digital password problems recently. They need to be consistently inconsistent in order to thwart the evil intent of on-line hackers and assorted ner' do wells out in digital space.  

It's become a constant bugbear having to monitor and update these pesky passwords.  I know, full well, I am not alone here...

So, this poem could be classified as a Rant poem. 

What gets on your wick? What drives you bananas? Do you have a life irritation you need to scratch? Poetry exists in things. This time my thing is-passwords!












Please Confirm Your Password

 

Everywhere I wander in digital space

My digital security

My password purity

Is constantly questioned

I feel impudent on the internet

I’m too weak

Not strong enough

Try again, that’s wrong

Make it unique

Change it regularly like jocks and socks

Make it easy to remember

Impossible to hack

-Go random

consider a sprinkling of letters, numbers, symbols

Upper case

Lower case

Just in case

-at least six characters

Add some more perhaps

Until you’ve got more characters than a murder mystery

Maybe…

Never use personal information they say

Not recommended

No birthdays

No names

Not even Phineas

Nor the circumference of your head

Or the name of your pet duck

Never use a word found in the dictionary

Quite clearly that rules out quincunx

And zeugma

And all their relations in the word family

All this pressure in the quest for password security

Is adding to my insecurity

Log in

Log out

Upper case

Lower case

In your face

Leave no trace

It's adding to this troubled space

Captcha

Prove you’re not a robot

Go on, prove it...


-Too long

Reset your password

Log in again.


Alan j Wright











It is Poetry Friday and our genial host this time is, Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup Jama introduces to the poetry of Helena Nelson and the poem, 'Mrs N Enters The Literary World.' Jama presents this as an example of disruptive poetry. Poetry that is unsuitable,’ rabble-rousing, anti-poetry, designed to keep any literary snobs in check and to make us chortle. It comes with a touch of satire, and Nelson is so good at it.

Comments

  1. Oh, Alan, this is perfect! I love your poem, and I think it should be published somewhere for lots of readers to enjoy. We can all appreciate the truths in this one. You seem to have thought of everything. I love the quick running through these lines:
    "Log in

    Log out

    Upper case

    Lower case

    In your face

    Leave no trace"

    And then the time limit reached at the end. Well done. I enjoyed this a lot.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Denise. Your response is most gratifying. I guess the strength of writing on such a subject is its ubiquitous nature. It is easy for others to recognize themselves in the words. It was fun to 'make' this poem. Quite cathartic in fact.

      Delete
  2. Alan, this is so relatable! : "All this pressure in the quest for password security

    Is adding to my insecurity" Fabulous!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Irene. Glad you found my rant relatable.

      Delete
  3. Oh yes -- so true. Fabulous poem, Alan. You speak for the masses!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Jama. Glad it was a moment for the masses.

      Delete
  4. It's a challenge to reply, don't want anyone to know "my" secrets, but I agree, so much time is spent trying to find the answer that will please, not sure who! I agree, definitely not "quincunx"!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just whisper, Linda. May you find password peace.

      Delete
  5. I feel your pain, Alan! A very humorous take on the absurdity of it all! AND I learned two words: quincunx and zeugma. I can't wait to try to work them into a sentence. : )

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Tracey. It is absurd, the lengths we now have to go to just to dodge the hackers. Good luck with your newly acquired words.

      Delete
  6. It is a rant, and a good one at that. The pressure, the PRESSURE! I can definitely feel it. Bravo! (I suddenly feel the need to find a closet and practice my mantra.) ;0)

    ReplyDelete
  7. This poem is oh-so relatable. Passwords make me crazy! I love how you took a frustration and transformed it into a creative inspiration. Well done!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Molly. Passwords are a pain, I wholeheartedly agree. We diminsh our frustrations somewhat when we laugh at them.

      Delete
  8. I love all your rhymes, beginning with security/purity. I had a scare just yesterday. I nearly got pulled to the brink of identity loss by a wily hacker impersonating a fabric artist I adore. I quickly changed passwords and added levels of security and it appears that disaster has been averted. For now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Mary Lee for your rhyme appreciation. Your account of attmepted dientity theft demonstrates how far these dastardly individual will go to in their efforts to swindle and steal. Glad you averted disaster.

      Delete
  9. I'm right there with you, Alan. Your poem is one we can all relate to!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Linda. Such matters are better shared.

      Delete
  10. "Change it regularly like jocks and socks" - bwahahaha! Talk about a chortle. I'm right there with you on this subject, Alan. I feel like the only thing all this password changing is keeping me safe from is accessing my OWN accounts. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah,Bridget, what an astute observation on your part.

      Delete
  11. Alan I feel your pain - and got a giggle too. I especially loved 'more characters than a murder mystery". Having recently had trouble logging in to online banking to the point I had to find an actual branch with an actual person to help me, I know this story too well :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Sally. The subject certainly exists on a universal scale. We all have experienced frustration in the zone as you can attest too.

      Delete
  12. Alan, you nailed this topic. In facet, last night my son got tangled into a password dilemma from the government. He was troubled, where to go, what is a good password, how to proceed, totally got confused. Thanks for the humor. Your rant is just what I needed to read.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Carol, you provide further evidence of password problems. I'm glad the humour shone through in my rant of a poem.

      Delete
  13. Soooo relatable, and worth not only a rant, but a poem. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Relatable, it is Karen. None of us are immune if we operate in the digital space. Glad the poem softened the impact of such matters.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poetry Inspired by Images and Objects

There are many ways pictures and photographs can be conscripted to support the writing of poetry. Allow me to share a few ideas with you: Old photographs are a great source of inspiration. Cynthia Rylant explored this idea with great success in her book 'Something Permanent' where she employed the Depression era photographs of Walker Evans to add a new voice to the starkness to the lives of people experienced under extreme circumstances. I have used this strategy to spark many individual poems. In ' I Bet There's No Broccoli On The Moon,' I used a photo I had taken in 2004 while living in New York to inspire a poem. The poem was based on a story related by a friend who grew up in New York.  I regularly combined poetry and pictures in my writer's notebook, drawing on inspiration from the photograph and my personal memories. We can also utilize existing cartoons and illustrations to create ekphrastic poems. I frequently use the illustrations of Jim Pavlidis to co

Opposite Poems

O pp o s ite P oem s In his book, ' How To Write Poetry,'  Paul Janeczko presents the idea of opposite poems. Paul suggests they could also be referred to as antonym poems. This is wordplay and it's fun to try. Here are some examples Paul provides to help us see very clearly how these short little poems work. I think the opposite of chair Is sitting down with nothing there What is the opposite of kind? A goat that butts you from behind Paul Janeczko You will  notice the poems are written in rhyming couplets. They can be extended so long as you remember to write in couplets. Paul shows us how this is done. What is the opposite of new? Stale gum that's hard to chew A hot-dog roll as hard as rock Or a soiled and smelly forgotten sock You might notice that some of Paul's opposite Poems begin with a question. The remainder of the poem answer the question posed. Opposite poems are a challenge, but it is a challenge worth trying. Not e

Powerful Poetry, 'Refugees' by Brian Bilston

  This week, Poetry Friday is hosted by Janice Scully  @ Salt City Verse where Janice shares some original words and offers us a taste of Thomas Carlyle to ponder. I encourage you to join a host of poets from all around the globe and visit Janice's page... Almost two years to the day, I wrote a post featuring the poem 'Refugees' by Brian Bilston. The poem was included in Brian's first book of poetry, 'You Took The Last Bus Home.' A very powerful Reverso poem and technically brilliant.  A Reverso poem can be read from top to bottom or bottom to top. It will often express opposite opinions depending on which way you read it. Such poems really make us think. A Reverso poem is like a picture turned upside down, a frowning face upended to reveal a smiling one. The poem read in reverse, contradicts itself with an opposing message. In 'Refugee' Brian Bilston focuses on a societal issue that tends to polarize feelings and the opposing views are clearly in eviden