Rather than just dumping the spam folder out of hand every couple of weeks, sometimes I like to pore through it and get…creative.

The short poems below are taken directly from text included in spam comments; I’ve mixed and matched and assembled, though I haven’t added any words; it’s directly out of the spam pile otherwise.

an amusingly old school cry for help:

Hey! I just wanted to ask
if you ever have any trouble with hackers?
I really found you by error, while I was looking on Aol
for something else
Hmm it seems like your site ate my first comment (it was super long)

praise and colorful metaphors:

Wow, that’s what I was exploring for, what a information!
I’m slightly certain I’ll be informed
plenty
look forward to seeking more of your magnificent post.
F*ckin’ remarkable things here.

a paean to monetization of services:

It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button!
I think one of your commercials caused my web browser to resize,
you may well want to put that on your blacklist.
One thing I’d like to comment on is that weightloss system

a ballad to community-organized scientific grammarians:

We are a group of volunteers and starting a new scheme in our community
Much of the infor mation about signal transmission in the nervous system has been obtained from experiments
A number of them are rife with spelling problems
and I find it very
troublesome to inform the truth

This one is actually more flash fiction than poetry; it’s pretty much a spam comment in it’s entirety (I axed a line with a link trying to sell me black-market cialis), but it was fun.

Today, I went to the beach front with my children. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back!

This has been the most recent edition of our semi-regular literary experiment. I hope you feel as cultured as I do.