Spam Poetry

I found this particularly poignant example of spam text (designed to get past the spam filters) in my inbox today:

World War I Lyrics

As follows in 1924,

Mother’s Day.

Let’s shake hands.

How’s life? I’ll speak my mind.

It’s nice; accept my sympathy in 1918.

Why not? Cheats!

I’m sorry, what’s troubling you?

Mind you, I had to add the punctuation and line breaks, but I think it paints an evocative picture of a veteran of that terrible war, speaking with his mother on Mother’s Day years later, unable to communicate the horrors that he saw to a blandly reassuring parent. The haunting refrain, “I’m sorry, what’s troubling you?” epitomizes the plight of the shellshocked doughboy in a world that doesn’t understand him.