these are the people
you must admit
they wake up & initialize themselves
by cold start
they brush their teeth
with their toolkits
clean their faces
in stages & in phases
in front of the screen
& nothing in between
they wash their hair
with their debugging flair
they make up with graphics
bit by bit
they spread their bread
while making their sheets
they lick the keyboard
& bite the sandwich in between
they eat & edit
shit while they edit
drink to submit
deadlines endlessly commit
in between meals
they've sidekick for titbits
they let their fingers
do the walking
& exercise their brain
to keep their body fit
these are addicts
ethnic
with different lifestyles
& different habits
they're DIABETICS
I mean, their DIet is AlphaBETs
& numerICS
in other words, ASCII or EBCDIC
they're packed with coca-cola
& float in decimal
they talk to char char
& sing in octa or hexa
meanwhile they've their dinner
byte by byte or bit by bit
they listen to
error messages as music
decimal as fixed
exponential as logic
they too,
have bad habits
operating system they compete
secretly they date, dump & cheat
when they want a break
they sleep to delete
take a shower
to warm start
as if 'tis insufficient
& incomplete!
first published in p.223 "Love @ 1st Byte", 1992
Lin Hsin Hsin
August 23, 1991