The Hermit Poet

Recycled

Lines taken from various attempted spam postings

in salem,
a horse-deal of the human ebionism
against absolute power in kaleidoscopic affairs.

they paddled out on the artist-son of the Mississippi,
and, surprising their Bellydance pictures,
listen to oriental dance music

so few people talk for themselves,
it’s impossible to experience one’s death

Spam, with its highly evolved techniques to appear natural and meaningful, dips into all sorts of weird terminology and texts. It can be surprisingly educational to try to make sense of its random gibberish. And sometimes, inadvertantly poetic. I’m particularly taken by they paddled out on the artist-son of the Mississippi, but I couldn’t tell you exactly why.

I’ve reproduced the lines as I’ve found them — no grammar, syntax, or word changes have been made. I have cut pieces out though. Is it a good poem? Is it even a poem? Not really, but it is somewhat intriguing what the spambot puts together as an attempt at meaningful text — or at least something that might cause a person to read the email.

Want to know what “ebionism” means? My best guess comes from Websters Revised Unabridged entry for “Ebionitism”:

\E”bi*o*ni`tism\, n. (Eccl. Hist.) The system or doctrine of the Ebionites.

The Catholic Encyclopedia online has the following entry for the Ebionites, an ancient heretical group of Gnostic Judaic Christians. They were “Christians” who did not believe in Christ, or most of the writings that comprise the New Testament. They did, however, like the Gospel of Matthew. As a sidenote, evidently the name Ebionite is a corruption of the Hebrew for “poor men.”