raven on a gravestone
raven illustration
Victorian flourish illustration

Once upon a thankless query, did I excogitate a theory

From the superfluous panoply of derelict accounts galore.

While I scrolled, next door to drowsing, importunely came while browsing

Yet another grim arousing of some motion at my chamber door.

“Tis GrubHub,” I muttered, “setting grub outside my door,

Only this and nothing more.”

 

And yet, I felt some grim foreboding, like some required undone recoding

As if somehow downloading long forgotten files before.

I may have erred in thus creating multiple accounts relating

To a single passcode varied nary by “1234”

And used again repeatedly whenever such was wanted for

Or just a name and nothing more!

 

As I mused upon this folly, softly then there came a volley

Escalating to a squall of knocks inflicted on my chamber door.

There outside my sacred address, such repeat demands for access

Hearing now the raps and taps that I had never heard before

That I had never heard despite my never having listened for

The wind, perhaps, and nothing more?

Victorian flourish illustration

And all the while this faint intruding thought disruptive to my brooding

Have I been myself deluding through laggard practices of yore?

Had I, through such apathique, designed to make defenses weak

To set the hounds of risk on this such constitutive score?

The fiend that lurks outside the light and preys upon your credit score

What need to lock an open door? A birthday, or 1234

Only this and nothing more.

 

And the password, never shifting, still is sitting, STILL is sitting

On the valid trust of palace keys and secret cryptic doors.

And the eyes have all the seeking of the daemon’s overkeeping

And the access to the streaming service, bank accounts and more.

And each account remains an invitation to come back for more

And shall be pwned — evermore!

raven on a skull illustration
Victorian flourish illustration

(*Too scary; didn’t read. And my most sincere apologies to Edgar Allan Poe.)