Steel yourself for the frightful tale of one named Thomas.
He lost his life, one rich with promise.
With neither means nor disadvantage,
He couldn’t fail, and could not manage.
Abundant grains did travel the hourglass,
He valued not the present’s pass.
He mired in cool discontent,
And quipped each thing he could resent.
While the shelf bore an encyclopedia,
Instead poured his brains into social media.
Once upon his final breath,
He Facebook-lived his worthless death.
So with a life lacking gratis,
It only earned a blip of status.
If you should happen on his ghost or bone
Touch the earth, but not your phone.
You think his fate you do not want,
But your own devices, it’s you that haunt.
The challenge here was to write a horror tale that is within reach of modern life for many of us, myself certainly included. I wanted to pull in familiar dramatic tones of other spooky poems for this time of year while touching on superstition but not the supernatural. I also wanted to be playful with structure and rhyme. It’s clearly there, but I didn’t feel the need to overthink either, so the structure is as imperfect as the cautionary tale of the modern life that probably put the poem in your purview.