Never check the Internet when you’re sick
The horror stories do more harm than good
The slippery slope takes you down quick
You can’t stop, though you know you should
The horror stories do more harm than good
Is it a headache, or a tumor in your brain?
You can’t stop, though you know you should
Click, click, click- an endless refrain
The slippery slope takes you down quick
Never check the Internet when you’re sick
Poetry
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This is a really interesting and unique piece! If you think about – and I believe that this is relatively safe to say that – when people are sick or under the weather, they generally turn to the Internet for entertainment or for updates on worldly events. It – the Internet – is usually regarded as a good thing because – who wants to sit around and do absolutely nothing, even when you are feeling ill? However, this piece shares a different perspective on the whole scenario. When you are ill, you also don’t have the will nor the brain capacity to confront bad news because you are sort of delusional and your fever makes you short-tempered. With these combined elements, it is inevitable that “horror stories” you hear – maybe the next political scandal, maybe the latest celebrity abuse story, maybe a category 5-storm is hitting the mainland – will not settle correctly. Furthermore, upon hearing the bad news, you’ll keep digging deeper and deeper into it because we humans are naturally curious: “Click, click, click – an endless refrain.” In essence, the turmoils of our reality is too much for us when we are sick, so it is best to stay away until we recover. Your poem conveys this message very effectively. Your repetition of the following sentences – “The horror stories do more harm than good,” “The slippery slope takes you down quick,” and “You can’t stop, though you know you should” – helps emphasize to the reader the fact that the Internet has a darker side that is toxic when someone is in the middle of healing. Lastly, I love the way that you separated the last two lines from the rest of the poem because it stresses the whole idea of a slope that rapidly declines – just like that, you’ve reached the bottom. Very, very clever decision!
If there’s anything that I would do to make this poem even better, it would be to add more “Symptoms.” Although “Symptoms” is the title of this work, over the course of it, you only reference signs of an illness in one line. That being said, I think that you should expand on what other changes a person could experience if he or she spends too much time on the Internet when they are sick, therefore exposing him or herself to brutal and scary information that does not serve as an aid when in recovery. Not only will this revision make the title more relevant, but it will convince people further to stay away from the Internet because you are clearly illustrating the consequences of the action for them.
Nevertheless, overall, this work was very well-crafted. I applaud you!