IF POE WERE A TECHIE

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
system manuals piled high
and wasted paper on the floor,
longing for the warmth of bed sheets,
still I sat there, doing spreadsheets.

Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand,
I then invoked the "save" command
and waited for the disk to store,
only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering,
long I sat there wond'ring, fearing
while the disk kept churning,
turning yet to churn some more.
"Save!" I said, "You cursed mother!
Save my data from before!"

One thing did the phosphors answer
only this and nothing more, just,
"Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

With my fingers pale and trembling,
slowly toward the keyboard bending,
longing for a happy ending,
hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee,
timidly I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still persisted,
words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted,
haunted, as my patience wore, saying,
"Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

There I sat, distraught, exhausted;
by my own machine accosted.
Getting up, I turned away,
and paced across the office poor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight:
a lightning bolt cut through the night.

A gasp of horror overtook me,
shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my previous data,
lost and gone forevermore. Not even,
"Abort, Retry, Ignore?"