Etaoin Shrdlu

Hot type, slug type, linotype,
you, baby, were more than filler text,
more than something to complete a line
when the newsroom wanted deadline.
You were sweet, fruit that was ripe.
There was me, there was you,
and you were anything but etaoin shrdlu.

No error was King Cnut and clan,

no proofing mistake at the end

or when the dance began,

Neither placeholder nor old headline,

it was girl meets boy, boy meets world,

for me an entirely different point of view,

never wrangled or tangled up in blue.

 

Looking at water, staring at the moon,

gazing at the mirror over the bar

after inhaling a favorite psychic tune,

there was always something fresh, something new.

Rope in my veins, flowers in bloom, my back pages

were so much younger than the old hag’s groom.

You were a sonnet, not etaoin shrdlu.

 

Nobody understood, nobody understood,

or so we said on a philosophical stool

while reminiscing rainwater that had disdained our sieve.

For the first time I knew how to live,

and because of you I was nobody’s fool.

Quantum entanglement is probably why.

You were literature’s kiss, scansion true,

not some bibliographic etaoin shrdlu.

~Willim Hammett

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