It wasn’t the dark cloud of destiny that
descended. YouKnowWho didn’t emerge
with his terrible swift sword to separate the
Be from the Bop. No, this was much worse!
At precisely 10:45 ET, on December 7, 2021,
a day that shall live in infamy, the Amazon
Cloud crashed! Forget Pearl Harbor, this
was a real catastrophe! The litany of misery
this evil caused is legion: When his internet feeding
machine failed, Kyle Lerner, cloudless in Marina del
Rey, California, had to feed his Persian-Himalayan
pussycats by hand, “like in ancient times!” Poor Steve
Peters couldn’t remotely activate his robot vacuum
to suck up those blue-berry muffin crumbs he clumsily
spilled on his kitchen floor that morning. He was reduced
to using a broom and dustpan like some pitiful common
20th Century laborer! Tragedy multiplied that day faster
than sex scandals in Silicon Valley. In St. Louis, Alexa
totally abandoned Mark Edelston, leaving him to
communicate only with his wife! “We chat more during
the day than me and my wife do,” he lamented. Alexa
always responded to his requests and commands, unlike
his wife who, strange to say, probably had an existence
separate from Mark’s needs and desires. Mark suffered
“separation anxiety” in the face of Alexa’s brutal desertion.
And what of the impossible hardship handed to Samantha
Sherhag in Atlanta who, because of Alexa’s cruel malfeasance,
had to use her own fingers to turn lights on and off! Imagine
her finger fatigue, the hours soaking her disturbed digits in
Epsom salts after excruciating rehab sessions endured to restore
her throbbing pointers and pinkies to their pre-disastered state!
But the most sadistic fate of all befell 19-year-old Sofia Echeverry
who couldn’t access “Canvas” the program she used to research
college papers. “I’m going to be at the library a lot longer than
I thought because of [the crash],” she moaned. Nietzsche wrote,
“To live is to suffer.” Trigger Warning! Only those with strong
constitutions should envision seriously deprived Sophia as she
perused the stacks of those antediluvian apps called books—albeit
apps she could use on takeoffs and landings as they are powered
only by intellectual interest and curiosity. What did someone so
young do to deserve such a fate?! We want to believe in a
benevolent God, but if God is all knowing and all powerful,
the creator of everything from pizza to the Pieta, why did he
allow the Amazon Cloud to crash? Why, Lord, why?
Quotations are from, “Amazon Outage Spotlights Reliance on Cloud Services,” by Sarah E. Needleman, The Wall
Street Journal, December 9, 2021, page B1-B2.
Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His chapbook, All the Songs Sung (Angel Flight Press), and his fourth poetry collection, The Broad Grin of Eternity (WordTech Editions) arrived in 2021. His poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of Net Anthology and three times for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Chiron Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, and elsewhere.