HEY LETTER 729 - a poem by John Selzner

[Note: In the course of soliciting submissions on Craigslist and other online spaces, we receive an influx of spam in our mailbox. Rather than delete all of these bits, we've decided to commit a few toward honest work. We forwarded a particularly incoherent e-mail from "Miles" to our friend JD Selzner and told him to fashion from it something useful. He replied with the following poem. - PD]

HEY LETTER 729
Between Miles and C.R. Darwin

Җ

by John Drake Selzner

Җ

Two pieces of correspondence, each possessed by the same rarefied air of discovery. They've here been interlaced nearly line by line. The resulting profundities concerning technology and progress seemed at times eerily forethought. Idiosyncrasies of spelling and grammar have, in both cases, been preserved precisely. I consider myself more the discoverer of this conversation, rather than its author. - JDS

Let’s be honest with each other...
Besides a general interest about the Southern lands, I have been now ever since my return engaged in a very presumptuous work &which I know no one individual who wd not say a very foolish one.
Are you sick and tired of not getting traffic and making money online?
I was so struck with distribution of Galapagos organisms &c &c with the character of the American fossil mammifers, &c &c that I determined to collect blindly every sort of fact, which cd bear any way on what are species.

Are you sick and tired of trying every rehashed *old school* technique?
I have reaped heaps of agricultural & horticultural books, & have never ceased collecting facts --
Are you sick and tired of hoping *THIS* could work?
At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced
Well ... for once I couldn't agree with you more.
- (quite contrary to opinion I started with)
So far starters this is what you need to do.
-that species are not
DON'T think anything ...
-(it is like confessing a murder)
Don't think about Google, Yahoo or MSN
Immutable.
Don't think about banner ads, social bookmarking, social networking, Facebook, Adwords, SEO, bloggi ng, article writing...
Heaven forfend me from Larmarck

Forget *EVERYTHING* that has come your way until now.
of a "tendency to progression" "adaptations from the slow willing of animals" &c, -
It's a time for a change!!
But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his-
I'm going to show you how to get a lot of traffic and make money online WITHOUT Google.
Though the means of change are wholly so-
YES!! Don't sound alarmed. I'm going to prove it to you.
I think I have found out
By now you must have realized getting traffic from Google just means ...
(here's presumption!)
Stress, more stress and then some MORE stress. Wouldn't you agree?

The simple way by which species become more exquisitely adapted to various ends.
How frustrated are you lately?

You will now groan, & think to yourself 'on what a man have I been wasting my time in writing to.'
In recession, endless bills to pay, loans piling up, job's a nightmare and the money ... well that's the BIGGEST problem...
I shd five years ago, have thought so. -
... and for years, that's exactly what happened to Mo Latif

I fear you will also groan at the length of this letter
For four long years ... that's 48 months, 1,461 days, 35,064 hours or 2,103,840 minutes...
Excuse me, I did not begin with malice prepense.
... and I bet, now he's glad he's out of that tortuorous cycle.

Believe me my dear Sir
But that's not all ... he wasted over $100,000 learning how to get instant traffic. That's $2,083 every month spent on learning.

Very truly your's
We don't have that kind of time or that kind of money lying around, as I know I surely don't!
Regards

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John Drake Selzner is a native of Oak Park, Illinois. He is currently pursuing an MFA from Northwestern University. He has previously published poetry in Help Quarterly and Read Words! Review. He cites John Cale's lyrics, the poetry of Emily Dickinson and the cinema of Luis Bunuel as his primary literary influences. He is currently working on a "biography in verse" exploring the life of painter Francis Bacon. He lives in Logan Square with his fiancee, Brenna, and their dog, Jasper Johns. This is his first work composed on a computer.