Modern Hieroglyphs

 It seems in vogue to talk in riddles,

 A language once known to a select few,

Erasing vowels and irritable middles,

 Is now as common as the fear of flu.

 Outsiders frown and glare, afraid of the new,

Of compressed words and removed letters,

English now released from (or detained in?) fetters.

 Less mind-straining is the reduced vocabulary,

Suits this quickened and fretful age,

 Youuths have ignored the local constabulary,

Condensing War and Peace into a single page,

Easily conveying their joy or rage,

 Without recourse to a dictionary,

 Each teenager now a word visionary.

 Strange symbols signify a particular mood,

Colons, brackets, full stops, in combination

 Say more than a whole poem could.

What I need is a codebreaker, a translation,

To sift through this lexical damnation.

 Until I do this, I stand woefully alone

 In need of a modern Rosetta Stone.

 A revolution, an overhaul of what's obsolete,

Or a degradation, a horrific abuse?

 Has English been raped, by teenage cheat,

Or is it blossoming, style let loose,

To inhibit thinking, increase output obtuse,

 Shakespeare and Milton left by the wayside,

 Washed away by the outgoing tide.

 These acronyms, these hieroglyphs

Do no more increase intelligence,

 Than new musicians tired riffs.

They dull the mind, cause intransigence,

Revel in petty insignificence.

  A metaphor for these sedantary times,

  IQ lost in childish, obscene rhymes.

© menshallknownothingofthis.co.uk 24.05.2009