We used to be civil, we used to be kind,
But now all that’s heard is “Kiss my behind”.
And one has to wonder, what in hell has gone wrong,
To the point I am writing this lamentable song?

The fault, my dear friend, is that blasted e-mail,
Which, I hasten to say, has replaced old mail snail.
Email is instant, it’s fast, and it’s cheap.
But response to an “e-mail”? Ahh, nary a peep!!!

By now, vaunted reader, you’ve probably have guessed,
That this poem of sorts, was not written in jest.
Is our time so compact, so harried and rushed
That to type a reply makes us both pale and flushed?

If you profess you are friends, and mean what you say,
Then what are you waiting for, just type away!!
If you have not the time to write a large tome,
Then write something small, as light as the foam.

It need not be Shakespeare, or romantic Peruvian.
It need not be runic, or antediluvian.
What counts is the effort that one expends
In the action that says, “we are still friends”.

That effort, I grant you, may be big or quite small,
But it’s a damned sight better than no effort at all.
For no effort at all, says a heck of a lot
It says, at the worse, that the friendship is shot.

And if our poor friendship has run its sad course.
Don’t let me beat it like a dead horse.
Have the courage and guts and fortitude to say
“I appreciate your effort, but it’s really ok.
I think that it’s time for us to move on,
The good times were great, but now they’re all gone”

Yes, it might sting, and hurt just a bit.
And I possibly might feel like a great bag of…excrement.
But at least I will know—and not waste my time,
Writing verses of poems that all have to rhyme.

I know in this poem, I’ve slightly digressed,
But I just had some thoughts that I had to express
Common Courtesy ( I pause, as I take a deep breath).
I hope I’m not lamenting its untimely death.
For in my case, all it would have took,
Is a 5 minute e-mail, not a play or a book.