Four Minutes

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Four Minutes

Four minutes nightly,
men and women horse
around, unsightly,
sexual intercourse,
quick to ravish,
minus underpants,
seven lavish
on their pets and plants;
nine are wasted
waiting for the web.
Have you faced it?
Far more minutes ebb
before a screen
that flashes, sometimes flickers,
than in between
the sheets, without your knickers.
Here's my quarrel
with pets, plants and computer:
they're not immoral,
but turn you into neuter.

Patricia Volk reviews "Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything," by James Gleick (Pantheon) in The New York Times, September 2, 1999 ("Can You Spare 7 Minutes of Life to Read This?"). She writes: "We're having sex for an average of four minutes a day. Seven minutes are lavished on care of plants and pets. Internet users can wait nine minutes daily for their Web sites to materialize." She adds, in parentheses, that it took her 412 minutes to read "Faster," or 103 days of sex.