Paper Crown

The headers were piled up high
The crown reached up into the sky.
Paper Crown buckled—
Its structure was truckled—
Before any payload could fly.

The headers were massive and grand
The content just barely could stand.
Each metadata badge,
Each header’s cadge,
Was larger than what it had planned.

A jacket with badges so bright
With more than a thousand in sight.
No sense, no regard,
The parser’s guard
Crashed underneath the full weight.

Before any useful began
Paper Crown buckled its span.
The headers so thick,
The payload too quick,
And nothing worked out as was planned.

The crown grew with every request
More headers that never would rest.
Metadata piled,
The parser went wild,
And function became manifest.

The headers were gathered so bright
More ornamental each single flight.
The request grew dense,
Made very little sense,
Till the whole thing collapsed in the night.

The badges were beautiful, sure
But nobody found them a cure.
For slowness and wait,
For system collapse—state,
Just ornamental excess, obscure.

The request started off light
Then headers made things not quite right.
It buckled and broke,
A parser’s last stroke,
When Paper Crown wore its full might.