I forgot my Visa password, and I really have to thank
The nice lady (who’s in Bangalore) I spoke to at the bank

She took me through security, although we’ve never met,
And in a trice my missing code was finally reset

But this last straw set me thinking, could there be a better way
Of managing PINs and passcodes? I forget one every day…

My credit cards have Chip and Pin; of those I have a brace
And for two matching debit cards my wallet has a space,

My internet accounts have codes (of those I manage five)
My stockbroker needs yet one more to keep my access live.

There’s also some for Amazon and PayPal and Ebay –
In entering the dratted things I pass my life away…

For one or two of these a passcode isn’t quite enough;
I have to give my favourite book, or other some such stuff ;

An animal; my second cousin’s mother’s maiden name,
And when you try to log in the requests are not the same.

A place I like? Some famous guy? The colour of my eyes?
To remember all this at my age is worthy of a prize

My NHS computer needs a code to let me in,
My voicemail inbox on the Net requests another PIN;

To login to the X-ray system needs a further code
Pathology has still one more – and adding to the load

My email servers (there are two) both know my username
But insist that no two passcodes used should ever be the same…

Then what about my laptop? One bad day I nearly died;
The password had escaped me, and it said “Access denied”

And made me wait two minutes till it let me try again,
Then when that failed, first five, then ten, ‘twas getting quite a pain

The wait was exponential, and up I got quite het
And took it down the corridor for IT to reset.

It’s bad enough to have codes for each access and each item
And on a secret memo it is possible to write ‘em

But some require six characters, some eight and for the cash
Some need an upper case (or two), or ampersand, or hash

And some will not allow you back to pre-computer slumber
Unless the jolly code contains a question mark and number.

So now I am quite organised, all codes I can remember
But that will cease to be the case when we get to December

For another cunning detail that is in the small print hidden
Is that every now and then you’ll find that you are cruelly bidden

“For your protection” (so they say), but just an extra load –
“Your password has expired now; please next choose a different code”!