There's a number you can call
to listen in on all the sounds of unresolved love.
The sighs and gasps.
The beating of pulses in throbbing song.
The voices of the unwanted and desperate
crying out in passion
for just one touch.
There are radio waves reserved for the place where longing lingers -
for voices mangled by mad grips and furious fingers.
A flurry of sound that culminates into one palpitating heart.
A graveyard for romance that was doomed at the start.
It swells up inside your telephone.
A coagulation of feeling hopeless and alone.
Crawling ever toward an unobtainable ******
that will never come.
There's a number you can call,
but if I were you, I wouldn't dial it.
There's an insanity involved.
The effect of that collective sigh;
some people die for it.
Inspired by a Ray Bradbury short story that I can't remember the name of.
UPDATE: Nearly nine years after writing this, and after getting (slightly) wine drunk and reading fellow HP poet Pradip Chattopadhyay's "Beatiful Ohio," I recalled what the cover of the short story collection that the tale that inspired this poem originated from looked like. After a short quest on google, I found the book by the cover, (it's the one titled One More for the Road) and read the titles of the short stories contained therein and lo and behold, those ol' bells of recognition started a'ringin'.
I now believe (but do not know for certain, as this does remain unconfirmed at the moment,) that the Ray Bradbury story that inspired this poem is the one called Beasts published in his 2002 collection One More for the Road.
I remember that this collection, in particular, was almost kind of a let down. I remember being almost disappointed with the content of the stories. They lacked the punch and intrigue of many of his other works I'd read before then, and paled in comparison to his short story collection I Sing the Body Electric, which I had read probably right before landing on One More for the Road.
Still, one night about eight and a half years ago, one of those stories that I had deemed lackluster had left enough of an impression on me to lead me on to write this poem. (Which, over the years, has grown on me, being the first one to appear whenever I view my published poems with the A-Z filter. I've likely re-read it more often that most of my other poems at this point.)
What a wild thing memory is. And how wild is it that something read and considered kinda mid can still plant itself back there in your mind long enough to germinate such a writing?
Okay, alright. I'll admit it. I may be a little more than only "slightly" wine drunk at this point.