"landline" poems
I read a text
Meant for a friend,
One you didn't mean
To send.
Our culmination in technology
Has us now concluded.
A landline would've
Kept me dangling,
But pocket dials don't lie.
Apr 29, 2015
Apr 29, 2015 at 10:03 AM UTC
That's me in the picture,
A collage of brothers and sisters;
I'm held high in my Mammy's arms,
Days before leaving Ireland.
Six months later, in our new home,
On a couch in our front room,
We pose again.
(See the console in our romper room?
It's testament to our boom and boons)
There's thousands of miles between those shoots,
And four million loved ones left behind
In a life and land we won't have again.
(That's the way life was back then)
No Face Time, #MeTime,
Sometimes a landline,
But always a letter in a card at the right time.
Brothers and sisters are missing.
In neglected churchyards,
And yet my mother smiles,
All the while.
Sixty years on, we pose again,
Sharing four hundred years here,
With seven hundred left behind:
Years of Famine and Hedge Schools,
Foreign invasions and Imperial Rule.
We stand ***** shoulders touching,
Between them loved ones missing;
Gone before the shutter opened,
A partial story as pictures go.
We're Irish proud,
Some of Canada's best;
An Irish-Canadian
When laid to rest.
Jan 30, 2019
Jan 30, 2019 at 10:14 AM UTC
Telephone scams are driving me crazy--
Both on my landline and on my cell!
I'm on the verge of telling every
Pesky caller to go to hell!
The IRS is after me.
Oh, the message sounds so dire.
The person says I'd better respond
Or I will be in big trouble. Liar!
Or a recording tells me that my
Router has been hacked, and so
If I don't call them right away,
They'll shut my router down. Oh, no!
A caller claims he's from HP
And says that they know for sure
That my computer has a virus.
I want to say he's full of manure.
Another swears he's calling from
The FBI, demanding money
Because I'm being investigated.
I must pay, or else! Funny!
Because you've managed to make our lives
So miserable, scammers, I swear:
There has to be a special place
In hell for you. You'd better beware!
-by Bob B (8-23-18)
Aug 23, 2018
Aug 23, 2018 at 3:15 PM UTC
where were you when the tree branches
were scraping against my window
when i was staring at the cul-de-sac
clutching the landline to my chest
one time i thought i saw a bear
in the woods across from the bus stop
but it turned out to be a pile of brush
you know i still see things in the dark
the other night i woke up from a bad dream
and saw teeth that weren’t there
i managed to blink them away but
there are some things that i can’t
like the shadow in the doorway that visits
every night and the open hand i am doing
everything not to grab
it pretends that it needs me but really
all i needed was yours
Oct 5, 2021
Oct 5, 2021 at 11:15 AM UTC
Altogether, the night we wove
a trickled treasure, tangled:
skirted legs spilling out from
the teacup of a denim lap,
validation in the vacuum cove.
- Dusty Nikes before the dusk,
who art in heaven, my god
he thrusts.
- Why'd your mother
let you talk that way:
You smoke cliche cigarettes
in such an unfamiliar way.
- The hanger left welts, weeping
into post-relevance landline love,
body lay like the hands on the clock,
copper landmarks seeping.
What a feeling, ever so same.
Arched eyebrows, a trademarked shame:
like a fighter, like ****** oozing.
Like a functional inability,
divine in its losing.
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 1:01 AM UTC
a decapitated dog put on too many sticks to reach out and bite a child who only wanted to play with a soft touch and gapped holed grin.
the lights go out when you can´t know when, say yes to hold lights for when ´when´ happens ¨you can trip and fall¨.
glasses melted with fire to become bigger for a bigger head are still to dark to wear in shadow.
tilted camera you stare with a corked head curious to what goes on behind me, won´t you look my way instead.
dragonfly warrior poorly protecting his flourescent queen from the onslaught of molecules in a world filled with air, with air, with air, air, air.
the volume of speakers are controlled by tiny gods moving their tiny fingers, just a littly bit louder my dear.
can you remember when landline telephones were used, I remember circle dials and zero always took the longest, when did phone get rid of tele?
white flowers and white hanging sheets with yellow sun bolts raining on a clear sky shout with thunder from a noisless wind, I wear earphones tonight.
trees dance better then me, plants taste better then me, pianos sound better then me, me is better then me, we´re equals.
fat cat dreams of being skinny, he wears eye liner on weekdays and thongs on the weekends.
sometimes yoga makes me feel like a woman who feels **** then yoga makes me think what that thought means?
rocks are hot when heated.
Jan 31, 2011
Jan 31, 2011 at 6:41 AM UTC
I remember
when growing up
was desired.
We swung our lungs
upwards,
towards the sky,
so we could steal
the air of the
universe's river.
I'd call you on
my parents' red landline.
You'd call me on
a broken cordless phone.
Your father would yell
and I could hear your mother
knock over things
as she was either
running, hiding, or
fighting back.
You don't exist.
You're a figment of my
imagination.
You're a poem,
but I want you to be
a memory that is real
to substitute the ones
I wish were fake.
You don't exist.
Your name is not
Kimberly or June.
Your ears aren't pierced.
We never played games
or shared deep thoughts.
We never talked about
running the **** away.
We didn't grow up together.
We aren't close.
You were never born.
You are just a phantom
stemmed by an unoriginal
imagination. imagination.
imagination. imagination.
But I want you to be real.
Please exist beyond my mind.
In my head,
you confided in me.
In my head,
I wasn't so ******* alone
from ages 6 to 16.
In my head,
you're a phone call away.
I don't want to write a poem
to communicate to you.
Be born. Be born. Be born.
I have so much
I want to share.
I want you to meet
my girlfriend Rachel.
I want you to hear
about how everything
is going well, for once.
Be born. Be born.
Be born. Be born.
Apr 3, 2015
Apr 3, 2015 at 4:44 PM UTC
Things blow up
People throw up
And then walk on
A land mine
When they talk on
A landline
I try to enjoy myself
But enjoyment has stealth
And eludes
Which secludes
Happiness hides
Behind sentinel shrapnel
That makes us abide
The rules of this flat Hell
There are frequent explosions in my mind
They are sequenced implosions through time
I have poor explanations
For my inflammations
My hands fumble
My brain crumbles
Progress is lost
That's the cost
Frustration cooks
From holy books
And constitutions
That can't be changed
Or rearranged
So we're gridlocked in an explosion
In Hell's fruitless fire we are frozen
Explosions dot the planet like acne
Humanity has no choice except to get older
Sharing information is our main asset yet we grow colder
We must evolve together
We're doomed to be tethered
So we must gel
To avoid Hell
There are monsters in our midst
In our mind is where they sit
We must expel them together
Or we'll be exploding forever
Oct 22, 2017
Oct 22, 2017 at 11:08 PM UTC
The world has turned into a global village
No one can deny on that...
But..remember the phone we had placed on that beautiful table mat?
Yes...it was a matter of pride to have one..
The only fastest medium of communication we had at that time
It too had models...the rotary phone, the keypad and many fancy ones
We talked, laughed and sobbed sitting at one place as we were tied with the corded set with everyone.
It was safe.....no fear of radiation or loss of eye sight .
Though it was much too costlier than what it is today....people still communicated and talked their heart out
Now...every hand has a cell phone which comes with many features overcoming the limitation of the old one
People can connect anywhere in no time
Then why...?
We are so disconnected.....!
May be we mastered the art of telepathy?...or we are blessed with a magical wand...?
We talk no more
We only make groups
We love forwarding messages
We have become mute.....
So can we again move to landline?
Come out of the virtual world by talking to our dear ones at this time?
Can we try and understand what they are hiding behind their smiling whatsapp profiles?
Let's do things one at a time...rather than multitasking with phone on one hand and laptop on the other...
Let's give them the love and respect when one needs from your side.
So ..... sit back and dial a number of your loved one...and help the world again to become one if not through landline but may be your heartline!!
Bina Mukherjee
May 24, 2020
May 24, 2020 at 2:39 PM UTC
She put her hand on my chest
Same spot as the rest of them
Oh, she’s up there with the best of ‘em
And she pulled the trigger
When she called me her Greek mythical figure
Write my name on stone scriptures
Internet interwebs and twitter
A trending topic to follow
And I fall low
Just like all the Greats before
They all know
Its just a matter of time
I better call to her god or call her landline
Before I’m left behind
trying to find
A hand that fits in mine
When she put her hand right here
Shot full of my greatest fears
Cause I am a mythical greek man
I’ll throw my self into the tar sands
And if I need that hand
which was place above my heart
I start shaken
a legend awaken
my actions mistaken
Greatness taken
out of context
Who’s next
To feel that touch
Is too much
For me to ask?
Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 at 6:24 PM UTC
There he is,
between the Siberian Tiger and the Maui's Dolphin,
**** Mobilis Nullius.
She does not own a cellphone.
Text for her is the letters and words
that make up a book.
If he wants to take a picture,
he'll use a camera, thanks.
She doesn't want to download, upload,
freeload, overload,
girl, you've got to carry that load
of debt to the telco company.
He watches movies in the cinema
and he doesn't want to be hooked up
to the internet
or caught in the ever-widening net of commerce.
She's happy with the ancient ways,
songlines on the landline
lines on the land
where a woman can walk away
and hear only the ringing
of bird song,
lines on the land
a man can follow to the heart
of somewhere lost
and know only peace.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 1:00 AM UTC
"He can't walk, he's on decline."
I was briefed as I clocked in.
an anxious robotic voice says
You have clocked in at 9:40pm
"When I get back from vacation He'll be dead"
I stand awkwardly at the landline phone and stare at him.
between us is the Clients bedroom doorway
The Client is asleep.
"When did he go to bed?," I say after a silence.
"Oh about a minute ago"
Breathing becomes fast and heavy from inside the room.
"I think it's a good time for you to go now"
I say, "It was nice to meet you."
"I'll be relieving you tomorrow morning at 8:30"
He leaves,
There is nothing relieving about this man
eager to back into each parking space
Lusting for his vacation in California
Caring for this helpless old man when I leave.
Architecture rivets as he walks down the hallway.
footsteps echo off the empty fireplaces and yellow wallpaper
no tumbleweed in the darkness outside
only snow wet and black tar.
as he looks in the mirror his wax smile fades into his hairline
I shiver in the recliner at my journal.
I look at the man sleeping past the doorway.
This is my job now.
That man is my future
Destined for a Hospice Heart
Apr 5, 2017
Apr 5, 2017 at 10:52 PM UTC
It's good to have technology, but not to our hurt. The internet is so often used, to stir up people's dirt.
The cell phone is used, to detonate a bomb. Your life can be in danger, whether you go or come.
The computer can be used, to download people having *** We already have a sick society, we don't need any more pictures, to cause our souls to be vex.
The television is used to teach our children very bad profanity. It also shows them guns and violence, something we don't want them to see.
The landline telephone is used to scam the elderly out of the money they make. Something need to be done about this, especially, for the elderly sake.
There are cameras used, to peek under a woman's dress. All because it's allowed within a particular State, there will be no arrest.
The thumb drive is used to steal important documents. Right behind your back, then they can be secretly sent.
By, Sandra Juanita Nailing
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 3:03 AM UTC
Your mom still calls me pretty
even though I pretend you don't exist.
I know I've loved you forever
built a house and a bed out of sticks
then burned it all down
like a candle to the wick.
Look at you with such admiration
and I start to feel sick.
Sealed by doom, in 2017
healed by your lips.
Seeking out a brand new lover -
it's you that I miss.
Made out of nerves like second hand china,
always shattered like this.
I hope you'll choose me
repair me, take me to your place
know this rejection is something
I must finally meet face to face.
Calling on your landline, late and weary
it's like screaming into space.
Drove around in a circle
because you always know what's right
with the windows down, I'm blinded
your smile so unbelievably white
and I wish I could stop feeling
like I'm such an ugly sight
maybe then you'd want me
and I'd have less to write.
Nov 27, 2023
Nov 27, 2023 at 12:56 AM UTC
My little black book is dusty,
The names are smeared and
Most of them were landline numbers.
For you youngsters,
Get on your parents lap and ask em
To tell ya what landlines were:
And I hate your love poem
Because I know they are real,
I need a girlfriend,
Maybe I forgot how that feels.
I hate your love poem,
Its really quite good,
But the t reminds me I'm all
Alone, alone in da hood.
I hate your love poem
Because I don't know any girls,
And yeah some are corny,
Some make me wanna hurl!
So don't get it wrong,
Please try to understand,
I'm just a little jealous,
Alone and doing what I can.
Apr 2, 2016
Apr 2, 2016 at 2:48 PM UTC
I got a Voldemort filled
inside my brain
a world exist where
door ain't remain.
A world governed by
testo and dopemine
everyday feel like making it rain
sleepless nights feel like jerking
aside the thoughts inside barking
futile because already gave in
flesh and bone
where sins cave in.
Feel like fly in Venus
ain't working out with Jesus
so lemme call out to star
bruh lend me few Winnie
to fetch me some honey
as i rather have pitch up deep than to sow and let it reap
thinking and thinking till it leads
to ************* scar that feeds
grooving epidermis making it bleed
it's like god handing out seeds
and I ain't getting one because of my deeds
Landline, laziness the line
bed's the mine
set foot there goes the crying
all i do is sit back and rhyme
hiding sorrows in these lines
hoping you'd save the day
like the Dre
back when shady was stray
Pray, I pray none's listening
is my existence so grey
pillow talking all night
only time i get to voice my say.
Apr 10, 2022
Apr 10, 2022 at 10:34 AM UTC
Love is crazy
Long lonely nights
Short stories told back and forth on a landline until the battery on the handset dies
We try forgetting days that haunt us like restless ghosts but they linger like the adhesive left when you peel the sticker off the back of a lighter..
Oct 21, 2023
Oct 21, 2023 at 8:42 AM UTC
On He Climbs!
Back up my spartan kitchen wall
a spot on a blank canvas
making his little way
to the tombstone of a landline
Oh Little Stink-Bug!
everyone hates you
I used to
too
Now I hardly notice you
crawling up my wall
not bothering anyone
keeping me company in fact
Poor Little Stink-Bug!
I saw you fall
It looked like a suicide
Made me quite sad
On He Climbs!
and I am glad to see you back
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 8:15 PM UTC
They say young girls are the best at keeping secrets
1. I have to pretend I have nosebleeds to excuse myself from having to sit further into the cinema because at some point there is the possibility that I will need to escape these social situations I can’t deal with. Anxiety is taking over my entire life.
2. I want to try ecstasy just to see if the colours really are as vibrant as they say they are. Can the browns really be more beautiful than his eyes?
3. I often think about killing myself because breathing is getting too hard. It’s been too hard for years but I stopped telling my therapist because I don’t want her to feel bad. I don’t want her to feel like she’s not good at her job.
4. I wake up every day terrified that really I should be in Art school because when I talk here, it still feels like no-one is listening. If I drew my words would they see them any clearer?
5. I call God on the landline phone because my mobile has bad signal. It keeps on telling me it’s trying to connect, connect... I think I forgot to pay my bills.
6. I lose potential future best friends because I refuse to be a sob story and therefore I don’t tell them much. The very idea of being one leaves an uneasy feeling in my body. Like pills too large for my throat or pins and needles.
7. I can’t pin this down. I’m not sure I ever did.
8. I’m still in love with a boy who spells my surname incorrectly. He doesn’t care.
9. I’m not sure I will ever be happy. And that scares the **** out of me. Because if I can’t be happy, then what is the point of smiling?
10. Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve my voice box. Most nights I wonder if it’s still there.
I’m not good at keeping secrets.
Nov 2, 2013
Nov 2, 2013 at 5:24 PM UTC
Sleepless in Seattle on my mind and in my feelings,
Making me feel moody and 90's,
Chunky belts and colorful, dark sweater,
Old airports in family comedies,
Big clunky landline phones,
When Harry Met Sally and I watched it on a plane for the first time last summer.
Baroque in my headphones and 1950's swing playing from the ceiling
Girls talking loud, so important,
Deciding options for their next photo shoot,
sweet and divine making their plans.
And me
Silently observing, enjoying
If I were an overweight man
probably
I would be creepy
But I am a nice package
They're in L.A. for the weekend.
Oh, they've been to London and "her boyfriend is an *******
She wore the baby blue, "it was my mother's", and it brings out her eyes
Why is he friend's with Madeline?
She's a *****
But we like her. She's very bold.
Plans laid and heading out. Good for them.
And I'm still here.
Ache in my neck,
Baroque in my ears (because I heard it improves learning and slows heart rate),
This anti-poem coming from my fingertips
Alone in this cafe and now the mood has shifted.
Feb 8, 2019
Feb 8, 2019 at 9:34 PM UTC
On this eternally present appendix
of our modern life
Called our lifeline,
What is a landline?
Our fingers glide
Our eyes slowly die
We stare, we do not dare
Look away; wait, I gotta take this!
We buy
Sometimes sell
We search:
***
Love
Stuff
Knowledge?
Perhaps.
J Eduardo Ramos ©
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 5:32 AM UTC
I still haven’t bought gloves,
though I had steel-toe boots for awhile.
Callouses are waiting for you to lay hands bare
to everything you own. You can go years without feeling
the bottom of your own table.
I moved Dad into his new house.
This brings the total to 18 moves in 10
years. Mostly in 20 hour windows.
You were around
for 7 or 8 of them
I read once that most of dust is actually stardust
from micro-meteorites. It’s not true.
It is actually dead pieces of you.
I’ve inhaled more of us than anyone.
Item highlights:
250 lb. End table with hidden safe inside
Combination: unknown
Garbage bag with mom’s clothes
and one Phillips-head screwdiver
Four landline phones tangled
with their cords in a laundry hamper
Seven phonebooks in a neat cardboard box
Madalyn: Dad still has the small wooden sign you made him
the one that says “Dad’s Workshop” in blue glitter-paint.
Steve: Dad has recently bought a toaster oven, and he loves it
as much as you love yours. He gave me the same speech
about the difference in the taste of hot-dogs.
You are both still in the pictures at his house. It startles
me when your faces appear on the screensaver.
Feb 22, 2011
Feb 22, 2011 at 3:01 PM UTC
When we talk, collectively, about being
equal
there will be someone who asks,
"What is that? How can you say,
that a women should be entitled to claim this violence as their own,
when men get hit by women, too?"
1 in 4 women in college will be victims of ****** assault,
and too often men will ask,
"but what defines ****** assault?
if a girl gets her
*** grabbed in the club
is she the 1 in 4?"
I haven't yet heard,
a women ask
"but what defines ****** assault?"
Sometimes I feel like I was born knowing,
how to make myself smaller
so that no one could see me,
looking down at crosswalks,
and stoplights,
trying not to make eye contact
with men looking at me.
I know what it means to be sexually assaulted,
and how this comes in many forms,
all of which
are valid.
I have had my shoulder grabbed and shaken violently
by men who claimed to love me,
I have been struck in the face,
by men who told me they wanted me to be their wife.
I have been threatened to keep things men did to me a secret,
or I would be hurt in my sleep.
I have had my cellphone confiscated, and the landline disconnected, so that I could not call for help when my father would drink too much.
My story is not unique,
this 1 in 4,
is so common.
you will look into the eyes,
of women who live with these traumas on their shoulders,
you will not see their weight but they will see
the ignorance in your words, the dismissal of their own
when you ask
"but what defines ****** assault?"
Oct 17, 2015
Oct 17, 2015 at 12:48 AM UTC