"telephones" poems
The era of social media and virtual interaction
Where it is so important to keep your reputation
And yet indeed it'll take you nowhere
Because you're just another particle in their atmosphere
No matter how hard you try to seem kind
They just can't bother to reply, they seem to be blind
No matter how many thousands of follows you've got
Your friends are still the same old scattered lot
Selfies galore, plenty of them
Show yourself to yourself, feel like a gem
You go with your friends riding a bike
Post a picture on FB and it gets many a like
You're all content about it, it feels so nice
After which, conversation turns to ice
At gatherings telephones sound
Ringing all day, a new friend was found
Introduce yourself, one more time again
And fall into oblivion, it's starting to rain
Jan 11, 2015
Jan 11, 2015 at 3:06 PM UTC
In person body language for the quickest returns
and obvious signs of disinterest and distress
Telephones for voices; plain, animated, or faking it
Letters for gesture, or a classic long slow catch up
And texting...
I know you got it
I may even know you read it
What's your excuse for delay?
Perhaps a brain lapse, perhaps some monotonous busyness
Perhaps I'm now an ignored fad, maybe you got better plans
Yet, could it be, our collective muscle memory pines for saying things by other means?
Aug 16, 2014
Aug 16, 2014 at 11:28 PM UTC
For seventy or more years TV
And radio ruled the world,
Along with telephones.
But then computers made their mark,
Soon followed by mobiles, Smartphones,
Ipads, Bluetooth, Wifi and who knows what?
In no particular order.
So herds of sheep migrated
Into Cyberspace
Even Myspace!
Then on to Planet Facebook
And Terratwitter.
We talk with people we’ve never met,
And meet folk with whom we’ve never talked.
It keeps us occupied I guess,
And gives relief from stress.
These images that yet fresh images beget,
I’m sure Yeats would agree.
I tolerate these adverts flashing in my face
And soak up knowledge to my solid mental grace.
A world of wonders beckons in
The depths of Cyberspace,
And as a Nerd before they were invented,
I have to say I’ve truly found my place.
Paul Butters
Jul 12, 2014
Jul 12, 2014 at 9:44 AM UTC
When Technology died,
some of us merely shrugged and
Tried to go back to before...
Only it wasn't the same...
So many hard-wirings gone,
So many places where we used to go,
So many thoughts we used to know,
Forgotten in an ethereal swirl...
Internetted and forgotten.
Power plants done, and no more juice
To feed along the sagging wires.
Once the Internet went down,
(Without so much as a diminishing blip
Of dying light (cathodes were gone)),
Ah, Lord, we missed the ethereal glow...
Screens now dead and flat,
Unable even to reminisce
The comfort-glow of former irritants,
The fuzziness 0f electronic snow....
And telephones! My Lord!
To think of how we used to talk!
Electronic prayers, each other we implored...
So much connected,
We forgot the depths of face to face,
Now cellular paperweights lie dormant,
Longing for at least a little life,
Reminding us those days are gone.
We pass our little news
Word of mouth now,
Word of mouth to ear,
Only if the ones
We want to know are near.
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 11:41 PM UTC
I know of a girl who dreads the New Year
Because it steals her away
from poodle-skirts and telephones
And all that is long gone
Drags her across the floor by her ankles
while she sobs
as though she'd known the era's
dead.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 11:24 PM UTC
Telephones.
Earphones.
Earplugs.
To drown out
Baby cries.
Engines exhaling.
Anxiety.
"Don't be afraid"
"You've done this before"
"He knows what he's doing"
The tired.
The disagreeable.
The impossibly experienced.
Tickets.
Bags.
Smile-free faces.
I'm ready.
You're ready.
Let's go already.
May 6, 2014
May 6, 2014 at 5:36 PM UTC
We are afraid of tying knots.
Now, my brothers weren't fond of Boy Scouts, but those aren't the kinds of knots I'm talking about.
Our parents got us velcro shoes growing up (something about not wanting us to be overwhelmed with tennis shoes)
And that, perhaps, was the moment that started everything.
We could no longer trip on loose laces as we ran our races,
Our parents couldn't see our disappointed faces as we fumbled getting ready for school.
It was the perfect contribution to the flawed illusion that the human institution should be prevented from failing.
Oh, yes.
In my lifetime, cordless telephones were placed in every house because we did not want to untangle our own messes anymore.
Failure doesn't hurt as much when it is invisible.
We wanted wireless, no-strings-attached luxuries with no side effects.
But there were effects that couldn't be seen
(how could they until we were older than teens)
Because the end effect was this:
a generation that shirks responsibility
we have anxiety
because our parents didn't let us face our fears when we were young
we are jobless, loveless, purposeless
because we still haven't realized that everything has its opposite
love - lust
success - failure
happiness - sadness
peace - anger and commotion
you see?
there are full-grown adults living in the basements of their parents
watching **** from an illuminated screen
a no-strings-attached commitment to a video that will never require a vow or a promise;
so many see the term "settling down" as "kicking up dust" of a dull life "confined to a four-inch screen."
we've seen our own parents cut the ties
now living separate lives
better that way, but millennials can't fight
for love or for kids or for dreams
because their caretakers' examples couldn't teach
the right way to do a marriage
the right way to commit
we are shirking responsibility--
because we don't want to fail.
still as afraid of tying knots
as we were in kindergarten.
Jul 2, 2015
Jul 2, 2015 at 10:09 PM UTC
people going mad telephones there hacking
all along coast they want to do some fracking
looking for some gas all along the shore
disturbing all the sea life like they did before
they dont seem to care about the consequence
public up in arms feelings so intense
anti fracking groups with there protest fight
fighting for there cause and what they think is right
why cant the frackers go and be fracking free
and leave the place forever and give us back our sea
Feb 19, 2014
Feb 19, 2014 at 8:44 AM UTC
Planes fly into the towers
Planes fly from out the craters in the towers
Black plumes of smoke choke the sky
Windowless planes flying into the towers
And now another, now another
The towers rattle
Planes take-off from in the fire
And go off into the city, into the stars
into our minds.
Planes like laser-lights, jetting off,
imprinting themselves
into our minds.
Over and over and over and over
and over and over and over
There were as many as 1,000 planes
or more.
Desks, glass-shards, people
High-heels, telephones, people
Falling, smashing down from the towers
A Warholian dream
Dying icons on every TV set, 24 hour access
On every channel
For months on end
On end
Headlines recoiled by an antichrist
Rumors he was in Pakistan
In Switzerland, at the mall
In your mind.
The towers burn forever
The towers burn forever
Frozen in pixels online
In our minds.
Sep 11, 2012
Sep 11, 2012 at 8:51 AM UTC
Men who look like ferris wheels
every color representing different aspects of their personality
The first three words don't have to be beautiful
they just have to make sense
like connecting dots on paper
men who love with their fists
and hate with their mouths
who once were boys taking things apart
like remote controls their own fathers used to beat Obedience into their small bodies. Left them with a fury tattooed across their hearts
Just to give them the challenge of putting themselves back together
They buy their wive's flowers after
a four day bruise isn't so glaringly purple anymore
not so accusing-
kiss her broken ribs
and tell their children midnight stories
children trained as mood detectors
human robots
*know when to shutup
speak when you are spoken to
Men who speak like cutting boards
Every slice of the knives in their toungues leave
hollow aching missing parts
just to teach their children that not all
things can be put together once taken apart
whose daughter glues together the parts of old telephones
to spite the missing pieces
so every welt he beats into her bones
she sings herself unbroken
until she stands robust and imperfect
there are holes in her armour
but she holds it together
with her fathers fists.
Feb 10, 2013
Feb 10, 2013 at 4:12 PM UTC
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
2.4k
High synth notes
Japanese thunder
you amaze yourself
Walk with headphones
through grass patches
and brightly lit streets
heavy petroleum clouds
nigerian gutter feast
of trash and telephones
prepaid cards
litter homes floors
in cardboard sandals
shuffling past pubs
London clenched ribs
teeth breathe heart beats
Kick old orchestras
through instrumental mixes
modernity insanity
kinyopoetry.com
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 11:55 AM UTC
Lining up batteries of anti-aircraft anti-everything
all anti- something this and that
distribution centre for psychological pressure
backed by radio, TV presidents staring straight
newspapers, journals and dialogues around
flash round tables on the whys how’s and who’s
sneaky microphone hidden in flower pots,
long distance listening devices. Telephones tapped
wives tapped, senior diplomats and doormats tapped
wives tapped on shoulders
whispered to: watch out for Joe blogs he has a roving eye.
see me tonight, after dinner.
The russians have warship A into Zone B
the chinese have shifted anti-missile up
the mountains near tibet, near nepal
near taiwan, near the hormuz straits
into africa, zimbabwe, fiji, and northern china
who cares. Tomorrow they will shift out again.
the pressure is building in the ukraine, turkey is on fire
The north koreans have no power
as seen from satelllites
The president has run of tomato sauce so he has asked
for a shipload from us of a
ship it with some spies dressed as tomatoes
god its killing me
these acupuncture points
three more needles please!
Author Notes
Relentless. ( an wacky I s'pose). Think about it all.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 4:20 PM UTC
Tonight's grey cloud hangs over the pearlescent blue and pink of today.
The gray is an avalanche
criss-crossed
with black
powerlines
that spread like cracks in a mirror.
The rain starts to fall.
To my right is a young blonde
age (17?) unknown.
Her bag and telephone
would
match
but for a shade.
The rain starts to fall.
Young lovers kiss in the calm embrace of one another
beneath an awning the colour of
old ladies - no
boredom - no
subjugation -no.
the under side of an old mattress.
The rain starts to fall.
Across the gap stands an Asian man with the complete accoutrements of a golfer.
Obfuscated now by a train
with the palette of a McDonald's ad.
The rain starts to fall.
The streets are become slick
and every lamp bleeds the start
of an oil painting
with brushes made of light.
The air is cool.
There is a canal that stretches between seats, walled by rows of heads.
In the distance a little girl peaks her head up in the middle of all this,
she wears a bright pink plastic bow on her head that blinks and glows.
Traffic lights streak
green and red
over black gesso.
Cars streak
silver and blood
down black gesso.
"I simply don't need to cheapen things further"
Matching work uniforms.
Matching looks of boredom
Matching shoes and glances
Matching telephones
Matching lack of conversation
Matching hair
Matching matching carpet and drapes
Matching posture
why is everything matching?
(they got off at the same station)
Suburban princess holds the phone like a bible.
I attempt to sketch her arm in my head....but I am too ******
I am hungry.
The outside air is cool.
This is a carriage for the antisocial
3 rooms of solitude.
Everyone is plugged in
No-one dares to speak.
The Art of Conversation.
An old woman sits in front of me, with the face of Ray Winstone in drag.
Her hair is a dandelion
and her eyebrows are birds
painted in the distance.
Hands wrinkled and knotty
like old fruit.
Trains are predictable
the purest form of modern transport
all the little fishies
in the giant metal can
are silent to one another.
The train conductors voice is boredom.
I mistake ambient noise for music.
Aug 14, 2013
Aug 14, 2013 at 11:13 AM UTC
Oh such lonesome lives in the west
When the sunshine stings bleary eyes
and telephones receive no calls
How does one survive in the city
When the angular buildings suppress creativity
and free-thought is despicable
See the man, laying in bed for days at a time
With ASMR videos playing on a smartphone propped against a pillow
and his arm draped over that pillow, imagining a body
Bob Ross love affair, the television drones
Each night spent alone, praying for passion, or acceptance, or anything
and joyous noise when paintbrushes glide evenly
A collective of poets, posing as one man
Fraudulent minds, each with distinctive style
and all with crooked broken teeth
Trumpets in the jukebox, cat-calls in the world
Outside the window children are playing
and he cries, for the years are growing weary
She peels skin from her fingernails, mindless on morning commutes
He stares from bus stops, train stations and runways
and never blinking, never blinking, never blinking
The intrinsic value of repetition falling short of artistry
Given that metal machines are perpetual
and when the crow lands on fences in the morning dew,
there is no more life in Ironville, not for me, not for you
Oct 30, 2013
Oct 30, 2013 at 1:16 PM UTC
Post Office:
Telegrams and Telephones
Tell me how the snow is where you are.
Traffic cones outside, must-be-done road works completed by no one nowhere men,
patched up walls clad in grit painted cream
shutters the same, shutting out the screams.
Graffiti bridges, restaurants on ridges-
river's rising fast, finish your entrée
let's leave.
Walk linking arms looking upon
glimpses of brick, of an old home,
lived in years ago by someone unknown.
Sep 3, 2013
Sep 3, 2013 at 1:39 PM UTC
Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.
Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like detergent, Here in this house
there are other bodies.
Whenever I see a six-year-old
swimming in our aqua pool
a voice inside me says what can't be told...
Ha, someday you'll be old and withered
and tubes will be in your nose
drinking up your dinner.
Someday you'll go backward. You'll close
up like a shoebox and you'll be cursed
as you push into death feet first.
Here in the hospital, I say,
that is not my body, not my body.
I am not here for the doctors
to read like a recipe.
No. I am a daisy girl
blowing in the wind like a piece of sun.
On ward 7 there are daisies, all butter and pearl
but beside a blind man who can only
eat up the petals and count to ten.
The nurses skip rope around him and shiver
as his eyes wiggle like mercury and then
they dance from patient to patient to patient
throwing up little paper medicine cups and playing
catch with vials of dope as they wait for new accidents.
Bodies made of synthetics. Bodies swaddled like dolls
whom I visit and cajole and all they do is hum
like computers doing up our taxes, dollar by dollar.
Each body is in its bunker. The surgeon applies his gum.
Each body is fitted quickly into its ice-cream pack
and then stitched up again for the long voyage
back.
2.1k
Lie in the bare-faced sun
savour time
under seige
frittering hours
afor breakfast and
rush ‘round
later
if necessary
under fire
moving appointments
with telephones twitching
anticipation
then forage
the howl
create havoc
hunt the giggling
play for keeps
heads roll
apart
the ultimate shudder
MChallis © 2015
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 6:44 AM UTC
Sitting around, no work today
Try pacing to keep awake
Laying around, no school today
Just drink until the clock has circled all the way
It is late afternoon
as you walk through the rooms
of a house that is quiet
except for unanswered telephones
You stand near the sink
while you're mixing a drink
You think you don't want to pass out
where your roommates will find you again
Stumble around the neighborhood with nothing to do
You're always looking for something
to sniff, to smoke, or swallow
Calling over next door to see what they got
but you would settle for anything
that would make your brain slow down or stop
Break this circle of thoughts you chase
before they catch up back with you
and your parents noticed your thinning face
all the weight you lost
You said, "I'm done feeling like a skeleton,
no more sleep walking dead."
You're going to wake from this coma
You're going to crawl from this bed you have made
and stop counting on that camera
that hangs around your neck
because it won't ever remember
what you choose to forget
as you try to find some source of light
Try to name one thing you like
You used to have such a longer list
and light you never had to look for it
But now it's so easy to second guess everything you do
until all you want is to finish this half-empty glass
before the ice melts away
The feeling always used to pass
but seems like it's everyday
Seems like it's every night now
Apr 8, 2012
Apr 8, 2012 at 4:24 AM UTC
Scrabble was more fun to play
When we both used the same board,
Long distance rules we now use,
As it's all we can afford.
Playing Scrabble was more fun,
When you used to live near Grand;
We could snack during the game,
And we took care of one hand.
Playing Scrabble using phones,
Is twisting the Scrabble rules;
But since we are far away,
Telephones are needed tools.
When we're playing phone Scrabble,
Face up letters need to be;
Where they're in Scrabble box lids,
To make them easy to see.
Two letter racks we both use,
Two by you and two by me;
During the game if tempted,
They help us play honestly.
Mary Anne, my Scrabble friend,
With words you're fascinated
You've sculptured many poems,
So craftily created.
I like the way you keep score,
You keep track of it so well;
You make playing Scrabble fun
I thought this you I should tell.
Mary Anne,, Do you have time,
For some phone Scrabble with me?
When you've time for phone Scrabble,
Let me know when it can be.
Nov 28, 2020
Nov 28, 2020 at 11:06 AM UTC
Dear Shyla
I keep the suicide note that you've forgotten you wrote our mother folded up in a small wooden box in the corner of my bedroom
It's there so that on my worst days
When I've run out of friends who will listen
I can remind myself that other people feel this too
And after all we've been through apart sometimes our depressions and our mistakes are the only way I can remember we're related
Dear mom
I've hidden a diary you kept while struggling through your ill-fated relationship with my father
In it there are weight loss goals
Vows of marital celibacy
Existential questions
But mostly just a whole lot of why's leading you to answers you wanted to hear
While all of the things you needed to say you left in the blank spaces between the lines on the pages you never made it to
Your favorite thing to say after the divorce was that you were grateful to no longer have to walk on eggshells to protect his feelings
It has been twelve years and you still can't admit the feelings you were trying to protect were your own
And your feet still hurt
Dad
I have an envelope of pictures of you and I
From when both of us were oh so much younger
In each of them you are smiling at me
And in every one of them I am smiling back at you
I don't remember most of them I was quite very young
And for quite very different reasons I can imagine you would have a hard time remembering them as well
When I flip through the envelope I'm left sitting criss cross applesauce on a tore up linoleum floor
Staring at the scales of justice
Weighing the honest love of a drunk
Against the stoic rejection of the sober man you've become
And I am ashamed with how often I choose love
I am the keeper of this family's pain
Somebody has to
Someone has to admit it's real
One of us has to stare at the elephants in the room and see them
To know how each of us actually feels
Dear family
We are nothing more than four misfitted human beings
Tied together with tin can and twine telephones
By an astronomer, who in an effort to console himself,
Confused a congregation of lonely stars for a constellation
And eventually that is going to have to be enough
For each of us to love ourselves
To carry our own pain
I can not keep carrying all of this for each of you
I have my own pain
Which on most days is more than enough
I assure you
On most days
It is more than one man should
Sep 11, 2013
Sep 11, 2013 at 1:25 PM UTC
I heard it on the radio
My mind was sudden fizz
Did they just ask the questioned
mass
Does Santa really live??????
Santa are you out there?
Santa do you care?
Oh Santa with your big old tum
That grey old fluffy beard
Santaaaaaaaaaaaa
Oh Santaaaaaaaaaa
We'd love to have you come
We wrote a letter ageeee........ago
We've left some pies and stuff
Now telephones went mad that day
That some one questioned this
Did Santa really come each year
Oh my!!!
said all the kids
Santa are you out there?
Santa do you care?
Oh Santa with your big old tum
That grey old fluffy beard
Santaaaaaaaaaaaa
Oh Santaaaaaaaaaa
We'd love to have you come
We left a carrot on your plate
Hope Rudolph fills his tum
The callers of the phones agreed
That Santa's really there
Good people of the world breath out
No words of great despair
Santaaaaaaaaaaaa
Oh Santaaaaaaaaaa
We'd love to have you come
We promise to sleep tight tonight
No peaking to be done
oh Santa !!!!!!
So children of the world tonight leave
Lots of pies and drink
And don't forget the reindeer's food
Or guess they'll leave a stink
Santaaaaaaaaaaaa
Oh Santaaaaaaaaaaaaa
We love you
Yes we do
We've been so good throughout
The year
Our Santa's sack is hung !!!
Our Santa's sack is hung!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our Santa's sack is hunggggggggg!!!!!!
Dec 16, 2012
Dec 16, 2012 at 12:33 AM UTC
Do no harm.
Leave the war-plane frame of reference
to other puzzle pieces.
We are naked.
We are not.
We are not certain of which
monologue to begin.
So we chant in
unified panting
etching legends
out of rhymes.
Do no harm.
Do no harm.
It matters now that the growing telephones
are charged like neglected
poisons of dampening redials.
Truth is gaining wisdom like
groups of formatted crosses
jumping like splinters
of margarine jars.
We are naked.
We are not.
We are one with living and prepared
for the drying of the hands.
Clean me up and leave me outside.
Sun gone but wind remaining.
Do no harm.
Do no harm.
Do no harm.
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 9:22 AM UTC
I lit the candle
with two hydros,
and burned the house
down with a bottle
of whiskey. The next
morning I wandered
through the ashes
looking for shower
invitations and aspirin.
Back in bars, filled
with screaming amps
and glaring ex lovers
I wove my way
in-between old friends
and mating dances,
losing Hemingway
and storm clouds.
I dropped the anchor
in your apartment,
falling mid sentence
into stain ridden furniture
and empty Budweiser bottles.
The only thing I broke
that night, was my determination
on not being a blow up doll
molded after some girl
I was never going to be.
So I laid there kissing
ghosts and shook
with a fever and chills
vibrating like telephones
on silent. And you wondered
where I went once
the door closed.
You can't define cordial as
branding someone
and mailing them back
to a delusional soul falling
in love with them
after. Hot metal
pokers weren't made
for joyous reunions.
They make sure you
always know where
you leave your scars.
May 1, 2012
May 1, 2012 at 6:39 PM UTC