Off the Hook

A land-line is off its hook, the dreamless are phoning me. The line is dead and useless, my dreams are often troubled by useless things. Like when I found a kitten in the woods and it died while I drove to the shelter. It would have died anyway, just not in the snow, my intervention was just another path to its end. Another voice not sunk enough to be silent. And now here are my dead friends calling me from party colored sets, and I am driving the dead uselessly across some finish line I can never reach. I want a turntable, I miss the revolutions, a label slowly spinning around at 33 rpm, slow enough to read, or seen from the bottom of a whisky glass. An empty line hums on static or white noise – who can say? If I could ferry them all over to where there is shelter I would.