What’s your problem?
You started it
It was all you
You and your family!
Your son playing his music too loud
Your son throwing his butt ends into our garden
Your son having his xbox so loud that it felt like a warzone
Your son with his not so funny racist comments
Your partner phoning the council
Your partner for phoning Health and Safety
Your partner for phoning 101
What for?
We’ve done nothing wrong!
We have the report to prove it!
So get a grip!
Chet looks rough, he wears his hair in a ponytail.
He has a plethora of tattoos on his body.
Ladies in the neighborhood feared him.
He looks creepy, a thug, a gangbanger.
They did not want to know him.
Chet spent a lot of time outside.
He smiled, waved and said “hello” to the ladies.
He is making a flower garden, they said.
Phoning each other to wonder what he was up to.
He seemed less harmless now.
Doris noted that Chet had the prettiest flowers.
She crossed herself and went over to speak to him.
They ended up having tea with orange scones.
They were warm and fresh.
Chet had made them that morning.
Stella was the next neighbor to visit the infamous Chet.
They had a lovely visit; he told stories and they were good.
Stella called up Emma to tell her about it.
I will NEVER go over there, Emma replied.
She had seen his type on TV.
Chet fixed Linday’s flat tire, but refused to take money.
There is something WRONG with him Emma insisted.
He is one of my favorite neighbors now, Doris told her.
He has been over to my house and helped weed my garden.
Emma thought the other ladies were nuts.
She resolved to never like him, and she never has.
Nowadays I'm a semi-recluse.
often, I feel the need to retreat,
reverse yet further
into a temporary nest
of a woolgathering and
imprecise brain.
It is feather-fluffing time,
time to watch squirrel's scamper
over a slack jawed presence,
to ogle thoughts from afar
as they fuzzily forage
after each other.
A wide Walnut tree,
spreads out of my imagination,
furry paws toy with cracked visions
in their nutshells.
Nobody here, nobody phoning or
knocking,
Just a crow cawing on a branch
which might be (in truth) my right arm.
That limb always was the most
social
and gregarious part of me -
I often talk to myself with it.
My father leave me since child,
I was about seven years old,
Nothing I remember which he told,
Than mother ice cream to sold.
My father have not yet died,
But he has kept me aside,
Phoning him a lot I have tried,
My calls ended without being applied.
Sometimes I fill myself bad,
Like I am not his blood,
How he has keep himself hide,
He cause me to be sad.
I know. He left home mad,
Wherever he is, has insurance card,
That card has beautiful words,
For future use in the world.
I wish he could be here,
His blessings to get and hear,
While touching me my head dear,
Then he can go and disappear.
Let’s Rob the Bank
Let’s rob the bank
Take all our money
And the overdraft
Go somewhere sunny
Let’s rob the bank
Escape the monotony
Worry about nothing
Eat bread and honey
Let’s rob the bank
Rent an huge flat
Somewhere in the sun
Buy a Siamese cat
Let’s rob the bank
Let them do the worry
We’ll live it up
Life in a hurry
What about the kids
Your son my daughter
We might miss
Them at the alter
If we rob the bank
We’ll live in hiding
No phoning home
Somewhere in West Riding
Can’t rob the bank
You know it’s wrong
The police will hunt
We won’t last long.
Get up for work
Carry on like ever
Dream of escape
But knowing we’ll never.
David Cox 05/11/23
There are no more telephone booths,
not the old type - the glass coffins.
The Atalanta hub is rocking,
planes and people buzzing in and out
of an anthill nexus
of distracted minds.
Calling London,
a city
that has red telephone boxes,
concrete-set booths
that all ring at once.
Wrong numbers are seeking answers.
There is a cacophony
in the pressed ears of puzzlement.
The airport begins to spin around,
faster and faster,
a shaky orbit encircling speaking lips.
Dialing fingers sweat, are too thick
for changing conversations.
Talking heads are searching
for one direct call,
one line in an ethereal ball of string.
Red boxes are bellowing now,
every voice is angry,
nearby glass booths
are trembling with a frustrated rage.
All these images are an allegory
for the deaf and dumb days of yore,
a distant time locked in its own
transparent sarcophagus -
drowned-out mouths,
even now
fitfully trying to connect.
We've all had them
those phone calls, every day
trying to take your money
all of it, in any way
A lot lose their money
many just hang up
but what about those phoning?
do they really clean up?
What if that is all you had?
the only way to eat
would you go home at night
knowing you'd taken someone's heartbeat?
Could you do it every day?
scam innocent people
and still go to sleep at night
without jumping off a steeple?
Do scammers have a conscience?
do they even care?
would they do it to your face
when they see the real despair?
My dreams are often troubled by useless things.
A land-line clicks on and off repeatedly
the dreamless are phoning me.
long disused.
I found a kitten in the cold winter woods
it died while I drove it to the shelter.
My intervention was just another path
to its end.
I want an old record turntable,
I miss the revolutions,
how the 33rpm vinyl slow-spins,
how you can read the record label
from the bottom of a whisky glass.
A phone hums-on in my head.
static, white noise – who can say?
This I know
there is no shelter in this world.
For a few years
my long departed granny
had one oft repealed saying.
I would take her out to do some grocery shopping
on the way there she would say
in a trembling unsure tones:
"Are we doing the right thing?"
'Are we doing the right thing' became her mantra;
going to and leaving the theater,
before phoning up an old friend of hers,
visiting a floral garden - anywhere or any act
not in her immediate circle of comfort
she would plead: "Are We doing the right thing?"
Years later, I often ask myself a similar question
and I feel her doubt
I understand the importance of questioning.
Doing the right thing can be for a wrong reason.
Consequences flourish after intentions.
When making even a seemingly innocuous decision
I smile and recall her foolish words
recall also the wisdom threaded through them.
Now Foreign Medicine, next Forest Herb,
Heart rate jumps, floored figure in a kerb;
Emergency phoning of a doc
Won't to acting like the Hardest Rock
"Doc, please, what do I do: I mean, now?
Also say 'How' or I'm a dead cow,"
From now on Doc to know about it.
Every fancied healer, full or split...
One's clear challenge to be circumspect
And ideas of True Restraint respect
Time and again think in retrospect
And - yes - keep minding that sly aspect;
If not careful rouse sleeping down
And sympathizers crowd in one's room.
Tables are Covid-full.
Some have had it. Some have it.
Some are carrying it.
Some are vaccinated. Others are not.
Masks are down because this is the cafeteria.
All are eating, conversing, putting droplets onto tables.
My mask is up. I am a lot older. I am trying not to get this.
Covid is up five hundred percent in two weeks where I live.
Some students have been quarantined.
A few have been quarantined twice.
Parents are phoning us, irritated their children have been sent home.
School nurses are depressed, ready to quit.
I watch it all in awe and amazement.
We eradicated the smallpox, measles and mumps.
Everybody got vaccinated.
People were more concerned about others than their “rights”.
'Or what woman having lost her mobile phone, if she loses is, does not try phoning it or search for it under the cushions, or with a torch search all over house and garden until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls up her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the phone that I had lost.” Just so, I tell you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.'
(compare the parable of the Lost Coin, Luke 15.8-10. So relevant are the parables of Jesus for all time.)
Bert was in a phone booth
Phoning his girlfriend Ruth
To say their courtship was over
He preferred his dog Rover
For company...struth
For my skin - hidden blood
Abandons neighbouring feeding forest
Dumping the nearby, friendly gutter
After a heavy washing flood
Hijacks long sleep and short rest
Forcing us to malevolent curses utter
With all manner of men getting into trouble
Who attack it with strength, a bubble;
Not infrequently phoning their nurses
And for insecticides, unzipping their purses.
Spared not also by The Saints,
Though its killing their images taints;
On it hipping a hurt's abuse,
All the time emptying the refuse.
Simply the handiwork of pin - sharp proboscis
Justifying uttered obscenities or Holy Moses!
In the late nights
A scheduling of sure flights,
With its sleep - verifying song
That does us a great wrong.
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.
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