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Automated Despair

I’m bad tempered and upset,
Feeling tired isolated alone
Sitting hopefully waiting for
Someone  to answer the phone .
I just want to hear 
A normal human voice
But these days my dears
You don’t get a choice.
Androgynous,  emotionless
It’s going off again 
Promising an answer but
Never  saying when,
Any second now and we 
Know what it will say,
Your call is important 
Please don’t go away.
When somebody invented 
Automatic answer machine
Life got more complicated
Than it had ever been
Then the multi choice options
To save wasting their time
But they just don’t bother
About them wasting mine.
There used to switchboards
With real people to call,
Probably shoved out on the dole,
Machines don’t need wages at all.
The inventor of this obscenity 
Is over the seas  living in style
A successful and much lauded
Multi faceted  rain and tax exile.
All I can say is,
Enjoy it while you can.
One day you may meet
One very angry man
Who’s spent ages feeling
Isolated and all on his own
As he’s waited and waited
To be answered on the phone
Every doggie has,
In time, their day 
And, oh brother may be mine
To make him slowly pay.

Copyright © Terry Ireland

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things