Grex Poetry Conference

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Grex Poetry Item 185: Redial + Rewind
Entered by orinoco on Wed Apr 19 22:30:02 UTC 2000:

"I put instant coffee in the microwave and almost went back in time" 
 --Stephen Wright

So it's one more afternoon with the dial tone dreaming of you:

    the phone cord twists and tangles 
               and call waiting interrupts like an angry chaperone;
          so it's just another morning mostly perched in your imaginary arms.

               redial spouts disinformation, wrong numbers, and 
the antiaphrodesiac of "if you need help hang up and dial your operator"
                      and it's yet another evening....

   ...in 1833....
       ...with the flowering dogwood in bloom....
   ...out courting on the porch swing....
cuz all this progress has set the course of love back a hundred years!
Slick technology has kicked us back to the age
of chaste conversation, romance by letter and "sealed with a kiss"

and so far it's pure bliss
but I'm just thinking, I hope this doesn't go too far.

I mean, it's a good thing I didn't buy that new answering machine
or I'd be slipping off in the middle of dinner
to powder and readjust my wig.
Four slice toaster?        The age of chivalry!
       Halogen lamp?         Back to the dark ages! 
I live in fear of changing my long distance service
lest we wind up in Me - so - po - ta - mi - a together.
And of course, there's the standard time-travel dilemma
of killing your great-great-grandfather, breaking up your parents,
marrying your aunt and giving birth to yourself
so kids,
just say no to unprotected time travel
and I'm thinking "gee, maybe I should wear a condom when I install that new
printer
just in case."

But it's a lost cause:
two millimeters of latex aren't gonna do shit 
against the inexorable march of progress!
 Before long, the last Nepalese villager will have 
lifetime warranties and ten cents a minute
and all this future's gonna send us back to the dawn of time.....
   ....back to the first word....
   ....back to --
       So,
          it's one more afternoon
                      with the dial tone
                 dreaming of you.

7 responses total.

#1 of 7 by arianna on Wed Apr 19 23:30:48 2000:

sweet, but weird.

#2 of 7 by jazz on Fri Apr 21 20:46:17 2000:

        Sounds like it was meant to be spoken ... might be missing a bit
without the rythm and cadence.

#3 of 7 by arianna on Sat Apr 22 16:07:05 2000:

(yeah, what he said.)

#4 of 7 by ponder on Mon Apr 24 03:23:32 2000:

This is very imaginative.  I like it.

#5 of 7 by flem on Tue Apr 25 20:37:53 2000:

I swear, I'd buy a book of this stuff.  :)  
Like just about all of your poems, orinoco, I find myself wishing it were
longer, 'cause just when I'm really starting to get into it...

#6 of 7 by orinoco on Wed Apr 26 04:08:20 2000:

I've been trying to keep em shorter lately, actually.  I get on one of these
rants and I could just _go,_ but I always figured it would get old.

#7 of 7 by ponder on Thu May 4 01:30:22 2000:

I'm familiar with that.

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