my civil service job
like the taste of a mint
melting on
my tongue, the day
drifts away. one phone call
from a man who lost his
job and wants his final
check. his employer
is broke,
I hear this twenty times a day.
the next call from a
woman who
is obviously
insane, looking for another
lost soul to draw into
her web. blah blah blah, hang up.
between the calls my fingers click clacking keys
I type virtual words into
an electronic nowhere
that
I trust to hold
them. answer the phone, hear
another story of a person's life
being destroyed by
a swamp
that eats
the working poor. desperate voices
come through the phone
looking for help that does
not exist, looking for fairness in
an unfair universe, and
existing only as bits
of electric potential in some
computer somewhere in between
silence and
the still uncounted stars.