‘Phones’ After Poe’s ‘Bells’ and Other Poetry by Paul Buchheit

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The Phones

with apologies to Edgar Allan Poe

Phones, phones, phones,
See the people with their phones,
Silver, pink and paisley phones,
On the subways and the buses and the sidewalks, all alone,
Lost in intimate exchanges with their phones, phones, phones.

Hear the murmuring of phones,
In their muffled monotones,
Feel the muted tremulations, like the buzzing of the drones,
Hear the pinging and the dinging of the phones..

Passing time, time, time,
In a strange robotic rhyme,
With the tintinnabulation of the tones, tones, tones,
All the people look the same to me, like clones, clones, clones.

See the driver with the phone,
How it chills you to the bone,
See a world of seven billion navigating all alone,
Through the secret sibilations of the phone, phone, phone, phone, phone, phone, phone.

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Desire

Emerging from the dawn’s ambrosial mist
in starry veils from milky galaxies;
seductive as the Satyr in a tryst
with waves voluptuous on surging seas;
her smile induces songbirds to rejoice,
her skin is silken, like a cherub’s wings,
her lips are passion’s reddest fruit, her voice
caressing, comforting, in whisperings
of breezes barely stirring; in her eyes
there burns a black quiescence that defies
surrounding gales, and in her soul the prize
of fire Promethean to tantalize
the troubadours who lust for dawn’s reprise
while fevered loins and lyrics agonize.

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Paul, a lifelong Chicagoan and retired college teacher, is an author of books, poems, progressive essays, and scientific journal articles. He recently completed his first historical novel, 1871: Rivers on Fire. His most recent non-fiction book was Disposable Americans, published in 2017 by Routledge.