I just spent one hour
And five minutes on hold
It couldn’t be helped,
It was something that I had to do,
Or I’d have been in bad shape
For weeks to come
I sat and listened to that
Goddamned hold message
For an hour and five minutes
They repeated it
Every twenty seconds;
I counted
“We’re sorry, but all of our agents
“Are busy assisting other customers.
“Please hold and we’ll be with you
“As soon as possible.
“There are currently more than
“Three callers ahead of you.”
I put my phone
On the ‘speaker’ setting,
And laid it on my belly
I was smart and plugged it
Into the charger,
Figured I would
Kill a few birds with one piece
Of terminal boredom
I added another layer of
Multitasking to my
Very minor ordeal
I read Bukowski’s
Love is a Dog from Hell
While I waited
Forty minutes in…
It was frequently difficult
To concentrate, with that
Stupid message, every
Twenty seconds—“We’re just a
“Tiny bit sorry…
“All of our agents are
“Pretending to be busy, so we
“Can feel like we’re important,
“And squeeze a few more bucks out,
“By not paying any more staff than
“We absolutely have to.
“There are three callers ahead of you.”
But the breaks in my focus,
They gave me an excuse to jump back
Several lines and reread what I
Had just read, to make sure that I
Hadn’t missed anything
The boredom,
The stupid interruptions,
The longing for a life that is not
A prisoner of circumstance,
A slave to bureaucracies,
To be able to do something else…
Any fucking thing that is something
Other than this stupid shit…
“We’re sorry, but all of our agents
“Are playing solitaire and circle jerk.
“Please hold onto your sanity…
“Or don’t; we could all use a good laugh.
“There are currently
“Two callers ahead of you…
“We think. We could be wrong. [Shrugs.]
“Who the fuck knows, really?
“We’re not fucking philosophers.”
It went well with the poetry,
It matched Chuck’s experience
Of life
Always waiting
Waiting on life to just
Come off it, already
Forty-five minutes
“We’re sorry, but all of our agents
“Are placing bets on horses,
“Arguing with whores,
“Getting drunk and feeling lonely,
“Feeling happy, angry, nothing at all.
“Anything but assisting customers.
“Please hold and we’ll be
“Finished shitting as soon as possible.
“There is one caller ahead of you.”
Maybe that last part was Charles
Talking to me,
I forget
I do know that he said
(And I’m paraphrasing here,
Paraphrasing wildly… speculatively,
Because ol’ drunk Chuck said
That’s the only way to do anything)
He said that we’re all sitting here,
Knowing, knowing that life,
The real life, is available, out there,
If only the small-minded
Would get out of the way,
And let the rest of us have it
We’re not entitled to it,
We realize that;
No one is entitled to
Anything
But the rich, the powerful,
And the boorish, dreary,
Unimaginative oafs,
They seem to have
All the access
To all the best stuff
But they’re too greedy,
Too fearful, too lacking in vision
To step aside and let someone else
Have a crack at the good stuff;
They feel they never have enough,
Or that only they can
Handle it all properly
And so,
We
Wait
And
We
Wait
Some
More
But I got it done, ⠀
The thing⠀
And now, I can
Wait⠀
⠀
On something else
©2025 Kevin Trent Boswell
Kevin Trent Boswell 