existential – Kevin Trent Boswell

Please Hold

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,

Wait

And

Wait

Some

But I got it done, ⠀
The thing⠀

And now, I can
Wait⠀
⠀
On something else

A Collage of Chimeras and Phantasms, by Kevin Trent Boswell, available on Amazon — Available on Amazon, 216 pages

Fire God

If they decide that you’re made of fire,
Pristine, glorious, and bright
Then they will insist that you burn
So that you may offer them light

If they believe that you are perfect,
And with you, they cannot compete,
They’ll make you a god, a dying one
To warm themselves by your heat

If you represent in their minds
Something they could never become,
They will set you ablaze in the night;
To the flames, watch you succumb

A Collage of Chimeras and Phantasms

by Kevin Trent Boswell available on Amazon

Now available on Amazon

Now Available

A Collage of Chimeras and Phantasms, the 12th publication by Kevin Trent Boswell

A Collage of Chimeras and Phantasms is a
general collection of poems. The material veers wildly in several directions at once. You’ll find stream-of-consciousness pieces, romantic poems, works of heartbreak, dark scalpel slices that reside in the penumbra of horror, and avant-garde bits of absurdism. So, there’s no need to trouble yourself attempting to understand the methodology here—there is none.

216 pages

©️2025 Kevin Trent Boswell

A Collage of Chimeras and Phantasms by Kevin Trent Boswell — A Collage of Chimeras and Phantasms
by Kevin Trent Boswell

mask

dwindle and fade,
no satisfaction here
purpose of the ire,
in the open, now clear

garnering support,
an ethos, a ruse,
self-righteous zealot
choose and abuse

don’t need a diagnosis
to tell you to duck;
it walks, and it quacks,
underhand fuck

watch, but do nothing
feign blindness, withdraw
could help, but won’t
the soul—coup d’état

in silence, compliance,
just keep on going,
not twisting the knife,
but watching, and knowing

hardly deniable,
accessory to the fact
encircle the target
enter foul pact

a tribe may be strong,
yet, poisoned in the heart
each member chooses
if they will take part

a bias is a bias,
and roses have fangs
hatred is hatred,
and hate runs in gangs

dead, bloated cow

and that sickly, ugly war
raged through the streets,
unhinged and unhappy,
all too costly and unaware
of the damage it deals

it blisters the skin and boils the blood,
ripping down foundations,
blasting apart buildings,
making vehicles cease to exist,
filling the air with a foul stench
of fear and anger

its reward? only carnage
and arrogant blustering,
nothing of validity or consequence;
nothing positive or loving or logical

only the bellowing roar of endless warring

a hotdog cart burning in the road,
and fat, half-dead cow by the river,
making horrible noises of pain,
as it hopelessly calls out for attention

and to think, how everything
could have been peaceful, happy, and quiet

but some will always find it absolutely
unacceptable to have anything other than
their way