writers – 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

I Know It’s Frustrating

I know you’re angry; I don’t blame you
It feels like American freedom is spent
But please try to remember that it’s illegal
To talk about killing the president

I know it’s hard watching these racists;
To a coward, sadist, false king, they bent
But it’s still a crime to make idle threats
About murdering the stupid president

I don’t ever want you to get locked up
So, don’t do something you’ll later lament
Don’t even jokingly say to someone
That you’re planning to kill the president

Seriously, don’t do it. No, really… don’t.

Goddess

Yes, my dear,
You’re exactly like God

You’re exactly like God
In the following way

You demand to be worshipped,
With no return on investment

And you angrily smite those
Who don’t bow and pray

Yes, my dear,
You’re just like the Divine

You’re like the Divine,
And the way I can tell

Is that I walked away
From it, and from you

And having done so,
I’m no longer in hell

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