Shanty

Is there a song more for today

Than dulcet loops of midi files

In a call center's hold melody

O, shanty of the digital age

So laden with anticipation

Sliding Scales

I can't get at it, a pregnant pause not for wringing words,

looking askance at latency or maybe we're just always 

talking over each other, I've lost some range in my left ear,

as if the speaker is burrowing in there, trying to roll back

the years and sort the lucid conversations from the ones

that are just a pile on that goes nowhere. Yet video chat,

so long held a wish for the future, a gradual fading in of the

reality of every awkward interview with a reporter in Madrid,

or Lagos or from wherever some celestial object will 

catch a beam, that seems the format for us now, I flip the

camera on and whatever data transmits kindly airbrushes

whatever two years looks like for a mother and son yet

to see each other again.