Airplane Mode
So what if I don’t put the phone on airplane mode?
Will it mess with the cockpit and send us smashing to the ground?
And while cleaning up the crash and collecting our body bits will they find my phone
and trace the disaster to me?
I wonder about these things as I sit in my aisle seat.
I need an aisle seat because I’m claustrophobic
and just plain scared about this whole flying contraption.
Yes, yes, I know, it’s safer than driving the freeways,
or so they tell us, they.
Admittedly, I’ve never been killed in a plane.
Nor in a car, for that matter.
I’m alive and get from place to place.
But still rather frightened.
Not just about transportation.
So if I don’t switch the setting quickly on the phone
have I doomed us all, this young family across from me,
the teenagers behind, so much ahead of them all?
I’m ignorant, and forgetful, and not a seasoned flyer,
and never ever listen to what the attendants say
or read about plane crashes and their causes.
So I just don’t know.
The modern world is a mystery, so many electronics that
might fry our brains that we don’t know about
until the tumor is too big.
So far, though, so good.
I mean, I do know how to switch my phone over,
and, there, I just did, just saved everyone.
But I always speculate before we get up in the air.
Jesus, man, I’ll just take the train from now on.
Though I’ve heard that when cattle get stuck on the tracks
it can be a real mess.

 

Job
This job, this mind-mashing driving-me-up-the-wall job.
I get 20-minute breaks and it takes me ten to disengage,
decompress, and am still depressed.
Fifteen minutes into my shift I’m suicidal.
Hey, he asks, happy here?
Not ecstatic, no.
Why? Cause it’s my role to ask.
I need the money, get it?
Sure, I do. So quit if you don’t dig it.
The walking dead could do this in their sleep.
The walking dead, I think, don’t sleep.
Well this place would knock ’em out.
You have a great phone voice, that’s why we hired you. Ever
consider books on tape?
Huh? What the…
Just an observation. But we need to sell this stuff, and fast. Can you do it?
Thanks for nothing. I quit.
Cool. Love chatting. See you tomorrow.
After blowing his brains out while lying in bed I slept fine,
and applied to In and Out Burgers.
Goddamn I should have gone to college.