Thirteen Mute Days --a rant!

Let's start with June 26, the day
I would become, by code transformed
from 44 years, a Bell client away
to internet wanderer, telephoned.

Closed by Bell in minutes, gone
to bundle member, transfer done.

Or so we thought.

There is no poetry to the deed
that should have worked but not,
when happy with the guaranteed
exchange, an entire week was shot.

That week became almost two.

-----------------------------------

Situation: Change of Telephone for
Internet server: No dial tone after
7:45 AM Thursday June 26 No phone,
no e-mail, No message, no IM, nothing.
and at last a revised promise of
Internet connection by 10 AM
Wednesday July 9.

The new phone number was active,
but not in my computer. "Call waiting"
list grows daily, without a dial-tone.

If it were an aircraft it would crash.

-----------------------------------

No Dial Tone-- A RANT

You'll never know how much
you miss it till it's gone.
My daily hours have been such
a constant part of many long

years, almost twenty now
since first learning how

a long series of computers
could make a life productive.
I'd used it when as tutor's
toy, Literacy became active

and a tool for kids to use.
I did not mean to choose

to be without a telephone!
I just cannot get connected.
By eight AM, no dial tone--
It was not resurrected.

No one greeted the morning sun
no matter how I tried, no one

gets a call when line is dead.
Without help, I could not call,
use smoke signals here instead!
No one knew how silent it all

is. Thursday became Friday,
Saturday turned next to Sunday.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday gone.
Bother a neighbour for her line
complaining that it is no fun
incommunicado for week: bovine

chewing my cud alone with flies
in field until my future dies.

Wednesday starts second week, no
dial tone livens dismal day.
Ennui, helplessly boring. Forego
contacts, obligations away.

No messages, no news, no hope
of updated computer, end of rope.

In this the second week of being
second-class citizen, I'm seeing
working off-line has its limit
with so little profit in it.

I will wish I'd had good sense
to appreciate: The silence.

At last,
Lament of July 9, 2008:
Time is relentlessly slow.

This story is so unbelievable,
in cynical world where we assume
people lie, it will be a miracle
miserable truth survives doom.

Does http://www.mattaweb.ca/ even
exist anymore? Automatic Deletion?

Solitary Solitaire, surfeit of SUDOKU,
So much to do, waiting to be done.
Novels read, feeling dead-- Missing you.
Missing distant family: I am gone.

Will my phone call to morning classes?
Often felt destroyed, but it passes.

I can't make long-distance phonecalls
from neighbours who do not know me.
Finding no connection to my own calls
and we wait another week to show me

why sons accuse me of pessimism. I'll say
there are fewer disappointments that way.

A happy ending at long last
before another day has passed.


Terry