Cellphone Sally (revised: 2/8/12)

[dedalus]

Perhaps a coupla hundred contacts

on Facebook, then, as if you could tell

who or what the hell. Might know, see,

37 of these people, but as for the rest,

they pop up as a constant surprise.

Could be for the best, this ebb and flow,

day to day before your eyes, as through

anew this jagged world you come and go:

try not to be cruel, try to be kind!

Wannabe friends? Oh, I don't mind.

So ... that's how you collect all these

stunningly gorgeous Japanese women

(well, according to their own photographs)

who ding on you but don't have to meet you??

Telecomputers become their social tool

which for them is ... so exactly cool,

it tickles their feminine mystique:

don't touch, don't see, don't speak!

Look, look at them on the trains and buses

tap-tap-tapping with polished nails,

having a great time altogether! I think

if smartphones had a disposable stiff extension

for discreet use, say, in a shopping mall

(come on Samsung, come on Apple!)

there'd be no further need for marriage,

no further need for lads at all.

[rosschandler]

I have several hundreds of friends

on Facebook, and I couldn’t tell you who

the fuck they are. I know, maybe,

37 of these people. The rest

are an outandout total mystery.

You want to be friends? I don’t mind.

That’s how you collect them.

All these gorgeous Japanese women

(according to the photographs)

ding on you since they don’t have to meet you

and that for them is exactly cool.

Don’t touch, don’t see.

They write all these sexy but safe little messages

With (^^) haha ([#(**) #) and God knows what

so that I can never understand them.

You can see them on the trains any day of the week

banging away on their phones with polished nails

and having a great time altogether.

 

They don’t fuck any more.

This is what the Japanese lads do be telling me.

They’re too busy with their designer pastel phones.

 

I looked at a girl yesterday evening

and I smiled at her in a distant pleasant way

and she said give us your number and I’ll send you a text.

She did, too. It said “Hello, how are you?”

I could have done that myself.

I moved over beside her, as you do,

and she went outside to make a phone call.

 

You people in Europe you have no manners.

Here you can’t make a phone call in a cinema, a theatre,

a restaurant, a bus or train, any public place at all.

This is Japan, see? It’s a great way to send blokes on their way.

Must make a phone call. She goes, she never comes back.

It’s a pity they can’t have sex with telephones.

It’s a pity they can’t have babies with the damn things,

leaving out the awkward male element in such transactions.

 

Microsoft will come around. Apple might be ahead of them

in freezing designer sperm, a button to warm it,

so ladies can stick their friendly phone between their legs

after having a long long conversation with their eunuch boyfriends

and have a child in nine or ten months. If you don’t like it

you can send it back and we’ll crunch it into bits for the parts

to keep our doddering shareholders alive. Up to you.

 

Me, I’m going out with a Chinese girl at the present time

and she doesn’t believe in any of these things. She believes in

keeping me miserable, teasing me, offering sudden outbursts

of unexpected affection. So hard to disengage. So human.

single serving friends comes to mind from Fight Club.