Your call is important to us

Earl Fowler

For English, press one.

Pour continuer en français, dites trois fois “câline de bine.”

Please stay on the line and your call will be ignored in the order in which it was disregarded.

If you know the extension of the person you wish to bother

press 2 to take a Seconal to a point just this side of suicide.

If you think your call is important enough for us to hire more operators

press 3 to discuss your downpayment on the Brooklyn Bridge.

If you were born in the wagon of a travelling show

your momma used to dance for the money they’d throw.

For all other inquiries, press 4

for the fourth stage of dhyana, at which point,

all sensations, even of happiness and unhappiness,

of joy and sorrow, will disappear under concertina wire

by the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow.

Feel free to suck a graham cracker for 40 minutes

of a Ron Burgundy jazz flute solo

until only rattlesnakes and rustlings in the brush remain in your brain, maybe the occasional waterfall,

and your eyes have become endless sandstorms

registering nothing but the ephemeral effulgence of headlights crawling slowly across the bedroom wall

at night when you’re in bed and unable to sleep.

Listen carefully because our menu options have changed

for capricious reasons designed to turn our valued customers

into pygmy three-toed phone sloths with grips so strong

that they are sometimes found still clinging to landlines

months after dying and switching to Rogers.

Tiny blue moths have been found feeding on algae

that grow along the deep groove

that develops along their midriffs,

lending the Hundred Acre Wood a feeling of dark and occult power.

This call might be recorded for quality control purposes

but then again, you might also toss heads 100 times in a row

or live to see a colour photo of Toronto Maple Leafs

other than George Armstrong or Bob Pulford

triumphantly shouldering the Cup.

Hold the phone and think of it this way.

You’ve put this much time into marinading in formaldehyde already.

Why throw away your investment in the Eternal Now?

Mind you, if you want to slam down the receiver and use bad words,

we’re down with that, too. We won’t hear them. And anyway,

that Ron Burgundy conch shell solo always has us feeling very mellow.

So go ahead, honey. Disconnect the phone.

See if we care.

Sylvia’s mother said Sylvia’s busy.

Too busy to come to the phone.

You need us more than we want you.

And you want us for all time.

And the Wichita lineman is still on the line.

Please hold for the next available customer service representative.

Your call is important to us, here at the embalming parlour.

Sitting on that sack of seeds.

And the operator said,

“Forty cents more … for the next … three … minutes.”

Some kind of apathy got ahold on you

and you’re wondering where the lines are

you’re wondering where the lines are.

We’ve been experiencing higher than normal call volumes,

oh, since Alexander Graham Bell took a bathroom break in 1922.

Rode with us to Memphis.

And Papa would’a shot him if he knew what he’d done.

Communicator, well, let’s forget about this call.

There’s no one here you really wanted to talk to.

Thank you for your time.

Oh, we know all about your kind.

Guess we’ll keep the dime.