A yellowed pad beside the silent telephone receiver Seven digits scribbled by an urgent non-believer The regional exchange was canceled fifteen autumns past Leaving three forgotten dispatches pinned inside the cast An overseas dispatch stamped with red rejection on the face Lies pressed against the walnut timber in the empty space Suspended dust motes dancing in the slanted afternoon Like shattered silica drifting to an unattended tune The outgoing transmission stalls along the copper wire A phantom message hovering above the church's spire A severed circuit hums inside the corridor at night A dormant pulse decaying in the television light The Dormant Relay Trembles In The Vacant Upper Air! An Unsent Dispatch Wanders Down An Unattended Stair! We Purge The Buffer Registry Before The Channel Drowns! Nobody Picks The Copper Up Across The Silent Towns! The clinic slip is tucked behind the plastic library sleeve A creased receipt from days he didn't have the grit to leave A registry of six erased with heavy marker ink Just blank enamel margins where the paper starts to sink The tape spool clacks in circles on the playback head in vain And spits three seconds of magnetic hiss across the pane The Dormant Relay Trembles In The Vacant Upper Air! An Unsent Dispatch Wanders Down An Unattended Stair! We Purge The Buffer Registry Before The Channel Drowns! Nobody Picks The Copper Up Across The Silent Towns! No dialing cadence answers on the handset in the dark No carrier signal carries through to spark another spark The draft box stays congested at the limit of the space A thousand memos frozen in a permanent embrace We strike the disconnect and sweep the static from the keys Listening to silence rustling through the barren trees The Dormant Relay Trembles In The Vacant Upper Air! An Unsent Dispatch Wanders Down An Unattended Stair! We Purge The Buffer Registry Before The Channel Drowns! Nobody Picks The Copper Up Across The Silent Towns! The ribbon strips completely from the supply wheel The carrier frequency collapses on the steel Clear the desk Trip the catch Nothing lingering inside the relay queue tonight
