Friday, January 12, 2024

Garage-Sale Rolodex for Seventy-Five Cents - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Garage-Sale Rolodex® for Seventy-Five Cents

 

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed,

debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.

 

-Patrick McGoohan as Number Six in The Prisoner

 

The Rolodex was once a symbol of power

Of knowledge marshalled into sequences

Orderly sequences alphabetized by names

By names and cross indices of subjects and dates

 

Of enemies or allies or contacts, rarely friends

Condensed in ink on smoothly finished cards

Restrained in place by colored plastic tabs

Awaiting the stroke of an office tyrant’s hand

 

The Rolodex was subsumed within The ‘Phone

Thus still your life cannot be called your own




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