Chris Brown: Sickie (10.2.06)

so you lied but only to the machine
now praise it the advent of voice-mail

as a certain reflex tucks the prefatory remarks
of a distance call up its sleeve and plays

back the sample - now somewhere else
you're absent        you can almost breathe

but then there's the ergonomic chair
(resembling emptily

this latest voluntary redundancy)
there

the well-wishers
a dutiful few

upstairs set to extort
the ghost-writers

of each winning C.V. janette
could be volunteer to the stage neatly
restructured turned before the audience

as the booth adjacent says
aren't we all a more random
potentially less

human cabinetry? best not be seen
play it safe write about it as if

someone's got to keep the culture running