Ode to an Odious Cell Phone Abuser

You speak as if to a roaring crowd
and yet I see no interested parties
to your pronouncements.

Addressing an audience of none
you shout into a box of inanimate metal
that has more diplomacy than you do.

At least it offers the option of silence.

Is the world better off with its overall volume increased
by your dissatisfaction with the terms
of your latest, and obviously well-deserved, divorce?

And what could possibly be so urgent
about your turgid sexual escapades
that a nearby adolescent
must have her romantic hopes and dreams
shattered in an instant by your utterances?

All this to impress
the disembodied recipient
of your regurgitated musings
a hundred miles away
who can probably hear you
without the phone
and who is no doubt scoring very highly in a lengthy game of Tetris.

Let us pray that the brain cancer myth is real--
and mercifully swift.

(This must have been my day for cell phone musings. My original idea for the note card exercise was that Nostradamus's cell phone had been uncovered, and its use was highly regulated for political reasons--no matter what was said into it, the receiver heard only vague predictions of future doom and horror. Sadly I couldn't figure out how to get that into one sentence during class.)