TRANSMITTING OUR WISHES.

The usual forms of communication
Seem to be making
Us irritable;
We’re either defensively sensitive
Or aggressively callous,
And we can’t seem to get the balance
Right
In words or type,
And it’s beginning to hinder
Our speech.

So maybe we need another form
Of discourse in order
To survive:
I could burn London Town down,
Whilst you work on New York,
And the boasting smoke will do our talking
For us;
Filling the already
Flush skies with our rebukes
And apologies.

Or I could use the moon’s blooming,
As you fumble with
The sun,
And with sufficiently large carpets
We’ll flash out in hardiest
Morse code the thoughts we once wrote
Down,
Or spoke to each other,
Via the sky’s incandescent
Messengers.

Or still in old codes we could transmit
In sound waves a similar
Pitch;
Me with the suspension ropes of
The Humber Bridge
As an instrument to strum away with,
And
You with the Golden Gate’s
Harp strings to bring them to my
Attention.

Alternatively we could send letters
To each other through
The postal system;
I’ll start with ‘A’ and see how that goes
And if I receive a ‘B’
Then I’ll know we’re onto something,
But
If you skip straight to ‘Z’ then
I guess we’ll spend eternity discussing
How to pronounce it.

And if all those fail then I suppose
We’ll try your most recent
Suggestion,
Which you brought up this evening
As the strain
Was starting to drain us of alternatives:
With the
Straightest possible face
You mooted the use of sign language
Over the phone.