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Customer Service

I want to scream. What
is this horrible disease
that I have wherein every
entity to whom I pay fees

on a regular basis has
found a way to rip me off,
to snooker me into paying
way above and beyond what

I was originally told? Usually
verbally. Calm down. Should
I list them all here, along with
their wrongdoings, as if this

were some conglomerated
horrible review? This is not
the stuff of poetry. Art has
never stuffed me full of such

anxiety and frustration and
dread. While waiting on
an online representative
to finish reading my file,

before spending yet another
hour or two glued to this screen,

then  promised access to my
account once again, yet at the

end of our conversation not
one bit of movement in the
right direction has been made,
my account is still inaccessible,

they are still charging me a
monthly fee, it’s been nearly
four months of this and maybe
a dozen hours on the phone or

chatting online with help—and this

is just one of many companies
whose names you would today 

recognize, which always gives me 

pause, like, how do they stay in 

business? And why me? Perhaps I 

should be whiling away this time 

writing a pastoral, taking a nice, 

long walk around the city snapping 
shots of beautiful ephemera. The
customer service representative
is still reading through my file. I

hope I don’t have to explain for
the twentieth time the problems
that I have had with my account,
to which I desperately need access. 

Please come back to the chat screen 

and tell me that everything has been
solved, that my account is now 
accessible, that I’ve been refunded

of the payments taken from my
bank by your huge company for
the services that I have been
unable to access for so long.

This is as far as you get from

beauty.  This that I’ve written

in such fits and starts is no art

but a headache tightended by

a crown of thorns.  The burden

of the sum of the sins I drag to my

death, or to the prison wherein

I shall await such a foul conclusion.