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