13 Ways of Looking at a BlackBerry

Wallets Steepens

Issue 35 * Spring 2015

1.0

Among twenty silent desks,
The only buzzing thing
Was the screen of a BlackBerry.

2.0

Three memos on my mind,
Like the buzz
Of a BlackBerry pregnant with three messages.

3.0

The BlackBerry buzzed in corduroy pants.
It was but a small part of the meeting.

4.0

A man and his title
Are one.
A man and his title and a BlackBerry
Are management.

5.0

I know which to prefer,
The beauty of spreadsheets
Over the beauty of memoranda,
The BlackBerry dinging,
The message after.

6.0

Washers filled the long window
Of upscale glass.
The flash of a BlackBerry
Reflected, here and there.
The stock
Raced in the image
An inevitable cause.

7.0

Oh Thin Mints of Haddam,
Why do you presage golden days?
Do you not hear how the BlackBerry
Points to the iPhone
Of your impending widowhood?

8.0

I know touch-tones
And ancient, rotary-dial pulses;
But I know, also,
That the BlackBerry is telephony,
Which is what I know.

9.0

When the BlackBerry finally left the scene
It marked the start
Of many new devices.

10.0

At the buzz of BlackBerries
And their screens of white light,
Even the lords of Taylorism
Would cry out sharply.

11.0

He flew over Montana
In a 787.
Once, an uncertainty reached him,
In that he mistook
The joy of being airborne
With his BlackBerry's buzz.

12.0

The cubicles are humming.
The BlackBerries must be buzzing.

13.0

It was morning all day.
Shares were rising
And shares were going to rise.
The BlackBerries buzzed
At the center of things.