Crimson edifice, monument to a long-gone past;
\nCast-iron anomaly that guards the village store.
\nWhat use have you today, whose last
\ncall made was by someone trying to find a w h o r e;
\na number picked at random from the posted cards?
\nThe secrets that once it was your job to guard
\nare whispered now into a tiny mobile phone,
\nor sent by text, for the recipients\u2019 eyes alone.<\/p>\n
Do you still provide a place to call for taxi-hire;
\nthe laggards rescue from the late-night long walk home?
\nEmergency requests for ambulance, police or fire,
\nor reporting out-of-order residential phones?
\nPerhaps you shelter still the teenage lovers\u2019 kiss;
\ntoo self-wrapped-up to note the reek of drunkards\u2019 p i s s
\nin puddled corners. And do runaways still strive to cheat the coinbox, telling parents that they are alive?<\/p>\n
Although on town and country streets I see
\nnow only clean-cut BT kiosks made of steel and glass,
\nthe old red phone box still provides a memory
\nof times gone by; a once great British past.
\nAnd still in hidden corners or forgotten lanes
\nI find your crimson frame and tiny panes
\nrecall own my misspent and happy youth. Oh yes, it\u2019s true\u2026
\nmy teenage secret life was guarded well by you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Crimson edifice, monument to a long-gone past; Cast-iron anomaly that guards the village store. What use have you today, whose last call made was by someone trying to find a w h o r e; a number picked at random from the posted cards? The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1359,"featured_media":73350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3442],"class_list":["post-73437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marathon-poem","tag-2020poetrymarathon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73465,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73437\/revisions\/73465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}