My main concerns

concerning this, as you might

expect, are that one:

I sustain no damage

of any sort due to

the unscrupulous,

and two:  That I’m not

held responsible

by any type

of social media

for falsehoods and confusions

not of my making

In another written piece         

a friend of mine introduced

the scam poems

But in case you’ve not read that,

there are four such poems,

one, two, three, and three point nine,

titled thus to commemorate

either the jokester or the would-be scammer

who told the internet (erroneously of course)

that the writer of these

had now nearly four million

followers on a popular social site

Yes, and so completes a necessary

introduction to these writings, and

from now on throughout all four

shall only actual deeds and

personal opinions be documented

It’s the first day of April

but I’m not fooling

when I say today I’m

looking back- looking back

to how it was – and I can’t really say

was it right or wrong

And I guess I’m looking

forth as well

looking back and forth

trying to find something today

And it must be that

same old elusive something

not many are apparently

able to find.

Yeah, and maybe that’s all

the fools of April

are trying to do as well

It used to be that

at least ninety percent of the time

I didn’t answer their calls

I could see via caller ID

that they were up to no good

But this piece is about

the times I did answer

And it’s also about how one

can hopefully start over

on the first day of April

Yet, April’s first day

is supposedly a day

for fools and foolishness;

a special day of connivery

by known friends and

unknown scoundrels such

as the man who called

that day to say he was

Officer Wright (with a W)

from the I.R.S.

And he said my tax returns

had been given to the F.B.I.

But I told Officer Wright

he was wrong

and that the only abbreviations

he had connection to were B.S.

And then the other day

I was just leaving the house

when the phone rang.

It was “Name Withheld”

telling me I still owed $600.00

on a loan I’d never taken out

And then a few days later

an apparently self-appointed

member of the local police force

called to say he was collecting 

for disadvantaged children

And then later that same day

I got a call from “Unavailable,”

who said that the C.I.A.

had recently tapped my telephone

But I can still remember

back in mid-March I’d just

completed a worthwhile call

and immediately upon my placing

the receiver down the phone rang

and it was the lottery operator

who said I’d won fifty thousand dollars

but needed to first send him

two hundred so that he could process

the transfer of the funds

And one day, it must have been

about two months ago,

someone with ten individual digits or numbers

as his name (at least that’s what

caller I.D. said his name was)

rang me up and wanted to

sell me some new products

which would enhance my

phone and television experience,

plus, he said he also “dealt in”

medical supplies such as

back braces, knee braces, walking sticks, etc.,

which he said many

of his “customers” had

been able to bill to Medicare.

The trouble that day however

was that I wasn’t in the mood

for scams broadcast

via the phone lines, so

I asked the person on the

other end what kind of life

he had, and didn’t he want

to do more with it than

make bogus phone calls only

initiated in the hope of

scamming hard earned money

from respectable citizens

And there was an angry exchange then

between myself and that caller,

but then later the same day

the sham cancer research people

called and said they needed

extra funds and would I please contribute

and then also distribute

their literature in my neighborhood.

But then one day I

complained to the telephone

service providers, and they put

my number into a device

which automatically blocks

what it determines to be junk calls.

And no, it’s not the No Call List,

but it keeps me free

from the world

of telephone scamming,

although those ne’er do wells

have now tried to

infiltrate my life

in other manners such as

bogus social media scams.