Newspoem.

20 December 1999

Radioplay  

beep beep

excuse me sir is this your artificial heart? you'll need that.

beep beep

[a shifting a rustling a passing of trains]

beep beep beep

[percolator, coffeecup, slurp, sigh]

yes, but is there a nonrecursive model for government? otherwise there would need to be a world government and eventually larger governments than that. but how can you have a world government that is not fascist? with no other world governments to compare itself to or compete with? how can you? 

and then my mind is searching for lost files and the monitor comes back on.

i can't get the news underground
there is only the substance that barely passes for coffee
everything is corrupt and unutterable
the news is fading back into view now, it's
my god it's
shimmering

the news is clearly in focus now
okay
i'm reading the first headline
i'm typing it in

did you get that?

okay i'm going to try typing in the first story
now

okay i'm standing here in front of the news, it's shimmering, flickering. i cannot understand it, it is a tapestry of fact. official sources have flown in and landed on the rail where they stand in a row, shifting from one talon to the other, and ruffling their feathers.

i'm going to try walking directly into the news now
i can't hear anything except static
so i hope you're still picking up my transmission

because i don't know what's going to happen

i'm afraid the news will drown me out

i'm walking forward now and things are getting brighter
the print is getting larger
the sentences clearer and more distinct

ah

things are starting to make sense now

okay i'm understanding the headlies
ah lines headlines
now

okay i'm starting to understand

i'm getting a rosy picture here
i hope you're picking this up
things are looking up, very bright, here
and i'm continuing forward into the news
i'm almost on the second page

everything's

white

with

black

type

i can see through it now
the pages are turning transparent my god this is not like poetry
it is all true it is all factual

i'm turning now to look where i came from
i can't see where i came from
i can't see the first page

there are photographs
my god
they are moving
they are real
they are little windows
i am close enough to that corpse to touch it

horror

i don't know whether i'll come back
i don't know whether any of this will be heard or recorded
but i am reading the newspaper

...

i think i'm starting
to hear some thing
i don't think that's the radio
i don't know
i hope you hear it too
it sounds like people marching
it sounds like machines

machine

guns

...

[dissolves in static]

 


Newspoetry at Spineless Books