1.

Invaluable advice from the radio:
Buy your girlfriend a wicker dog.



2.

Our next caller is Frank,
who wants to know why
love is so destructive,
music has gotten so bad,
and we're not living in space yet.

He also requests 'Hungry Like The Wolf'.



3.

In the passenger seat
we go by a church,
and I know neither the name
of the road, or the song,
but we both like it.

'It's probably someone awful,'
you say, nodding your head,
and I agree, nodding mine
in time.



4. (remembering Pacific Radio Fire)

On the landing, I watched us
in the mirror,
reading.

Side by side, me
with teary eyes,
hoping for the same from you.



5.

Certain notes and chords
which make me dance when placed in order
are locked up in the archives of
the British Library,

Secure from prying eyes and hands
but sometimes I still hear them played;
Librarians and singers are
conspiring against me.



6.

There's radio online, now:
I tried a punk-rock station
and got the Rolling Stones;
tried the best of rock and pop,
got the Clash and the Ramones;
I tried an easy listening
and ended up with jazz;
found Mingus and Coltrane
on post-electro-fuzz,
but hearing Frank Sinatra tagged
as dub and then as ska
was only topped by Cypress Hill's
Furtiva Lagrima.



7. Found Radio Poem

I have become
     comfortably numb,
and blind to sound;
weeping strong, dark ale
in the back of the whorehouse.

Blues wail ghostly over the dead;
a drunkard's lament,
a failing call to arms:

     If there is an end,
          let it be the end of a rope,
     and if there is a hole,
          throw me in
          and cover me over.
     Tuck me in with earth.

I drove all night
     to get to you,
my black market baby;
I'm sorry for laughing,
sorry for tossing our trivial boat

onto the ocean of confusion,
way off course, far
from the sea of love;
far from our destination.

Lamps ignite throughout the rooms
throwing shadows on hollow faces,
their women are coming, and you
are not among them:
the torture never stops.



8.

The six o'clock hangover bus
terminates at the train station,
where coffee and bagels are found.

This morning's driver is a devotee
of Mozart's Cosí Fan Tutte,
and lets our ears know it;
coffee's suddenly unnecessary.



9.

Remember my incredulous sneer
when you brought home that
garden gnome radio, and placed it
on the kitchen sill,
where it oversaw the washing up
and never said a word?

For months he pushed his barrow
in vain, never able to pass
the dying herbs,
unable to comment on current events.
I drew the line at batteries.

He looked on, with impregnable cheer,
when I slipped on wet tiles;
when I set the room on fire;
when I ate that bad mince;
when I rubbed raw chilli into my nostrils;
and every time we fought
(when others were out)
he made sure to take it all in.

Unphased by ants and mice he stood,
while everything broke down:
bills went unpaid,
we turned hungry, and angry;
left one another alone.
When the time came to split,
you took the gnome away;
I wonder, seeing all he saw,
what songs he'd have chosen to play.



10. A Short Independent Film

The radio receiver hears everything we say:
     “Morning Billy,
          how's the wife?”
     “She died, just yesterday.”

The radio receiver doesn't care, he just receives:
     “Cold out, i'n't it?”
          “'Tis a bit,
     and all these fucking leaves!”

The radio receiver takes it down on vinyl disc:
     “Seeing her again,
          or not?”
     “It isn't worth the risk.”

The radio receiver doesn't care, he just receives:
     “Seen those Asians
          down the offie,
     thick as fucking thieves?”

The radio receiver takes the good news with the bad:
     “I 'eard Bill's wife died
          yesterday.”
     “She did?  How very sad.”

The radio receiver doesn't care, he just receives:
     “Move them bins
          from by the door;
     It really fucking heaves.”

The radio receiver cannot hear me when I type:
     …
          …
     …

The radio receiver doesn't care, he just receives,
So it really doesn't matter what the fucking cunt believes.



11.

The antenna on my radio
reminds me of you --
not in that you are long, or thin,
telescopic, or made of metal,
but in that you are wholly indiscriminate
as to who you pick up,
and you once poked me
in the eye.



12.

          Your eyes flicker behind their lids
as you envision the players,
          the passes,
     the fouls, and,
hopefully,
               the goals.

Soft lounge-lamp light
          shadows me in the folds
     of your coat on the couch,
where I sprawl, watching you
     in the final minutes
          before you head off for work.

     I don't care at all for football,
but as you rise,
          switch off the radio;
     grab your foiled midnight lunch,
your coat from under me,
          I briefly miss the game
behind your closed eyes.



13.

Your name is on the airwaves.

My finger
     pauses
on the power switch,
while I listen to it one more time;
     syllables soaked in static,
sweat glistening
     on your speakers.



14.

For a while, when we were friends,
we'd beer and Sunday-evening-radio;
interviews with Bonzo and Music
For Biscuits
(still, even now,
on my Amazon wishlist):
next time you pass me in the street
I'll turn up the volume
so you can hear that memory.



15.

I wonder about the vast
array of satellites which keep us
in music.

I wonder how many of those stars
are beaming down disco,
or country, or jazz,
and I wonder if

alien civilisations are laughing
at how far we've
not come.



16. Flish's Folly

...fweee...crrrfzz...
Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Cromarty...
ssszz...crrp...

...over one hundred stations,
          nothing on any.