Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Radar love

THAT GUY ON THE RADIO IS TALKING ABOUT THE BIBLE AGAIN

That guy on the radio is talking about the Bible,
again, reciting from it, his lunch breath
a paraphrased ecstasy, his pants over there
on a hook, or in a tote bag he got
for free, somewhere, and that day was a good one,
an example unto all the others,
you might say, he might say, Jesus
might have said a long time ago
when nobody cared about the sad eventuality
of this prick. I was saying
something concerning pantlessness
but I got caught up
in anger. The way dolphins knot themselves
in skeins meant for tuna.
Which are miles long, the nets and not the tuna.
It is still true: I love this
planet, even though my life
amounts to a lot of waiting
on the lives of others to line up with mine.
So I'm not so unlike
you or this mouth that on the radio
becomes invisible
or monstrous tuna which pass through the waters
like freight trains,
never stopping until they do stop,
fatigued, sinking, glad
to arrive. This is what we mean by
at long last. This is what I mean,
though it confirms me
a fool, though my knuckles stain the walls with blood.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, Paul,

I like it--can you push the scene for me just a bit? Give me something more to fill out where the speaker is, and why that place matters? In some ways, this feels very different from the work in your two more recent collections, and so perhaps I'm just reading it incorrectly--but it feels like there's still something under-the-surface here, and I'd love to see more of that. Peter G.

Fred Miller said...

I'm easy. I like it. It's just a poem. Damn.