Tarkan Deluxe: Photographer Unknown

Dead Radio

I have this little radio,
tarnished; rubbed wood to thinning beige,
it no longer plays; signals silent for an age;
      there is nothing to engage
and yet, I can't throw it away,
and so it stays with me,
in memory of the days
it had given me joy, buttons on play
in a constant stream of music haze;
      it reminds me of the days
we slept by that stream
and fucked fourteen different ways --
your lipstick stains still remain
on a button or two, dented and grazed
on this little radio -- it no longer plays,
      but still speaks of you,
tarnished, rubbed and thinning,
and yet I keep it close
in memory of the days
it watched us singing,
silent now like time and the stars,
      remote in its compassion,
coldly and distantly flaming
and so easy with its cruelty,
as the fates always remind me:
every star has an atom in me
every desert made from my bones
every death is in single company.

As the first poet whom I knew
to make all the difference;
dictating every poet and poem
      from thereon, driving down
into the root core of the word,
we are tailless semen spore
solicitous of every vowel and comma,
enthralled by the shapeliness
of a line and even by the white space
      beyond it; cloudy horizons beckoning
to sight and shore
and the salty deep sea inbetween
coral teeth that chew into you
as you swim in its blue --
bitemarks in your every sinew
      that turns the virgin page
into fractured portraits of ink;
you grow in this stink
as you age and age
and your radio dies
before you do

haloed by the chalk dust of time
as you write and write
from tense to sense
      and the sudden
moving constellations of regret
to gratitude for the heaven sent --
(but did we ever listen?)
setting into motion
the lineage of every poem
      and every song
after the first introduction;
pointing out lines of affiliation,
evoking a matrix
of historical interactions
so far beyond understanding
      it makes your head spin;
and the rage you feel within
is the rage of the first original sin,
where every stab uses the thinnest blade
to get deep beneath the skin;
and every masquerade of hatred
      is the fear of losing
the sun in the shade.
I began to read before I knew of this,
before feelings entered the arena;
before conspiratorial verbal rhapsodies
sang to you of getting closer:

For as the first poet knew
it makes no difference to the flow.
Love will take you
      where it wants to go,
malnourished and amplified
you are planted in a field
you reap yet did not sow,
your roots die from too much rain
and you fall down a rabbit hole
      before your insides have dried
losing yourself the deeper you go;
the world spins on an axis
without asking you where to go.
There is no control,
no rhyme or reason to it all
      but the laws of its season;
folding your corners into a box file
of false starts; false stars piled
into dead leaves and rustled cattle
where memories used to be:
loitering in the dark gardens of childhood;

a vast swath of snowy landscape,
on the bank of a dark stream.
Rods of light
      illuminate your illustration.
You take your photo
but the selfie is not of you,
that's all you need to know.
For those who survive
are those who figure out
how to love; those alone
      remain behind buried in snow,
where envy uses the thinnest blade
to get deep beneath the skin;
and every masquerade of hatred
is the fear of losing
the sun in the shade, while listening(?)
      to a small dead radio
dictating every note
in every poet and poem
driving down into the word;
spores of the absurd
driven and eaten
      by the white space and even
beyond; to shadowy horizons darkening
sight and shore: I saw you
and saw no more
but mine was the blindness
in every human's core.