Sam White
THE PAPER RADIO
You develop a sense that something might happen
and in so doing you develop an argument for the paper radio
though no one may pass by to hear your theories or Björk.
So pour another battle as fought in ultramarine paste
with soldiers collapsing when they feel the idea leave them
and enter another. You think about Stevens and the structure of ideas
And you feel the helicopter might land on you.
But it's hard to say what's there. Is it Stevens medevacking
the highway pile up or the highway pile up
And where does that end? You can't possibly continue
but you do walking away from the car
with one dessert on each knee.
WHY NOT LOWER THE DRINKING AGE TO 12?
It would lighten the children, just look
at their trampled sod faces like hauling a plow
to grin through the earth. O put a foot down
with some weight behind you, kid.
It's not the end of all blazes -- it's surely the trail
as surely the clothes of those lovers ahead --
A bra in the rocks was that light.
The laughing and splashing heartens the children
whose eyes grow neck-deep in the moat,
whose eyes grow horse-deep in pasture,
whose eyes grow like footlights to heighten
the actor. Why not lower the actor
to the blaze of all dogs when the blaze of all dogs
is their teeth. Why not lower the children, to children,
to the whales and the waves...