Lindsay E. Martin
untitled

my heart raced and pounded within me his preempted
words rushing through my fingers as i patter them on my
leg it petrifies me to think my future lies in such few moments
as i breathe in and out my eyelids blink as normal my
eyebrows rise the anticipation as he wasn't even looking
at me now he is i nearly gasp as his mouth opens and
his hand migrates the way it always does to my leg the
way mine always does to rub his head as if he's thinking
like he has no idea what to say i know it's true he'll end
up lying and maneuvering around the way he really feels
does he feel i think of how we ten to hurt each other
dementia runs around freelancing as an unbelieving pause
fractures everything we've ever had so easily i try with all
of me to apologize but it isn't right it isn't true life is too
short to care to apologize life is too confining and
revolutionary to leave everything behind to think it won't
come around again.

so I turn on the radio

so I turn on the radio to see what I could hear, so I turn on the radio to capture all my fears big bass drumming everyone's leaving their jobs their families and life just as they know it they drive they complain they drive they breathe they drive they breed so I turn on the radio to listen to it all so I turn on the radio to feel the time burn they collaborate and regurgitate above the gray asphalt route 16 all the way past the city past the country past love and light and everything in between so I turn on the radio to cry to my life so I turn on the radio to listen to someone's song they keep living and lying and trying and buying and crying their whole life for more than what they have so dwell in the past and live for tomorrow and don't worry about what they lost today so I turn on the radio to a sing-along song so I turn on the radio to drown it all out they update and live late in the golf course before his wife gets home and they relive their wedding day in the chapel that's long since burned down with the rice in the steam pt above the mashed potatoes so I turn on the radio to watch the stars fly by so I turn on the radio to listen to their song they get home past leno and reek into conan's life a lovin life in a tv show living more than a man could ever do in their tv as she dusts the tube so I turn on the radio to taste the commercials to I turn on the radio to kiss my lover long distance they keep riving commuting swearing haring bumper stickers fingers rear view mirrors relationships that they've never met and they cry to their steering wheels and free themselves so I turn on the radio to pacify so I turn on the radio to blare it quietly they listen to rush and dole and Clinton and bush and gore and gorbechev and hillary and sadaam and newt and the easter bunny too to catch the real world at a glance about Siberia and Tibet and Russia and china and commies and the capitalists and the powers that be and the germans with their nazis and the black white Indian asian Eskimo hippie free love feminism power groups and they never realize they are all the same so I turn on the radio to feel the same so I turn on the radio to listen to them argue they love their life and can't learn to love another they love themselves and each other but not everyone and they are all everyone but they can only love a few at a time when it's all around in the cars on the trucks on the bikes in the semis through the tunnel and they just don't know it so I turn on the radio to spread my love so I urn on the radio to quiet down the politics there isn't a thing in the sky they can't hate and they all turn away and they all turn cold and they all let the moment pass and they all get old so I turn on the radio to the fountain of youth so I turn on the radio to listen to the stale old truth there isn't anything love can do for these Americans they love the dream the gleam the team the stream the cream the beam the American freedom for them the American life for them home of the free so I turn on the radio to listen to the brace so I turn on the radio to become a little more free they kill things like butterflies and they love a good beer and they eat they drink they be merry and they still can't hear so I turn on the radio to cry in the dark so I turn on the radio to perhaps make a little love under those fast moving stars.

Back to Issue 2, 1999