RADIO by Cornelius Eady.

There is the woman
Who will not listen
To music. There is the man
Who dreams of kissing the lips
Attached to the voice.
There is a singer
Who reinvents the world
In musical notation.
There is the young couple
Who dance slowly on the sidewalk,
As if the rest of the street
Didn’t exist.
There is the school boy
Whose one possession
Is an electric box
That scrambles the neighborhood.
There is the young girl
Who locks her bedroom door,
And lip-syncs in the mirror.
There is the young beau
Who believes in the songs so much,
He hears them
Even when he is kissing someone.
There is the mother
Who absent-mindedly sways to the beat,
But fears the implications
For her daughter.

There is the man
Who carries one in his
Breast pocket
And pretends it’s a Luger.
There are the two young punks
Who lug one into our car
On the stalled D train,
Who, as we tense for the assault,
Tune in a classical music station,
As if this were
Saturday night
On another world….