Another unpublished story here he goes again

 

There is a strange music playing on the radio

Today

It is playing words

To songs that

Were recorded in my childhood

I first heard them played during Vietnam

But then the songs could protest

Sometimes

Then the songs had meaning

Sometimes

Songs played

While families sat huddled around television sets

Watching the evening news

Watching television screens

Scrolling the names of the dead

Of war dead

Of soldiers

Of friends

Of sons

There is a strange music playing on my radio

Today

Its announcer gives it phrases

And orders from behind a desk

With presidential seals

Its newscaster gives daily briefings

Quickly

Scrolling

Lively

Down

Other

Lies

In other hands

And families sit huddled around television sets

Watching for news of the dead

Arid climates and radical ingrates

Offer repulsion to invading hordes.

Hordes that are us

And some offer new records

Playing old tunes

Songs that are meek

Forms of protest

Offered in senate rooms

At lunch time interviews

Song that weak

Songs that are political

Liberal

Democratic responses

To conservative

Insanity

And these songs are

And ineffectual

Everyone fails for every reason to hear

Their whispers

Which should be

The word

So distracted by the

We

The I

The us

The other

By the images

The blasphemy

Manufactured in the sound stages

Of oppression

Of colonization

Of opportunism

Of inaction

Of oil cartels

With American roots

And mothers

Watch teary eyed

Still again

All the while listening

To songs now played

On records that house both

Genders

Singing

This time

Involving daughters

As well as sons

And black girls with braids are taken away

And no songs are written

And white girls with ponytails

Are made

The chosen daughters

Of a new American Revolution

Not by they're choosing

Not with their help

And not to be blamed

But

Many songs are written

Through their lines

Sing a song of deception

And manufactured risqué

And both girls

Are returned as damaged records

Who volumes are muted

By government lyrics

That issue veiled

Songs of secrecy

Loyally

Black op missions

These are always played

On televisions

With missing picture tubes

With gaps in the

Memory

Motive

And music

And we rejoice in their return

And we mourn

Them ever being there

And songs keep on playing

And lies keep

On lying

We pretend that this song

Is a new one

Instead of the same old tune

Recorded long ago

By other evil men

Muttered between

The fingers

Holding victory signs

High in the air

And as ditches are dug up

And bodies are found

I can hear other songs

Screaming out in my head

Songs that

Have little girls

Burnt by napalm

Running naked through

The streets

And the bodies

Other bodies are found

Lt. Calley

Still sings his

Song of sunshine

It will make your day

Sing a song of sunshine

Wash your cares away

And it all

Only ads to our confusion

To our outrage

But a violin strums its chords

And nullifies us again

In the background I can hear

The outcast singing

Bombs over Baghdad

The beastie boys singing

"In a world gone mad"

But they are drowned out

By government radios

Playing on radio stations

Left behind

Left running

After the cold war

Beamed down to torture

Cuba

Iraq

Iran

And I run

When I hear

These silly old songs

Playing tunes

On airwaves

The voice of America

Strangest music of all

It's playing on my radio

It is playing words to songs

That were recorded in my childhood

Now

But if I close my eyes

I can hear public enemy

Singing "song of bush"

And I can hear some of the others

Turning up their instruments

Collecting their lyrics

Sleater- Kinney

Far away

"Don't breathe the air today

Don't speak of why you're afraid

No other direction for this to go,

And we fall down

And if I use my hands

I can create a new song from chicken bones

And hair

Then maybe together

We can make a chorus

That drowns out

The false prophet