Coming at You Live and Past

Posted on May 25, 2003 in Blogging Book of Days Poems

Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: You’re listening to the radio.

Listening? Never. I create radio.

Back when I was a student at Pomona College, I was a DJ at KSPC. The best things I have ever done in my life I’ve not been paid for: djing, writing my weblog, helping do the Alcatraz web site, etc.

That’s saying something about all the other things out there to do for a dollar, for the identities we think exist because they are printed on pay stubs.

Most of us listen or watch or read — to second rate, arrogant talents who do radio or television or popular best sellers.

I don’t have the time.

I’ve got to keep my pen scratching at the paper. I’ve got to hear it cutting grooves in the cellulose.

Seeing the needles jump as my voice or the music I chose went out — that made me feel alive, proved to exist by measurement. Preparing scripts and seeing them live or die gave me a sense of mortality.

Those times amplified me.

Doing this now amplifies me, too.

I blast the world

exalt the world

paint the world

wallpaper the world in my words and my images of

the native bunch grasses

the wildflowers

the streams

the florid angles of the ridge backs

all coming at you

just long enough for you to notice and maybe remember some of them

remember some of me

This is my radio, coming over the wire waves and through cable optics, strafing your mind with my dissonance and my peace of mind.

Signing off but never out. Not until my tubes break.

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Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.

Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: “And it was at that age…” (after Pablo Neruda)