Listening to 'Chinese Radiation'

Here I am.

Here!

Listening to Pere Ubu’s Chinese Radiation.

There we are. There!

Kissing, in bed, naked, young, studying our own feelings, our university,

You wondering what Bob Dylan meant in Desolation Row,

While all I can think about is holding you and Friday night.

Holding you and wanting you to be proud.

The guitar has gone. Now there is a piano and everything is dark.

Is this the same song?

I’m here after the event. Longing myself back inside it.

Hurt as ever by the mystery of being held back.

Hearing the crowd cheer, the sad piano, ‘I saw it coming’.

Do you think memory is a crack in the mind?

Is radiation an emotion beneath our words?

I put a Geiger counter to your heart and call it my hand,

But my technology is simple, like a fat man dreaming he is a bird.

I can’t believe we were so inventive, that we grabbed another world.

Your pink jumper, your mini skirt, your books on Structuralism.

Can I take you out Friday night? Can we go see sounds

That scribble in our head like urgent love. Infection.

Infection gives me wings to be distorted. Help me fall.

Here comes the real world, just like the fat man sings.

I saw the New World, I saw the real world, I saw the big world.

- Mark Mordue