Signals Copyright © Richard Whiting 2010

I was searching for signals;
The small, yellow transistor
placed with careful precision
tight to the pencil tramlines
I’d etched into the sill
where reception was best.

Sometimes, in storms, a silence;
battles born of static.
Luxembourg, on clear nights,
near perfect. Arguments of sound
pulled like a tide by the moon
Clear as sanity, vague as madness.

I’d strut across the room
pogo-ing to the Pistols
with a squash racket Rickenbacker
and a single-piece ear-phone.
A figure less like John Lydon
more a skeletal Johnny Ray.

My mother stands by the window.
If I could turn her to the mast, I would
scrawl a line around her with my fists;
Mark a circle in my own blood.
She hands me that old radio;
But her signal is poor,
her reception is fading,

The walls are closing in

and I no longer have the will to dance.