Listening to the BBC World Service Late at Night

My little radio, my shortwave

monster of confession,

small black box of many sorrows

and a joke or two:

it turns you on to brag about

destruction, tell me that

in jungles heads are rolling,

that the city towers tumble on themselves.

In deserts, things are even worse.

The children, too,

it seems, must suffer

as the world goes boom.

Sometimes I hate what you

have said, can’t stop

from saying. I could fling you out

the window testily

in high green grass,

but everybody knows

you’d just keep squawking.

Better let you scream.