Scotch Tape
--Tony Hoagland 

There’s a radio station at the left end of the dial
where you can listen to 24 hours of genocide war crimes;
how in the south the election was bought cheap 

by men in unmarked uniforms;
how the contaminated medicine was shipped abroad
until babies started being born with deformed spines. 

--And the then the big conspiracies: how the oceans
......are being poisoned;
the toxic waste pumped from one container to the next,
the oil wells drilled like dental work 

down into the jaw-bone of the earth,
and bad news keeps on coming like a river
or a crazy, filthy wave, that breaks against you
......like a shore. 

The evening program is called “The Misery of the World”
The announcer has a voice like stomach acid.
To listen is a moral obligation,
--or is it an act of masochism? 

It broadcasts daily from 8 to 10 p.m.
And I am listening tonight, I am faithfully,
dutifully listening,
moaning a little in frustration. 

while I try to get my fingernail
under the serrated edge of the scotch tape
to unstick it from its small transparent spool 

so I can mend the torn pages
in this second-hand copy of Heraclitus,
where he says that everything is on fire.