After dinner today, I sat uncomfortably-

I'd eaten too many potatoes-

In our kitchen-

I'm always alone there-

And turned slowly inward

Through squawking air waves spiraling down

Through Europe and two cracked, grapefruit-sized speakers

Over a hulking mass of curbside salvage turn table.

Sometimes there's football on

So I smoke and strain in our white cinder den

And it sounds like the lions did,

Not growls but heart-felt yawns bellowing too big for their boxes.

No football today.

It's dark out and cold under a soviet-block naked bulb in the corner

At best it sounds like vinyl

And today it pops warnings and sparks once.

I am the rebel at the dial

Under cover, seeking asylum in maimed dead air.

Then I found him

Between German talk radio and an opera

Maybe French

Elvis.

And I saw, I must have seen

Men my age with parted hair and slim mustaches running to the street and dancing.

From here it looks ginger, these bound dissidents

Scurrying about in the shadows of the knuckle

And just beyond the grip of the great, red, iron fist.

You can hear the voices from here,

Buzzed and warbled, muffled like from a make-shift antenna

A distant choir of mono-tin,

"Everybody in the whole cell block

We're dancing to the jail house rock"