Sporting Life
The trouble with comparing a poet with a radio is that radios don't
develop scar tissue. The tubes burn out, or with a transistor, which
most souls are, the battery or diagram burns out replaceable or
not replaceable, but not like that punchdrunk fighter in the bar.
The poet
Takes too many messages. The right to the ear that floored him in
New Jersey. The right to say that he stood six rounds with a
champion.
Then they sell beer or go on sporting commissions, or, if the scar
tissue is too heavy, demonstrate in a bar where the invisible
champions might not have hit him. Too many of them.
The poet is a radio. The poet is a liar. The poet is a counterpunching
radio.
And those messages (God would not damn them) do not even know
they are champions.
