Signals Intelligence

The alley just simmers there
like the red-faced man
on the other side
who has had it up to here
            his son never returned
this is the place where I played

littered shards of shatter
and fool’s gold
glittered chrystalline promise
to obscure the threat
to tender flesh

where summer steam rises
slightly acrid after rain
to amplify July
like the static of transistor
radios
that no-where zone
between two stations

stations
like the rows of houses
framing this linear playground
rooftop receptors channel signals
as if intelligence
stream blue the night
in wall-to-wall living rooms

where men Laugh-In
after the evening news
beside women in placid Aqua Net
silhouette  
ice knocking
softly against their tumblers
round, round the enclosure

I used to watch
from my childhood
afraid
of the war

__________

NOTE:
Signals intelligence was falsified by the NSA to suggest that North Vietnamese PT Boats had attacked U.S. Warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.