"Listener's Discretion Advised"

When I think of the radio I see a steaming cup of coffee in the morning. My nose twitches with the faintest aroma of lead newsprint. In a moment out the window my mind is averted with the sounds of street dancers, grandmothers brushing the pavement with listless feet and that cacophonous racket that passes for 'music' blaring from laneway to laneway. It crackles like blinking radio waves in my mind. White noise and static echo through the lane houses hung with last night’s laundry. There are no rubbery cheques for the street dancer, the only cash they will see is what they secrete and crumple in their pockets. A love note folded with longing fingers to the temple of Want. A street dancer never has to beg for what is already theirs. A simple joy in shuffling, missing beats and dancing like no one is watching. A cassette whirs ‘Dirty cash I want you/Dirty cash I need you/Money talks, money talks’. In the haze of the afternoon the aging street dancer disappears. Resplendent in the finest silk an electric boogaloo dancer with robotic moves alights from the void and then disappears in a curlicue of imaginary smoke.