This poem first appeared in my book, In the City of Smoking Mirrors.

A Letter to My Brothers and Sisters in North Korea

    Where will all the music go if you bomb us?

    Do the fashion magazines lie?

    I hate to be serious, North Korea.

    But there are stations playing all night here

    and sometimes the disc jockeys spin

    old dreams of love

    almost no one knows, awkward frequencies

    announcing us to the stars.

    I've heard of your masses

    starving in railway stations.

    Your cobbler sick hue

    won't keep me from calling you.

    I don't have any apples.

    There's no way all the TV stations could lie.

    Your cobbler sick hue

    won't keep me from calling.

    North Korea, in one of my magazines

    there's a girl without shoes. In one of my tea cups

    a .30 caliber bullet, an indescribable lotus

    blossom wrapped crudely in wax.

    It's for when you cross the sea

    in your rocket

    of the thousand petaled sun

    so bright, so bright.

    But before that happens

    I'm calling your sons and daughters

    to tell them that evil red communism

    never happened here--

    we're happy watching beautiful

    models and basketball players--

    that evil red communism

    failed here and will always fail

    here because we have the Dodgers

    and full supermarkets

    and lovely green rooms

    under the Rockies

    where our warriors sleep

    in their own slow radiation.

    But this argument, too, has ended.

    Sadly, and terribly

    atoms conspire against us

    generals conspire against

    all of our favorite songs

    to keep us from knowing

    our bodies, our hands

    how we might mingle

    or touch.

    Radios are a must, North Korea.

    For if I choose to love you

    anymore, with your winter

    hats made of coyote fur,

    and the children you drop off at the zoo,

    I'll have a song in my head

    for all the dead ever did to you,

    a gift from the stars

    that sounds almost new.