[Stephen Kieninger]

Pubblichiamo una poesia di Stephen Kieninger letta a Cagliari nello spazio di Radio X Social Club durante il Caralis Poetry Slam dell’11 febbraio 2026.

I turn on my television to empty static,
the remnants of the big bang,
“cosmic microwave background radiation” they call it,
living inside our unused frequencies,
woven between the channels,
somewhere between the news and prime-time talk shows.

stardust playing games on the heartstrings
that tug at police shootings,
and immigration “officers”
kidnapping children on Tuesday afternoon,
all that cosmic energy stuck in images
of bullet holes and blood
bouncing on icy driveways.

So, I change the channel to more static,
more white-hooded-noise,
voices yelling incrementally louder into the void,
guns pointed at just more stardust,
another man/woman/child dead in the streets,
another inconsequential statistic,
one of hundreds in the US,
thousands in Gaza,
and hundreds of millions
living in poverty across the world,
a tiny crumb in this cosmic ocean,
bombarded by static,

the sandpaper drone drowning out the noise,
but I still hear the screams and tears
of daughters and sons,
covered in tar and ash,
begging the sun for release.

I tune out for a moment,
the gears inside me grinding away,
trying to forget, but I can’t forget,
who can forget when
the energy of our sun
flares out,
burns down,
takes eons to die,
and our entire civilization
comes and goes in a blink,
our “leaders” a
group of gangsters
denying us minutiae of happiness,

interstellar nebulae churning,
pockets of gas collapsing,
initiating a spark in our souls,
firing sub-atomic particles
down synapses,
protesting proto-stars
telling us it’s time
for another big bang,
another revolution,
televised and livestreamed,
a whole universe expanding
one idea birthing another,
ready to leave us with something more than just static
fuzzing out into the emptiness of my living room,
the whole fucking thing
ready
to
explode.