Blue light's projected on impassive faces,
And no one's tending the yard or the garden
Or putting sporting goods through their paces.
The shouting and the crying
Reverberate through the home auditorium.
Then a popped top releases a hopped fountain;
The beer forms a fine foamy head
And dampens a throat that was drying.

He shows little patience
With the mock hip-hop shtik of Chris Rock.
Raps the remote; he's on a country road,
A road wending its way 'round a mountain.
"Must be Discovery," he thinks as he waters
Desiccated daisies, drooping, that drink
Up; at least he didn't tink' in the sink.
He flicks to MTV, and a band's
Playing puerile, anachronistic punk rock;
Then Emeril's roasting a hock on a spit,
Doing the "Kick it up a notch!" bit.
On CSPAN, silence, except some crook spoutin'
Off about how much he feels our pain
A pain, by the way, caused by his routin'
The treasury as he feeds at the pork barrel.
"A pox on both their Houses!"
Exclaims the watcher

"What a crock!"
There's so much shlock
That this poor watcher
Is watching.
He drinks
Another Rolling Rock,
So light that it tastes like water only.

Now a chick, aimless,
Attempts the singing
Of some piece of watered-down shlock pop rock. . .
Sounds like lushed Kermit, crocked on anti-freeze
"RIPit," croaks frog; drinks grog, drops.
And who is the wanker,
The smirking turd sitting beside Abdul?
It's simpering Simon emigrated from his nether
World, incarnated as a poison toad.
Like male contestants, he'd like to be astride Abdul.
Even she limits by whom she's wooded.

Then he switches to a channel for women. . .
Time for another point of "View," pint of brew.
There is so much stuff on the air:
Murders and internal examinations--
Four or six forensics; CSIs swarming
Across the screen; of spleen there is no dearth.

On PBS, it's repeats only
Of the same old shows, as they are counting
Contributions. . .endless begging on the air.
"Fawlty Towers,"
"Best of the 60s," "Nick and Alexandra,"
"Vienna, Night In
Old." Cease!!

A woman with bouffanted hair held tight
In place as she dithers on zither strings
While a fellow fiddles fiendishly with all his might;
They're country queens and kings.

It wouldn't be fair play to portray all
That assaults us 24 hours
A day as debouching from the same desiccant cisterns and wells,
But it does seem that you can be countin'
What's worth watchin' on just a few fingers.

To your domicile, Sunday, comes the chapel.
But it's not just a chapel; rather it's a domed
Dome.+ Warrior-worshippers sing
High praises to the Son.
Then the coin toss from the referee.
"Go, go team, go! Go, go, team, go!"

Ganja was smokin', and the limp leaves
Went up in flame, and he hacked clouds
From his lungs, and distant from him vaulted
A syllable; broke the silence
As out it thundered:
"D'oh!"

Dada sounds like a gibbon
Simpson who isn't too smart--
Perhaps 'cause he's on a booze, tokin' bender,
Meaning he's a stewed dunce and slow to react
Or just maybe his cortex has been twisted
Because he sits and sips, watching "documentaries,"
Faux reality shows, "contestants" ingesting spiders.
He sits, absorbed by these shilling screen malingerers
In his living room.
"D'oh!"

Dad's on divan--perhaps that's the key
To why he feels like part of the "Lonely
Crowd,"*--faux bonhomie; foe, anomie. Prism
Refracts, day and night, ethereal humors.
Stands a moment to revive torpid, corpulent anus.
"D'ow!!"

"Damn Yankees!"--his lobes responding
To a sports color-commentator bore
Who to a disputed play is responding
In rote rhythm, his rap a mere expedient.
In controlling hand,
The remote at the fore.
Omnipresent content sent globally--
Fantasyland without borders.

Latin brings Italian, frowns; my mouth frowns, Romance clown:
Per arte fatto de foto, no ho affinità
Nè Italiano. Celle j'entonne, so shallow, shallow:
Très mince, aqueux le plasma--le tube abolie.
[I have no affinity for art wrought by light;
Neither for Italian. Feeble French is what I intone here:
Plasma screens are very thin and aqueous--and have no tube]

Fragmentary edits--"cortex to ruin,
As befits you," heirs to Minow rant again:
"Data, drown in detrital data,
Shabby, shabby, shabby!"


+"Dome" entered the language in the early 16th century. From Middle French "dome," from Italian "duomo," from Latin "domus (Dei)", "house (of God)"; i.e., "church."
*"The Lonely Crowd" [David Reisman, 1953], the first of many books about conformity and individuality in postwar America.