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elizabeth Feb 2017
My eyesight is fuzzy
My thoughts are static;
Tonight's show is on:
Depression and Madness.
February 24, 2017.
Austin Bauer Jan 2017
I heard of a man
who never owned a
television.  
Instead he bought
a set of solid oak
bookshelves stained
like mahogany.

With the money
he saved on cable,
he filled them with
classics like Plato,
Aristotle, and Dostoyevsky.
He studied Darwin
and Descartes, and
memorized poems by
Whyte and O'Donohue

Because he never
made the switch to
high definition, he
could afford trips to
Rome and Tuscany.
Walking those ancient
streets and resting
in those heavenly fields,

he learned the art
of attentiveness,
minding the
genius loci
of a place,
and setting
one's cadence to
the breath of the wind.

And in the end,
he had a few books
of his own,
but they taught
nothing new
other than
how to truly live.
Thinking about Carl Dennis and David Whyte's book, "Consolations."
Kewayne Wadley Jan 2017
Inside there lays a sort of guilt.
Insuring that the electric company does their job.
The only problem is most nights there is never anything worthwhile watching.
I often question the receptacle, the thought of changing cable providers.
I thought of saving myself, turning the tv off and going to sleep.
But where's the fun in that.
Watching colors run frantically across the screen.
The flick of a button brings a different hue.
A different click of the screen lock checking for notifications, plugging my phone back on the charge.
By passing all the channels at least twice before finding a show that fills the 30 minute gap.
The hard part of favorite shows is that most time they come on when either there's not enough time. Or someone spoils the ending.
Either way here I am looking for something to devote my time.
And here I am, seeking
Some kind of reassurance that you'll return after the infomercials.
My new favorite show.
You
Travis Dixon Mar 2011
reality television
doesn’t just sell a vision
it crawls & squirms like
disease-ridden worms
contracted through the eyes
to terrorize the temples
of self & hope, pushing us down
this precipitous ***** of
cannibalization feeding on
station after station & projecting
its virus to every nation
LOOK@ME
LOOK@ME


why?
what ever have you done
beyond sell your being to
the vultures circling the
stumbling corpse of dignity
cackling in the sunny waste
at our utter lack in taste
eroded by the steady stream
of soulless visions hellbent on
sowing never-ending divisions
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

but it’s never enough
because the machine is lubed
& cheap to boot, all the better
for the execs collecting loot
thus the only prescription
is to denounce this fiction
with the utmost conviction
and step back into
reality.
Oh Archie,

The Don speaks so kindly to our generation...
I wish you were here to hear,
To lament, with me...

Oh Archie,

It seems so difficult this modern life.
This place of no rewards,
...no one knows what started it all,
how life was great once here in America.

Oh Archie,

They've taken over your favorite past-time, television!

They're everywhere nowadays my love...
You can't get away from them; like ****-a-roaches.

I see them out in the marketplaces and wonder;

"Can these people understand English?"

"Do they remember that white people saved the world in WWII?"

"Do they care that someone else built civilization?"

Oh Archie,

...my love,

I miss you.
I must live on another world or something? No one has ever seen Archie Bunker?
Kewayne Wadley Sep 2016
I want a love of that seen on
TV shows and romantic comedies
Without the overdrawn scripts
Or interruption of subliminal commercials that go on and on
A love filled with the visit of random outburst
An award winning Assemble
Which displays overcoming harsh realities
Crazed neighbors that have no idea when to go home
barging in making themselves at home.
Morals and manner
The latter of spontaneity without control of volition
The latest trend of comebacks played prime time Every Thursday
Late night reruns that bring a smile to your face
Not just when there's nothing else on TV
I want a love of that seen on
TV shows and romantic comedies
Without the anxiety of overdrawn scripts

An emotional attachment premiered during every episode

The ego that accompanies relationships 

The ups and downs
Beautifully understanding,

Introducing ourselves to a deeper notion 
The beautiful curvature your mouth makes during improvised motion.
Typically I never found myself that goofy
Except when it's was funny

Identifying with whats felt inside
The serious situations that occur and end all in the same hour,
A simple template in the whelm of a moment

Cast with the kiss of the rolling credits
Best understood by the various themes played at the beginning and end,
Eliminating the distance of alone time spent while the cameras are off
I sat down to watch the radio

There was nothing on TV

I have two hundred channels

But there was sweet F.A for me

I could have watched one channel

And learned to fricasse

A chicken raised on wild grains

By a woman chef named Bea

I started checking channels

But I decided in mid flick

That I was getting tired

And I was also  feeling sick

So I sat and watched the radio

Since there was nothing on TV

I have two hundred channels

But there was sweet F.A for me

I worked on through the listings

English, French and some bad ****

There were movies on one station

That were made 'fore  I was born

Out of all the things I saw on there

The best show I could see

Was something shown in black and white

Made in nineteen sixty three

My TV s high definition

With cables left and right

But to find a show I'd like to watch

Was taking half the night

So I sat and watched the radio

Watching nothing happen fast

But as I sat there watching

I travelled bckwards  to my past

Still flicking through the channels

Trying to find something to see

I thought I'd found a hockey game

But it was all in Punjabi

So, I listened to the music

Watched the radio, passing time

Then I thought, why do I have this?

With what I paid, it was a crime

eleven channels showed the same

times 8 networks made

at least eighty eight tv stations

That didn't make the grade

Twenty two were pay for view

The French networks were ten

Then the networks there in Real HD

And so, it started once again

Pay for **** was fourteen strong

New shows added two

Weather, sports and info shows

Now I was at one eighty  two.

I could have bought alot of stuff

On informercials through the night

I could have bought Pro Active

But instead I watched the light

I turned back to the radio

With the station light in green

It was better than the tv set

And all the crap I'd seen

So, Tonight I watched the radio

There was nothing on TV

But as I sat there bathed in that green light

The music showed me all I need to see.
JR Rhine May 2016
I again glimpse of eternity.

I saunter where the shadows stain the streets.
I linger where my essence is silhouetted in the moonlight,
or beamed under a street light,
                                               or doused in headlights.

I loiter with friends in parking lots of frozen yogurt shops
in a small town--
listing torpid quadrupeds,
whose shells glisten and dazzle in the myriad of lights,
scrolling down the boulevard.

I find myself behind the wheel,
grazing among pavement pastures,
hungrily consuming the open road
on a silent night,                         in the still air.

          Night makes everything seem to go on forever.

From the speakers I hear the sizzle of ancient synthesizers
envelop the interjections of pulsating snare drum
slaps and snaps, cracks and claps.
          Hypnotized, I hit cruise control and drift ceaselessly.

At home, face illuminated in the television's glare,
my body buried under the weight of scattered sheets,
staggering dreams, snacks and drinks,
          my eyes burn steady into the void.

The television, likewise, burns into me,
as I ingest films that depict time travel in all its ambiguity.
I rip through the portal, feeling simultaneously
expeditious and sluggish.
          Did I stop time with breakneck speed,
or did I freeze like a river in the winter solstice?

Either way, I now stand outside the confines of mortality.

There's the sands of perception (identity)
muddied by the breaking waves of time,
where my sunken footprints
appear
and
disappear.

Relinquishing the captain's chair,
my mind fills with lucid dreams,
          from the TV screen.
Surely I know this is not reality,
but I cannot help it--
I am an accomplice in these chronographic schemes.

Though I appear in control, or at least aware,
I surrender my earthly duties to the conductor of time,
or its deviant: The Vexer.

The Vexer, the mischievous time traveler,
who dances between the dimensions,
with black holes for ears,
the speed of sound for a voice,
the speed of light for eyes--
it is the pestering worm digging throughout the galactic space apple.

The Vexer, who has wrenched me from my mortal footing,
to cast me adrift among uncharted seas,
with gloomy waters murky but heavenly
in its dark and rich violet glow,
like fires that burn hot hot on the color spectrum.
          A color less seen and therefore depicted as serene,
but all the more potent in its mystery.

The Vexer, with a wink of its cataclysmal eye,
grabs me by the wrist and tears me across the night sky--
I stretch thin between the television lines,
the endless roads and the mystic synthesizers,
peering through the night sky,
where human senses dull and the mind wanders--
          I have found myself in the Twilight Zone.

I am bound for eternity, ****** through the
tunnel vision telescope of man,
refracted as I bounce among the mirrors within,
expounded among the stars and the space between,
exploding in a brilliance in the vastness of its bliss.

The youthful laughter that ejects from the parking lots
of frozen yogurt shops,
the night drives with eyes that gloss over as it peers into oblivion,
dulled human senses that leave room for the mind to ponder,
the television screen that burns steadily into the mind,
the Vexer who oversees the mind's pondering of night life,
who like the court's jongleur skips and leaps
around the immensity of time's preponderance--  

Feigning insomnia to reap the benefits of illumination
in the infinitesimal night hour,
in these lingering hours that warp around somber hands
frozen on the midnight clock,
where thoughts of poetry flow and still bodies collect dew,
          the proximity of night life as it pertains to time travel:

The two are entwined.
Listen to Part Time's "PDA" album. (E.G. the song "Night Drive")
Many movies come to mind. Here are a few: Donnie Darko, Cashback, Memento, Back to the Future, Love, and anything from the 80s. Literally, anything.
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