Plagues

[mnaz]

Plagues abound onscreen.
Pig flu, bird flu and bogeymen,
ruthless, sponsored and dire.
The picture is sharp.

Casey goes off to war.
Rush goes to drink at the bar.
They always go drink and fight.
Can’t remember why next morning.
The bar has cable, house of plagues.
Watch the war on TV.

The picture is clear.
No more forest of antennas.
Cronkite's face used to be fuzzy.
Tweak the rabbit ears a bit.

Casey went to war.
Rush went to the bar.
Sit and watch the war.
Watch the TV plagues
on profitable new drugs.
Incarcerate the herb
in bigger prisons.
Flatter stomach.
Whiter teeth.
Go get a job.

[revolutionR]

well, that's the writing on the poet wall.

[mnaz]

Lobby, sponsor, hype hype hype. Stand up, sit down, fight fight fight! ... Manufacture shit for Big Corporate to solve at a tidy sum.

But it has changed a bit of late. The War was getting bad ratings, so they pulled it off the air. For awhile, at least ...

[revolutionR]

they will trot Bush jr. out to make some retarded comment.

[mnaz]

Yeah, I confess, wrote this a few years ago.

Still studying the corporatocracy's habits ...

[saw]

Fear is the commodity...and they peddle it well....think tank admen work with psychologist shills to scare us, and sell us something....goods, war, it's all the same....there's a sucker born every minute they say, and they never get tired of stretching the reality to fit the product...

during the big day of rioting here in Baltimore, it was so obvious the local stations had nothing to say...but that didn't stop them from over dramatizing...because they just stayed on the air for umpteen hours saying the same thing over and over again...with plenty of ads in between of course

on Al Jazeera, they were having serious discussions about what led to the violence...guests from all walks of life analyzing the socioeconomic, political, reasons that caused the lightning strike that started the wildfire

when I flipped back to local...same images, same drama...a poor reporter had some pepper spray drift in her face for a second.....countless descriptions about the black plume emanating from a burning car....over and over and over....then some ads

even the gangs here were in solidarity....the bloods, the crips, the black gorilla family, all together trying to stop the rioting.....but the local stations were busy selling shit

[WIREMAN]

sensationalize....best thing to do is throw that tv out the window....run the car off the end of a pier...stop smokin them cigs.....buying into this its the best shit.....believe me theres a better life out there after cars n tv's....and news shows....also beware of locusts....LOL:)

[mnaz]

Exactly . . . sensationalize everything and call it "news reporting." I'm tempted to do the LOL thing here (which I never do ... oops, I just did). I am TV-less once again. Had a roommate for awhile, but he's gone (and he took the big screen) . . . and, ah, the blessed quiet ! I still have a car. I decided to keep that deal with the devil going ... It's an old Honda though, pretty cheap to operate (sparingly).

Yeah, this poem mostly takes a few shots at made-for-TV Big Pharma and Big "Defense" (War). And Rush, of course. And a parting shot at the growth industry that is Big Incarceration ...