A World (from our sponsors)
This is another poem from my archives. I think that I probably wrote it in the mid to late 1990s, when I first moved to the US. As such, it precedes flat-screens, and streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Apple+, HBOMax, Peacock, etc. One thing that hasn’t changed however, is that the product isn’t so much the TV shows, but our attention is what’s being bought and sold, whether or not we realize that fact.
A World (from our sponsors)
Awakened by the noise of commercialized greed
He slowly pulls himself upright
Focusing on the object that defines the center of his universe
The one that speaks to him in his own language
His 34-inch, high-definition, wide-screen, Dolby(R) Digital,
Picture-in-Picture, universal remote, wet dream come true
Picture the cozy scene that awaits him, pixel by shiny pixel
It’s one of those adverts that passes for a program
Or is it a program that passes for an advert
No-one is really sure any more
No-one really cares, anyway
As long as it keeps selling product
Picture the cozy scene, line by line (all digitally combed)
An obese and obviously greedy child asks for more and disappointingly gets it
The rosy-cheeked storekeeper smiles benignly
As the parents, glowing with approval, in that “As Seen on TV” way
Hand over what should have been, would have been his college fund
And which is now the down payment on a mis-spent youth
Seeking and retrieving the remote
Unnervingly warm from the folds of his flesh
He stabs at the buttons with Velveeta’d fingers
and the scrunch of a Saltine soundbite
Hoping to find some saner Christmas fayre
A little reminder of the sweeter, kinder world
The way things used to be before the “new improved” version
He wants to find Howdy Doody
He wishes he could find himself
Instead, he loses himself
In 500+ channels of broadcast banality
In 500+ channels of sanitized sterility
Colorized, dehumanized, desensitized
And now it’s Ted Turner smiling benignly
And he is the child and the child is him
Turning his back on his parents
He walks calmly into his own oblivion