Nightline					4/18/91



The TV reporter disconnects his lapel mike
waiting for the monitor to blank out
the papers he has been reading from
shuffled impatiently are soon to be refuse

He has finished their utility of words
and they become the end of the message
to be followed by a pause at station break
so the violence of the act can be forgotten

Quaint stuff paper when electricity speaks
so efficiently to the vast hungry madness
whose attention spans the crossing of Lethe
as it flows quietly into Lettermania

Who pushes magazines off his carpeted table
after holding them before the lens of reality
and tears his quips into pieces to be slung
into the scaffolding behind the stageset

One shot of the landfills, the great graves
of trees who have given their lives
to the insatiability of the images
that crowd the edges of our sleep

One whiff of the foul mixture of sludge
that billows up the moment the scenes end
would perhaps squelch the laugh track
and we could turn off the incessant Hondas