Just Watch

11/17/2024

1.
Watch how the culture shifts,
        Next year, with the change of regime.
	
I don’t much like watching television, 
             But we do- 
                     what the hell, we’re old-
	After dinner, when everything’s done,
		She likes true crime drama,
			I’m more an old movie guy,
And we watch in the evening.

	Lately I’ve noticed the ads, the inclusiveness;
A South-Asian banker
		Explaining a product to a biracial couple,
Or game shows featuring transexual contenders,
	Black guys doing laundry, 
			Hispanic women shilling prescription drugs
				(the omnipresent pharma),
		The presentation of a prosperous, 
Blended, united Nation.

Watch how it changes come January Six,
	How tv will get so much whiter,
Pretty hard to preach inclusion then,
	While deporting millions of minorities, vulnerable, needy,
		In this horrifying future we’re building.

2.
What a tragic and stupid turn of events,
That we would become a people inured to lies,
Paranoid, delusional thinking, attracted to
The basest of our makeup, 
No more the better Angels of our nature, 
But the devils of our worst selves,
No thousand points of light,
No shining city on a hill,	
No great society, this,
Just fear itself, stoked and spread
With a tsunami of lies
Thick enough to bury a democracy.