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TV MAN

by Charles Carreon

[It's not always possible to write a good poem, but we still have issues. TV is not a subject that we find it easy to deal with poetically. Oil and water might get along better than TV and poetry. I mean, have you ever seen "The Hour of Poetry," or "Great Poets Remembered," even on A&E? This rhyme takes aim at the great glass teat.]

 

The TV the TV the TV

   is the thing we use

   to soothe our brains

   and make our troublesome thoughts all loose

We sit in front of the screen --

   Soak up the rays

I heard a man once sat there

for a hundred days

His wife and children

   they thought he was dead

But then he yawned and

   took himself

   off-to-bed

He was a TV man

   a real TV hero

Don't anyone say the lie that he was

   a real zero

He was a TV man

   he lived in a TV land

   he had a TV brain

   don't anyone say insane

He watched the news

He watched the sports

With a smoke in his hand --

  in his undershorts

He watched the weather

He watched the wars

And a personal talk with Louie L'Amour

He watched the Carson

He watched the games

He watched the soaps with

   arduous names

He watched the movies made for TV

And an expose of democracy

He watched until there was nothing left

And the news was a re-run

   like all the rest

He patiently sat with his TV set

Until there wasn't any dumber

   that he could get

And having done that

   he knew he could go to bed,

Because there wasn't one thing

   left in his whole damn head

And from then on he had no trouble

From that day he felt no pain

'Cause he'd killed off all of the thinking

In his god-given brain

He could smile at everyone

His friends said he was more fun

But he always said it was

   nothing

That anyone couldn't have done

He said, "I'm a TV man,

   I live in a TV land,

   and I'm very proud to say

   I think it's a damn good way."

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