TV Vestiges: 1874, 1974, 2004

Two figures from
The Raft of the Medusa
Pose,
A pieta for the Entertainment Wars,Televised direct from Viet Nam,
Kosovo,
Bosnia,
From Angola to Afghanistan,
From Baghdad to Bangladesh.

Cambodia,
Tel Aviv,
Cairo, Nairobi, Monrovia, Addis Ababa,
And Jerusalem,
Far away places with strange sounding names
Which used to call us all to mystery, romance, and adventure,
Now beckon to Bedlam, mayhem, and disaster.

How helpless we feel,
Faced with all that death and destruction,
For no
Eventually apparent purpose.

We’d have thought the world would
Never again engage in planting the killing fields.
“Jamais la Guerre” begged the pope
before the UN,
before our very eyes.

Lies
And “misdemeanors”
Have been the subject on the screen
Ever since.

But what about those two figures
From the raft?
Is there no hope for them?