TV Widow/the poet hates & fears TV

I have learned to write

       while studying how not to watch television,

       while, distracting from the next room,

                its tinned false information crackles,

                as from a hearth blazing blue.

In childhood's neighbors' houses,

        while gazing at their blinky modern apparatus,

                I saw the (best) minds of my generation

                lulled by Donna,

                titillated by the Lone Ranger, next by Lonnie,

                cathected in the cathode.

I learn to watch the sky, now

          while TV football's high male drama reigns;

          while the dear love blossoms

                    of Fred & Ginger,

                    of a WWII platoon,

                    of Lucy & Desi,

                    once again refreshed in the moonglow.

         While the luminous green compliant eye

                compels you where I may not go:

                I stay here, and scrawl.

I have been left to my own devices,

                laid (like Truth & Beauty) in an adjoining room,

        while the observations of what might have been

                my peers, my partner,

                flow out the hollow tube,

                the sinuous coaxial cable.

                                   11/22/89