"Television Poem" by Madeline Miller

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/The changing of the channel/ /The weather in Oakland will be/ /blenders now five/

/thousand people need/ /the British Royal family is/ /in 1954 there was/ /huge sale on

Hondas/ /This program will resume shortly.

Walk through the kitchen; a quest for meaning, a quest for microwave popcorn, same thing right?

And while I'm waiting let me

¡Ding! send you a joke I didn’t write and you can ¡Ding!

send me a picture you didn’t draw and you can

¡Ding!

send me a bit of silence and I can

¡Ding! send one right back.

Well, I’m moving sporadically/ /from/

/room to room to room

in my home, In this house of hollow silence.

There’s no writing on the wall in the suburbs, it just happens sometimes;

I’m 15 and going to the supermarket alone and

I’m 12 years old and dying my hair for the first time

And I’m shaking my head so fast it blurs

I’m 53 and I live alone

And I’m 22 and found

I’m 13 And I’m breaking my own bones

I’m 17 and I’m hale and whole

I’m 32 and I’m eating chips on the kitchen counter

I’m 28 and I’m drinking on the laundry room floor

I’m holding my own hands,

I’m saying a prayer.

Driving through New Mexico;

Worshipers congregate in a strip mall

Tourists linger in the church

No forgiveness for the failed follower of profit but there’s never been a more celebrated saint,

Or a higher price to pay for the non-believer.

But there is no reformer to tear down tainted temples, topple tables,

Brevity is the soul of wit but Shakespeare never wrote a play less than 2 hours long, so tell it to 147

characters, William.

Your tampered-with attention span is turning a profit,

Or just call me crazy, I'll wear the tinfoil hat.

/I’m sorting the laundry/

/I’m eating burnt toast/

/I’m 42 and I think I’m in love/

/I’m taking a photo/ i’m ignoring my phone

/I’m trying not to talk to you/

/I’m 28 and certain I’m dead/

/I’m 19 and lost in a Macy’s

I can feel time and every version of myself running through my fingers like the fabric of a garment

you try on but can't afford (to keep).

I’m standing on a street corner

Across from a blinking light and billboard

Where some beautiful girl makes

bedroom eyes at all of LA.

Did she bite back a laugh at the

studio-factory of camera-clad lookie loos

Casting her as sexy-with-a-secret?

Or did she join their ranks for an afternoon

Only to be angry in her apartment

That she’s getting (un) intimate with

everyone who’s advertised to?

Is that what it takes? to be tantalizing, a tempest in every public moment?

To be Clear skies and mild/

/senator’s plan to relive/ /stronger blade than/

/waterproof mascara/ /extra durable napkins/

/nothing gets past these

long-learned ways of keeping anything less than “oh what a lovely–” out of sight of

anyone you haven't convinced to love you yet

This is it! The American Nightmare!

What a shallow thing to aspire to in isolation.

Well the world through my eyes is an ache in my chest and a punch in the stomach,

But I want to see it.

Show me every pain, every little injustice,

every unanswered prayer.

I want to hold them gently,

untangle every knot,

and replace every missing screw.

Because the future belongs to those who are willing to bear witness to the present.

It will be grown in the gardens of those who are willing to get their hands dirty.

And I can’t live like this Anymore!

I am grease-stained-muddy-fingered-set-jawed and angry.

I am too angry to live on television.

I am angry enough to fix this by hand.