poem of the day 02.03.14

television sets in bars

friday afternoon

and we’re surrounded by cancer

yet this bar is no respite

there’s a television at one end of the bar

another directly across the room

they are playing this medical show

with some floppy haired doctor

telling everyone in earshot and beyond

that caramel coloring could give you cancer

i can’t even enjoy a beer because of this guy

because of the way the televisions echo in the bar

like we’re in a club full of old degenerates

i can’t even hear myself think, i tell my wife

then i start my shit where i just close off and sit there

i don’t know what i wanted

a quiet friday afternoon for me and the mrs.

to get drunk on beer and talk movies and books

forget cancer and this unforgiving winter

if only for a few hours

but now i got this doctor blaring in my ear

about carcinogenic gases from soda and from frying potatoes

maybe next he’ll talk about how the air

can give you cancer

i down my first pint

i have to get the out of here, i tell my wife

it’s these television sets in bars

they weren’t so bad when they were small and tubular

and hung off into the distance

now every joint has some sixty-inch monster

that we’re stuck with

that permeates every nuance of the moment

i feel like i’m in an electronics store instead of a pub

it’s background noise, my wife says

these people are used to it

it’s giving me an aneurysm,  i complain

while the floppy haired doctor tells us

how cleaning supplies can give you cancer too

he’s a smiling angel of death

he’s raising my ire

and this echo off the dueling televisions is raising my heart rate

i’m playing music, my wife says

because she’s better at salvaging things than i am

i grow too content with the rot and the decline

she gets up from the bar to slide dollars in the juke

she asks the bartender to turn the televisions down

and he acquiesces with glee

because maybe he was looking for an escape from this malaise

life is really that simple at moments, i think

even with it being cancer all the time

then it’s the opening of street fighting man

and another round of beer

old men are doing their best mick jagger

talking about the old times

it’s like we all woke up

on the television, the floppy haired doctor

is holding up an apple

that’s probably going to give us all cancer too

but we wouldn’t know it

because we can’t hear him

and ignorance like this

is finally bliss.