THE CAMERA ZOOMS IN

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

With her automaton smile
the six o'clock news Barbie
recites a litany of the day's
shootings
stabbings
muggings
rapings
robbings
lootings
burnings 
natural disasters
sewer main ruptures
and one arrest for
spitting on the sidewalk.

The camera zooms in
on a whopper of a loogie
oozing on the concrete
in all its wicked glory.

A young gendarme collects it,
gingerly,
to be analyzed at the lab
so that someone can say
on good authority:
Yep, that's a loogie alright
and tag it "Exhibit A."

The wild-eyed derelict
they've collared
for this egregious offense
manages to fire a parting shot at the camera
a real bullseye that does a 

slooooow

shimmering

hoochie-koochie dance

down the middle of your TV screen--

while the Barbie's pasted-on smile
and glib tone never wavers
like her counterpart on CNN
who dispassionately described
the incineration of eighty-odd
men
women
and children
live as it happened at Waco
for to betray a hint of emotion
would not be impartial
nor professional
when anyone with a whit
of human compassion
would have hung her head and wept.


But that's okay
it's all in a day's work
and it all blends together
after a while anyway...
the real blood you see on the news
looks like the ketchup oozing
in that old burger commercial
from the nineties
and everyone out there
in TV land
is just as numb as you are.

And the guy who spit at you, well
he's only trying to wake you up...
cuz like the old ad once said
If it doesn't get all over the place
it doesn't belong in your face.