Two Video Channels

Two video channels
working on the cable box
this morning — old school
R&B, or rap
barely five minutes old?
I would tell you
it’s hard to choose

but I am not lying, not
this morning at least,
when I say

ten seconds into
one video and I am
on that remote as if it were
a life raft to reverse
course back to the 
brand new mumble
I can’t understand, because

mouthing the words
and pretending I’ve got
every nuance, every hiccup
of timing, every inflection down 
in the song I’ve known for forty years

feels too much
like accepting that I am
already long dead.