Play By Play

Tune in twenty-four
seven for the melody
of the moment. Explosions

and big deaths,
laws broken and hard weather
all get sung the same.

The newsreaders sing
the cadence of sport, sing
like play by play reporters.

They throw it to the sidelines 
where generically handsome people
add touches of color to

their black and white
depictions of struggle
made simple and easy to

swallow. Every
story reduced
to winning and losing,

even if all there is
is loss. There is rarely
any story where

all are winning. That’s
not American enough.
Can’t be number one

without there being
a number two. They sing
that song in spite of

the fire behind them:
lullaby, fight song
for the last quarter.

Enough to make you turn it off
and go wail in a corner
waiting for silence to take over

and make you forget.
Make you want to stop caring
for any of it. Almost

as if 
that was the plan from
the starting gun.