Hitting The Media With A Poetic Piledriver

Hitting The Media

Thanks to the Media
The apocalypse will not come
in the form of four horsemen.
It has already arrived as 180 channels

of pre-packaged, pre-fabricated,
artificially inseminated, pre-meditated
aggravated assault.
Thanks to the media,

statutory rape now occurs
every time a minor turns the TV on
and is violated
by Jerry Springer, reality shows,

and commercials for 1-800-I’m Barely Legal.
Thanks to the media,
a remote control is now a semi-automatic
and channel surfing is homicide

as the minds of children petrify
at the mercy of digital cable.
This is no fable.
The body count rises every day

as children no longer go out to play.
They’re too busy being seduced
by images of Paris Hilton, Britney, and Amy Winehouse
telling them wealth and power

are more important than education.
It’s a devastation
that the media has convinced children
there is a University of PlayStation

care of the media’s penetration
a mind gives birth to an illegitimate thought
every time the TV is turned on.
Thanks to the media,

I know more about Brad and Angelina’s travel plans
then why 50% of inner-city schools
do not have libraries.
Thanks to the media,

a child could give a damn about
John Coltrane
Miles Davis
Thelonius Monk

Charlie Parker
Bud Powell
Duke Ellington
Count Basie

Ornette Coleman
Louis Armstrong
Jimmy Cobb
Elvin Jones

Etta James
Billie Holiday
Ella Fitzgerald
Sarah Vaughn

Aretha Franklin
Mahalia Jackson
BB King
Robert Johnson

Muddy Waters
Maya Angelou
Toni Morrison
Saul Williams

Sonia Sanchez
Jessica Care Moore
Tony Medina
Reg E. Gaines

Paul Beatty
Beethoven
Rachmaninoff
Bach

Schubert
Dvorak
Grieg
Hilary Hahn

Rachel Yamagata
Yo Yo Ma
Renee Fleming
London Symphony

Bob Dylan
John Lennon
Thom Yorke
Gil Scott Heron

Jim Morrison
Amiri Baraka
Run DMC
Public Enemy

The Last Poets
Van Gogh
Picasso
Jackson Pollack

Balthasar Van Der Ast
Monet
Janis Joplin
Jimi Hendrix

Jerry Garcia
Grand Funk Railroad
Sugar Hill Gang
James Brown

Rainer Maria Rilke
Kurt Vonnegut
Tom Wolfe
Kwame Dawes

Khalil Gibran
Nikki Giovanni
Etheridge Knight
Dylan Thomas

Emily Dickinson
William Wordsworth
Walt Whitman
Malcolm X

Martin Luther King
Mother Theresa
Jane Austen
The Bronte Sisters

Thomas Hardy
Charles Dickens
William Thackeray
Tito Puente

Pablo Neruda
Harriet Tubman
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway

Salvador Dali
JD Salinger
James Joyce
Robert Frost

Robert Pinsky
Sylvia Plath
Langston Hughes
Jack Kerouac

William Burroughs
Allen Ginsberg
Alvin Ailey
TS Eliot

Poetry
Photography
Painting
Sculpting

Carpentry
Dance
Music
Theater

Film
and architecture.
Thanks to the media,
we are led to believe

terrorists only live
in the projects and the Middle East.
These days,
they need look no further than Wall Street

Thanks to the media,
assault and battery now occurs
in high definition broadband surround sound
as our minds are taken to the impound

Courtesy of MTV
MSNBC
E
and DirecTV.

Thanks to the media,
lies perpetuate at twice the rate
that a child’s mind evolves
as it revolves around the perception

That there is no repentance
The media is bound to live
an infinite, consecutive, executive life sentence
for putting our children’s minds in front of the gun.

There is no justice
We risk losing everyone
because the media is and always will be
public enemy number one

one one one
one one one