Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Televised

 

“Some news managers have been slow to grasp that good television news is always substance over form.”— Jessica Savitch

SOURCE

“Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone.”— Hodding Carter

      Midweek Motif ~ Televised

This little poem of Maya Angelou left me pondering. First the poem:

Televised news turns
a half-used day into
a waste of desolation.
If nothing wondrous preceded
the catastrophic announcements,
certainly nothing will follow, save
the sad-eyed faces of
bony children,
distended bellies making
mock at their starvation.
Why are they always
Black ?
Whom do they await ?
The lamb-chop flesh
reeks and cannot be
eaten. Even the
green peas roll on my plate
unmolested. Their innocence
matched by the helpless
hope in the children's faces.
Why do Black children
hope ? Who will bring
them peas and lamb chops
and one more morning ? 

This hurts so deeply.

Every society has its own problem and its televised version. This week we wish to do poems on current topics brought home to us by television and its impact on us.

Let us see what patterns of life surface from both the positive and / or negative sides of the televised news and also sometimes its purposeful silence on certain current affairs.

Here is a link to another poem by Susan Stewart:

from Lessons From Television

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

              (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Museum/s & Magaly is doing an Interactive Moonlight Musings every third Friday of the month. So stay tuned for this Friday)