Three dimensional television’s back in, again,
though the perfectly paced snow falling all around
streets evacuated by breakfast news broadcasts
provides all the layered magic of a widescreen
without the plastic, pay per pair glasses
disposed into a bin of stale popcorn, chewed straws,
the final gummy bear that proved one too many
and ticket stubs on a Sunday afternoon’s expense.
Even the waiters are consumed with weather talk
as a stomach rumbles to another story; no buses,
a baby to get home to, slow trade, slush and grit.
Though there’s moaning about the groaning,
national hysteria captures all sooner or later,
sitting even the most determined and resolute
media sceptic onto their warm sofa at last,
in front of around the clock travel updates;
a sucking vortex zapping panic into a diary’s plan.
The morning walk pins a tramp’s bundle of blankets
across people’s iced through heart strings.
‘I haven’t seen him sleeping around here before. Oh,
how terrible it must be like that in this awful cold.’
though that same guy’s been on that corner
way before second interviews and first days,
all the rat racers forming one loud blizzard of business
so no single unit has the air to take note, squeeze
in the sight and flick chewing gum change to a cup.
Taps, rings, yawns and shuffles close another day,
the few who made it switching computer for TV screen.
Comedic portrayals of every day life in synthetic universes
created by upper class writers of working class slang script
leak across living rooms to melted microwave meals
steaming the stained pillows beneath their plates,
right up to the zoned out minds each story cycle rots
to mute, as desired, those pictures of paper piles
or meeting room murmurs from an evening’s day dream.