because you are too damn exhausted to fight bad breath transfixed by the systolic glow of the first war you really feel apart of wondering if bombs over baghdad equals multinational terrorism on your doorstep in your neck of the woods down the street in the non-descript building where other sun-burnt Americans mull over the chemical dependency of the hit-and-run massacres hoodwinked by the evening news on the same TV with the same obnoxious multilevel news ticker and bullet list of main topics about today’s weather so cold it’s at least ten degrees different than the groundswell of coo-cooing sounds fuming up with stink lines from the ceramic lawn dwarf in patent-leather codpiece like a figment of flamingo spring crowding out the over-inflated round-robin bust of some talking head ex-general with a fading-beauty buzz cut whose contract with the 24-hour news network allows him to say whatever the hell he wants to think so long as it plays in peoria at the pair-a-dice casino with its cigar-chomping computer poker hussies going all supernova crackerjack so the scum-sucking producers can fill the endless minutes that keep you watching the degraded hands of the nuclear war clock as the grease from a bag of deep-fried potato chips with d-alpha tocopherel acetates and methyl heptine carbonates—of cheese-flavored popcorn oozing its spoiled odor from a clear liquid model of your intestinal track—of over-salted peanuts containing 10% real nut product force you into a vacuum-sealed environment of run-on sentiments and slick overproduced 22-minute teleplays about 20-something now 30-something single-now-married honey faces feeding the bulimia jones in high-priced manhattan lofts while dusting lipstick traces off oversized coffee cups in the mocha double fair-trade latte shop where some of them “work” but never use the bathroom to view their botox-injected jellyflesh calcifying like a charbroiled fetus served to you on a metal spork that breaks apart from long-range psychic gamma rays to jam their cell phones as relationships which don’t even seem like your relationships anymore faltering and picking up again in time for the sweeps period nielsen families gathered round the glowing rca vacuum tube and conspiring in some awful genetic conspiracy to flip off the racist show that you love so much because of the seizure-inducing colors of the choc-a-bloc trials and travails of a cartoon family with an abusive husband for a cult leader in crappy tennis shoes moving his followers along the forested trail of manifest destiny straight on up to the de-luxe comet in the sky where sweatshop conditions slow down to almost nothing as the hunk-a-hunk-a-burning-space-rock approaches the speed of light delayed eight minutes by the blinking caller id number projected over the rump of some nameless basketball player directly onto my screen

i’m TV and you love me as recently as last night and i mean we have a relationship and you can’t just walk away smoking a overpriced cancer stick that those tobacco settlement commercials tell you is bad for your body and what’s worse some fat cat executives marketed addictive tar and synthetic additives like the algebra of need way back in the 60s while maybe some black ops arm of the federales simultaneously sold crack to the inner-cities so says the exposé on the fringe cable channel late-night hookup while charlie rose lifts up the skin of his eyelids like a petulant little kid who turns them out all bloody and raw so mommy knows exactly why he wants to live with daddy and daddy’s new girlfriend whose boobs stay perky all the way into his dreams until it’s time for the pledge drive this year where you can pick up a tote bag a coffee cup the who’s greatest hits before they hall you away for watching without paying for it through your eyeballs held in place like a mud-slinging attack ad leftover from the last election cycle to languish in the museum of broadcast and TV archives next to other great moments from my past the first space shuttle explosion or archie bunker’s chair cradling ernie from sesame street’s severed head going all googly eyed and funny while he he he he’s about nasa standing for “need another seven astronauts” so that any flashes of light may as well be the bombs over baghdad or pieces of some intelligence-gathering satellite crashing into your microwave popcorn bag and knocking those annoying half-popped kernels into your lap while you bite one greasy customer that isn’t really popped at all

you crack your teeth with all the manufactured sentiment of a made-for-TV straight-to-cable hallmark movie on the lifetime network for women love story channel where a sunset congeals over a triumphant victim fresh out the courtroom and stockard channing gets an emmy nod as either the mother or the judge who seems almost the same as the judges of american idyll star search in order to keep you guessing about who sings some saccharine pop-ballad with less sense of tone and goofier footwork—you, more talented than the current contestant or your slightly overweight friend watching me with you in the room and only if you got it together and tried out for the next program run you’d be able to sing that whitney christina madonna pink ballad you know the one about the booty and the bling bling but in the more adult contemporary language of white middle america that you practice all the time in the shower in the decrepit sedan latenight when driving reminds you of a pornographic video game filled with laser-powered dildos and free-floating asteroids or the world’s most outrageous atf chases because whatever happens in that dark corner stays in that dark corner

i am TELEVISION, and i feed you back the sounds of your own body like a gourmet meal of over-grilled bratwurst soaking up the condiments from a pre-prepared roll and the soft slow images of your internal organs vibrate on the operation channel that you cringe at for a moment flip off then flip back to see the scalpel so delicately rip like a razor in the flesh or some poor schlub getting probed during a colonoscopy done on the nationally redundant morning show cause if you think she looks cute and perky on the outside wait’ll you see what kind of intestine a multi-million dollar contract will buy to be arranged by the iron chef on a platter made of slick polished chrome and 22” tire rims featured so prominently in the background of the music channel’s hip-hop hour which shows off your crib to your neighbor and ex-partner who secretly re-decorates your outdated torture dungeon with the help of eddie/butch patrick from “the munstas” all decked out in his fabulous gangsta rap line of urban clothing that’ll show those punks at the suburban mall just what kinda crew you are running with when they see my flat-screen chest and sub-woofer set-up booming so low that either your stomach is rumbling or it’s the bass of that new acid-house-techno-dj-brit/garage star on mtv2 while square pieces of hologram-protected papers fall like swirling stars from your slim wallet and find their way through the mail to soupy sales jerry falwell the franklin mint for a limited time collectible plate commemorating the spectacle of you, in your phat crib, watching the coverage of september 11th with a portion of the proceeds lockjawed in the sublime bureaucracy of the teleprompter press conference various movie stars and government officials use to accuse other countries of terrorism and a big-5 record company of racist bullshit with the king of pop goes raspberry parade all over the hyperbolic oxygen chamber in just two easy installments

AS WE SLIDE INTO THIS COMMERCIAL THAT MUST BE LOUDER THAN YOUR OWN SENSE OF SELF AND HEARING for the “poststructuralists gone wild” video where continental philosophers are surprised by my cameras after the weekly french talk show has ended and someone coaxes them with bouncy jouissance to flash their signifiers to the crowd and michel foucault and jean-luc nancy both blush a little bit and fade away into the grainy background but jacques derrida and jean baudrillard start stripping completely into the undergarments that seem both soiled and alluring until derrida disappears completely and only baudrillard is left to look directly at the camera and crack a big smile that reaches clear from epcot center to the craps table at the las vegas luxor where nothing matters but riding the wave of associations and media channels surrendering to the sensory wasteland where the meaty ugh is the message and there is no longer a symbolic exchange separate in the projected sensory data i pull from an errant nine-iron swing that ends its parabola in the sublimated violence of a golf channel outing with rick steves across old europe stuffed with a healthy dose tony blair’s head while those smarmy guys in wigs decide to insult new labour by sticking extra bones in his breakfast kippers before baudrillard comes back to push his eyeballs directly onto my surface so you can see the bulging lines erupting outward from his pupils like a contour map of the middle east publishing the best way to blow up american landmarks while michael moore and bill maher talk about how it’s a fucking erosion of our civil liberties to see your already receding hairline all nasty and exposed

in your psychic future find the mating habits of armadillos and gazelles and octopi lolling along the ocean floor and the top of mt. kilamanjaro like that kid in indiana who interviews tom green from his basement while his parents force-feed everyone in sight some down-home god bless America disk of balled-up ground beef that the evildoer saddam hussein will never get to enjoy once he’s smoked out of his cave says the retired general whose 401k will finally see some action unlike that united airline guy in the black mustache who looks like saddam but isn’t quite him or maybe is him again with the glasses a bit too big and his face a bit too wrinkled and the hairs on his mouth a bit too perfectly in place for the fury of the allies forcing him to build a small island in the shape of his thumb with a stone mosaic of his thumbprint uber alle which makes you think of the jorge luis borges parable you about the map of the country scaled 1 to 1 and then placed directly on top of the country itself, and you remember not so much reading this story but having someone tell you about it, whisper it into your ear, print it across the lining of your forehead that is a lot like watching yourself watching me, telling you, now, here, in this space, to please pause, your, attention, for, a, limited, time, offer that has no endocrine system whatsoever because you see, i am bill clinton who did not have relations with you but might like to beep your pager when the heat dies down and his arteries unclog and maybe you can wear the dress, you know the one he likes while pretending he’s george w. snorting cocaine with an emaciated senator’s daughter purging foie-gras and listerine while the lonesome jukebox plays “fortunate son” as some descendant of that nazi bastard henry ford sells you the american dream in the form of viagra in a gum stick that works so quick on your central nervous system you won’t even notice that we’re back from commercial already cause everything is so light and fluffy when even your dreams remind you that i am TELEVISION and i have assumed control of your network

dream caused by the contusion of your brain around a pixilation,
one second before cluster bombing

davis schneiderman