Representative Poem Leaving the TV

Representative Poem Leaving the TV on Overnight" Morning. The kitchen still smells like last night's Bachelor dinner. Pizza in the microwave. Cheap Wine washes away the moneymaking day. TV? Still on. Even now, and it is morning. The TV does not remember It hummed "Law and Order: Criminal Intent." Last night. Yeah, nothing going on last night. Nothing good on. Same old, same old. Body found, body died Surprise Plot twist and All revealed in an hour. To music, credits. The End.

No surprise, really and This is comforting No one to call afterwards, no one he knows Likes the show. She said to him before she left He liked stupid shows. Stupid. Left the TV on as he got ready for bed. Fell asleep, forgot to turn it off. Why turn it off now? Grind, Make the coffee. TV murmur weather, commute, delay Death at home, death Iraq. The soldiers are brave 24/7 The living write letters & email Now He will leave home Now he will remember. Clean the cup.

Turn off the voice. It is not hard to remember To tune out, to turn things off. Self-critique This poem is about a man whose girlfriend has just left him. He is young, and has a good job, but still feels lonely without her, in his empty home. He is using the television as company. He is trying to act as though things are normal. What could be more normal than one's morning routine? This is why I chose this image and setting for the poem.

But because days and nights are blending into one, I decided to use the man's carelessness in leaving the television on as the connection between the loneliness of his evenings and the emptiness of his mornings. In the poetic style, I was inspired by ee cummings to use short sentences to convey the man's thought processes in the morning, and also cumming's subject choice, which is usually about loneliness and loss and the inability to express what one is feeling in concrete terms.

I tried to break up the poem in significant places, using line breaks to emphasize important words like "left" and "loss" rather than strictly adhering to conventional sentence breaks at the end of complete thoughts. From Baraka's influence, I was inspired to include a reference to the current political situation in Iraq. I wanted this reference to be realistic -- most of us get our input about politics in snatches, from the television news.

I wanted to create a sense of irony too that the soldiers want to communicate and get home, while the man wants.