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.