Poem I Wrote While Babysitting Grandson

Grandpa’s Sitting

Hundreds of cascading TV channels
Blinking their best same old, same old;
Sitcom stories splash with eternal ennui;
Pundits pound home the depressing political impasse;

What happened to Howdy Doody? He asks.

The mirror watching the couch where he sits
Annuls his reverie, shining its spotlight on
The reality of a wasting medicare  social security self.

So many forgotten dreams replaced
With angry choruses of debt collectors,
liars,  and charlatans while formerly consoling friends
are silenced dead  to Realms no longer defined
to his satisfaction by science or religion.

Switched off babysitter
Surfing the sounds of silence
Wondering which wave will
crush him.

There is a darkness late at night when the
Media sleeps and all human contact is absent
And even memories have retreated to
The graveyard of burned synapses.

It is to that darkness to which now drawn
He davens in drunken prayer to the fates,
Yet again to be interrupted by the cry of a little one:

“GRANDPA!”