WHAT’S ON TV?

What’s on TV? A lot, I’d say,

Fare both good and not,

Any hour of the day,

High def and polyglot.

Abundant sex and violence,

The off-beat and the trite,

Opinion, sense and nonsense,

Sports from morn to night.

Lots of pretty women;

Of Vanna White I am a fan.

Games to test your acumen,

And win a trip to Mazatlan!

Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose

Interview the great.

News from every network flows,

Controversy and debate.

Oprah fills the afternoon

With her wisdom and her ‘nice’.

Dr. Phil’s in your living room

Giving free advice.

Want to know the temperature

On the Himalayan slope?

Tune in the Weather Channel;

You’ll get the latest dope!

Leno and Dave Letterman

Keep us laughing after dark.

They’re snide and irreverent,

But often hit the mark.

TV keeps us occupied

And also up to date.

It’s much too easy to deride.

It also keeps us up too late!

MORNING MAN

Radio’s most important man

Has the early morning show.

We wake up to his chatter;

He gets us on the go!

I’ve been in many towns,

And wherever, rain or shine,

A rousing radio guy

Got me off to work on time.

In London was Lloyd Wright,

In the a.m. hard to beat.

In Kingston Al Boliska,

A nut case but a treat.

Ron Wilson wakes up Edmonton.

His voice evokes a smile.

He’s so bright and cheery,

Who’d dare change that dial!

In T.O. Wally Crouter

Raised the performance bar,

Fairly bursting with energy,

A morning superstar!

Of these and many more

Whose often-thankless task

Is to drag us out of bed,

I must this question ask:

Who gets you up so early?

Do you ever sleep?

What puts you in a good mood,

And can I get some cheap?

APOCALYPSE

We’re heading for disaster.

I can sense it in the air.

Each day the news gets worse,

Pain and misery everywhere.

The front page features murder,

And death by accident,

Storms that wreak destruction,

Defeat and lives misspent.

We hear of endless wars.

Disease its harvests reap.

The elements assail us.

The earth shakes beneath our feet.

The arts have abandoned us.

They repel us and bemuse.

What once delivered hope

Fails even to amuse.

Religion is exposed

As dangerous fantasy.

God may well be there,

But's been made a travesty.

Where do we go from here?

The future’s looking bleak.

I predict apocalypse.

Now I need to take a leak!

SEX

What’s happened to sex?

It isn’t fun any more.

Romance has fled the scene.

Sex is now a bore.

Getting laid’s as common

As a peck upon the cheek.

It can happen in a cafe,

In the park or on the street,

In a public washroom,

In a taxi, on the stair.

No one pays attention.

It’s hardly worth a stare.

‘Making love’, we used to call it.

One did it in the dark,

It was private, almost holy!

Ne’er a carefree lark!

Now we call it ‘fucking’,

‘Screwing’, or ‘in and out’.

It’s just a form of greeting,

Not to get upset about!

Every sexual deviation

Known to psychology

Is an entertainment subject

On the Internet or TV!

Nothing’s sacred, nothing’s bad,

All on DVD and live.

The result is total boredom.

The race may not survive!

BEAUTY

I walked into the office

To register my car.

Little did I know

I was about to meet a star!

She was seated at a desk.

I hardly noticed her at first.

A tiny Asian woman

In paper work immersed.

She was one of seven clerks

Serving folks like me.

She signaled me to come.

I strolled over casually.

She was thin, and turning grey,

Neither old nor young.

Her dress was nondescript,

English not her native tongue.

I bantered with her briefly

Then she broke into a smile

So radiant and infectious

It knocked me for a mile!

She was missing a front tooth

But her beauty from within

Glittered like a sunbeam.

Heaven was in her grin!

THE INDUSTRY

Be good to senior citizens!

Were we all to up and croak,

Nothing could replace us,

You’d end up sad and broke!

All that pension money

No longer in the till,

Countless pill prescriptions

The druggists needn’t fill.

Hospitals half empty,

Retirement homes shut down,

Undertakers bankrupt,

Not a bingo game in town!

Unemployment soaring,

Even doctors on EI,

Golf courses growing over,

Cruise lines high and dry.

Caring for the old folks

Is a prodigious industry,

The heart of the economy,

Salubrious it must be!

So try not to forget

We make the world go ‘round.

Give us due respect

Or we’ll go underground!

SUPERNOVA

According to astronomers

Someday our sun will blow,

Become a supernova,

A celestial fireworks show.

The Earth will be enveloped

In a cloud of burning gases.

No one will have a chance

To save their sorry asses!

Think of all that’s lost

In this catastrophe:

Works of human genius,

Reduced to space debris.

Mozart’s compositions,

The paintings of Seurat,

The plays and verse of Shakespeare

Will have had their last hurrah.

Not more Elvis, no more Bing,

No Frank, no Sarah Vaughn,

No Bergman/Bogart movies,

Even Oprah will be gone!

Let’s hope there’s some dimension

Where this greatness goes.

Where it will last forever,

And there too our sorry souls!