eleventh.transmission
POEMS
Mass_Media_Manipulation
Three Poems by Gord MacLennan
False image of a beast?
The Prophet
Millions worship nightly
around The Altar
prominently placed
in gathering rooms
Alone
with flickering thoughts
anxious
What comes next?
Seeking diversion
open to suggestion
waiting for guidance
ready to follow
Empty, until
The hour begins
False prophet appears
Deliverance of conscience
with a flick of a channel
Provoked by a local rock station one day in 2003…
Get with the Program
The false prophet reins over VHF waves
AM, FM and narrowcast cable TV
Tune it out for a while, then, revisit the dial
Witness twisting of truth – everywhere – blatantly
New concepts, conniving, trash thought advertising
It’s not so much product as label they sell
E-Bay proficiency cures your deficiencies
Girls, with this shampoo your love life goes well
Go cruise this bar and you’re sure to get far
It’s a sex party ladies - and guys – skin and lace
You, you’re a schmuck ‘til you drive this new truck
then voila, just like that you’re a man, with a face
The wars overseas get a blurb on page three
when political sound-alike cutouts headline
Just don’t make a blunder with sweat odour under
Chew morning breath fresh ‘til your pearly whites shine.
This is a public performance piece. A prominent news story of summer 2005 presented a shaky plot to the
public, yet a powerful underlying theme – something like recent movie “V for Vendetta”.
Lock your doors, tune in, and await further instructions
Help me, I’m lost
in the news wires crossed
endless terrorist threats, nervous pain
Moslem extremists
hate freedom, it seems
not what those near the kill zones are saying
Stories don’t mix
Some accuse M-I-Six
but what’s murder of innocents gain?
Don’t orchestrators
claim forty years later
that campaign’s Iranian slayings?
How’s that connect
with the current deflections
Mistake, OR, betrayed foreign man?
I flail for direction
Send further instructions
through channels I fearfully scan
I do as I’m told
I buy packages sold
mock and discount unpopular views
foreign news sources
or angry mass voices
claims counter to national news
Wealth without work here
praise science, bulls, shirts
The court rules, other worship is blind
But what is the precedent
P.M. or president
this round, which swords do we grind?
I’m just so confused
who deserves, who’s abused
Today’s vermin, past house pets to you
Is freedom of choice
and to voice it now poison?
Please newsman, advise me. What’s true?
Biography
Gordon Ernest MacLennon was instrumental in Calgary Stroll of Poets 2001-04, and has performed in
countless public readings from Edmonton through South Country Fair, Red Deer, Banff, Lethbridge.
Will less periodic setting of his feet in rhyming passages free his verse? Sixty-odd steno pads of persono-
socio-politico rhyme suggest a difficult withdrawal.
Arts, Culture, Media, Activism
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