It's Called an Idiot Box Because Idiots Like It

Somewhere in Google's search results for "bad goth poetry", there's a page sporting the headline "Not all goth poetry is bad", immediately followed by Satan's own scribblings, in midnight-blue text on a black background. Satan wants the Internet to know that rape, depression, and mutilated wrists are horrible--but horrible in that elegant way, you know?

Don't you?

That's all right. Neither do I.

Sometimes Satan forgets to rhyme, and that's bad. Other times, he remembers, and that's even worse. Worst of all, however, is when he only half-remembers, and agog finds itself cohabiting with pollywog. Satan believes that his pain is terribly original, and that capital letters are the work of the Man. Punctuation, he warns us, is for wankers, and only twats use an i where a y will do. (punctuatyon ys for wankers and only twattes use an i where a y wyll do).

Satan's vulva opens like a flower. Satan's gashes bleed like rivers. His love is like a red, red rose, and his eyes shine like diamonds. (Dark diamonds, mind you.) When night overtakes him, it does so in a manner not unlike the fall of a velvet curtain, and when he's overcome with emotion, his tears fall like rain. His soul is black, withered, tarnished, and lost. His heart is broken, wounded, shattered, and pierced. And let us not forget his skin, which, caught in the moonlight, glistens/gleams/shines/glows like alabaster/pearl/ivory/bone.

Satan is a bad, bad poet. I hold him up here, that he might be mocked and ridiculed, and that his egregious failures might take the horror out of my own confession.

That's right. I've a confession to make. I love--

(Don't laugh!)

--I can't get enough--

(Don't cry!)

--I can't sleep without--

(Don't look! It's too embarrassing!)

--I'm lost without--

(Oh, no!)

--television.

That's right. I said it. I hate the programs, I hate the advertisements, I hate the personalities, I hate the music, I hate the newscasters with the glued-on smiles (gasp!)--I hate tests of the emergency broadcast system, I hate that beepy noise you get when a channel goes off the air, I hate sitcoms and movies and telethons and infomercials--but I love TV.

I love the joyous ripple of laugh-tracks. I love the reassuring murmur of chat shows, turned just low enough that the words aren't clear. I love the chirpy lady on the Chinese news station, the one that always trips over her own tongue. (I can't understand a word she says. For that, I love her even more.) I love shreds of conversation caught in channel-surfing. I love not having the faintest idea who's doing what to whom, because I'm really reading a book instead of watching the film. I love the upward inflection of questions I didn't quite catch, and the silly folks who put a loonie in the machine so they can say their piece on CityTV. (Man with the Viagra sign, singing your brother a happy-fiftieth song, I mean you. You made my week last week. I love you. You are wittier than a box of philosophers, and balder than the American eagle.)

I don't care what's on, or who's in it. It doesn't matter, when I've got my back to it. I just want my voices back, my happy, companionable voices! The telly here's stopped working, and the silence is driving me bonkers. I mean, I've got music on, and so forth, but it's just not the same without that steady murmur, the news and the ads and the laugh-tracks. Christ, give me an infomercial--a little infomercial! A butter-whirler or a fruit-compacter or a milk-bottle-opener--that's all I ask!

I can't sleep without it. I can't think without it. I can't live without it.

Give--me--my--television!

...

...

...so, anyway, Satan's poetry, eh? Quite something, what? More embarrassing than a little, tiny TV addiction, wouldn't you say?

(Saints preserve us.)