each night he would enter his boy's room Bobby's tomb, he had come to call it and turn the TV off
before remotes, 24/7 programming and the infomercial, plump with desperate promises the tube gave a final hail, the stars 'n stripes whipping, the national anthem screaming, and an anonymous promise to return tomorrow in a perfect world
it would not be perfect for Bobby, no matter how much thoughtless Thorazine, hazy Haldol, or mesmerizing Mellaril they shoved down his throat
now and then before flipping the **** to off he would sit with his sleeping son stare into the screen, listen to its hissing; he would swear he saw something in the gray ocean of static
not trillions of senseless electrons busy bouncing, but a lone sailor, rowing away in a foaming sea, riding raging swells, bound for a black horizon