‘We must have entered the Latter Days
For the Moon has broken in two,’
Said Paul Maresh in the month of May
Of Twenty Twenty-two,
‘I said they shouldn’t be mining it
And drilling through to its core,
For now the Russians claim half of it
And the States have gone to war.’

‘That nuclear bomb on Ohio left
A crater, big as a lake,
And I heard that Lake Ontario
Has flooded New York State,
The world is shifting allegiances
So we don’t know where we are,
Since the Internet has crashed and burned
With my friends, both near and far.’

He went to the old style UHF
That he kept in his father’s shed,
Checked that the aerials were up
And the generator fed,
For the power had gone for the second time
And they said, it won’t be back,
With the power station the target in
That first, but brief attack.

He switched on channel 11 then,
Hoping to hear her voice,
Through shifting, drifting frequencies
He sat there, calling Joyce,
But all he got was a wailing call
To prayer, from a Dervish man,
Sent out to all of the faithful from
Some place in Pakistan.

He checked through all of the channels that
They’d used, back there in the past,
But mostly got a cracklng sound
From the swirling, nuclear ash,
His sister Joyce, having flown on out
To the States in the month before,
He thought was missing in Florida,
In the first week of the war.

Then a voice came through on channel three
That was lost, and fraught with pain,
‘Is that the Paul Maresh I met
In June, on the Sydney train?’
His mind went back to the smiling girl
With the drawn out Texas drawl,
Who’d chatted, stolen his heart away
With her laughed, ‘Be seein’ Y’all!’

They’d kept in touch on the Internet
And she said she was coming back,
Preparing to give their love a fling
On some great Australian track.
But then the world had shuddered with
That first American bomb,
So now, as frequencies swirled, he said,
‘Where are you calling from?’

He thought that she said from ‘Boston’, though
A crackle had interfered,
Maybe the word was ‘Austin’ back
In Texas, that he’d heard,
But then her voice was carried away
In a trans-pacific hum,
And the last few words he heard, she said
‘I really love you, ***!’

Part of the Moon has crashed to earth
In the Gulf of Mexico,
With Texas drowned in a sea of mud
And the earth’s rotation slowed,
But Paul Maresh in the Aussie Bush
Is clamped to the UHF,
Looking for Joyce and Linda if
It takes him his final breath.

David Lewis Paget

Collected moments
Things changing so quickly
One, then the other
Certainty flees
What's next?


Cold rain
Hard, stinging
Softens
Starts as a shot
Ends a windblown pillow
Dancing in front of the window


When I walked in
I was dodging drops
Now flakes turn
The window white
Like 2AM UHF
We wait to change the channel
To see what's coming on
Next

Startle response! Wake--

When danger is ante
cipated,0h
--0n
lego-h-overedge aver
age
verbage re sighin'

clinging vines from debunked strings and
threads twisted wit'em.

Assume, if ye may or plea or will as
ye wont, pray means ask.

That's all.
Here, wit'afewmisstook aitches and spaces:
here is what we got,

a fresh secret story, un concerning anything you
believed you believed of/from/about idea ifify ie able ity ness

Reason requires response, Will Robinson.
Hidden persuaded, almost,
but lost...

Really,
what sacrifice bought
young John Carson to sublimnal
top 0'the mind status,
for the first two tv
generations?

Who do you trust? Carson's tv game
show debut, aimed at after school,
junior high, latch key,
wait staff on swing shift or graveyard,
the entire set of doin' nuttin'
'round Tea, fancy goin'

head t' head wit' Mickey Mouse Club,
on all the UHF stations out west.

It's 1957, who do you trust?
Time's man o'the year,
The Hungarian Freedom Fighter Idea,
the first stiffed
equal-value re
belicose cold war victim
of the famine for the grammar
of kindness and good sense
associated with DNA,
little green apples, puppy dogs,the
straight up command to love them that hate ye,
enemies and other words for folk
who would just as soon **** you
as hear one more word
about peace.

VOG,
words were scrambled,
christic crypt vacuum
tube
signal to noise ratio, caliber calculater pro
jection on to the rerewall o'yeardamnedbrain,

VOG Cancel
Bozo. This ad will **** for us. We can own the
'earts and minds of every grammar 'ater ever.

Since Babel, since Eber 'is 'ebrew ef-
fective, fervent...strainer at jots and tittlishit
self.

This ad makes mistook rules po'man laughable,
punch'n'judy'ishit:

Whom
do you trust, the grammarian so like so many
Deweyish proguess
edumacated teachers, you had this teacher,

squint, wrinkle nose, tight jibbs
frameless wire rimmed specs, a greying bun,

flower print dress wit' the weest bit o'lace,
lipless snide corrector's face. A trope archetype,
heroes re
bel
on demand, that was the plan. It
started with

AN AD. Who do you trust? Black and white,
Here's Johnny standing under the billboard,
y'know,
for the show, standin' like *******, shoulders
shrugged, palms up, elbo's bent

(contenintal suit, note the skinny tie, why?)
Who do you trust? Innocent grin, wordless
"Who knows?" or "knew"?

Whodjewtrust, in 1957? Cronkite, nicht wahr?
See the USA in the USA

in yo' Chevrolet, ole!
Yew should try Ritalin, for pep.

Take Serutan tonight, and sleep, safe and restful,
sleep, sleep sleep

VOG (Scourby) and, remember Serutan is Natures,
spelled backwards. Cue the choir,

safe and restful, sleep, sleep fade away

----
Where were you in 1962? Off t'college,
watchin' Johnny of Johnnies,

Johhny Quest, Johnny Lighting, Johnny Carson on

Tonight, there's more...
after the news, the dayroom in the dorm,

this is whence the quips in the quad were to be
sharpened wit'

fashion able ible tips, to fit the Esquire *** Hef
uniform dress code of mutual hidden

persuadeds.

Some souls were spared the spread of the
original tv virus, VHF, couldn't penetrate
the canyon...never subjected
to Howdy Doody,
our brains were spared the
complexes planted via the sit
com cowboy war subplot
phase of novus ordo
secluremishitistcal
experiments in
alientated
mind control.
We lived in the desert, in a place

a lot like Oscar's Oasis,
a wordless Korean Cartoon
set in a desert much like mine. On Netflix, 2019.

I did not watch the mandated ten thousand hours,
even when the deadline for party affiliation

mental ascent was ex
tended, circa 1985, pre-
tending to be a measure of de
fencing public universities from the
effect of rock and roll,

since about 1964

with folk like Dylan and Baez and Hallelujah
Jubilee and Jambalaya on d'Baya,
Herb's brass on the Baja, where all the girls
work it,
like 'otel Kali phornia, sticky,

sweet, like a taste of Honey. Mr.Bond,
meet Miss
Galore. OH GOD, in the car from the speaker
she heard the idea the meaning

in the name, oh god, she squeezed my hand.

Honor Blackman plays that role, she whispered.

Trust me. It's a good plan. We got these kids!

Mom and dad just won the war, had six kids in five years,

Levittown di'n't work out, couldn't go home,
mixed marriage, from the war.

Things hap, cajun catholic wannabe aerospace engineer spy guy,
lands in Alamagordo and environs,
Summer 1944.

Here we are, Equinox, loosing season, 2019,

so some prayers were for real.

Red somthin'r'other butterflies are riding a rare breeze
from the south to the north through my
makepeace home. My peace I give,
he said,
all that passed is unexplored, take all the time

you can imagine.

My wife knows the names of those butterflies,
that's part o'm'peace. Knowin' she cares to remember
such improbably beautiful things;

soul possessed in patience, is she.

footnote 1: Despite Ciba’s efforts to market Ritalin as a ‘pep pill’, the stimulant failed to become a best-seller.  But that was not the end of Ritalin’s story.  As early as the 1930s, psychiatrists working at a children’s psychiatric institution in Rhode Island, USA had noticed that stimulant drugs could have a positive effect on the academic performance and behaviour of troubled children.  Although few psychiatrists took notice of these observations at the time, by the late 1950s, escalating concern about the educational abilities of American children during the height of the Cold War encouraged Ciba to consider a new application for their drug: underachieving schoolchildren.  They received approval from the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market Ritalin to children in 1962 and, almost immediately, it became a best-selling drug (google it I didn't write the footnote pard but I forget where I got it.)

Channel 3 had Commander Bob;
Eyewitness news on channel 7.
Channel 4 could be watched—
Sometimes.

UHF was a twilight zone,
“Imagine if you will…”
Twiddle those rabbit ears
Tune in if you can…

Local news with a weather man
Gesticulating, cut to
“Shoe sale at Tom McCanns” or
“Save on snap peas at the A&P.”

Then cable:
240 stations with nothing on
Re-runs; if you can find ’em, tape ‘em.
Stack ‘em up and maybe watch ‘em.

Cut the cord.
Nascent net hits the nation
You tube surf to some URL,
A network station replacement…

Netflix, not Nielsen’s
Binging, not “tune in next week…“
Amazon, Hulu, Utube, or Vudo,
Storytelling bettered.

Back in the days of Commander Bob,
"Mutual of Ohmaha’s Wild Kingdom,”
Followed by “Wonderful World of Disney”
In Peacock Technicolor

Cancelled shows meant
Unfinished stories
Tangled plot-lines
Unresolved ennui.

Now, you pitch to Netflix *****, get a “yes.”
And tell a story In 6 to 10 episodes.
You won’t be canceled after number 3;
Vox populi decides Season Two.

Story arcs matter;
Just ask David Lynch.
25 years later, you magnificent *******,
Agent Cooper crushes his chrysalis.