preface by Jameson Bayles

when your entertainment comes in a can
and you realize that your can opener is broken,
and your dog ate your church key because your resume was stale,
and you realize that the campaign ads that haunt you in your dreams
are nothing more than discontinued lean cuisine casseroles
that you have burnt in your microwave while you mulled over
your third eviction notice
and you are too tired
too drunk
too crunked
too oversexed
too under sexed
too lack of free sex
too sodium free
too fat free
too gluten free
too GMO free
too condoms free for college freshman
too sleazy
to sleepy
to dopey
to grumpy
to anti-Trumpy
to care
and you watch digital dialogues transverse your social media status update
and no one really sees the lighthouse in your mind among the tsunami of
insanity
and you watch the ebb and tide of twitter feeds, Instagram likes, snap chat face
swaps and you have purged these recycled conversations without comment
and you watch food bank lines en mass despair, plasma centers donate lifelines to
the forgotten dreams of childhood that hashtag fightforfifteen merely drowns
and you watch suicide/depression ward lobbies weep and moan
during the ethereal silence of man
and you watch the unrehearsed screams of poverty
and you watch
and you watch
and you watch
so no
no
I don’t
watch
reality
TV.

____________
Jameson Bayles is a roving correspondent for Poetrybay and his work has been published in numerous literary journals and magazines; most recently in Poems-For-All, Hedgerow, The Ambriel Revolution, Thirteen Myna Birds and on Rumrazor.com. He has been published in ten books. Currently, his work can be found in the collaborative reader “A Case For Ascension” (Asinimali Publications, 2015), the 2016 Hessler Street Poetry Fair Anthology (Crisis Chronicles Press) and “Delirious- A Poetic Celebration of Prince” (Night Ballet Press, 2016). His book “legends of doe hoe” will be published in 2017. Jameson resides in Kansas City, Missouri