Modern Entertainment

Modern Entertainment

On weekends, the people get so bored

With the athletes paid to parade before us

There: the hockey rink, the basketball court, the arena

There, the players prepare to battle for our pleasure.

Businessmen become ringside heroes

and prize bimbos strut as cheerleaders.

Who can say of what they’re made

that the testosterone ones turn and bray,

then, suddenly, they’ve swelled, bloodied and battered.

Who can say of what they dream,

those entertainers now drowned in the inflamed screams

spewed from the mouths of the multitudes—

Hurray!

On Sundays the athletes get so bored

When required to suffer for us.

They line up for their cortisone boosts

while mobs everywhere chant for revenge,

and when results bequeath only broken bones,

the mobs cry out with disgruntled groans:

A signal for businessmen to display Machismo

And use women to echo their punching blows.

Every day we news whores get so bored

waiting for the other to drop dead for us

The bombs will reign down and the mob will drool

The blood will pour and bodies stack up—

Hurray! Hurray!

Then the businessmen become champions,

and in triumph, we all scream and shout,

praising the necessary assault.

And when those in the way finally fell

Did not the victims dream of some hell

Where war mongers and worn-out soldiers still burn

Or perhaps with their last breaths

Would the scapegoats not pardon us their deaths

Knowing what we did—or did not do—

At:

the Crusades—Hurray!

Wounded Knee—Hurray!

Versailles—Hurray!

Iwo Jima—Hurray!

Hiroshima—Hurray!

Saigon

The Killing Fields

Rwanda

South America

Afghanistan

Iraq

Gaza!

Special thanks to Jaques Brell’s song “The Bulls”

and to Picasso for Guernica