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Coming Attractions (1994)
Black is white, white is black, two and two is three.
Put your common sense away, all you need is me.
I’m the soothing voice, the calming face on your TV.
Let me settle all your fears, all you need is me.
I’ll raise you up and train you right, I’ll be your family.
Turn your back on Mom and Dad, all you need is me.
Outdated rights must strain your brain, too much complexity.
Throw away those useless things, all you need is me.
You’ll live in peace, you’ll never want, in time you’ll learn to see
Our brave new world is better than the struggle to stay free.
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Haiku
hot wind stirs the flags
time checked as coffins go by
the slow boil begins
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David Greenwood is a lecturer in the Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. After taking his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, he has authored books with Cornell, Cambridge, and Routledge, numerous articles in theology, philosophy, and history, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2021. His poetry has been published in numerous venues, including The Lyric and WestWard Quarterly.
This is an accurate poem assessing what is on TV including particularly the Progressive commercials that say do not be like your parents!
“Coming Attractions” is a great poem in monorhyme. What the reader is left to wonder about is this: Who is the speaker? I think this is deliberate, since the advice and urgings being expressed (all in the voice of a woke modernity) come from countless sources — from TV, from newspapers, from magazines, from stupid friends and colleagues, from the clergy, from teachers, and from every kind of bureaucrat. There is a huge chorus of voices saying these things.
I confess confusion about the year “1994.” It may refer to some event that occurred then in relation to the poem’s subject, or it may have a strictly private meaning for the poet.