Real Life: Take One

I wrote this poem about the media and how people just believe everything the television tells them.

Real Life: Take One

Are we sure we can believe what we see on TV?
Fox, CNN and the BBC push their views through the news
but maybe consider what follows as truth.

Someone cries action and there’s an explosion
five more dead in Helmand we’re told.
But how do we know that later soldiers go
and grab a beer at a bar before driving home?
Afghan, Taliban, American are the same
and work on a film set in Manchester most days.

The Ethiopian diva trashes her dressing room,
breaks a mirror and that nice perfume
when her agent phones to let her know
the lead role for the segment on starvation
is cast. She had to starve and fast
to look so thin and now this anorexic African
steals her spotlight?
For years she stared hopefully into a camera
as the face of poverty in Africa
she worked hard to study drama,
and graduated with flying colours from Cardiff.

A white coated scientist stares solemnly through the screen
and warns of a global pandemic
(the likes of which we’ve never seen).
Cameras switch off and in rush his peers
and jeer at his proposed climate of fear,
“bird flu?” says one, “what the hell is that?
I bet you just made it up on the spot.”

Are we sure we can believe what we see on TV?
Terrified at home with nails bitten to the bone,
we sit,
they yell cut.