Chat Show

Chat show hell.
Voyeurs in the audience.
Exhibitionists on the stage.
And me? The voyeur of voyeurs -
Transfixed by the inanity of it all.

Like Romans at the Coliseum,
The audience screams for titillation.
Screams for vice.
Screams for someone to pay the price for its fun.

The sacrificial fool basks in his five-minutes' fame.
He teases the audience with misdeeds -
All conceived in a wet dream.
The audience is as shocked as a nympho at an orgy.
Still, the game has to be played.
The script needs to be followed.

Like a lion tamer,
The host throws the audience titbits,
On which they gorge like mad dogs.
He controls the audience as Hitler controlled his.
There is form to this chaos.
A gradual crescendo of outrage (orchestrated to a climax)
In which the sinner is brought out to face the rabid.
He's barely safe as the audience strains at the leash.
It is red-eyed and foaming like a medieval crowd
On the scent of a hanging:
Like those zealots who lust for Myra Hindley’s blood.

The host relishes his power.
He teases and tempts; though keeps control…
Even the shows final showdown -
The cathartic release (in which fists and expletives fly) -
Is carefully orchestrated.

Oh! Isn’t this fun!
Dear Host, please let there be blood!