Own that insomnia!

WATCHING GAME SHOWS, EARLY MORNING, LIVING ROOM

Gray faces, gray eyes, gray couture beaming down
from some satellite as if from a planet
where it’s always 1953.
Gray, but not dead:

Arlene’s mobile earrings bounce, Steve’s wit zings,
Joan’s arm thrusts the pick-me wave
of every teacher’s pet.
Hornrim glasses.

Cigarette ads. Spray deodorant in swank bottles.
Swanson dinners. A parade of gray ordinary
people, innocent of YouTube,
let alone Living Color.

It’s those women in their pinned hats, pimpled
smart alecks, squirming immigrants
condescended to, coddled, handled
like unexploded bombs

by the hornrim men in Cardin and Vitalis
who seem most like aliens, recovered
from a world where no one knows
when to look at the lens,

when to look away.