Please Stand By

In our English class, we had to write a poem inspired by a picture that we picked out off of the internet. This poem is what I saw when I saw a picture of the old 50s "Please Stand By" TV screens.

Pardon this interruption, but we ask that you could kindly stand by until further notice.

Please stand by and give no notice to the closed doors and guarded walls.

Never mind the cries you hear coming from within.

Ignore the destruction and chaos of the world crumbling around you.

Forget about the homeless you pass along the street, pleading for mercy from the concrete hell they call home.

Refrain from noticing the students you pass with the scars decorated on their wrists.

Pay no attention to the girl attacked by pressure and acceptance, looking for a deathly release from pain.

Never mind the boy who cowers in the corner from the blows and bruises of the heroes of society.

Ignore the mother watching helplessly as her children consume the sin that lives in their veins.

Forget about the grandfather who sits alone on the rusting park bench, mourning his lost lover.

Refrain from noticing your exalted leader’s addictions to pride and seduction.

Pay no attention to the others who follow blindly without a hope for salvation.

Thank you for letting these concerns fall upon deaf ears, and please continue to stand by.

Author's Note

Although this is a poem, it doesn't exactly have a rhythm or rhyme to it.

Reviews

[emmah]

this is such an immensely powerful and impactful verse. the anguish and the defiance and the sarcasm. and the no-mince comment on society, leadership, polotics, drugs, pressures of sustinence, plight of the children, and the aged and the young; it's such an intense and cutting verse - it dissects the decay of society, the demise of 'what we stand for' - while we 'stand by'. brilliant work there. 100/100 for impact.

[Marie Harrison]

I enjoyed your poem and the issues you selected to highlight. They all seemed like valid concerns to me also. I loved the picture and the interuption in the broadcast too. Very creative.

[J.M. Barrett]

Wow, this was very powerful. Great poem!

I love how it confronts our nature to ignore these things even though we know that it is happening by using words like "pay no attention" and "never mind".

Great write!