This poem was written by Ofelia Alcantara – Dimalanta
and originated in the NCR

Perhaps it is the tinted screen
that filters the glare, subdues the blare
and pads the pain, and cordons off
viewers-victimd from squirts
of blood, programmed splices of life,
tubed in, shrunk to twenty inches,
or flashed full color, making the children
with not much effort after,
glide on back to the myth of mother
and sleep, still all right
to palate and nerves.

Nothing fraying nor dissembling
when events are re-enacted at nine,
Or with a dateline.
Not this buffed violence. Blood is even
Glamour stuff in 5-0,
Or where west is wildest,
And mission loom impossible.
Not this but the bare face of everyday
In people handy with their built-in
Hates and Angers and indifferences,
Stripped in and for the act of unlove.
Actuality is the surrealized,
Fiction rigged up, farcified,
Touch is after all not just eyes
But skin and senses and glands interacting.
And violence, screen-deep, does not scream
More than the vile feel of things,
This Bare Fact unwinfing its Act, reeling off
Unfeeling, unloosing the Beast
That leaps and flays and rips.

And once cannot just flick off on Life.