Screen

There's the white trim,

the brick fireplace hearth,

wood tones of floor and furniture,

and this: a rectangle of light,

showing humans doing awful things,

while children sounds filter in

through the room's open windows.

From the garnet red of my sofa,

I see blood in the streets,

a choking tear gas cloud.

A plane over my house blends with

mechanized terror on the square

half a world from here.

I can make it go away, a push

and it's over, this flat, shocking

angry chaos that our media have

marshaled into some sort of order

for me and my couch-bound brethren.
It is, after all, and by definition,

a screen.