they could call it "Take Me Home, Country Roads" or something in poetry

just once,
lifetime movie channel,
when the powerful CEO comes home for Christmas
or a wedding or Thanksgiving or God-knows-what
and she magically falls back in love with the
strapping farmer she once had a locker next to when
she was in the seventh grade at Podunk Junior High
I know that’s your entire business model
I know that’s all you do
I know you’re not in the game of art or entertainment
I realize you’re really just selling
low-cost vicarious wish-fulfillment
but once, lifetime movie channel, oh God
just once could the improbable loving pair
move back to her city together instead?
it’s all I’m asking

lifetime movie channel,
you and I both well know
she’s making a lot more than
ol’ Johnny Sheepshit’s making
not that growing the nation’s food
is anything less than noble of course
but it is bloody labour and it is
brutal labour, back-breaking labour
farming is brutal merciless labour
so nobility be damned if you don’t
need to be delivering a stillborn calf
at three-thirty-five in the morning as
an expected function of your vocation
if there’s anything else you can do
maybe you just don’t do that
maybe Ms. CEO and Mr. Sheepshit
go live in Manhattan instead
and when they wanna feel all country
catch a train to Madison Square Garden
and get tickets for the Dixie Chicks
or something, Jesus Christ

don’t get me wrong,
lifetime movie channel,
I believe in the power of love
but can’t they love each other
in a nice apartment on Central Park West
where the crushing toil of manual labour
won’t grind their hearts and souls
and minds into the mud of a corn field?
maybe Johnny Sheepshit can
discard his idiot masculine pride
and learn to try a fucking bagel
they’re pretty good, you know
when you give ‘em a chance
they grow on you

I’ll even meet you halfway
you can still have the CEO
be played by the actress who
played Winnie Cooper on “The Wonder Years”
I know you are legally required
to make fifteen movies starring
the actress who played Winnie Cooper
on “The Wonder Years” every single year
but just once, don’t make her move
back to Possum Scrotum West Virginia
to sell preserves and pop out children
make the guy who looks invariably
like Dane Cook but with more stubble
move to New York City instead
he could join a fucking bluegrass band
there’s only 78,000 of them in Brooklyn alone
he could be amongst his own
he’d be happy
it’s all I’m fucking asking here

Last updated October 17, 2019