Another Reason (Among Many More Global)

My downstairs neighbor is a nice quiet woman whose TV I never have heard before.

But tonight, cutting through her ceiling,
my floor, and carpet with padding
shrill and whiny, insistent and hounding
the shriek is slicing, shattering, pounding, demanding.

Is she having a nervous breakdown?

Words muffled, it seers
faster than the speed of sound
down each ear canal
shattering cilia with a coldness
that makes the tiny hairs
fall dead and gone
like so many icebergs of late from the polar ice caps.

It is not her. It is her television. But what?

Striving to hold their own:
my eardrums, defended only with weensy hammer,
and cochlea coiled as if to spring.
Plugging ears with fingers
does nothing against the tide of it;
the waves course through my very bones!

The timbre, the resonance, the clip
the sound - vaguely familiar...
...yes new... just in the past week.

This is not the kind sweet girl
who greets me in the carport
or by the garbage bin.

Nay, this is the night of the RNC
and this shrill shill
is that odd little governor called Palin.

(Who also enjoys the gratuitous killing of animals).