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Watches Late Night All Morning

I do try to catch it as close to live
as possible and all, but sometimes,
when I’m particularly antsy about
getting some important stuff done,

the whole thing sort of mushrooms
out and interrupts all points morning,
by which I mean after midnight and
before noon, so, yeah, that’s quite a

lot of mushroom. People have often
told me that I should do mushrooms.
I bet you didn’t see that coming. It’s
true, but I have yet to partake, except

when it’s on pizza, say, or in a salad
or a casserole of some sort. Anyway,
my days of roiling emotions, fun as
some of them were, are well behind

me, I think? Now it’s just the late
night comedians making me laugh
through the night and well into the
morning. I suppose someone trained

in the psychological arts might find
that sounding like I’m using television
as a substitute for something that’s
more real. The thing about real is that

it’s fun, enlightening, seems like a thing
worth aiming for, but like everything else,
real’s ephemeral, and real can gut you. It
can filet you like a fish. That has yet to

happen while watching these guys do
their monologues and interviews. That,
to me, is fun and enlightening, and it
always perks me up. Even Johnny

Carson reruns, which, for example,
made the pandemic bearable for me.
Watching the gamut of late night tv
fills me with life. Puts me in better

spirits. Riles me up, sometimes, sure,
and catches me up on what’s what, or 

at least skews me in that direction. How
is that not real? And, as time goes on,

and night melds with morning, and I’m
still watching Stephen Colbert or Seth
Myers from the night before, I’m happy,
which, if you ask me, is a state of being

toward which I will always aspire. And
for a gutted man like me, that’s as worth
while and as real as anything else could be.