informed by television

What I Know About Nobility In The Face Of Heroic Futility I Learned From I Spy

It is a purely inspired scene written,

I want to believe, under the gun;

the writers trapped, sweating in a

windowless room of their own design,

a too neat and tidy trope worn thin

by overuse, the hour late, the coffee

stale, paper cups half full, crushed, sodden 
butts afloat, a bowl of tired fruit

adrift on a crumpled sea of

water-marked onion skin,

Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott

hapless victims of yet another

petty Third World tyrant, Fernando Lamas

perhaps, no less so by a hackneyed script

that lands them reliably week in and week out

in some locked room

in some strange exotic city

in some blistering equatorial country

waiting for the specter of impending

deadline to spur the narrative forward,

setting them free, ushering in

another Chevy commercial;

an implausible pyramid of

citrus their ticket out in this  

particular episode, cracking wise,

impossibly cool while they stacked each and

every orange, layer upon layer to

the edge of the high narrow window that

framed one coconut palm, the writers

expectant, hopeful even, in the

moments before they send Alexander

Scott scurrying to the top in a heroic

but futile bid for freedom, the Cos’

sprawled, mugging, oranges rolling, juice

seeping everywhere, the writers, spying

an out, having escaped amid the carnage.