"A First on TV," for Walter Cronkite.
This is the 20th century.
You are there preparing to skin a human being alive.
Your part will be to remain calm and to participate
with the flayer in his work.
As you follow his hand, the slow delicate way
with the knife between the skin and the flesh,
and see the red meat emerge.
Tiny rivulets of blood will flow from the naked flesh
and over the hands of the flayer.
Your eyes will waver and turn away
but turn back to witness the unprecedented, the incredible.
For you are there.
And your part will be to remain calm.
You will smash at the screen with your fist
and try to reach this program on a phone like a madman,
gripping it by the neck as it were the neck of the flayer.
And you will scream into the receiver,
get me Station ZXY at once, at once, do you hear?
But your part will be to remain calm.