Poke was a facility of the language - it was a keyword built right in. I was referring to using it to put a machine code routine into memory via BASIC, but yes

Poke was a facility of the language - it was a keyword built right in. I was referring to using it to put a machine code routine into memory via BASIC, but yes you certainly could and did control screen memory directly using it, this was also very accessible because there was typically a fixed region of memory with a simple logic to its layout that made that direct connection and feedback available.