Not sure why I never posted this, probably because the audio is so crummy (crumby??). Here it is in all it’s iPhone glory — footage from last year’s Clash House event. Words below to help follow the audio. Note: since this performance I have mad adjustments to the piece, but for clarity sake I am posting the words as they were more or less on the night of the performance (perhaps I’ll save the final draft for another entry…)
“Put your guns up in the air, wave it over, behind your shoulder”
July 4th, 2009
I sit, a white ball clenched over black ink
I sip, fine white wine I do not drink
for the taste,
it is putrid, horror, stuff of nightmares
like the ones that once woke me on summer nights in past years
when i was but a red-headed 4th grader
sitting on duvets, I give hi-5′s to nagging mosquitoes
only to regret the silence that orders the chaos plain
amidst the ordered chaos of the plaid
a Muppet Show penny jar
a typewriter atop broken antique TV framewood
the irony, casement of my soul,
wrapped in iron bars and led walls
I inhale the fumes
before fuming myself,over melted candlewax
the music comes in pieces
my life in lines
between which I reach right-handed to a dog I don’t own
Because here, in America,
antique swords adorn tool-shed gardens
growing guns by moonlight
dime a dozen for the dollar menu
we wax until we are the withering spirits of our fathers hollowed drums
our spirits once lived in the wind
now they catch flames that we hold captive
bound in leathers we tie them to sleepless nights
whose portraits we painted in Disney films
while wolves cried “to a newborn moon”
So do you get it, America? Do you get it?
Because then we dreamt of small steps for
penis-bearing homosapiens;
then druglords in Cuba,
then nightmarish red-tint caused blindness by the on-ramps of Highway 61 Revisited –
except my generation
only made it for the shortened regarded,
which is to say we never visited in the first place,
did we?
To die of a pigeon coup — de etat,
to refresh the tree of liberty
choking in the smog of Angeles
and
blinded by the lights of La Ciudad,
We came shouting, JAILBREAK
to immigrants with 3rd degree convictions
burned atop their curved shoulders.
It goes without saying,
our books are left in the car
with kid loves in the back seat
innocence is tossed & locked in the trunk,
her hands bound
and ducktape over her mouth.
Our poets, my fist,
scrawl plays, on words
our mothers once taught us at bedtime
and over morning coffee.
But I, for One, inscribe imminence
rarely do I make sense.
Rearranging words, paper the new magnetic poetry,
so old it’s new again.
Occasionally, I said, I do make sense when I write,
but, usually I don’t.
But, it sounds good sometimes.
And we like music,
we just lack the attention span to meditate.
So America,
ask your children:
how they will dance at midnight
if we never let them see the moonlight.
Know that we will never have peace in the Middle East
until we find peace on our own city streets,
because how can we break their hate,
if we can’t love ourselves?
So America,
“Put your guns up in the air,
now wave ‘em over, hold your shoulder.”
Hug yourself, America.
Hold yourself tight, America.
You’re getting old now,
and it’s cold out tonight.
Prayer vigils, over wine mugs, by lamplight.
And I feel industrious,
the dog is sleeping.
- Mike Rosen aka The illDefined
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