Nico, it has been
too long, I am out of
practice, I’ve been losing
your voice on the first VU album
to focus on Lou,
skipping your later work
all together,
listening to crude guitar
more than smooth,
praising flat declarations
more than lyric
observations.
Please, say that I
will be forgiven this morning
as you sing of gambling
over strings and
fingerpicked guitar
and break me open,
rolling dice within me,
pouring into me
like a snow-grown stream
just before summer.
1.
trying to climb out
of a deep stone hole
where I’ve been starving
cold and wrecked
for so long I’ve lost track
my fingernails break
I panic
when I consider
what that will do
to my tone
2.
django reinhardt
and
pat smear
are each worthy
of worship
I am therefore
a polytheist
3.
for the perfect combination
of flow and crunch
I would tear out my eyes
and stuff the holes with rare
psychotropic flowers
as if blindness could offer
space for illumination
4.
enough words
not enough chords
play one for me
that’ll shut me down
are best grooved to
while you sit
on the front lawn
in your kiddie pool
while cars pass by
blasting them
from open windows
every ten minutes
for two seconds
as they pass
or while the neighbor
trims hedges with a radio
on somewhere
maybe from the kitchen
or set out on the porch
with the cord stretched
all the way from inside
while your fat ass is shaking
in two inches of water
your bald head is bobbing
in two inches of sweat
you look like a cautionary ad
for heat stroke and the danger
of summer hits
some of which
will never be heard again
BUT
summer is best grooved to
with them
in fact summer needs them
like you need a tallboy
while you groove
sitting ridiculous and cool
in that kiddie pool
all season long
it never held tune
it never sounded great
it broke
again and again
i would toss it then
fish it out
tighten the bolts on the neck
restring it
it was blue and chipped black
an outrage to be posed with
when I was fifteen that
was all that mattered
it got me close enough
to close enough
to rock and roll
for the first time
Mike’s banging the strings right now
and certainly getting some original noises
out of that ancient, worn out,
catalog-origin, shitbox
frail-necked banjo.
Many marvelous errors are being made
while his hands walk toward
the transcendental possibilty
of the greatest song ever,
and thus we are at
his mercy, at the edge
of awful and awesome
which by all accounts
is where we ought to be tonight:
wrong or almost wrong, often;
but focused entirely upon those moments
when someone pushes beyond the
best possible rightness.
Mike may not get there tonight or ever
but we can see it from here
every time he plays with his eyes closed
and the odd chord falls off the banjo
into the room as perfectly as a little bird
spotted singing in a bush on a river bank
in the moonlight of our grandparents’ courting
long, long ago.
Stop listening
to Max Roach,
I was telling myself;
stop reading Greg Corso.
Stop it, you are never
going to have
Max’s rhythm or
Corso’s gift of mad
flow, so stop
torturing yourself –
I said, shut up
and stop yourself,
Self.
You’ve been chattering at me
about this forever,
and I’m beyond sick about it.
Stop making this
about utilitarian needs –
maybe the joy of hearing
Freddie Hubbard cozying up
to Max’s silky beat trumps
my clumsiness and maybe
reading Corso just turns me on.
I know who I am –
I’ve worn out my slight talent at 53,
written a handful of known poems,
am already in the “where are they now’ file,
am already winding down –
and as for music
I never could figure out
one end of a drum stick from another –
I know who I am and
suddenly,
just this morning,
I recognize
that maybe hearing Max Roach
without envy
and reading Greg Corso
with no lust to best him
is what I
was meant to do all along
but I couldn’t have done it
until now,
until after all
the ambition and strain
fell completely
at last
away.
There’s a certain vocalization,
the top of a sung syllable that breaks
into halves like a split particle.
Chirp and bark echoing over each other.
Fragmented call of vulnerability welded to one
of aggression.
I’ve heard it once. Someone I loved
made that sound once. Someone I loved
made that sound singing a song
in Italian. I was sure I would recall that song
for all the rest of my time on Earth,
and I have all but forgotten it — all but
that one sound at the top of a syllable
in the chorus, the one she was singing
when she turned
and saw me listening
and stopped.
I remember seeing that
for the first time
on the back of a hand
at a show
and smelling
the tired fire scent
of obsolescence
wafting by
I knew the music
would survive the symbol
but it would take a while
before it shook free
of fashion
anti-fashion
fascism
and other labels
Here’s a shocker: personally,
I’ve pulled more salvation
from an E string
than from a wafer. Whatever,
it’s all good in the wood — hell,
imagine the guitar that could have been made
once Calvary had ended –
whatever the Cross was made from
could have become body and neck
of one passing strange guitar
that would have had resonance
and sustain for days though
it might have been a tad screamy
in tone. Still, it would have been
sweet to play: I always say
the heavier
the metal, the more
it depends on God
for its weight,
either through
opposition or through
substitution.
If you think any of this
is blasphemous,
you don’t understand –
probably not the music,
certainly not
God, who invented two things
above all else:
cognitive dissonance
in the face of the sacred
and the gut-blessing roar
of a power chord.
The amplifiers are suspicious
of the rest of the equipment.
The guitars and drums and the bass
aren’t all that keen on the keyboards
but they all agree on what insufferable
dicks the microphones and PA are;
it’s gonna take brawn and art
to keep their war from being fought.
It’s gonna take a bunch of humans
wrestling them all into a surly truce
to get them to scream rock and roll
in rough, raw parity with one another.
a descending series of chords
a chorus shouting “hoo”
a man speaking in rhythm
rhyming a bit
a touch of sing song
a target
hit repeatedly
it’s working
early in the morning
for me as a listener
this atmosphere where
all your secrets stay safe
all your liars will lay
all your stories are stains
on that mattress
I’m crying
in bed
how much do I like that guitar
I ask myself
I like it fine
how much do I want it to be
guitar and rhyme and not meaning
that’s getting to me
I like distance
I like a target
hit repeatedly
from a distance
this is working
I declare it
a good song
a target struck again and again
I swear I’m not listening to the words
– italicized lyrics from “Mattress,” by Atmosphere; from the album “Sad Clown, Bad Summer”
(listen to it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRcLFA0wW80)
In Sweden, extreme bands
thrash like icy schoolkids.
In Brazil, there are bands
who root themselves in pounding and scream.
In India, happy are bands who know
that all kinds of heads are made for banging.
In the United States there’s one band
for every market in every loud box.
In metal there is a noisy truth
which crosses a border
on its hands and knees
when necessary
but which always
stands up by stage time.
Glorious here, even as the noise
has fallen silent. Silent glory as
the musician dies. In his wake
or her wake — glory being no disrespecter
of any people, any persons,
all are lit evenly and well by it.
If we never hear the musician
again, the music still lives. Lives
in the mouth of another, all our ears,
and the hands of the bearers — living being
no exclusionary state, no prison
for the art it engenders.
Glorious, living music here, though right now
no one hears. Hear that? No music now,
but the absence that demands it. No filler,
no stuffing, nothing just to add shape — the missing noise
was and is perfectly shaped already if it indeed arrives.
The artist is not the art. Sing for that glorious truth.
This warm,
this early,
sex
becomes a blues:
lemon squeezing,
starter mashing,
rolling,
tumbling,
juice sliding down our legs blues;
“can’t be satisfied”
rumbling out for challenge,
not lament.
No guitar here?
Use an ice cube instead,
stinging it, sliding it,
running fast between mouths
and bellies.
The sun will barge in soon enough.
How humid it’ll smell then,
our hair torn up
along with the room;
Chicago, sweet home Chicago in the background –
no matter how Mississippi
it gets in here
this warm, this early, this dark,
we always end up
asking each other,
over and over,
“Baby –
baby, don’t you wanna go?”
“he didn’t leave much to ma and me just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze” s. silverstein
if you thought it was written by Johnny Cash
you are forgiven a little
if you thought he was telling the truth
you are forgiven a little more
if you hate your name too
and all you have to fight it with
is your missing bad ass dad’s old guitar
you are not only forgiven everything
you are blessed and should forgive me
for everything I am about to say
“they’re dead wrong I know they are cause I can play this here guitar” weill, mann, lieber & stoller
can you explain
why it took four people to write one line
about a truth every 16 year old kid
with a death grip on a maple neck
learns by osmosis
from the first chord
“well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk” b. springsteen
can you
interrogate your guitar
till it owns up
to things you have never done
“the bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar” d. bowie
if you’ve not
stolen a guitar yet
have we even seen
your bitter yet
“your guitar it sounds so sweet and clear but you’re not really here it’s just the radio” l. russell
ghost superstar by dint
of your broadcast ominpresence
in fact in truth in real life
we end up usually alone
in a small room
with wood and wire
pen paper and bone
this is what
it does for you
does to you
kid
get ready
Dark Matter
