Oh! The Scene!

I Navigate the Hardcore Community
like Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly
Dancing with Concrete Shoes

You could stick your entire fist through that gauge
in his ear. If you did he would breakdown
and punch you in the gut. Fighting
is just as much a staple of the hardcore scene as dancing.
Pay the fee, aquire a wristband,
that’s your ticket to punch someone in the face.

First band, three incidents, two bleeding faces.
Bodies collide with the force of a shotgun of considerable gauge
The only constants that mark competitors are wristbands
and the fact that they choose to be present for the breakdown.
All these kids look like Gene Kelly with their dancing
they just don’t know it. They’d rather be fighting.

They go at it tooth and nail fighting
not afraid to take a kidney shot or kick each other in the face.
No tap, salsa, ballroom, or waltz dancing,
just hardcore. I step back to try to gauge
the crowd. The positive vibe suffers a breakdown
and Mikee helps make someone else get their own hospital wristband.

An hour before the show in a garage a dozen kids make fake wristbands
and sneak in to the show. The promoters nearly start fighting
but cooler heads prevail. Reason, rhyme, melody, and harmony breakdown
only while the bands play. At least they should. Face
the facts, this is the scene. The only gauge
suitable to tell who’s who is how hard the music plays and how much the kids dance.

I wasn’t lying when I said that when the kids dance they dance
like Gene Kelly. If the scene watched Singing in the Rain they’d exchange their wristbands
and two stepping for calmer pursuits and take their ears and un-gauge
them, become peace makers and priests instead of fighting,
and really love each other instead of breaking each others face.
Gene Kelly has the potential to single handedly make the scene breakdown.

It isn’t likely though. All the musical parts in his movies don’t have breakdowns
which is well known to be the only way to a scene kids heart. No amount of dancing
could ever make up for that, not even the prettiest face
on earth could entice the warrior wearing a wristband.
They’ll keep showing off, one uping each other, and fighting
and we’re still tempted to put our fingers through that gauge.

Stand back, gauge the momentum, watch structure breakdown
but continue fighting for relevance as the kids continue dancing,
wristbands on hands and troubled hearts while they punch each other in the face

This poem may come across as being irreverent

but be assured that is not my intention.

-----

The Great Commission

She is preaching the funeral of God.
I want her anyway.
Missionary dating leads to missionary death.
I’m ready to evangelize.

Another Freud poem

Freudian Sisters

Violin music drifts on the air
as Yente strolls with an old bald man in her purse.
Mamma says that if you want hair, marry a monkey.
But we’re hoping that Yente trips and dies
because the thought of that forty year old
underneath the sheets with me at night
is not kosher. I want a better match than that.

---

Tzeitel grew up with a man destined to stitch
and sew for the rest of his life. Tzeitel and Motel
gave each other a pledge. Unheard of.
They gave each other a pledge. Unthinkable.
They kept it quiet, even as Mama and Yente conspired
to wed Tzeitel to that bear of a man named Wolf.

As Pappa spread the news and Mazal Tov
swept our house, Tzeitel and Motel double-teamed Papa.
From behind the door I heard Pappa yelling,
Then who is it? Who is the match for Tzeitel?
Motel quaked like he stood before a pillar of fire.
Who is it? Who is it? It’s me.
More yelling.
Even a poor tailor is entitled to some measure of happiness!
And then we planned their wedding.

---

Hodel loved a revolutionary.
That’s not as respectable as Tzeitel’s tailor.
Revolutionaries don’t have sowing machines.
Revolutionaries have alternate interpretations
of the Good Book, and dances from Kiev,
and pretentious brown eyes not afraid to stare down
the Rabbi. Pappa said that Perchik was crazy
for hating wealth. Pappa came around
when Hodel and Perchik informed
him about their engagement.
They decided without parents,
without a matchmaker
But then again,
Did Adam and Eve have a matchmaker?
Yes they did, the same one as Hodel and Percik.
Then Pappa said goodbye at the train station.
Pappa, God only knows when we shall meet again.
She fell into his chest and his arms wrapped around her.
Then we shall leave it in His hands.

------------

This poem was inspired by the movie The Fiddler on the Roof. I highly recomend it.

The Melting Point of Gold...

The Color of Gold

Gold should not be allowed to rust on its
own. The perfect gift from man to wife melts
at the same temperature as sex. Bits
and pieces flake as ‘johns’ undo their belts.
Eliot Spitzer melted his wedding
ring many times with many other wives.
Did he realize while in the bedding
with her that he was connecting the wires
to an infernal machine to destroy
his marriage, his reputation, and wife.
What went wrong with the former altar boy?
Did he mean to cause so much discomfort?
Why would anyone want to destroy gold?
He took the gift and ruined the mold.

Inspired by a dream...

He Fights like the Waves

His six year old frame crashes
with the wave against the sandy bottom.
When he breaks the surface his cheeks
look like they have been victimized by sandpaper.
He stands up and trudges on the sandbar,
approaching the point where the waves break.
He miraculously passes the drop off. He swims
into the deeper water. Eighty pounds of nerve
against eight hundred pounds
of crushing force in each wave.
The current doesn’t help. Every inch of progress
should be three. The lunar force pushing the water
has conspired to kill the boy.
The wave upends him and tumbles him to the shore.
He lays on the beach, bleeding from his mouth,
lips, and nose. The boy is polka dotted
with bruises. He stands to try again.
I have to hold him to stop him.
He fights just like the waves.

Red Light Epistemology

Red Light Epistemology

What if I ran the red light
because I can
and because I drive a Hummer
and they drives Camrys.
I’d be fine,
they’d be flat.
We could even outrun The Police.
Sting doesn’t drive a Hummer.
Sting is a pansy,
he probably drives a Volkswagen
van. The ones that used to be for flower children
but now only creepy old men drive them.
The only way I wouldn’t rev
the engine and go on red
is if there was a Corvette
or a ‘pimpin’ Cadillac
in oncoming traffic.
It’s the American way to covet
your neighbor’s wife, house, boat,
but especially his car.
America doesn’t want Jesus
to bring us the gift of eternal life.
We want Xzibit or Lil’Jon or Chamillionaire
to bring us a blazin’ high grade ride,
sittin’ high on twenty fo’s.
The only acceptable alternative
to blingin’ and ballin’
is a 4x4 with more mud
on the under carriage
than an actual mud road.
Bonus points for a rifle rack
and John Deere’s logo
and a giant antenna for the CB radio.
You need that tricked out Cadillac
the mud running four by four
or a Hummer like the Govenator
to drive in style
unless you are a soccer mom
carting kids around all week.
Odds are your soccer mom-mobile
will be a tan Honda minivan.
I think most soccer moms
use their Honda as a vehicle
to carry out hypocrisy.
“Baby on board: Drive carefully”
Then she cuts you off in traffic
and flips you the bird as if it were
your fault she’s running late
and couldn’t get Starbucks
and still have time to take Jimmy
to soccer practice and April to
ballet and May to softball and
Augustus to football and I
don’t care that she has an honor
student and I’m glad
she ran out of months to name her children.
It would suck to be named November.
When she does stop at red lights
the eight kids in her car
will throw their trash onto the hood
of yours and moon you through the window
and laugh and cry when you honk at them
and mom flips you the bird again
and if it’s Friday she’ll really be in no
mood for that crap and she just might get out
of the van and go over to your window and
pull out a can of mace and then you’ll be sorry
that you had to go to the grocery.

Poetry is Legend

William Faulkner, James Branch Cabell,
and William Tecumseh Sherman are Legend


Lately, I’ve been uninspired,
disorganized, tired,
and twisted out of shape.
That’s the way men live,
like a railroad tie,
wrapped around a tree.
At every birth,
someone seizes the soul,
and twists it on itself,
so that it can never
be twisted back.
Human beings are only
Sherman’s Neckties in disguise.
A few brave ones
are willing to rebel
against what they are
and twist their spiral
soul to its original shape
and create a world
where lovers don’t remember
where they met
and heartbreak is easy to forget
and no one teaches children to grow.
There is no love in this place,
only rail roads tied around trees.
They refuse to accept this.
The Poets lift up hearts
and hold their hands against
the wounds of the world.
Poetry will be our rebellion
against what we are.

I've drafted this five times now...

Skinny Dipping will be the Death of You

You test the water
to see if the chill is enough
to give you a fever.

You check the waves
for dangerous fins.
The crystal blue water

is clear around our boat.
You slip off your clothes
and step off the deck.

From the shore I see you
displacing the water.
I’m not used to your body yet.

I’m not used to the way
your hair sticks
to your back and neck

after it has been drenched.
I’m not used to the way
water swirls around you

when nothing separates
the ocean from you.
Your body perplexes me

in the sunlight.
I row back to the boat
with my back to the boat.

You float on your back
oblivious to the tangle of
gear beneath the waves.

This old anchorage
holds a dozen anchors and their tackle.
The ropes make a Jacob’s ladder

to entangle you in the coils.
You allow yourself
to dip into the quiet blue.

The ropes snag your leg
and tie you down,
pulling you with the current.

The anchor-weight drags
you below the surface
and threatens to keep you.

You try to fathom the implications
of dying underwater.
I row in a passive manner.

I stow my clothes below deck
intending to join you.
Your outstretched hands

extend just above the water line.
Through the water,
I see the panic on your face.

I grab a skinning knife,
intent to loose the fouled rope.
I jump into the water.

to pull you from the water,
to buoy you,
to save you from the waves.