Their Trimmings

Human, robot, human, robot, leather, bedazzled words lit up in lasers, steel, secret skeleton hands and vinyl. Steel walls, towers, two towers. Neon plays tricks for soft eyes. Each helmet is a hot zone. It’s always summer but never the beach. No trunks, just leather from head to toe, except for the steel. Shields always up, but always grounded, never stars. Robot, robot, human after all?

Hardcore

A spirit lost.
Naive are their ideals, their politics, perhaps
Young rebels still want to say something important.
Secret is the longing which fans the flames of discontent
For those who hear it: noise...
The ones who listen hear music, poetry, and the message.
New punks don't know how to be.
Romantics with nothing to romance, they sing what lines their pockets.
We see them on our lunchboxes, a commercial theatrical stage...
Express train to homogeneity.
Ourselves equal the frustration of a genie trapped in a Coke bottle.
In our hearts we know something's missing.
Loud, angry, uninhibited by self-consciousness or the restrictions of the normal.
And when it is felt, it is beautiful.
Fashionable for the few flying the flag
Ways to make people listen.

New Noise

A burrowing ache in my fingers, my neck, and my shoulders

Is the result of indecision.

Seven years I dreamed of a stage, a gilded cage

Five years I dreamed of guitar, a rising star

And all that time, my pen never left the page.

That singular fact has led me instead to turn

To places where it’s no longer fun to think

And I expect to be paid merely for the paper’s ink.

I feel…Refused.

This music stirs my frustrations like a fondue

Which thin to chowder and finally stew

And a silence follows which preludes a bursting of steam:

CAN I SCREAM?

My predispositions are out the door,

I pound my fists, my feet stomp the floor

I grip the invisible microphone stand

Like a rattle

I’m ready for battle

I’m never felt this obsessed

I no longer feel so possessed

But liberated, a frequency

Which is mine

I’m frozen in time

Like four who were Refused themselves

So they Refused everyone else

I lack the motion to move to the new beat

The new beat of selling your thoughts

If your soul isn’t worth their time

The new beat of keeping yourself on track

To deviate is a crime

The new beat of anger, the new beat of loss

The new beat of false opportunity

The new beat of destroying yourself

The new beat of destroying unity

The new beat will remove you from yourself

It consciously tries to blank you

The new beat!

The new beat!

The new beat!

Thank You

Unplugged

Thin wires sing weakly and hoarse

Black residue clings mischievously to fingertips

Pickups lean off-kilter

It matters not; they are silent.

Was it three years? Four years? Five?

Such claims would be unfair.

Just a collection of moments

Chords strung out of sequence, only occasionally,

Without a clear goal.

They don't sing loud enough

Play faster

Fingers don't hold tight enough

Play faster

Grasping for the frets, for the pick,

for meaning.

The human voice has wires

Notes that don't ring clear enough

Not enough force to strum through

If there was an amplifier

And the black rusty glue was brushed clean

There would be a symphony

Not a cacophony

The best amplifier is in my head

And if there's only one outlet

Why plug in anywhere else?