“It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement—that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.” —Freud
I) Out Of The Black
America is, after all
a nation of immigrants—not
a nation without a culture, but
a culture without a past, and so
America builds itself
from its one remaining natural resource:
coolness, for lack of a better term…
And so many of us kids
thought we found the final
after-school special,
the one to finally free us
of the burden of being cool;
but then one day—maybe
the day Nirvana t-shirts and pre-shredded jeans
showed up in Orange County malls—one day
even being uncool
cost more than any of us
could afford…
Let this be the story, then,
of the kids who just wanted
something of their own,
who paid for this
but instead got that,
who wait outside the
blessed circle—
faces faintly forming
out of the Black.
II) Disappear On The Wildside
And first there’s Kyle
who somehow didn’t believe
the 72-hour-hold nurse
when she assured him that
being raped by his dad at eight
isn’t necessarily what’s making him gay;
an endless string of sugar daddies and
down low married men
compose a tired rebuke
to the past…
Next there’s Jessie
who always thought
his parents wasted their
beach-house, being so busy…
Twenty years old and slinging weed
three blocks from the Ocean Beach Pier;
I honestly don’t know
where the tar heroin came from
—doing it off tin foil sheets—
and you can almost smell the sea air
from the ocean Jessie no longer
visits…
Finally, it’s Natalie,
the ultimate punk rock chick:
“that which does not kill me
just makes me angrier,” and again
I don’t know what happened
but after ten years it just
seems kind of hollow, she
composes her horizon
upon marrying the guy
with the union job and
finally finishing an Associate Degree
in Nutrition.
(Maybe I worry that I’m
somehow just like her…)
III) A Certain Lonely Heart’s Club Band
So the local venue crowned Dimitry
King of the Punks
having mastered the art of screaming
over the same three guitar chords;
Dimitry decided to write a song,
in secret, for his girlfriend,
a perfect punk ballad
to make her immortal, to make her happy;
it did neither. Two weeks later
he called me from the lobby of
the Capitol Records Building, having
already traded in for a silicone sister.
But what to name the band?
“Could you get away with,” I asked,
snubbing out a joint into an empty soda can,
“Sgt. Pepper And His Discontents?”
VI) Jane’s Recovery
Jane woke as blinds
cracked lines
of sunlight
across her bedspread;
the day is new and
the air is new and
she finally knows—
after holding her best friend’s
hair all night so she
could throw up chunks of
guilt and retribution—
Jane finally knows
this Sunday morning she can
put on her grandmother’s dress and
step out onto a pathway of moments
unencumbered, forgetful
of her mom and dad’s divorce
of who got the BMW
and who paid for the school
she dropped out of…
Free from her mother’s dreams and
her father’s drugs—
lost in their Woodstock mazes,
let them find their own way.
We do not
owe them
their renewal.
)… I wouldn’t dare try to do as good a job as this song, not in a poem, not in anything. It just can’t be done; the song is like, the Platonic ideal of a piece of art about age-imbalanced romances. Here’s a sample: