Nightwings
nightwings
we swooped
the avenue
slanting desire, vague
molten, pulsing swells
while city midnights drank
moonlight rock’n’roll
(first published in Verse-Virtual)
Jimi
Frontiers in the wind cry
steeping into the colors of the light
while crossing traffic to that place
of changes, voodoo chile and voodoo
children who were stone free,
whilst you beamed down rainbows
and built bridges from on high to
our third stone from the sun.
Foxy ladies and Mary dreamed with
you while you watched Joe escape
down Mexico way in yet another dream
through those gypsy eyes, eyes that
burned through a haze of purple,
that burned like a midnight lamp
in a nook in a watchtower, watching
and witching for a princess
and you were the prince,
the knight who slayed our
monster, manic depression.
White Mice
Early 1980.
I live in a house owned by the rent-a-car business next door,
which they’re only keeping till they can tear it down for
their expansion.
The bathroom upstairs
leaks into my kitchen, and
roaches wander in droves
through the night.
At least there’s heat, though the landlord
harangues me to push it down, while
the Puerto Rican family upstairs
harangues me to push it up.
The sun pours through my
kitchen window on a Saturday morn,
while I write, as always with
my radio on.
College station. WMSC.
I hear it. Unreal.
First, the drums rat-tat-tating
into a tease of
that nasty, taunting
bass line.
Then a guitar clangs in,
But only to punctuate the bass.
The bass carries the day.
Then, with no warning, that
voice from another planet,
that voice that rings and rattles
like no other I’ve heard.
The Mo-dettes.
The song is “White Mice”.
And soon I am hearing it everywhere.
At the Dirt Club, at Eats-U-Want Café,
in little pop-up punk joints in
the East Village, and on all the college
stations I listen to.
There’s something about that voice…
At once a shy little girl and a naughty woman.
I later learn that she is Swiss, not only with
a flighty accent, but also with a trace of a
speech impediment which makes discerning
the lyrics an impossible chore .
But we can imagine all sorts of poetry in them,
from Beat to Surreal to Dada to anything.
My buddy, Lodi Poet Laureate Ed O’Connor,
insists he hears a reworking of Rimbaud’s Season
In Hell with more sophisticated sophistry.
I figure it’s something like Subterranean Homesick
Blues, only updated with a New Wave sensibility.
Mickey Music on Main Ave tells me there is no album
yet. But they do have the single. I buy it.
On the flip side is “Masochistic Opposite”.
This side is excellent too, but
the only words I can make out are the title.
I listen and listen to that record, but it is the
early eighties, life is full, and eventually
I am on to other things.
Fast forward to 2010.
It is now standard fare to look up
ancient song lyrics on the web.
I have not thought about White Mice in
years, but one day it creeps into focus.
So I look it up.
I am flabbergasted.
Stupider, more idiotic, more senseless
lyrics could not be written!
Jane Crockford, Kate Korris, were you
really such asinine bimbos?
Damn! Was I listening to this claptrap
for so long, being such a stupid fool
as to admire it?
Betrayal!
After a few days I am thinking. Actually,
arguing with myself. Was not punk the ideal
of stupidity, the revolt against intellectuals
and the elites?
Think of Gang of Four with their ponderous anti-lyrics
in songs like “Ether” and “Natural’s Not in It”. Or the
Sex Pistols. When they told us they were “Pretty Vacant”,
who could deny that? And the Angry Samoans?.
And the Cramps? The Revilos? And so forth.
But wait a minute.
There was intellectual punk, too.
What about
the brilliant Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks?
Something Goes Wrong, I Believe, Orgasm Addict?
Harmony in My Head?,
And Howard Devoto, I am on fire and it’s the
rainy season.
So I can listen to White Mice. And know that
Crockford is no poet. And pretend that Ramona
is singing some foreign language. And such,
my friends, is post-post-post-post punk rationalized
life.
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