The loving light of our Lord is being sent
to bring renewed health to you.
You are His people and He wants your healing
And salvation through your prayers and
Confidence in His Holy Works.
We pray God will lighten your burden and
will help you to spread the Word and Love
of God to those who call upon Him.
Skeptic
Because you see the skull
glaring back in the mirror
like a traffic light,
you think you see
beneath surfaces.
You see yourself a visionary.
If I try to look
beyond the skull,
you think I’ve missed it.
I look out my office window
and all I see are skulls,
even in the daylight. You
wait until it’s dark,
and miss the gray redundancy
of funerals while you squint
in the yellow haze
of your cheap electric light.
But that’s your way.
You walk into a churchyard
with your plastic sack
full of straw-men and equations
wrapped around your neck.
You smell dirt,
so you think the air
is made of dirt,
and you leave,
afraid to breathe.
Hildegard von Bingen Consoles a Skeptic
Line the decomposing days up end to end
across the velvet dusk. Burn the brickwork
of the tower, and the spiral stairs
to the finite clouds.
(Ash in the earth. Ash becomes the earth.)
Burn the sound, the air, the light that burns
within your head, that bursts the skull
apart with pain, with vision. Burn
until the smoke and ashes
red the coming dawn,
then breathe it in
so it becomes your air, your life.
(Ash in the earth. Ash becomes the earth.)
Separate dead ash
from what has died, and remember
that what burns to ash
cannot be burned again,
that what is earth was once of blood and flesh.
Flesh took form from ash
and then consumed itself with fire
of the soul within. Ash
in the earth. Ash
returns to earth.
What has burned returns, and what returns
will rise again.
Three Days After
The city gleamed on the horizon. The sky
was an impenetrable gray. You did not speak.
An angel stood between us – flaming sword,
glimmering gold armor, face concealed in fire
as we tried to face each other standing
on a charcoal-colored slab of rock in the Nevada desert.
Since your burial on Friday, I had prayed
to see you any way I could, but when I closed my eyes
and waited for a vision or a visitation, only darkness.
Now here we were, and I could barely see you past the blaze
of this imposing force, the fire and the terror,
the metallic glare of blade and armor, the blinding sheen.
I longed to touch you, but I could not move
except to tremble, tried to speak to you, to ask you, why
must it be here, like this, why can we not see each other,
why do you not say a word? but an inarticulate dry gasp
was all that left my burning throat. The angel answered
in an ageless, sexless voice as cold as lead:
From this point on, you will not see her anymore
except like this, with me, a wall of fire separating day
from darkness of the living flesh. And if you see her,
you will not recognize her as she is until it is too late
and she has vanished back into the realm of light.
At that he stepped back, pulled up his sword
so I could see you better. You looked at first
much as you always had, your black silk dress,
your shimmering gold scarf – but your face looked empty,
motionless, pale, your eyes as if stitched shut.
The angel came again between us, his fire
eclipsing you completely. He stood silent, blazing. And I
stood back against the gray,
and cursed his brightness.
The Death of Saint Joan
I.
You did not see a win. The voices blazed brighter than the fire that burned you. Then they stopped. You did not see a win, but waived your shimmering sword against the glare of sun, crown, miter. Fire. The black smoke from your burning body fouled the dimming sky before your dying eyes. You did not blink, but watched in front of you the beggar’s cross, two fastened twigs held skyward by a shaking, unseen hand. The fight was over. All the guiding voices, silenced. Men who held the keys to England’s throne and heaven’s gate had signed your writ. You could not have seen a win.
History is written by those fools, the winners. How they’d love to sanitize you, make you sane, prop you up as practical, mainline. Pragmatic farm-girl with a social worker’s sense. Civic minded. Middle-class. You and I know better. You, my beautiful and butch protectress, my warlord of the gallows and the sanitarium, with sharpened blade, with glimmering quixotic drag, screaming at the sun your stubborn creed, your visionary doom. You, who did not see a win, but leapt, soul first, into the fiery arms of darkness, waiting for an unseen light to catch you.
II.
Chain, embers, shadow. Ashes
on the ground.
Soot and bone dust on the ground.
Dried twigs and branches
singed to scattered fragments,
black and brittle on the ground.
Here the heretic of voice and metal
burned in the waning daylight
while collaborator churchmen, stunned,
watched in muffled horror flesh
reclaimed by fire to eternal void.
Now, the silence of the dusk.
A dagger of white stone
stands up out of the heap of cinder
and charred shackles.
A long dagger of breastbone
sharpened by the flames,
flanked with ash in the growing darkness.
Night. All that is left – heart
become bone, become sword.
III.
I will not see tonight. I will not raise a blade
to silence and the moon of black unseeing fire.
I will embrace the ashes. All I know
is dust that stops all speech, the choking silence
of the final flames, the heart that would not burn,
the desecrated ashes scattered in the unclean river.
My voices are the heretic, sealed
in a metal crypt beneath a sanitarium,
the shrinking daylight screamed to silence
by the burning of the keys, the beggar’s cross.
The fight is over. I do not hold a key
behind the black sky in the smoke of silence
and the burning gallows of the body.
I will embrace the ashes on the ground.
Consubstantial
I was eating one clear night on the hood of my ’83 Buick the Body and Blood of Christ. Not some bowdlerized symbol, mind you, I mean the fleshy substance of the soul in all its agonizing glory, body of unending matter, and of spirit without start or end, and of time collapsed into eternal light beneath the steely moonlight of December in Las Vegas, frozen night pierced with light that poured through stippled punctures in the fabric of the dark. I had not planned it. I only wished to drown the garish noise left from the day. I needed a drink. I drank the wine I found, and that was all. All that is seen and unseen, maker of all that is seen and unseen, burned and trickled down my throat; throat, soul, and self-transformed into the Mother of Creation’s womb as that dark penetrated me, consubstantial with the flesh and fire she bears, Buick rusting and ephemeral beneath the weight of earthbound flesh. I saw that the food was good, the wine as sweet as blood, as thick and effervescent with the heat of life.
When I got back, I found the only one awake, beyond her recent death, the dying light of her apartment burning through the pre-dawn dark, sitting up in what was once her deathbed, golden scarf around her neck, drinking brandy-and-espresso as she waved me in. I told her everything and took a drink. She told me, what you saw is what you’re drinking now, no more or less, and what I drank before your birth, before my own. The wrinkles on her face looked chiseled and eternal. You do not know what you have drunk, she said, but you will die from it with gratitude. Tell anyone you want, but it will only sound like silence of the dark. I tried to ask her what she meant, but all that came out was the shimmering dark music of eternal silence as she slipped back into her celestial night.
Alone and drunk, I stepped back out into the growing dawn and climbed into the shadow of my Buick, a symphony of darkness on my trembling lips.
I completed my MFA in poetry at Syracuse University. My poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Gargoyle, Pensive, SurVision, Maintenant, Zymbol, Poetry is Dead, ABZ, Fjords, San Pedro River Review, Four Chambers, Snail Mail Review, Enizagam, and The Café Review. I teach creative writing at Scottsdale Community College.
My Childhood Butterflies
The colors of the butterflies
Still now after many years I can see on my fingers
The loving butterflies, the sweet butterflies
Still now flying on the eyes in the morning or afternoon
Every now and then
The garden smiles on
My childhood attention glows with such lights
Tinged in the life’s color
Bleed with the experiences in every ups and downs
But the sweetness of the glow
Never allows ringing the bell ‘Out’.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
16/11/2019
Resurrection
The leaves of the lemon tree fall down
It’s just before the winter though not encircled with mist
Travelling on the wheel of time
Makes them leave and a chance for the new
The yellow dry leaves scattered on the ground
The green new beams on the morning sun
One by one it covers the braches
It mixes with the blue to the sky
What a matching color of the earthly bound
The yellow bids adieu
And the green starts
Even thousands of years later.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
16/11/2019
DROP-KICKING 2020 INTO HISTORY
Starting over.
Starting fresh,
as if the slate was clean,
all baggage safely stowed,
no bridges burnt.
The meme is a baby,
eyes wide with hope,
heart filled with confidence and ignorance
in equal measure.
2020 was a soap opera of catastrophe.
Wildfires. Hurricanes,
Worldwide pandemic,
the U.S. leading in infections and deaths.
A president partly impeached.
An economy mostly derailed.
Election results rejected by the loser.
who sicced his lawyers on the courts,
and discussed a military coup.
Opened prisons instead, for droves of cronies.
We would like to leave all traces of 2020 behind.
But we bring into 2021 the cause of it all:
ourselves.
Our society, with its huge rich/poor split.
Our tendency to say, “Me first.
Too bad about you.”
Our leaders, who magnify what is in our hearts.
The New Year Baby is young and fresh.
But history allows no “do-overs.”
We can’t return to “Start.”
We pick up where we left off—
and perhaps this time choose the right direction
before we start walking.
We wade through trash of our own making.
But we can stride briskly.
And no one said we couldn’t whistle.
Copyright 12/2020 Patricia Doyne
LET FREEDOM RING!
Like all voyages,
the Titanic took to the sea with an all-hands drill.
Picture the captain saying,
“These life jackets are for emergencies.
This is how you put them on.
But, of course, wearing them is optional.
Let everyone use their own judgement.
In paratrooper training, here’s the enlightened instructor:
“When you jump, this is how to open your parachute.
But they are cumbersome.
Some say wearing heavy packs is bad for your back.
So you are free to wear one or not.”
One of the most dreaded diseases is leprosy.
A colony of lepers was once quarantined on Molokai.
Do you suppose Father Damien told his flock,
“Hawaii is a state, now.
You all enjoy First Amendment freedoms,
such as Freedom of Assembly.
So you don’t have to stay here.
Feel free to fly to other islands, or to the mainland;
get together with your family and friends;
have a wild night at the bar. Enjoy!”
When motorcycle helmets were made mandatory,
not all states saw the need.
Iowa, for example, felt helmets should be an individual choice.
Like covering your mouth when you cough.
Or wearing masks during a pandemic.
And then there’s the freeway.
Cop stops you, says,
“Do you know how fast you were going?
Well, that’s okay: 70 is just a suggestion,
not meant to restrict your driving style.
Guy like you wants to get on the open road and fly!
I understand.
But you might want to get your tail-light fixed.”
On city streets, too, just use good sense
Say you oversleep, you’re running late.
It makes sense to speed up, blow a stop sign or two.
Reject the oppression of red lights.
Just do what you gotta do.
Another thing! All those gun control fascists?
Haven’t they heard about the Second Amendment?
You can keep a rifle or a military arsenal—
it’s no one else’s business
You shouldn’t need a shrink’s permission.
If schools aren’t safe from crazy kids,
arm teachers. Custodians. Yard duty. The lunch lady.
Don’t limit constitutional rights.
So, people!
Let’s hear it for freedom!
No one should be forced to consider commonweal.
Force is a tool of repression,
an arm of the Socialist State.
Ask the kids forced to get kindergarten shots.
Did they choose to get stuck with a needle?
What’s the deal here?
Isn’t this America?
Copyright 12/2020 Patricia Doyne
Messenger
Said when to time
this moment stand
I step to stone
from the sand
A challenge met admit to All
A hill to climb as if to Stall
But with this honest path I take
Let Quiet mirror waters make
In faith I ask as if Loves Rest
In hopes to hear from Love’s Best
Temple mine My Sun My Sky
Warm myself Breathe in then Sigh
I’m not made to weather
within Earth’s Storm!
As seasons Pass this may Transform.
Here. A garden, sun morning Lifts
Brush Palm to flower passage Drifts
Empty my Heart to be Refilled
Smell the soils where Life is tilled.
As tears well up on Letting Go
These eyes drift with feet to slow
Then glides within from away
An insect Bird a path to Lay
Through my ether pats the Air
To flutter up a spiral Stair.
Tilts and teeters Velvet Fan
Takes a flora near my hand
Face to face, I fear great Grace
That all my Baggage may Replace
To Walk the Talk that I have Lent
To fill my Sails that once were Spent.
To take attention off of me
I see its flower as if a Tree.
But its eyes to mine Do not Relent
So with this Bird a message Sent.
“Imagined or real this time I steal
So you can learn again to feel
But Don’t Look Down
Don’t Look Down
Raise your eyes
Reverse your frown
The tears will come
as they may
And wet the soils
We’re made that way.”
This sturdy insect, I feel its Strong Legs climb my finger.
It took the Sun But did not linger
Pumpin’ 4 The Man by A. Iwasa
While working on the ‘zine Clevo Style, I read Good Trouble by Joe Biel, and was inspired by everything he wrote about dead end jobs to write about the crappy jobs most scenesters I knew worked in the mid-to-late ’90s.
My first job was completely steeped in the party and music scene I had been in the midst of for a couple years by 1996: a fast food job at Parma Town Mall. It had its pros and cons, but it was there, watching food float in the fryers, where I decided I needed to take a vocational class in case the whole music thing didn’t work out for me. I suppose this shows a lack of dedication, making a Plan B. But considering how The Revolution hasn’t been happening since 2001, perhaps I was smarter then!
None of my coworkers were in the scene, but tons of the other mall rats were. Some friends, others? Enemies. There were rockers who we shared mutual hatred for us that rivaled the intensity of our conflicts with some white hip hop kids and jocks, who sometimes made walking to-and-from the mall dangerous.
Two of my band’s shows got cancelled in a row. After dropping hundreds of dollars to professionally record at Spider Studio, we didn’t have enough cash to release our second demo. After a particularly crappy day at work, I started kicking a garbage can in front of the mall, screaming lines from a record Schnauzer’s Steve Eggs recorded, of himself screaming on a roller coaster, that he released as Nut Screamer on a split 7″ with Pissed Off Orgasm: “I don’t care if I’m a pea brained loser! I don’t care if I don’t have a fucking future! I hate everything about life! I JUST WANT TO BE BURNED, LIKE A FUCKING PIECE OF BACON!”
My friends laughed, some cute young women laughed at, not with, us I suppose, and a stranger yelled, “Me too!” I quit my job, our rhythm guitarist quit our band, and that all fell apart. School started back up, and a friend I made through the first ‘zine that published my work, Possum, started taking me to Tremont, Clevo. My first visit to a commune, The House, and my first spoken word performance, at a cafe named Isabella’s if I’m not mistaken, were in that neighborhood that fall. I was starting to get new ideas about creative possibilities, and probably should have dropped out of school and got on with my life before my recent relapse into drug use totally spun out of control.
Instead, after I ran out of the little I had saved from my first job, I bunkered down, got another fast food job closer to my mother’s house, and eventually worked with two of my best friends from Parma’s High, also part of the party and music scene that I was in, and worked with other new and old friends.
One was a middle aged woman who had been friends with Floyd from Floydband in the ’70s. I also met my first two real Hobo friends who worked there while my first couple of old school friends hit The Road with dreams of doing nude house cleaning when they got to Seattle. It was a mostly fun time, but the drugs and booze were a gnarly underside.
My favorite memory from that job was really belting out Pumpin’ 4 The Man by Ween, the kind of guilty pleasure I’d like to believe I wouldn’t dig if I hadn’t heard it when I was 14. I was sweeping the parking lot, looked up, and realized a slightly older and very attractive woman was trying to eat in her car with the window rolled down, and was frozen, eyes bulging in abject horror as she stared at me, part way into a bite. I quickly shut the hell up, and finished my job, praying though I didn’t even believe in God at the time, that she wouldn’t snitch on me for what she probably perceived as a vulgarity laden rant, like the woman who claimed she saw a couple of us smoking weed by the Dumpster. Would I have been the irresponsible of a teenager?!
My nearly two year career at what I then frequently called Burger World, in honor of Beavis and Butthead’s employer, was still in full bloom when my vocational class, Graphic Communications, started at Parma’s High.
This was inspired by local death metalists, Descend, who were all printers, did their own printing, and even at one point all worked in the same print shop.
One of the really fun things about Graphic Communications, the printing class for the shared vocational system with Normandy (AKA Normally High) and Valley Forge, is that apparently if you failed the aptitude test the councilors just stuck you in printing. Out of 20 or so kids, I was one of maybe three that actually wanted to become a printer!
Telling one of the farmers I worked for in southern Iowa about how most of the other juvenile delinquents ended up in my printing class, he said, “It sounds like you went to high school in Soviet Russia!” I think he meant that as a bad thing, but the Communist Party was enough of a force in northeast Ohio historically that it actually owned the building Speak in Tongues, and The Pieta/The Pit were in! Further, Gus Hall, a former Chairman of the Communist Party, USA and four time presidential candidate for The Party, had been a leader of the organization in Clevo during its glory years around 1939.
Back to class: our vocational classes were three periods a day, five days a week, for two years. I was one of a few students from our class who got hired to work there in my off periods, after school and some vacation days. I went on to work there for five months after graduating, adding up to a year and a month actually working in the industry for my first bout.
We listened to a lot of great music, and had some good and bad times, some of which spilled over into or backwashed from the scene between both students in the classes and other employees of the print shop.
Matt from Abrasion/Temper Tantrum and later Crash of ’59 was one of my favorite in this cast of characters. He was critical in helping me go my first year sober when we were down with claiming Straight Edge, and a fun game playing, drinking buddy after we both sold out.
Maria was another, who listened to a couple of my bands, and had a brother who went on to play in at least one band that did shows. She kept a year book photo of our class in her car after we graduated.
Then there was this kid we called Hillbilly Frank or Franor… He Loved The Cramps, Carcass, and a host of other great bands. When he wasn’t lecturing me about my need to lay off of drugs, he was asking me when I was going to start again, when he realized what a mess I remained sober. One of my fondest memories of high school was him spending an extended period of time trying to reason with me to not be upset about something, before he lost it and yelled, “Cheer the fuck up before I punch you in the face!” When I moved into a Christian Compound in Uptown, Chi, my room mate their assigned to monitor me through their Orwellian “Buddy” system was called “Hippie Frank” by mostly everyone, I called him Franor since I actually did like him.
Our first year printing teacher, Bill, was a childhood friend of Jeff Hatrix/Jeffrey Nothing from Hatrix and Mushroomhead. He found out about Mushroomhead through me, after noticing the Hatrix graffiti I drew on a cute lady’s folder. Bill tracked down Jeffrey Nothing through a mutual friend, and interviewed him for the school newspaper, on the condition that he not print Jeffrey’s real name. It turned out Bill also went to grade and high school with one of my mother’s cousins! They had nothing but nice things to say about each other.
That cousin, actually took me to see Face Value the one time I got to see them. Luckily it was when they opened for 7 Seconds, because when they played with Agnostic Front and Ringworm, another one of my mother’s cousins went, and not being familiar enough with Hardcore to guess it was going to be in the Agora Ballroom, not the larger Theater, he just followed the trail of blood to the Ballroom…
In her stone washed jeans and Christmas sweatshirt, a steady stream of posi Punx asked her in a friendly manner who she was there to see. She had a blast, and actually wrote a paper about how she thought Do It Yourself (DIY) Punk was giving young people the tools they needed to advance their lives in productive ways. She read a draft of it to two of my friends and me, asking us questions for a later version. I have no idea what she did with it, but she was a pharmaceutical sales rep (the family joke was she was a drug dealer, my friend Sarah who she also drove to see 7 Seconds didn’t get the joke at first and was like, “She looks really conservative for a drug dealer!”) so who knows what sort of industry think tank that might have ended up in… She also went to at least a couple of the bar shows I played at, one of my only white relatives who supported my creative endeavors over the years without any mean spiritedness about it.
One day in the print shop, while I was trying to clean out a paper jam of a press, Bill turned it on and almost ripped off my hand! It was the first time I cursed out a teacher. Bill smiled through the whole thing like a cat that just ate a canary. When my shock induced tirade was over, he said, “Sorry man, I’ll buy you a Coke.”
An odd outcome of this was that day I decided to start making playing bass a daily discipline. I had been occasionally noodling with guitar for about five years at the time, but almost losing my hand was a real wake up!
About a year later, I reminded Bill that he never bought me that soda. Instead of coughing up the change, he turned to Franor and said, “This kid’s going to show up to your twenty year class reunion, and still complain about not getting that Coke!”
Bill was in a barber shop quartet at the time. We only talked about it once, but the way he described it to me was a revelation: there was a barber shop quartet scene! It still never ceases to amaze me that there is basically a scene around everything.
One of the only reasons I started taking classes at Cuyahoga Community College (AKA Tri-C or Try High) in in 1999 was that to keep my job at the Parma Print Shop, I had to be a student. I dragged my feet in registering for classes that fall, and even only taking three classes ended up giving me such a screwed up schedule that the print shop job turned into something impossible to deal with, especially since I was trying to walk everywhere which meant I lost a lot of potential work time walking, also stressing myself out with my newly found sobriety’s bursts of energy and wing nut ideas like only sleeping every other day, and eating while I walked.
Luckily I had enough saved up to take most of the semester off from work, since my mother didn’t charge me rent as long as I was a student. This also nicely coincided with a renaissance of Parma bands. I played a few bar shows, cut a demo, supported the other local bands like Abrasion and The Getaway Drivers, and saw some great international acts such as Danzig, Samhain, Six Feet Under and Manowar.
My hair reached my waist for the first time, I got a couple tattoos much to my mother’s chagrin, this time along with much of the Parma Youth Straight Edge and Assholes, in our dude’s older brother’s 100% DIY basement tattoo parlor.
It seemed like everything was going full stride for me, but wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. I floundered a bit in school, started washing dishes professionally at an upscale Italian place, and between semesters, quit my band.
I still haven’t seen The Godfather, so at first the joke to the name Corleone’s was lost on me. Also, this was way before Kill the Irishman came out, so I was only dimly aware of old school mob violence, and mostly associated it was Italians in Chicago and New York.
I actually found it charming the way my boss, who was Polish and Lutheran, wanted to appear mafioso along with all his small business owner buddies. Remember, this was in a town at least once so Italian it was called Parma.
He also had this working class hero thing going, at least in my book. He frequently talked about working at some sort of metal fabrication factory for years, saving up to start his business. All these years later he remains one of the most fair people I’ve ever worked for.
The thing I find weird in retrospect, is how many people his age have to remember the dozens of gangland car bombings that happened in Clevo in the 1970s. I mean, maybe that’s why he knew the Parma Youth Straight Edge kids he hired weren’t bad, but most of his peers, how could they always talk about how violent people of color were or judge us for how we dressed when they lived through that era?!
As usual some other things were lost on me at the time: Erba, the last name of guys from a slew of local bands such as Face Value, Windpipe, the H-100s and 9 Shocks Terror, is actually the name of a city in Italy, which I only semi-recently learned while reading a collection of Antonio Gramsci’s writings on the post World War I factory take over wave that had swept Italy at the same time that much of Central and Eastern Europe was in the throes of Soviet styled insurrection.
Also, neighboring Seven Hills’ name has to be a reference to the Seven Hills of Rome, which I only learned about after a Seventh Day Adventist picked me up hitchhiking, and gave me a DvD about the Book of Revelation that I had actually prayed would be a granola bar when he started pawing around his back seat for it. I felt obligated to watch it with a couple comrades when I finally got back to the Bay Area out of respect for the driver, and a nearly jumped out of my seat at the reference!
Back to Corleone’s: I believe Chris from Allergic to Whores was the first one of us to start working there. Culinary Arts was actually his vocational at Normally High, and he cooked there. I believe he was Lerpy from Abrasion and Striking Distance’s reference when he started working there, busting suds.
Lerp worked his was up into management, and when he became the Head Dishwasher, he called me up and offered me a job after he heard I needed one. He also hired his band mates from Striking Distance, John and Josh. We listened to Hardcore, Metal, Punk and the local oldies station, much to the confusion and annoyance of most of our coworkers. I ate so much out of the bus pans that I was almost fired for it, by the Head Server who had known Floyd from Floydband in the 1980s, when he was dating a significantly younger woman.
When the spring semester ended in 2000, I hung around long enough after my last final to take my mother out for Mothers’ Day, then spent one more night at her house before actually buying a Greyhound Ameripass (as opposed to the counterfeiting scam so popular among the other Travelers of the era) and set out for my first trip alone to the west coast. It was also my first trip to the American South West and Deep South. I saw my hometown out of a bus window as I turned 20 On The Road.
Ex-band mates started a rumor that I went to Cali to join a cult, which sadly wasn’t true. I was going to Phoenix to check out a trade school, and figured if I was going all the way out to Arizona I might as well re-visit the West Coast and see what else I could get into. When I did move to Chicago to visit a Christian Compound in Uptown, I used to like to joke that the rumor became true in kernel.
I eventually wandered back to my mother’s and Corleone’s, then working in an electronics factory and taking just one class on Saturdays. I actually started playing in a contemporary worship band at a Four Square Church, which is the only all around good experience I’ve had playing in bands. Our guitarist, Arthur, had been part of the small but lively Christian Hardcore Scene in Clevo in the early-to-mid ’90s. I can’t remember what band he was in, but Six Feet Deep, who was on the Dark Empire Strikes Back comp, Mortal and Forge were the cadre of that milieu. One of Parma’s High’s marching band’s drummers circa 1995, Mike, was also in one of those bands.
As time wore on slowly, and I day dreamed about hitch hiking to Alaska, I went back to professionally washing dishes, working my way up to Head Dishwasher and my only stint in management, and took classes for two years straight including summers to finish school with my factory savings. I did a few more ‘zines as I tried to figure out a way to relate to the people I was around, but they seemed to be more popular outside of the scene with seemingly random co-workers and class mates.
One of The Getaway Drivers started waiting tables at Corleone’s but I didn’t recognize him. He told me he had a video of my jumping on stage at their first show, and grabbing the mic out of James’ hands and singing Skulls by The Misfits when they covered it. I had expected half the crowd to mob the stage, but no one followed me up!
I remember James’ look of shock as he let go of the mic, eyes bulging, mouth open. I looked back, perplexed, shrugged, and sang the song as I would since James stopped. I felt like Henry Rollins singing Clocked In for Black Flag when he was still in State of Alert!
Many people in the crowd also looked shocked, and I felt like Moses parting the Red Sea as kids scattered to avoid getting kicked in the face when I jumped down. I was sort of a bloody mess to boot, and you can still see a scar on my left hand from that show.
But 9-11 was the definitive end of all that for me. I haven’t played guitar or bass since that day, and I’m almost ashamed to write how all these years later the war is still going on, but the Afghans appear poised to end it the old fashioned way: by winning.
But on a lighter note, if you haven’t already, next time you Consult The Oracle, please search the youtube for descend cleveland death metal demo 1995, and as Franor would say whenever a good song came on the stereo in the Print Shop: “Make it loud! This is the song that started it all!”
1606—the bubonic plague,
the Black Death—
raged unchecked,
ending life for 25 million people,
in a world
without miracle medicine,
without vaccines,
closing London theaters
for fear of contagion.
Yet from this fear
Came Shakespeare’s
King Lear,
An aged king driven mad
By perceived betrayal,
By loss of power,
Wandering the heath,
Deep in the night,
Raging at the storm,
And ultimately screaming
From the depth of his soul
“I AM A MAN/
MORE SINNED AGAINST
THAN SINNING!”
2020—Coronavirus,
New plague,
Killing millions,
Shutting down normalcy
For fear of contagion,
And as if an ancient,
Fictional king
Has come to life,
an aged President driven mad
By perceived betrayal,
By loss of power,
Wanders the internet
Raging at the world,
Screaming over and over And louder and LOUDER,
“RIGGED, A FRAUD
A STOLEN ELECTION,
I DID NOT LOSE!
I CAN NOT LOSE!”
Did Shakespeare know?