Stitches

1904 // Before Wackness Descended

In Jacksonville the riots are on TV

as a gaggle of child rappers take the stage.

The shrieking faces shrink down to LCD flatscreen height and width,

contained in the space of a pixel and as easily overlooked.

I can no more blame than explain my interest

in a 19 year old plastic pitbull of a human being,

a walking gimmick, a schtick-up if you will.

Stitches and the other youngbloods are glitches

in the pop culture matrix which makes this student

of the universe perversely curious.

Thankfully the pain of aging is quiet, mostly, though

sitting on the floor of 1904 with my head relaxed

against the rattling speaker cabinet I feel the clamor crescendo.

It’s midnight on Thursday and I have work in the morning.

Through a haze of – body heat? Fake cocaine? Wannabe endo?

Who knows what this thickness is that hangs over our heads

but the strobe lights pierce it effortlessly and through it I see

a groping and desperate thirst somehow crammed

and coerced into young white bodies.

I feel like a bully. Like I oughta get this superiority complex examined

because I can’t understand it, the clear rift dividing sincere from riff raff,

the blaring transparency of marketing turning its keen eyes on us.

You didn’t come to this stage by your talent, motherfucker. Who’s paying for these beats?

You disgust me, turning me even against weed, on stage looking like an eggplant

with a skullcap barely on your head, flashing a set of shiny golden teeth.

I feel like overturning every table in this tainted temple,

taunted by televisions mounted on historic brick.

Mmm I’m too old for this shit