6 poems today,
Wanted to see what I could come up with,
Are they rough...yes,
Are some of them short and to the point... Also yes,
But the emotion still rings true.
3% battery...
2% left...
1%...
Goodnight

The bugs have overwhelmed my deet defence,
So I've retreated behind the screen door,
Smoking by the doorway, leaning back in a chair,
Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, and Christine McVie are haunting me with their words,
To never break the chain...
My eyes feel like there's grit in them,
I drink a glass of water to rehydrate a bit,
To counteract the cigarette's sting,
Of 2 packs smoked when I should have only smoked one.
I feel like a record player, and my table belt is just slightly off kilter,
Making me so my rounds just a little too fast,
Just fast enough to be noticeable and an annoyance.
13% battery left,
How many more can I do?

I sit here.
Contemplating it all,
Of the difficulties and obstacles that one must encounter,
When in the pursuit of making a concept album.

So many parts must go into it,
To tell a proper narrative,
With lyrics written well enough to not just sound like spoken word.
Rush is a master of this technique,
To be able to make such an easily understood story,
All one has to listen to do is listen to the lyrics,
Acknowledge the musical cues,
Maybe is given a few lines of backstory,
And is at least a little bit smart,
They are told quite a touching tale.

Pink Floyd does it well,
Telling tales of oppression,
Of goodbyes to friends,

The Who do it multiple times,
From a young London man,
Besiged by nostalgia for the bad old days,
To the telling of a deaf, dumb, and blind kid,
And his struggles as he goes through life.

Green Day seems to have done it most recently (in the proper format) with some success,
The struggles of their "Jesus of Suburbia",
A story of anger, love, rejection, and suicide.

It seems like most time the protagonist of concept albums always get the end of the stick,
Why is that?
That the underdog can't ever seem to catch a break?
Death is his end destination,
No ifs, ands, or buts about it,
That or they are placed in a situation where death is preferable,
Because all hope is lost?
Or if they're caught on the cusp of the unknown,
Which can be quite as bad.

So here's to you, you lunatics,
You rebels of causes untold,
You'll live in these story's forever,
Your vinyl Valhalla victorious and verbose.

Anthony Kedis is rolling like a runaway train,
His voice carrying too much momentum to be stopped,
He just keeps rolling down a track of guitar solos.
It's unusually hot here,
As I wipe sweat from my brow.

My bottle of water is sweating on the table,
My eyes are stinging from the heat and perspiration from my forehead.

Flea is laying it out hard,
His slaps on the bass with specific design.
It's almost time to go to bed,
Got to get back into a rhythm.

If one's body were a book,
What would mine say to the world?
Would it be a tale of injuries and woe?
Or like trophies to admire in the years to come?

Would my tattoos tell the story of why I got each individual one,
The mind frame I was in when I got them?

Would my thrice broken nose,
Crooking just slightly to the right,
tell tales of fist fights and rough housing,
or of the time I spilled face first into the cement, when my bike flipped on me.

What of the scars?
Do they tell of workplace accidents,
Of battle, of burns and tight scrapes?
When I busted my brow on a marble windowsill,
Or when I busted my cheek wide open from being hit with a pipe?

Tattoos a plenty,
Each could be explained like an ancient epic,
They are only put on because they are earned,
Through blood, sweat, and pain
By way of spiritual revelation and as a proclamation of faith?

Maybe it's the imperfections that tell the real story,
Wrinkles caused by a brow that is furrowed far too often,
Or the creaking of my right hand,
From when the fingers have been broken and bruised too much.

Would my eyes,
My windows into my soul,
Would they still be bright and shining, or would they be dull and weak?

Bill Wyman and **** Jagger are sitting down by the fire with me,
Preaching out from the tiny speaker in the small radio I brought with me,

The crackle of the fire and the upward avalanche of cherry embers into the air distract me for a second,
A dance of heat and light that has entranced me since I've been a child.

I light a smoke using a stick I've been using to stir the bonfire,
Fortuitous for me because I forgot my lighter inside when I last went to get more beer.

Drums lull me back into the song,
Jagger laying out the words like an expert mason,
His words are the bricks that the song is built on, sturdy and precise,
The message they lay out is strong.

That every man has a darkness in him,
It's been there since the very first sin,
A little devil on our shoulder,
Whispering sweet nothings in our ear.

The bonfire a perfect example,
The higher the flame,
The denser the darkness seems to pool,
Just outside the light.

At times you will be weak,
This is the pain of being human.

The song changes to one of a plea,
One of asylum,
From the chaos of the world at large,
A world that we had in 1969,
Desperate voices screaming for a stay of execution.
Would you be one of the people I wonder,
Who would stand against the night,
To save the hopeless and downtrodden.
A hero of the people,
And a bane to those who would do the people harm.

The fire has died down,
Only the bluest of flames are licking up from the wood.
I add another log as another song comes,
In a flash I am transported to England in the times of '66,
The viewpoint of a depressed youth,
Wishing the world wasn't as bright as it was.
The instruments slithering about like a cobra,
Ready to strike at any moment.

I take the large gallon bucket and upend it over the flames,
The water drowns wood and flame.
The fire hissing in pain as steam is given birth to.

The small radio now had Eric Burdon wailing to me Baptist-Style about the dangers of the Big Easy,
As I head back inside.

Justin Chancellor is blowing my mind,
His timing as he hammers on his bass,
Setting the tone in the picture Maynard James Keenan paints as he rips through the events,
A great separation between sects of the faith,
The horrid fate of a monolith,
To crumble and burn,
Alone and lost,
Adrift a raft of ashes,
Floating out to sea.

The taste of tobacco, tar, and ash is too much at that moment,
I stub out the smoke,
Taking a swig of cheap beer,
To wash down the rancid taste.

The song changes again,
Keenan belting out about his dark passenger,
Making all his victories taste of ash,
A most dreaded specter indeed.

My mouth is no longer bone dry,
I really need to quit,
Trust me.

As Billy Joel is pouring out to the listener,
Of a tale of patrons in a bar,
I think of what would happen to my works when I die.
Maybe I get a couple collections printed but they never really sell,
And years after my death,
One such book is found in the piles of books in an antique store.

Maybe it's a curious individual,
Amused by the art embossed on the book,
Or maybe he is an actual fan of poetry.
Maybe it's just a kid who is thinking old books are cool.

Either way the individual would read my works, gets a whole lot of hubub about it,
And years after my death I am talked about as an unsung poet of my time.

Novel idea right?

I take a minute to sip some beer,
Miller High Life and Winston's,
Shakey Graves is stomping out through the wires,
Telling the tale of a boy walking to his execution,
His head held high,
Misguided in his actions that evening,
in the waning days of summer.

The song ends, I take out a tin,
Open it up and throw in the last of the dip I had,
After that I'll be done with smokeless tobacco.

Elton John is now waxing poetically about the ideas of roses in Spanish Harlem,
His voice eloquent, nostalgic, and tear-jerkingly honest,
The loss of innocence in an idea,
Ripped asunder by the cruelty of the world at large,
If only there were one Good Samaritan,
If they were to stand up and say enough!

In the album he is but the Master of Ceremonies in the château.
Weaving great tales of happiness and woe.

And isn't that what life is,
Both the ultimate comedy and tragedy?

But what do I know?
I'm just an Average Joe.

When I first moved out of my parents place,
And got an apartment with two of my buddies,
They asked why whenever I wanted to relax,
I'd have a beer and listen to music,
Why not play video games or watch TV?

I looked at them and remembered why,
It's what my grandpa would do when my grandparents babysat me ,
He'd be sitting in his chair, chewing some tobacco and listening to the radio,
Big Bands blaring out of the tinny speaker,
Enjoying the shade of the screened-in mud room.
And when I was a little older,
My dad use to sit out on the back porch after a hard day's work doing landscaping,
Nursing a cold beer and be listening to his records, which he had set up right by the backdoor, it's screen door allowing the sound to pass through with ease.
Sometimes Led Zeppelin,
Sometimes Rush,
Sometimes it was a band of some local talent that was all the rage for a week back in 1974.

Now it was my turn, even years after the revelation, that it was their way to decompress,
A reprieve from the days struggles.
For me it's a dining room that has a sliding glass door that opens out into the back yard,
Where I can play songs of my choice,
Either from albums I've gleaned from record shops over the years,
Or CDs burned , a gift from one person or another that everyone seems to collect over the years.

I'm almost out of smokes,
I realize,
This thought halting the ruminations I was just having,
I need to also choose a new record or CD,
Maybe getting a drink wouldn't be too bad either.

It's dark,
Shaun Morgan is bellowing into my ears that he's reliving the same experiences over and over,
That nothing's forever.

The flick of a bic,
The taste of tobacco and ash,
Filling my lungs and giving my brain a buzz,
And in this sleepless night I'm inclined to agree with him,
Nothing lasts forever,
So what are you waiting for?

It's 9:38 P.M.
It's going to be another night for the profound,
I'm in that same darkened room,
Same kitchen light,
Cigarette smoke not quite filling the room yet.
But it shall soon, because I can already tell it's going to be one of those nights.

The sandman apparently forgot to visit, for my eyes are still fresh and new.
Getty Lee is jumping from the speakers,
The anthem is long and blue.
He's telling me about the protagonist of the story,
He had just discovered a relic of the past,
It's potential for destruction could not be more true.
Of how he takes his own life,
To hide away the weapon he had stumbled upon,
To ensure its location could never be pried from his mind.

I think of old buddies from the Army,
The shenanigans we'd get into,
Of times both bad and good.
It's when I do this that I really smoke cigarettes,
Or use chew, that was a bad habit from the Army, but I'm quitting that.

Neil Peart is thundering out a solo that imprints onto the inside of my skull.
I let the waves of sound wash over me.

I sit here in the darkened dining room,
A small light shining in from the kitchen,
Just enough to silhouette the curtain of cigarette smoke that hung about the room,
I've been sitting here,
Smoking all the while,
Listen to Robert Plant croon,
About a woman he loves with all his heart,
But against his wishes,
He has to bid her adieu.

I sit here, smoking, in this warm and comfortable room,
All else is quiet,
Everyone else asleep,
Plant singing my anthem so sad and true.

But eventually the song ends,
And the record must be flipped,
So too the anthem changes,
One more upbeat and slick,
A song of change and travel,
And ever pressing on.