Rebellion – for too long the status quo,
is, in our day, a predictable show.
Antichrist irony, absurdity
shockingly daring incongruity
no longer shock the bourgeois, you know…

Alone in the temple of glass with a rock,
you’re out of traditional symbols to mock.
Surrealists did it much better than you –
and it meant a lot more in ’32.

You chew your cud on the cattle-wagon
overused shock-tactics (moo ! ) now draggin’
(or herding) aboard the iconoclast train
(b)lowing through boxcars your bovine refrain:
“to, um –  make people think…”  Oh Lord, how uncouth.
Nihilist narcissus – tell me, what’s Truth?
Must creative always be subversive?
I discern, in your frenzied discursive,
a dull and predictable lack of life.
While you brandish that plastic butter knife
I  seem to note, in your constant ******,
dearth of artistic ability.  Must
bohemian acolytes (some yawning)
ever be deer in the headlights, fawning
before the ironic gesture? It’s sad;
the bitter is sweet but the art is bad…

They circle hors d’oeuvres on opening night
like moths around white wine in candlelight,
cerebrating in a modernist void:
contemporary aesthetes, overjoyed
to know once more that life has no meaning;
the planet is doomed; that kings are queening;
that chic just arrived, escorting philosophy
(Forgive us, Duchamp, for all this monstrosity).

I long for Hudson River School sunsets
Old Dutch Masters, religious art, portraits,
Red, green, or black propaganda-art?  NO !
The view does not merit the price of the show.
I’m dada-ed to death, beyond the surreal.
Conceptual gimmicks have failed to conceal
your want of ability, values, and faith
In the book you despise it is written: “thus saith
the fool in his heart: that there is no God…”

You: Postmodern Art – **to the firing squad!

When I was young,
& dumb,
& drunk,
caught in that summer between teenage rebellion
& shipping off to towering landscapes
begging for rigid responsibility held
in the embrace of adulthood,
I sought to sharpen my wisdom
by dulling my senses and searching
my timid teenage soul.

When I was young
& dumb,
& drunk,
trespassing on the high school roof,
staring out over an empty parking lot,
I told myself,
and beside me
the fellow undiscovered,
misunderstood teenage dreamer,
the basis of the harsh reality we face:

Everybody is looking for
the right person.
But no one is trying to
BE...
the right person.

The silent gasp of sudden
drunken realization
elapsed his lips before he could lasso it.

The realization that neither of us
could claim we were just,
or striving to be
anything beyond bewildered and lost in
the confusion accompanying coming of age
kept us company through
that dusty summer night.

I spot a drone today;
No bombs,
But with plenty o’ potential –
A will to malice,
To malcontent, to ******.

I seek it south
And at its zenith,
Above dissent,
And the bastion that’d never know
Better, from worse.

So too, I spy it over the sands
And over cave,
Over Manhattan, over perdition,
And over “god,” over greed,
Over "great," and *******
Guaranteed;

A glistening, wrought silver teething,
“Dead,” come one wrong,
Word, or whatnot,
Anything antagonist “corporate,”
Our contradictory content,
Blessed, this,
“Complacency,” – indiscriminate.

Unbeknownst and melancholy-ridden,
The bombs have dropped,
And for some time now,
A sooner to be eternity
Whilst we’ve managed nothing but
The simplest of slumber;

We’re lucid but one second
And sheep more so the years.
The flock afar-critical,
As abstained become the hours,
The minutes, until, “then,”
Atop, “when,”
Whilst we learn again to breathe,
Maybe even dream,
And relieve the nooses continually
Knotted by others –

It’s an imaginary rebellion. Sure.
And I’m sure you’d agree;
Yet still, I soak a nightmare’s sweat
Whilst we gladly assume our
Peasant’s role
And as long as we do,
“They’ll,” gladly assume their
Thrones.

This is a war
Of crowds drunk
With their fists pounding in the air
One ominous heartbeat
As they turn their ears away
From deafening music
Of undiscriminating souls
They turn it to the real music
And turn it to rock and roll

They say you're chaos, grim, and flirty,
and that the words you speak are
*****
you spit ******, flip the birdie
Creep like a callous beetle
over the Earth
(Or more specifically, the city)

Well I said I'd slap you silly
Shove your hands into dirt, nails
gritty
"That's what you get fer stayin' in this
city.
Now get yer defilin' *** back home"
(What a pity)

Then I'd say "Son, yer swinging high, and soon
you'll be dry
I've had up to here with the aches
and the sighs
You pack your bags while I shout with
my eyes,"
and you don't want that, as neither
do I

Even so, of these things I must say
clear:
My worry for you is more than
just fear
Besides ******, I hear moans of
tedium, my dear
And so I feel life is better for you
far from here

Away from here, go on, away
from here, from this
***** city
Show then to those who say "he
couldn't be"
that "be" could only mean anything
you'd want it to be



And you'd never again "be"
a creeping beetle of the city
but the sonorous sliver that warms
the Earth
on a darkened day

If life is the journey, then we are pilgrims,
hands bound and blindfolded,
stumbling to our graves with moments of clarity
and threats of immortality, scattered along the way.

It’s all do or die, no second roll of the dice,
where the blind lead the blinded with promises of paradise
through the killing fields, we walk this knife.
Conform to live, obey to survive.

Not while I’m still breathing will this world ever see me to my knees,
we’re all born on death row, I just wear my sentence on my sleeve.
Your vicious icons of god are nothing special,
these devils you unleashed.
If it’s blood that you want, you won’t get a drop out of me.

I do not worship your human gods.
Do not presume to know me.
My gods are my own.

I do not care for your burning woman.
‘Great Prophet’ ‘Lady Redeemer’ ‘Bride of the Maker’
She is nothing to me.

The Circles stripped us of our beliefs.
Unfamiliar names on our tongues,
Like poison forced down our throat.

You expect us to bow so easily?
You are arrogant in thinking you were the first.
We have bled for our land for centuries.

Our cities were burnt to the ground.
And you built upon the ash,
Without a second thought.

And you wonder why we rebelled?
Do not make the same mistake again.
We are not forgiving.

our parents were starting to worry
about what the future had in store
for the kids like us-
with after midnight blue Manic Panic
streaked through our hair and
our after midnight curfew.

we look at our friends, and
follow their lead, even though we
think we are anti-conformity.

pierce your nose, rip your jeans,
just buy a ramones shirt,
don't say please.

our parents says it's just a phase
oh, we will see.

-e.k. fm