IN A SCURVY AND DANGEROUS WORLD
Pale and bloodless without voice or shadow,
you each perform in drunken hell.
The video light that remembers you,
keeps you on file
like a great myth of your own undoing.
Limbs somehow operate in their numbness
as the party throng chants,
and the next number is clicked off.
The human drug refuses to counteract narcosis.
There is nothing to bring you up
or take you out of this lethargy.
It is more ponderous than a dead end,
more like a lotus vision.
Sudden death lurks in your midst,
but no-one cares as long as the music
continues to punctuate shallow concerns
or nurse another man's murderous rage.
Coupled sailors and transvestites
waltz by in oblivion,
and sway to the master of revels
where you are the real danger to all.
They close chaotic eyes to your gospel notes
in dangerous places where everyone goes.
The window on the world spirals inward.
Your drummer has the saucer-eyed look
of a punch-drunk fighter staging a comeback.
Sauced on a pint of cheap wine,
he swells up like a spud of allergic addiction.
The guitar player sweats testosterone
as he mentally screws every gal he sees,
but holds back his musical passion
from boys in tight dresses.
The bass player leans against the wall
expressing his boredom,
perhaps lost in a Doc Savage fantasy
and nothing will bring him back because
Doc has guided him
through the seven steps in every direction.
The singer touches up his stage make-up
while making inside jokes to sailor's dates.
His false eye-lashes belie his masculine eyes
as he flashes a white-toothed grin
and mounts the plywood excuse of a stage.He makes one more disgusting joke,
winking at the boys in their disguises
and churns the guitarist into pure frenzy.
They all look to you
for a line, a feature, a care.
They would stop at one wrinkle of fairness
in the balance and brass of harmonies
you bend so cool and send so mater-of-factly.
So, the world isn't fair, no-one cares.
You make your own danger,
destroy one world to create another,
discover your compassion, but only
for the one guitarist who turns bright red,
the bass player, bloodless, placid white,
the singer, retouching his pancake,
and the drummer, yellow as a gourd.
You learn to ignore these passive angers
and aggressions, delusions and fantasies,
learn to tread the invisible path
laid down by tones and intervals
played with passions more abstract.
Although it's hard to concentrate
when someone dives over a booth
to stab a fellow in the chest,
it only takes a minute to clear the room,
click one off, begin again with another tune,
and check the flower of your being
for lost or drifted petals.
ŠJimmy Warner Design, 2010
