[Poetry] Back in the Day

[jon_chaisson]

(This is an experiment that I'm trying right now...most of my poetry has either been in akin to song lyrics or stream of consciousness thoughts. This is the first time I'm actively trying to get some kind of narrative into my poetry.)



Intro:
At thirty-nine I'm trying not to yell
at the kids to get off the lawn.
Not that I have one at the moment,
but point being--things aren't like they used to be.

I:
Back in the day,
I'd use those mottled black-and-white notebooks
to let out my frustration and anger at the world.
A bedroom revolutionary, a nonconformist in my own mind,
Thinking myself better than the jocks and the popular kids
(Screw 'em if they won't include me, if they don't like me!)
by embracing my intellect and my creativity.

Back in the day we didn't have the internet,
We didn't have Facebook or Twitter or the blogosphere
to vent our frustration with half-assed indignation.
Our problems were our own and not everyone else's,
except when we befriended similar lost souls.
We held it back, we kept it to ourselves, and moved on.


II:
Back in the day,
there was that elusive college radio station,
the one I found by accident back in '86,
the one that only came in on a good day during the school year.
By the time I was a junior, the station was ubiquitous in my bedroom--
on when I was getting ready for school, on when I got home,
when I did my homework, when I was writing or drawing or reading.
We thought college DJs were the coolest people, and we wanted to be them.
They were us, they were who we wanted to be.
I taped their sets off the radio, songs that were hard to find.
I borrowed albums and tapes from my friends,
dubbing them on blank cassettes we bought at the Radio Shack.
We were obsessed with music, our music.

Back in the day we didn't have a thousand different stations,
podcasts and feeds all ready to be streamed,
all of them alternative and yet all playing the same playlist.
We didn't have music blogs and file sharing,
with every single release awaiting a questionable download to my PC.
We were obsessed, but we were never this obsessed.

III:
Back in the day,
I wore the green trenchcoat of my friend's grandfathers',
my walkman in one front pocket and cassettes in the other.
I wore that Smiths tee-shirt I bought at Main Street Music,
probably more often than I should have, clean or not.
I let my hair grow away from that dreadful 80's spiky 'do,
because I chose to wear what I wanted to wear,
look how I wanted to look.

Back in the day we understood we were outcasts,
and reveled in that fact. We forgave our detractors.
We never saw the need to protect our own,
because we never saw the need to kill the poseurs.
We sought peace in a troubled world, that was all.


IV:
Back in the day,
we understood the meaning of a Cold War and the meaning of anger,
because we'd grown up with it.
We knew firsthand about making do with what we had,
and making do with not being able to reach any higher than we could.
We were fine with that, as long as we respected our creativity
and our sense of self, our sense of belonging.
As long as we knew we weren't alone, it wasn't so bad.

Back in the day we didn't feel lost in a global world,
unable to unplug and unable to stop feeding ourselves with information,
knowing--or seeming to know--more than we ever thought we would or could.
We might have wanted the world to be a smaller and more accessible place,
but we never thought it would become this overdriven, or this insane.


Outro:
If there's anyone to blame, it's myself.
I could easily back away at any time, away from this car crash of life,
because I'm the only one who can control the intravenous brainfeed.
If there's anyone to blame, it's myself,
in this big and terrifying world.

If there's anything to be done,
it's done now, on my own, on my own time,
from my own heart and from my own mind.

Comments

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

I like this.

***

Incidentally, MLW and I were on the way back from Jersey yesterday and on the path train was Ubserspooky Gothy Piercy mcGothmuch Chick, "Queen of the Somethingorother" tattooed across her chest and "Viva Hate" on her fingers. It was kind of Aww.

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks! I had to add that Smiths picture...that was the teeshirt I had that I wore my incessantly my senior year until it started becoming see-through. I hearted that shirt. :p

I don't see too many goth kidz out this way, mostly skate ponkers. After all, the punk scene out this way back in the day wasn't so much "be yourself" as it was "be as annoyingly anarchistic as possible" (or so Gimme Something Better sez).

Although I do see a lot of the emo kids--not the guyliner types but the kind that look like they should be on the farm milking a cow rather than hanging out at Justin Herman Plaza. You know, the short messy hair and trimmed beard, the corduroys and button-down shirt, etc...

They all need to get offa my lawn, dammit. I'm gettin' old. ;)

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the hardcore impulse always had a real conservative streak.

How is "Gimme Something Better"? Haven't read it yet.

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

Kind of amusing actually...it's not so much a narrative as much as it's a collection of quotes from bands and punks over the years. What I got from it is that Tim Yohannan from Maximum R&R was an ass but ran a tight ship, Jello wants us to get off his lawn, don't fart in the tour van, squatting can be fun, East Bay punks are the only punks that matter, and Green Day sold out but we still like them because Billie Joe is just so darn nice. :)