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Two Poems
Derek Nacho Nason

 


once upon a time

we were bastards together.
don’t you remember?
we were like brothers,
with no mother.
(unless you count mine.)

 

 

 

 

Street Bound Sound

Americans and their music.
Songs of field
harvested, barrels of seed and wheat
cultivated
clip       clip
    out of autumn blossoms
presented on wooden carnival bandstands
announced by megaphone rasp
plucked from country moons
Travels to skylines on tractor trucks
    aaaaaaaahhhhh...
        wailing for simple times.

Hitting the road
the notes pick up strangers
at dust pricked crossways,
becoming chords,
thumbs slung to the sun
eyes on the road
hurling forward
to bubbling core of city sidewalks
where old notes find new harmonies
in old thieves,
howling street bound lunatics
                 aaaaaaahhhhhhee...

    City music, drifting, permeating.
The earth birthed of earth’s birthed,
the works of cafe cowards and
nickel-bag bullies-
the songs of suffocation.
Hard feet falling on harder cracks
of sidewalks,
new songs,
hard
    pop                                                 boom
            pop     pop

falls on asphalt
cracks expose earth
variation breaking
all pattern.
Walking to miss the cracks.
Songs to slip into them.

American songs tear down and rebuild
American songs destroy and crack
           pop     crack
              pop                                     beat

    some sense into the collective drool;
Songs digest skin and
Songs cough in your face,
Songs hold your head under water
in an old tin bathtub threatening your life
if you don’t pledge to their allegiance,
and Songs are the charcoal that gag the
water from your lungs.
Songs slash you from your sleep
and you come out raging,
                             aaaaaahhhhhhheeee...
            eyes raining
                pop
           feet seizing
                                          snip
            spinal column unwinding
                        zip   zip
            teeth tingling
                           crack
     lips pulsating and
          boom                       boom
      throat dilating and
                                pop pop         pop
      screaming
          aaaaaaaaiiiiiihhhhheeeeeeeeeee
    new songs of American cities and
old songs
of roads traveling to
ancient cores
forgotten stories
plots spiraling
spidering
    snip
              back
                  slip
                          to
                            snip
                                    city centers


to the web map veins
on the skin
of some street sage
silently screaming some
tired sonata
the truest sonic blast
to deliver America’s sin
            pop       zzzzzzzt

            the cradle of a lost song
            in the embrace of sound.

 

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