The Poet

As the firetruck rambles past, the stranger across the street closes his eyes and breathes diesel. The siren's roar augments the perfect melody he knows so well, enough to make him gasp again, and shudder. The hot breath of the exhaust pipe evokes the flames of some far off tragedy. He can hear the screams, see the charred out hollow of someone else's broken life. He is moved, it does not matter in which direction. He smacks his lips and smiles.

The sirens fade. No longer parted by the firetruck, he spies a haggard man across the street in a business suit. When he was a child, he would wear his father's jacket and carry around his father's briefcase, racing around the house in a pedal car. He would interview neighbors, and strangers in shopping malls and restaurant booths. "What do YOU want to be when you grow up?" He posed this question earnestly to business executives and old widows. They would laugh uncomfortably and tell him he was precious, or too precocious for his own good. When they turned the question back on him, as the situation demanded, he would shrug, and laugh. This always seemed to be enough. He was just a child after all.

He would play "army man" with his friends, and he always got upset when the stage deaths weren't well acted. When they played baseball, he delighted himself by imitating the swings of famous ballplayers. They would play schoolhouse in his friend's basement, and he was always affronted when his ficticious schoolwork received less than stellar marks. There were strict rules to his imagination, which he defined arbitrarily and enforced like a despot.

Some dreams blossom, and some die on the vine. Others are sold at the market for pennies. His just grew and grew and grew untill they became grotesque and untenable. He gorged himself on dreams, and his visionary appetite became insatiable. He plucked the dreams of others and ate them like red apples, as his fell and rotted at his feet.

The stranger stares at the man in the suit. Whatever dreams this man had, he sold them long ago, and dons the transaction in an unflattering set of pinstripes. The businessman catches him staring, this unkempt vagrant, and shoots him a look of disgust. "Get a job, you f***** slob" the look exclaims (though not aloud). But the man across the street does not notice, he has slipped back into the daydream that the firetruck dropped at his feet. He does not notice, either, when I drop a quarter into his cup.

-sw

The Firefighter

On the street, there on the right side, is a man. He walks to work with the weight of the world on him, with the pressure of obligations, palpable even from here.

As a child, he is a dreamer. He throws on the cap he got for his birthday, dreaming every moment of every day of being a firefighter off to save the day. Those moments dwindle as his studies to become something more slowly fill the gaps in his mind, and then spill into the corners specifically reserved for dreams. The physics classes teach him fear of heights, the econ classes the delicacy of the money market, the biology classes the fragility of life, the statistic classes the few who make it, the sociology classes the might in numbers, the philosophy classes the ideas of others...

No longer does he think of the firetruck, except in those exhilarating moments when a siren rings and wind brushes against his face from the force of the red blur now speeding away down the street... But that's not practical! It's dangerous, and stupid, and different, and whats-his-name at one time said that jobs like that are whats-it-called. So he walks down the street into the indistinguishable glass building lost among other men in suits.

His adventure gone, his fears multiplied, his practicality in high gear, his thoughts stamped out by those that are more highly acknowledged, his personality molded into everyone around him. And he doesn't even know that his dream is still there, that his dream can still be, but it is lost in the thicket of maturity, progress and real life.

-as

The Gutter Twins:

A Reach Towards the Light for a Match Made in Hell

By: Steven Waye

The privilege of writing a piece on The Gutter Twins’ “Saturnalia” is, for me, the critical equivalent of handing out a lifetime achievement award. The aptly named Gutter Twins, Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli, have toiled in parallel obscurity for a decade and a half, cranking out some of the most inventive and visceral music from that period. Dulli’s quartet Afghan Whigs, described by Rolling Stone as spending “the bulk of their career on the brink of stardom” and Lanegan’s band Screaming Trees, the forgotten sons of the Seattle grunge scene, are shunted aside in discussions about the greatest rock acts of the 90’s. To this day they are prohibitively overshadowed by bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains, despite producing catalogues that have aged as well or better than their contemporaries. They are the neglected younger brothers of jaded flannel rock, the Kevin Dillons of the alternative scene.

However, in my eyes these are two of the greatest frontmen of their era, and the longevity of their careers, if nothing else, supports my claim. They have managed admirably to continue to make compelling music leading up to this 2008 release without tragically self-destructing (Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain) or becoming a flickering echo of their own fading stars (Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder). While admittedly uneven, “Saturnalia” highlights the complimentary creative prowess of two backburner legends in the twilight of their careers, and when Lanegan’s smoky growl tangos with Dulli’s fire-breathing wail, the result is some truly stunning black magic.

The opening track, “The Stations,” sets the tone, with Lanegan crooning, “O mama, ain’t no time to fall to pieces,” with every ounce of bitterness his pack-a-day baritone can muster. The guitars and strings wail in the background as Dulli joins Lanegan for the chorus, lamenting a salvation that for them only serves as a consistent reminder of what they always pined for but never tasted: “They say the rapture’s coming/they say he’ll be here soon/right now there’s demons crawling all around my room/They he lives within us/They say for me he died/And now I hear his footsteps almost every night.”

Throughout the album, the musical accompaniment serves only as an atmospheric backdrop for two men struggling to make sense of a life of burgeoning disappointment, as a movie score might serve to heighten the emotional intensity of a tragic dialogue. Yet, strangely “Saturnalia” finds Dulli and Lanegan closer to anything resembling peace than we have ever heard in any of their previous endeavors. The tension and scrappiness that defined their output to this point is still there, but the interplay between Dulli and Lanegan reveals a ruggedly beautiful synchronicity that led Dulli to dub them “the Satanic Everly Brothers.” “We had to become the Gutter Twins, because that’s how we were perceived,” Dulli quips. This album captures the sound of two weathered men working together in world-weary harmony, a kinship of the kicked-around.

Though “Saturnalia” recycles many of its best moments, it has plenty of them. “The Body” is an ethereal ballad that sounds like something “Adore”-era Billy Corgan may have penned if he had the vocal chops to pull it off. Martina Topley-Bird’s guest vocals make the song really take off and transport the listener. “Who Will Lead Us” is a hauntingly dark gospel-tinged ballad that showcases Lanegan’s more wistful side. “Idle Hands” sounds like a dance party in Hades, and you can almost hear the ground shaking as Lanegan croaks “With idle hands/there’s nothing I can do/but be the Devil’s plaything, baby/and know that I’ve been used.” When Dulli accompanies him for the chorus, it scares the bejeezus out of me in the most beautiful way imaginable.

“Heaven, it’s quite a climb…” reads the epigraph to the bio section on the band’s website, a line lifted from the “Saturnalia” track “Seven Stories Underground.” Here’s to hoping the duo’s ascent continues on for a few more rungs, and that they keep dragging us up along with them.

.

Glossolalia

Brown froth congregates round the base of my cup
as I drink in all but the last stubborn drop.
They cling to the periphery like a life preserver,
or a proverb, shielding them from the same
nameless void they embraced
on a Sunday morning when the glass was much fuller.

Each pocket of air deflates upon exposure,
shriveling with a sound so unlike
the primal yawp of the bursting bubbles
I used to blow as a child,
or the defiant cackle of a renegade balloon
that dared fly too close to the sun.

This is the music of the world,
that grows fainter as I grow older.
When, perhaps, the sun and the earth
stop dancing in circles and steal a kiss,
I will get to hear the roar of ten thousand lives
extinguished in a fit of passion.

Honest Expression

Ultimately, martial art means honestly expressing yourself...
it is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky,
or I could show you some really fancy movement...
But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself,
and to express myself honestly...
Now that, my friend is very hard to do.
Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives
And for that live moment we thrive
Awakenings, as we make the dead come alive
Rise and walk my son
Come into the light
Inside the dark we illuminate mics
Give knowledge to mediocre
The will to neanderthal
Filter to the the small
Digital to analog
We steady advancin'
Rhyme enhancin'
Civil minds can't keep up with this

Dig - I'ma put it on the table
I ain't a thug nigga and playa, I ain't playful
I'm just Senim Silla, man without label
Standin' on my own to you tryin' to stay stable
Speakin' what I know to only what I'm able
I ain't the kinda guy who carry on for dough
The material cat who walk around for show
I'm just your everyday, merry way joe on the go
While others go with the flow
I ain't never been the one to follow trend, I do my own bit
Can't keep up with the joneses, I'm on my own sh*t
I don't care what you drink
What you stress, how you dress, or where you got the link
I ain't impressed
These lames run around like mice in a maze
Tryin' to get up on cheese, its just a rat race
Wanna change times' schemes to make man worship things
Over the supreme being, or stop, fill up?
Should I join the hypocrites?
Or side with the suckas by choice
It makes no difference that y'all product of environment
It's just coincidence
The world's a violent place baby, there ain't no more innocence
Or civil men or penatence, just
Ignorance cast on the right from wrong
They mimic sh*t they see on TV or hear in a song
What that tell you they on?
A sucka act up every minute
The righteous live on but the the niggas are infinite

I ain't hardcore, I don't pack a 9 millimeter
Most of y'all gangster rappers ain't hardcore neither
Whoever get mad then I'm talkin 'bout you
Claim you fear no man but never walk without crew
Where I'm from, your reputation don't mean jack
So what you pack gats and you sell fiend's crack
You ain't big time, my man
You ain't no different from the next cat in my neigberhood who did time
Rhyme after rhyme it's the same topic
What make you think you hardcore cuz you was raised in the projects
Broke ass finally got a hundred in your pocket
Now you on the mic spittin' money's no object
What you say is bullcrap
If you wasn't with your crew and wasn't drunk off the brew
Would you still pull gats?
You need to stop frontin'
Or you're headed for self destruction
Yeah, today's topic is self-destruction
I ain't talkin 'bout the KRS-One discussion
I'm talkin 'bout the one too many ignorant suckas
Lyin' on the mic to my sistas and brothas
Everytime you listen to the radio, all you hear is nonsense
They never play the bomb sh*t
Everything that glitters ain't gold
And every gold record don't glitter that's for damn sure

How many cats you know speak the illegit rhyme after rhyme diligent?
85 percent represent ignorant
Either you innocent or guilty
Some of my favorite emcees fell off
It damn near killed me
Lookin' at the kids that was true hip-hop
Nowadays them cats don't even do hip-hop
Rap got 'em brainwashed with cats that don't last
And five minutes of fame
That's when it's a shame
Seein real emcees tryin' to imitate rappers
If you ask me they goin' out ass backwards
Tradin' in respect to push a fat Lex
Puff rhymin' on the remix, what's next?
It hurts so bad I wanna smack 'em
My favorite crew members break up turn around and join wack ones
This is dedicated to you hip-hop hypocrites
Drivin wack songs like you don't give a sh*t
I ain't got nothin' against nobody tryin' to make a decent living
It ain't the money that's the issue
Only if that's the reason why these cats are makin' decent music
That's when I got beef with you
And I'ma break it you like never
Go ahead, call me player hater if it make you feel better
Try to jump my crew if you cats feel foggy
You need to wake up and smell the damn coffee

-Binary Star

Impatience and desire are combustible traits...that is all.

O Cap'n, My Cap'n

Captain Kirk was a rockstar tonight.

On other nights I knew him, well,

at least knew him well enough to know

that he’s an average looking guy from Hawaii who dates

the gorgeous friend of a gorgeous friend.

To his face, he is always just Kirk,

with the crew cut and the cover band

and the girlfriend with kind eyes, at which

I can never manage to arrive in the compulsory meanderings

of my renegade glances, moving upwards from her hips.

But the vindictive comedian that I play

in one of my meaner public lives

can’t resist accentuating the arc of his dumb luck

by painting him with clownish nicknames, and I dub him

“The Cap,” or “Cap’n K” or “El Capitán”.

Tonight though, he’s someone else entirely.

I always thought he was a nice guy

but it turns out his band is actually pretty tight,

and so I pay him tribute with sardonically overwrought fist-pumps and yelps,

I guess to force laughter from whatever girl I’m with.

I would like to say that this

is one of the more difficult parts

that I play in my life of petty method acting,

but it’s as effortless as a devil’s handshake, if I’m being Honest.

And that’s the one role that

I’m still truly scared to face.