Math-Rock Existentialism  

 
The other day, I was in Grog-Shop to see the “Battles”

math-rock and math; they both suit my type

And I adored John Stainer,

probably the realest alternative drummer of our times

and I hung out with an Ukrainian PhD student

from Case Western, and his doll-like  Asian girlfriend

we mixed the weird and recurring rhythm of Battles

with some cheap cans of Pabst Blue,

and talked soccer and existentialism of

Graduate School during the break.

 

Things got awkward, when I was in the restroom;

all walls painted with glaring graffiti blue

there was John Stainer standing on the aisle next to me;

he had a beer-bottle in his hand

and he was drunk like a pagan priest.

Indeed a moment to treasure when your

favorite drummer is peeing right next to you.

and I said “Damn John! is that you”?

and he got into a laughter-riot, in a drunk sort of way

we both laughed, talked a while and did not shake hands.

 

The Metropolis

 

The metropolis lives, like a war-veteran.

over-head bridges of pre-cast concrete slabs

bear the weight of piss and alien dreams

degenerate electric-poles are bent

like cabinet-ministers, and the roads

tell the untold stories of cocktail-waitresses

who just wanted a clean job, so they  can send

some money back home. Buy books

for their  kid brothers may be, make

a little dream-theater  for their

worn-out mothers. But are we defeated?

 

I have stopped counting temples in my

God-stoned city.  The specters of

dreams cloud her sky, and they keep coming back

through our own vertigos. In my Metropolis

dreams are reborn, before the devil knows they are dead.