Friday, April 20, Ursprung Collective’s work will appear on Dog Horn Publishing’s podcast, Dogcast 13, available at: http://www.doghornpublishing.com/wordpress/category/dogcast-central
Poetry Killed the Video Star
http://soundcloud.com/ursprung-collective/poetry-killed-the-video-star
They killed Cobain
when they made him a god.
He was a god,
but not because they said so.
He knew.
He had to die to be real.
Fugazi was the true
voice for a generation.
“Everything’s Fucked!”
they shouted, they screamed.
“Do it yourself,”
they told me while I watched MTV.
And the radio
was blabbering for years.
Elvis Costello
managed to tune in its light.
Lou Reed’s rock n roll
is long gone. Nothing is all right.
A rock star is
a pantheistic god.
I’m a monotheist
fighting dualists
who shoot at me
and the ideals we make.
In order to love God,
have sympathy for the devil.
They killed our idols.
Now, we have to fight
for our right to die
when we feel it’s right for us to die.
I feel like I’m sixteen again
because I died at fifteen.
I’m a teenage lobotomy.
Joey Ramone told me that.
He disappeared on me, too,
but he did it naturally.
http://soundcloud.com/ursprung-collective/poetry-killed-the-video-star
The Periphery
http://soundcloud.com/ursprung-collective/the-periphery
“Who starts dying… And when?”
I asked, screaming – Whoopy!
“Why didn’t Rocky have breasts?”
my mother begged of me.
Her hip bones liquefied –
giving birth to our son.
He was a beautiful, bright star,
and his momma went down real slow.
Jason would be the real name for Saint Nick,
delivering all his presents on Friday the 13th.
My name is simple. It’s plain – Michael.
I’m waiting to trick and treat on Halloween.
God would make for a great mother,
if He would let me suckle off His breasts.
I would drain all His milk for Him
if He couldn’t take care of Himself.
I can smell death in your cigarettes.
Do you think mine taste like cloves?
I love the way scent sounds.
I love the way taste talks.
Please, tell me, who is in Zen –
Is it the pig or the goat?
I’ll tell you what – The lamb,
the sheep look like mutton to me.
White
http://soundcloud.com/ursprung-collective/white
My face is
so pale it’s white, like
a whale, as bright as
the underbelly
I saw last night.
Ahab ain’t got nothin’
on this motherfucker.
I’ll tear through
every wave, deeper
than that peg-leg bastard
was ever willing to go.
I’ll take everything on:
Death, hate, fear, the loves of
lives repressed by straight white lines,
lives depressed by little white lies.
I’ll smack that shit upside
the head, send it running,
screaming, like the screams
from a dream of paper
and fright, of real lines of
white, of demons and night.
Take it again. I’ll bear it again.
The bright white light of life
breathing right here, so strong, like
sex and drugs and mythology,
is the source of what I rolled for you
since I was a child so wild,
baby child, little child,
running wild like a firefly
through the glare of hell’s headlights
lighting our lives through the songs
we wanted to sing. Those songs are
gone. We’ll remake them tomorrow.
You were all waiting for me,
waiting for me at the crossroads,
wanting, needing to tell me
we’re all going to die.
I told one of you a story about
your hometown. She smiled,
shook my hand, wandered
into the black night, vanished in
the haze of our minds. There were
two more things I wanted to say,
but there were three more of you
that day. I couldn’t tell you all
rats sang when I came home,
scuttled in the bed frame
when I laid down alone,
when I rolled my pen,
burnt it on the altar of love.
Ranting, raving, lying
on my bed, my funeral pyre,
flames of white fire, Lord, is what
I eat. Rats run across my feet.
I wandered down the street,
left you all, left the whorehouse
behind my left, but the rats still
ran across my feet. The rats
still made up my myth for me.
Beady red eyes, bodies
like milk, so white. Like
milk this drug gets old.
Aging, we die. We talk about the color
white. We say something that says
nothing, nothing at all, but
that’s everything, right?
Where the Wild Things Grow
http://soundcloud.com/ursprung-collective/where-the-wild-things-grow
There’s a garden in the middle of the city
where we planted a tree outside my window.
I had poetry boiling in my soul,
I needed a shot of rock n roll:
A vampiric lover who ain’t afraid of the cross…
Honey, I’m the living dead. What’s suffering to be afraid of?
I think I’ll take you to where the wild things grow.
Come here, sweet thing.
I want to suck your blood.
I need a belly full of loving.
I’m gonna feast on you.
Why don’t you slip on inside
by that door there by the side.
Invite me back into your life.
Pretend like you’re Janis Joplin,
and let me get down on you.
I was speaking to your daddy.
He told me a secret I shouldn’t tell.
He told me how much you like to fuck.
I never knew that he ever knew.
I figured he was too drunk to care,
but then, he said he lost his virginity to you.
I want to tell you a secret now:
I’m a battered lover.
My face is all black n blue,
but if you ever ask me,
I’ll tell you I fell down the stairs.
Nobody ever molested me.
Maybe, they were all too scared.
I had to destroy myself.
Now, I’m bringing my disease back home to you.
These people need help.
I can hear them cry:
“Save us! Save us, please!
We forgot how to sing the blues.”
And I whisper that they need to save themselves.
Before you can learn to sing the blues,
you have to learn how to fall in love.
Now sing: Baby, baby, help me please!
I’m crying down here on my knees.
Just one touch would heal me.
I’ll wait, though, if that’s what you need.
I saw God. He didn’t exist.
The devil is real, though. He ain’t no myth.
Did I introduce you to mydad?
I just cooked him up.
Would you like to eat his body?
Would you like to drink his blood?
Go ahead, everybody else does.
But maybe, if you’re real sweet,
instead, I’ll let you feast on me:
A walking STD, but you still want to love me.
Let me hook you up with my HIV.
I’ll condemn you to eternal life.
I lie, but the myths are what life’s all about.
And I’ve been lying this way for forever.
It keeps me all twisted up inside.
If you would just pay attention to truth,
I could speak it to you.
This here is my blues:
Did I tell you I’m schizophrenic?
The jackals want my soul.
They’re not content to eat my body.
They want to dine upon my soul.
I’m always in prison.
I can never be free,
not until she marries me.
Smash out all the windows.
There’s nothing outside to see.
Come here, watch the wild things grow with me.
http://soundcloud.com/ursprung-collective/where-the-wild-things-grow
