Speaker Noise
It was Bakersfield, circa 1985.
We were misfits in black,
high school and college dropouts,
jobless as often as not.
Scared of girls,
scared of boys,
scared of most everything
the world had to offer us.
We’d sleep by day
and in the afternoons we’d wander
the malls and parking lots.
Most nights I’d gather us up
in my puke-colored Datsun
and we’d stop by the 7-11
to grab a case of whatever swill
we favored at the time.
We’d end up somewhere,
most often a neighborhood park,
where we’d sit at a picnic table
with a boombox and a little suitcase
of cassette tapes.
We’d drink and smoke and listen
to our punk and our deathrock,
our jangly guitars.
We didn’t talk much,
maybe argue a bit now and then
about what to put on next,
but mostly we’d just lose ourselves
in the speaker noise.
Sometimes the cops chased us away
but mostly they left us alone.
Now and then one of us would bust out
a mixtape we’d made.
We put a lot of time and thought
into those and I remember the one
I was most proud of. I christened it:
Shitty Bitch: A Collection of Love Songs.
It was a bunch of noisy tunes
about being dumped or passed over
because I was mad at a girl
for breaking my sullen
and misunderstood heart.
It always felt good
watching your friends nod along
to the songs you chose,
saying fuck yeah now and then
as they sucked at their beer.
It helped a bit to feel
that they understood life
and its trouble
in the same way you did.
You felt a little less alone
when Rollins screamed
some line that cut straight through you
with its truth,
and your buddy opens
another beer
and says, goddamn right.
Horror Sleaze Trash 