1969, The MC5 take arms and demand,
kick out the jams, motherfuckers!
Punk rock, the boot to the neck
of flower power's soul trippin hedonism.
Born in the wake of a culture
Manson brought to its knees.
Enter the Blank Generation.
Noisy dickhead, art trash.
Iggy Pop rolls in broken glass
slurring the chorus to I Wanna Be Your Dog
Primal nihilism,
never meant to mean anthing
so says the prophetic junkie.
I spent a season in hell
to offer Rimbaud a blowjob.
Poetry in the modern,
fleshy and raw. mumbled
over the hum of blown-tube
amplifiers and static blast
of cheap out of tune guitars.
Venus in Furs drones hypnotically
through Warhol's Factory.
Lou Reed scowls.
Civil society left you
blue in the face
red on the wrist, fingerprints
where convention held tight.
You've met your heroes
gracefully slumped over a toilet
or the back booth of a nightclub.
Effigies of excess, strung up,
strung out, planted in the ground.
Little flowers sprouting from their arms.
From her pulpit, Patti Smith spits her sermon,
Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.
All the dysfunctional children,
filthy and unclean, tracing
the grooves of old records
with calloused fingertips.
Aspiring to achieve expression
in its purest form.
Art and anger,
an alchemy divine,
rawness, what it means to be alive.
Black Xs, a badge of honor.
An American hardcore is born.
It's funny how
everything works out.
You can break all the rules
while seeing the world in red
but get played all the same when
all they see is gray and green.
Even the most dangerous minds
wind up on T-shirts sometimes.
Cobain said,
Punk rock should mean freedom.
Freedom from co-opting movements,
perverting bands into brands,
statements into slogans,
riot girl to please sit down, girl.
Images sterilized,
flaw and fury wiped clean
placed neatly in a vacuum,
sacrificing potency for profits.
Cobain said,
Punk rock should mean freedom,
the freedom to say,
Fuck You.
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