released: July 8, 1999, at the People’s Center, West Bank, Minneapolis as part of Streets of Minneapolis, headlined by Larry Havluck, streetsinger-songsmith’s Anarchy of the Heart and featuring Scott Vetsch’s Hauling Ass: Cab Driving Poems.
The entire program, with the addition of LeNor Barry's song Third Precinct was recorded November 4, 2000 at Sursumcorda as a web TV show.The audio cd of that show is for sale at Mayday Books in Minneapolis
previewed: TC Revue, Hot List. July 8, 1999
reviewed: Pulse, July 7, 1999
excerpt:
They said on the news that people were seen
coming and going in the old woman’s apartment.
The neighbors complained about a smell.
When she hadn’t paid her rent she was reported missing.
The old woman’s brother came to pick up her cat.
The police checked inside the apartment twice.
The landlord changed the lock.
The neighbors complained about a stench.
They said on the news that after two weeks
they found her body in the closet
stuffed into a garbage bag rolled up in a box.The news gathers us
into its electronic web:
generating traffic reports for the unemployed,
school closings for the childless;
infects us
with its epidemic of fear
outlined with swift, fervid strokes:
the scream in the night,
the footsteps running down your hall
and those hungry eyes that gleam
just outside the circle of light:
the eyes of another, not the brother.
The news bombards our brains with images
of people blown up, out of all proportion,
into outsized social problems:
the old drunk reeling against the lamppost,
violent death and the survivors:
roadside figures, torn, limp
and huddled like birds in the rain
carting suitcases filled
with brittle yellowed memories.
These are the images,
the rags and masks we wear
on our evening rambles through the twilight zone
past the homes where we don’t belong,
past the glowing glass display
of the silent family framed within
awash in the flickering stream
of images.And so we reflect upon and reflect back the news;
but there in the mirror, plain and flat,
we each see the image of death uncoil
as time loops degraded copies from copies
of the copy of some forgotten face:
a rumor garbled as it's passed along.
nd everyone's death is a lonely thing
even when our fondest killers,
our family and friends surround.
They will not stand there at your side
to gaze into an open mirror
upon an empty closet in a vacant room
and to turn with a silent scream.
So now you unlock the final lock
and pluck the petals
from your flowers of pain;
to scatter before a hubbub
of the blank and numb
who shamble down your hallways,
offering you oblivion.