Me, Joe McPhee and a $25 poem

I had a real fine time performing at the Hearding Cats Collective production DAEDALUS CACOPHONUS on Friday evening under an eerie sky in the beautiful, Old Post Office Plaza to the accompaniment of saxophonist Joe McPhee. A friend shot video of it, which you can see here. Laurent Torno III was there with a much better camera than the Canon Powershot that my friend used for this video. I hope to see his footage soon.
See the script below.


READY FOR LIFT OFF


Crawl outta your skin and grow wings, Kid
Crawl outta your skin and grow wings

Crawl outta your skin and grow wings, Kid
Crawl outta your skin and grow wings

Crawl outta your skin and grow wings, Kid
Crawl outta your skin and grow wings

Take your wait off
Strap your wings on
Gravity is a crutch!

Gotta get away from you Cretins!
Flying higher and higher

While faceless slaves
feed the beast
grow, slaughter, cook and serve
the feast

sew the walkabout threads
stripped from wheels
spin willy-nilly wobbly heels
shuffle feet
scuttle butt
talking the talk
walking the walk
clod-kickin’ nomads
riddling clichés
in piecemeal-economic class majority of days
knotting and tangling
screaming and steaming
angels falling in teams
coaxing hope from men and children
suffering guilt and schemes

for flavored vodka
to put out the flames.

Faceless in frenzied crowds
not their piglets for a tit
sweet silk web of perks
splinters in their lips

it’s a wooden cow
eating the genius grass of now
leisurely-gone-mechanical
madness habit
horses clip-clopping through the sky,
hot on the trail of a giant carrot,
bobbing
on the end of a string
tied to a stick unseen.
Burning spear becomes the sun.

Sorry.
Pardon me.
Sodomy
crying in reality
steeping in normality
buttheads are bound
to butt heads
that buy shit, bite shits
bytes hit and heights hit
won’t give the satisfaction of
the real tail hit.

You chop down peasant trees
if you can’t get no
pleasantries,

You a pissant?
Pissed-off, beaten-down?
Disinegratefully muttering,
“Icarus is sick of us clowns”

and the sin of Pomegranate
Sultans of Homer
Keeping her down
under
while up top
behemoth
violent women
with bushels and bushels of rags
and frenetic mongrels dropped
from hot snatches
to scamper about floors of life
‘cause they were lonely.
Heel scream bitch moan

retort cranked to 9

The locked-down boom box blares
soft-rock soma static
statistician death
equation of chaos avoidance.

See its nonsense?

Others anguish?
sitting in the John Wilkes Booth
with the Donner Party

Sorry utters ranting of wishwash blather
of too much peroxide
silicone and the glide
and the kind of salvation
they sell on late-night television.
faces cracked and exploding,
but you tip
a little extra
so the waitress
can shoot it between her toes tonight.

Gotta get high tonight
Outta sight
Set a course for the midnight light
Window-pained souls squeegee a play of rage
turn to stone in its chemical cage
jaws yawning uncertainty
future doom cult in dreads circle spirits
their wagons around teepees

snap and rage
against bludgeoning
the right
clothes tumble in the drier thoughts
fall in sync

Scattered and disconnected,
but all feeling the same heat.

STOP THE CAR!
I’M GETTING’ OUT
I CAN’T TAKE IT!
Hey look out
There’s somebody comin’
And there’s nothing you can do about it!!!!

That’s ok
He ain’t got long to go!
So we’ll forgive him.

Something spontaneous
Possibly dangerous
Something precarious
Probably not legal
Something fun
Eventually lethal
But we probably won’t be out
That long.

Ride it on a glide like that
Let it prove its groove
Slow down ancient mellow day
And play it to the moon

And now we hurtle through the stars
The President says we goin’ to Mars!
Just to get away from this rubbish heap!
Flying higher and higher
Until we drown in melted glaciers.
…another failed attempt at escape
from Cretins and their addiction
to the glug glug.

Crawl out of your skin takes time
Crawl out of your skin takes time

Crawl out of your skin takes time
Crawl out of your skin takes time

Crawl outta your skin and grow wings, Kid
Crawl outta your skin and grow wings

Crawl outta your skin and grow wings, Kid
Crawl outta your skin and grow wings

Crawl outta your skin and grow wings, Kid
Crawl outta your skin and grow wings

Brett Lars Underwood, 2010

The chants at beginning and end can be attributed to the late, great Welsh band, Mclusky, and their song ICARUS IS SICK OF US.


Would that I were the performer that they are/were.