I’ve got the urge.

The urge for what? you ask.

I’ve got the urge to… *yells* ROCK! (ROCK.)

It’s been too long since I’ve rocked and rolled. Too long since I’ve been crammed in a room with hundreds of sweaty, long-haired, tight-jean-clad kids—angst thicker in the air than the heat. Too long since I’ve skanked at a ska show. Too long since I’ve moshed at a punk show. Too long since I’ve stood in the sidelines at a hardcore show, fists held out in protection as kids threw down like champs in front of the stage.

Sure, Bona’s has shows, but no one moves at them. I twitch around as much as I possibly can, but the music is just too mellow to do much else to. No, I need shows like I went to in high school. Take me back to the open mics my friends’ band played at. Take me back to the Battle of the Bands they won, where girls would try to stab me with their eyes when my friend (the flippy-haired, tattooed, gauged-eared, lip-pierced guitarist dating my best friend) played to me and not them. Take me back to those horrible hardcore shows where only one or two bands could actually play music and the girls were all shorter than I was and all sported horrendous “scene girl mullets.” (Do you remember them? The thought of them even now makes me cringe, but it’s better than no shows.)

When I wasn’t at shows, I was in my room listening to music. My mother would poke her head in and see me bobbing my head while my CD player whirred.

“Are you listening to your ‘screaming boy bands’ again?” she’d ask.

“Yes, Mom. I am”

New or old, metal, screamo, grindcore, deathcore, metalcore, corecore… you name it, and if it rocks, I listen to it.

Why?

Because I’ve got to rock, folks. It’s part of who I am. I came out of the womb making the sign of the horns with my pudgy baby hand and, now, sitting in my dorm room, listening “screaming boy bands,” I raise my slightly less pudgy hand in salute to you all. Rock on, my friends. Rock on.

Charles Bukowski

I'm In Love

she's young, she said,

but look at me,

I have pretty ankles,

and look at my wrists, I have pretty

wrists

o my god,

I thought it was all working,

and now it's her again,

every time she phones you go crazy,

you told me it was over

you told me it was finished,

listen, I've lived long enough to become a

good woman,

why do you need a bad woman?

you need to be tortured, don't you?

you think life is rotten if somebody treats you

rotten it all fits,

doesn't it?

tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a

piece of shit?

and my son, my son was going to meet you.

I told my son

and I dropped all my lovers.

I stood up in a cafe and screamed

I'M IN LOVE,

and now you've made a fool of me. . .

I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.

hold me, she said, will you please hold me?

I've never been in one of these things before, I said,

these triangles. . .

she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all

over.she paced up and down,wild and crazy.she had

a small body.her arms were thin,very thin and when

she screamed and started beating me I held her

wrists and then I got it through the eyes:hatred,

centuries deep and true.I was wrong and graceless and

sick.all the things I had learned had been wasted.

there was no creature living as foul as I

and all my poems were

false.

Took this outside Dev today.