“After BANG OUT” by Chris Stroffolino
Ah, too clothed! Nah, too naked.
So, let’s say one of my standards of nakedness is this:
And could share again
And I start feeling it anthemic,
Like the great poet singer Patti Smith Bobby Womack Jonathan Richman
(just for shorthand…)
Like a need the psychedelic guitarist
Coz I’d be embarrassed to just say it, or, nah, coz
Music is more naked than words,
Or at least feels it to me,
Well, Shakespeare words come closer to music for me
But not because of their phonemes and meter,
I mean coz of their dramatic structures
(to sprinkle, and scatter, what would otherwise be bulky baggage
of so-called naked self in the puckish hookie of love
the way a band and a theatre company and a football team
have much more in common with the practical dreaming of writing
than most contemporary American notions of the ‘poet…’ make me cry
And I wouldn’t even waste any time criticizing those standards
If they weren’t also my own—
So you’ll probably have to pay me a lot to get me to read something like
I would really love to sing you the most sincere, naked
Song of my heart, or song of my soul, or song of your eyes
Or your ears or your hair, or song of the beauty,
The beauty we shared—
Or “redeem it” with linebreaks and such…
I’m coming closer to singing it, as a convincing character
(of nakedness…)…”in a Leonard Cohen song”
But, we’ll see, how it pans out…
And in the meantime she’s singing in
Conspiracy of Venus and I,
Well, “It Ain’t Cheatin (If You Broke Up With Me First)”
Might end up being a hit….or, better a near Miss…
Nontheless, I was too much the joker, not enough the thief,
Flitting around the surface,
Merely “comic relief”
Now I think comic relief is needed,
But it would be better to develop the trance,
And I didn’t even get people to dance—
So I settled for a cop-out
Out of fear that the trance would have taken more than 10 minutes
To develop effectively—
Or maybe just the knowledge that I came ARMED
WITH NAKED RECORDINGS!
Copyright © 2009, Chris Stroffolino
