some Heavy Metal poems

A couple of Metal-related poems from back in the day (circa 2003-04). The first poem is inspired by my first Slayer show, which is to this day one of the most intense public rituals I have ever participated in.

The second is a a response to the murder of Dimebag Darrell of Pantera. I haven't actually listened to Pantera since I was 17, and they were pretty much a bunch of misogynist rednecks, but I had my phase, and Dimebag was murdered in Columbus, Ohio at my regular metal venue at the time, the Al Rosa. So there was some nostalgia, plus the fact that he was killed by a self-described 'huge fan' (and ex-marine who'd been section-eighted and released back into civilian society...).

Fellow Metalheads will recognise a number lines and titles laced into both of these. Both were first published in the Appropriated Press, and 'Divine Intervention' in Antiglobe as well. As usual, the blog format has fucked the formatting all up on both of these.




Divine Intervention



the crushing creeps before the blast
dead skin behind the mask
crowding (as if)
to see the serum spread before the clash
(of s/cymbols)
the loud impatient hush
then
dim forms the mechanical smoke
the air thick with blasts
(double-quick)
the epochal impend
the sixteen-cut call
the ensemble to sliding arms
and
the thousand-throated word:
then
the press gasping surge
the primal sweat
the sinew snapping at itself
the beat claw tribal flex
the thousand-tendon muscle
animal enlightenment of pulse-diluted minds
weirdly wakened to the chunk of charged string
screams
the cloven-hoofed spleen plays
the unanimous forebode of next
lone voice atonal screech and swallowed
by the vein outside the ear
the cleansing rain of blood
and
the (non)memory of millennia
heaved in shield-walls
religion written in gangrenous limbs
philosophy beaten on stretched skin
felt with the earnestness of flesh
the thrashed-dance spear-tip
damnation leering from forests that
slaughter allegory
and
have we fallen so far?
or
bonds still fold down two fingers
ward off vestiges of sunlight
one set of the philosophy of caves
ethics of embodiment
vicious sincerity of the newly crawled from clay
one tip of contact with essential
and throwing all reserve into the pit
laugh at the memory of forests
bristling with purely more that physical threat
and
skin and strings race like thoughts
savage intricacy
leaving words abhorred
slashing all complacency to chaos
ordered on the bones of ancient terrors

this is real art
(it makes the ears bleed)



************



Vulgar Display of Power


a grating thump of strings and then
the blast-beats stop

drink booze
smoke weed
make art
you are still clenched tightly in the jaws of the mad

and in the last seconds everything must unspool like notes abandoning the staff
must ring false among a harmonic hoarde

this is the obscure end to your exuberance
the smiles you
made have betrayed you
your racing frets knew not what they had done
eloi, eloi
my friends, my friends
you keep this love love love
how have you betrayed me


in a land of war and honey
this is where all beauty leads
even if it is soaked in smoke and blasphemies
gunned down because your art held the finger back from the trigger
gunned down because you were the only friend to kill
this is
what has driven ( )
far, far beyond


R.I.P. Darell Abbott 12 / 9 / 04