Got live on the Zenta New Year, Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, out on vinyl in January ’69.
Less “sha na na na” than “no one here gets out alive.”
High school almost done with me, believer
in the strobe-lit dream
(it takes five seconds to realize it’s time to move, to choose, to testify),
in rock-n-revolution, Yippie sages, candle magic, Blake.
Ready to trip out with John Sinclair’s
evangelical, alchemical, almost unimaginable
Trans-Love Energies White Panther rama lama fa fa fa freak-out.
Ready to kick out the jams with the bare-chested boys,
brother Wayne & brother Fred, brothers Mike & Dennis & Rob
(“music,” sd. Sinclair, “is revolution”).
Far left was far out,
& Johnny Rotten’s bad-ass uncles—
less ramblin’ roses
more handful of thorns, strung out
& dangerous
(black to comm, motherfuckers)—
Potawatomi voices from the whirlwind out of Lincoln Park
prophesying starship rides (hang on, we’re leaving the solar system) & burning cities,
snipers on the rooftops, revolution for the sheer white noise of it,
pot, free love, & the end of waiting (god it’s so close now).
Don’t take my word for it—the boys were “the counterculture at its most volatile and threatening” (Stephen Erlewine), “a catastrophic force of nature” (Robert Bixby).
Wayne & Sonic wannabes, we listened loud, born hell-raisers
& were transmogrified, glorified,
wanting to be both problem & solution
(This is the high society, men for girls who can’t stand it
when you’re doin’ it right)
high on booze disgruntlement, on acid possibilities—
the future almost now, scary & exuberant & inexhaustible
(the brothers played eight hours anything but straight
at the Festival of Life in Chicago, August ’68,
the pigs in the street freaking out)—
punk seventeen-year-olds learning what we needed
from The Big Us, the Fifth Estate, Crawdaddy! Rolling Stone,
protesting the draft in front of the wrong building,
desperately sweet-talking every sweet young thing
(I want ya right now not the best come-on),
stupidly scoring oregano more often than not,
learning songs from the boys & Mitch Ryder, Terry Knight & the Pack
with a rhythm guitarist who knew maybe ten chords
& shirtless an unsavory sight to see.
But anyway & what the hell, our hair was right,
the blotter for real & potent, a few girls willing.
Come together, come together, yes yes yes yes yes
. . . . .
Today, the vinyl’s scratched and obsolete,
Detroit in its dotage (let it all burn).
The dream, heaven knows, is over. Don’t
look up the brothers in their decline, two dead
of heart attacks, one of liver failure.
Yesterday, standing on the corner
with no girls going by, waiting for
the light to change, I watched a car pull up,
music blasting from its open windows.
My first thought: “why’s an old bald guy drumming
the wheel & singing along to the MC5?”