The Garbage Man (lyrics)

You’re gambling, kid, you’re playing roulette

You’re never gon’ win, you’re racking up debt

Roll the dice all ya want, the result’s just the same

It’s rigged from the start, your girl’s a card game

Look at this ace I’m giving to you

I scored with your chick, you hadn’t a clue

Don’t look so shocked, but I’m your savior -

The luck of your life is that I laid her

Doing the scut work, they call me a hero

I’m bringing divorce rates down to zero

If your lover’s trash, I’ll take ‘er out -

Just call the garbage man, shout it!

Your relationship’s dead, you’re drinking the dregs

I’ll junk it for ya, you’ll grow new legs

If your girl’s gon’ cheat, I’m doing a favour

Once you catch wind ya won’t talk to her later

Don’t call us Don Juans with beer cans,

And don’t hate your neighbourhood garbage man

Our work is noble, yeah it causes you pain

We give the stress test, without it what do you gain?

Doing the scut work, they call me a hero

I’m bringing divorce rates down to zero

If your girlfriend’s trash, I’ll take her out -

Just call the garbage man, shout it!

(repeat first two verses)

(chorus)

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For my free poem, I considered finishing my Rime (see Mundane Autumn entry), but that poem is interminable compared to anything we’ve read in class and I figured the archaic diction might not be well received. As luck had it, a close friend who’s the trombone player in a ska band said he wanted lyrics, preferably rhyming tetrameter lines with a good hook. I looked up the lyrical structures of some conventional rock songs and came up with a two-stanza verse, a chorus, and another two-stanza verse, and indicated that the chorus would then be repeated, then the first verse, then the chorus again. I jumbled the lines substantially during composition of the lyrics. I do enjoy the “If your girlfriend’s trash, I’ll take her out” line because of the two intended meanings (if she’s trashy, I’ll take her on a date and if she’s like trash, I’ll take out the trash for you). But I know it could also be construed in a violent, misogynistic way and I hate this, so I watered down the first instance of the line to “If your lover’s trash, I’ll take ‘er out.” The second stanza of the second verse is the weakest link, but maybe adding a foot to the first line would improve it marginally. Another metrical tidbit is that the lines in the first stanza each have a “caesura” in them and I’m not sure if this would translate well musically. Also, I think there’s a sort of weird dissonance or clash between the two metaphors – gambling and garbage. All in all, writing song lyrics was a novel, humbling experience, and I was pleasantly surprised at the class’s response. We’ll see if anyone churns a song out of this. I highly doubt it, and I’m not sure it wouldn’t cause me more embarrassment than pride.

iGod

The Earth’s a shiny hulk

Orbiting around a lightbulb

The filthiest dirt is microchipped

And trees are spraypainted metallic

The papery moon’s a new Eden

Coveted for its inertness,

Its blank slate for beeping machines

Human hearts pump electronically -

Consciousness is chemical

The sun is blocked out

Gates led us out of the caves

To Jobs, the Buddha incarnate

Whose MacBook

Is more spiritual

Than nature

Nobody dies a pneumonitic death

Souls are saved to disc

Google Maps links the galaxies

The problem of sex, mechanically solved

But if the epochs could be rewound

I’d travel backward, before engineered embryos,

The Sino-American star wars, CDOs and ICQ

And prescribe a cult of poetry and song

To preempt the atomization of focus

People would die, but they’d have lived

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I was to write a poem inspired by the Irish poet Paula Meehan. iGod partly took inspiration from her Child Burial, a beautiful and powerful piece that rewinds time and almost invokes “the Fall”, and was also partly inspired by Death of a Field. The poem's a dystopian vision of a world saturated with technology, and I’m obviously not the first or last writer to address this. In fact, after I wrote it I was watching a Charlie Rose interview with Franzen, Wallace, and Leyner where someone mentioned how there’s no downtime anymore - how even in airport waiting spaces there are TVs. To compare this complaint in the nineties to our current world of smartphones is quite instructive. My poem is entirely without meter, which is a bit of a departure, as I find meter a good way to frame words, a convenient way to brainstorm even. People liked iGod and I’m pleased with it overall. Of course, the last line is rather redundant and the whole backwards thing happens too quickly.

Mundane Autumn

Brigit vacuums and blocks the door,

Her back is turned to me.

Do I wait, or go, return upstairs?

She looks! And jumps ten feet.

The leaves are golden limey brown

As I descend the stairs.

A TV van is parked outside:

A creepy-looking lair.

Beneath the overpass that runs

Above the winding road

There lies a stain of whitish grey,

The birds’ great unload.

It lines the sidewalk like the scene

Of someone’s tragic fall,

Has blotched the pavement many months,

Will do so till snowfall.

I give the wrong directions to

A passerby from France.

A man corrects me straight away –

I can always count on chance.

At Luigi’s Italian diner chefs

Are Transylvanian-born.

I’m ignorant of that region other

Than Dracula and porn.

And thus wraps up my afternoon,

The chips are fully eaten.

I know you’re jealous of my day,

It surely can’t be beaten.

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This poem did not come to me easily in terms of material. I was straining hard for content and went for a walk with my notebook to seek inspiration. I indeed walked up behind a woman vacuuming and blocking the door, knowing she’d jump 10 feet if she turned around and saw me, indeed saw a massive splattering of bird droppings that almost reminded me of some cordoned-off forensic scene of a freak accident. The actual ballad vibe is unfortunately not there, although metrically it basically conforms, at least to the meter of Coleridge’s canonical ballad Rime of the Ancient Mariner. (We also had the option of blank verse, and I’ve already done that with my Bali Pastoral, a rather stiff poem that I do like both for its packed, colourful details and personal evocations.) Mundane Autumn is sort of funny and random and it gives me pleasure that I wrote it based on a half-hour of experiences on a Saturday afternoon. I admit that the final stanza is a dud, and that the ballad aspect is lacking. I originally planned on completing the third part of a very long ballad inspired heavily, all too heavily by Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Here’s a sample:

            An engineer withdrew his gun

            And aimed it at the glow,

            Which charged with sonic might and knocked

            Him to the ground — too slow!

An afflicted engineer            He trailed the glow with neutered will,

succumbs to                      Resistance disappeared;

bizarre activity.                    We waved our hands and begged he stop —

            His deference was weird.

            He skulked into a room and sang

            A hymn we’d never heard,

            Vociferating like a mad,

            Enraged, suffering bird.

            We studied with amazement grand

            This mockery of man,

            Deciph’ring how to fathom him,

            When half of us straight ran.

            We flew from orange spurts that zinged

            Through air engorged with screams —

            Some tripped! — these victims were betrayed

            By surging starry beams.

            I spied the exit to our ship,

            Illuminated blue,

            And groped through shadows down the ramp,

            I swear this all is true.

            The docking bay in which I hid

            Was brimming full of spears

            Of flashing purple speckled light

            Refracting throughout mirrors.

The astronaut                    And through the flashing spears there spun

experiences an                   A lavender blanket of calm:

aurora in the midst              Aurora tranquil fit for scene

of the calamity.                  Of beaches with sunsets and palms.

            A soothing cool diffused through skin,

            I breathed in healing rays.

            The more I drank the fount of light

            The more the warmth did pay.

            I pictured worlds colliding —bam!

            And all reduced to dust.

            The stars withdrew into the womb

            To nurse at nature’s bust.

The dreams                       These fancies of suspension formed

are interrupted.                    Elixir awesome, whole —

            But loud commotion ripped through dock

                                                And heightened peace it stole.

I See

                                                            I see

A bartender as focused as an air traffic controller,

A bustling street with no street signs,

A Grafton Street busker who could fill a stadium,

A stream wetting a peat field,

A wizened train clerk nodding directions,

A shot of Jamieson swirling in a glass,

An Abbey actress playing emotions like a clarinet,

A slippery mountainside covered in moss,

A comic bombing in a half-empty club,

A streetlight reflecting off the Liffey,

A house band playing the same songs over,

A ewe grazing beside the highway,

A spraytanned girl in line at Coppers,

An abbey with doors open 800 years later,

A congenial plumber fixing the toilet,

A cold lake as smooth as crystal,

A migrant worker making another sandwich,

A tricolor rippling in the wind,

A homeless man shaking his cup,

A rainbow I can touch the end of,

A bus driver racing against time,

                                                            And you.

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I was to write a free verse poem and originally I wrote one analogous to Ginsberg’s America, but I was told by a sharp reader that it seemed too hostile, even coarse. I decided to write another at the last minute on the train ride home from Connemara, and began with a list of visual images of Ireland, some poached from my original poem. After I’d compiled my list, I typed it up and split it into “people” on the left and “things” on the right, and thought of adding another category. Still, it wasn’t a poem, as there was nothing to hang these images around.  I had the idea to write “I see” at the start and “and you” at the end, and I think this has a striking and personal effect, great for its simplicity. Dr. Perry and Eunika commented that it was their favourite poem of mine thus far. This highlights the value of striking imagery, accessibility, and quiet power over more technical, old-fashioned efforts.