NAIL
Pick up that
hammer
And drive the last nail home
If you can't
beat them,
Throw money at them,
Turn the teenage rebel into a neurotic cigarette smoker cokehead pushing 30,
still portraying a teenager on film,
These are the
lines on your face you get from standing against authority,
And these are the venereal and psychological diseases,
And these are the drugs we bring you from South America,
So that you, my rebellious friend,
Will look 50 when you're 30,
And you won't be a rebel without a cause, you'll be an addict,
And the only people who'll help you then
Are the Jesus freaks downtown
Who offer to save you from your addiction by offering you another,
One that tells you not to rebel
One that tells you to be a sheep
And I think we all know what The Man uses sheep for
Pick up that
hammer
And drive the last nail home
And apply a thick coat of lacquer
Somewhere in
Southern California, a luncheon is being held.
Greg Ginn is there, dressed in a three-piece suit
with matching attaché case,
And a man in an identical three-piece suit and creepy grin
is telling Greg
He needs to have his tattoos removed to get that promotion,
And what is our friend Greg doing?
Let's see now, he appears to be smiling…
Ah, now he's nodding…
Across the
table a blonde in skimpy clothing
is trying to talk to Joey Ramone,
While he tries to hum a Sex Pistols song
but gets the notes wrong,
He looks up
and his eyes lock with her nipples,
and Joey stares at this voluptuous homunculus
Of Vitamin E, silicone and Wheat Thins,
and he wonders whether this woman is his wife.
Pick up that
hammer
And drive the last nail home
And apply a thick coat of lacquer
And screw on hinges and a lid
At the next
table, three federal prosecutors and three of LAPD's finest
Share a dinner table, to talk
About the ups and downs of the business of butchery
One of the feds wonders aloud if they'll ever
catch the real abortion clinic bomber,
While he shuffles the papers of the man
he's trying to get convicted in that case
One of the
cops scowls and complains,
with mouth half full of his sandwich,
that they didn't blame it on a black.
The second fed shushes him, saying that the last thing they want is for
Racial tensions to jumpstart
a renewed civil rights movement
They're still trying to mop up
the militia population explosion
"If the guy
is black," notes the third federal prosecutor,
"they're probably going to produce papers
saying he was a Muslim who
snuck in from overseas."
The second
cop perks up his ears.
"You really think the American people
are dumb enough to fall for that?"
To which the attorney retorts,
"They let you walk around with a gun, don't they?"
The third cop
is quiet,
eating quickly,
and glancing at his watch every two bites
Twitching
as Mini-Thins,
donut sugar,
and carbon monoxide
vie for control of his hippocampus,
It's the 27th,
and he's got eight tickets to go,
And he's getting
more anxious by the second,
He can hear his superior officers
screaming at him,
Laughing at him,
And his twitch grows a little faster,
And he hasn't had a felony since May
And he absent-mindedly carresses his holster as he finishes his meal,
Pick up that
hammer
And drive the last nail home
And apply a thick coat of lacquer
And screw on hinges and a lid
And line it with velvet
I dreamed of
you again last night
We rode until our horses refused to continue,
then camped in a hollow
and made love for hours beside a warm, bubbling spring,
Passing out in each others' arms
as a tree we'd never seen the likes of before
Showered us with its fragrant blooms,
We rose at
dawn to track and kill a deer,
And after we ate,
I gave you the necklace my grandfather gave to me;
You drew your sword and between tears prayed that we would
Be together forever
Then, suddenly,
I awoke to the sound of gunfire
and the smell of smoke,
five seconds before my alarm-clock came on
to christen the room with a
used car commercial followed by classic rock.
I switched the radio off, surveyed the out-of-control fire
and weeping family
across the street,
yawned,
scratched my butt,
and walked downstairs,
to discover your note,
saying you never wanted to see me again,
and that
You had decided to run off
with that stockbroker guy you met in Miami,
written on yellow post-it,
stuck to the wall in the empty corner of the room
where all my records had been
the night before.
Pick up that
hammer
And drive the last nail home
And apply a thick coat of lacquer
And screw on hinges and a lid
And line it with velvet
And put the dead man in it
©2001 Alex DeLoach
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