Rude, Riffed and Righteous

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest. - Thoreau

Image: Black Sabbath (Courtesy of Warner Records as

           appeared in Rolling Stone)

forging the gilded ore of heavy metal

laying the foundation of a galvanized genre

clinging intricately to the past participle of cannabis haze

climbing cocaine hills and unscalable musical mountains

peeking out from the dark recesses of sabotaged minds

bodies burning and souls on fire

lost in a liturgical realm where mobs rule

caught in an unnegotiated parallel between heaven and hell

cutting through still silence like a reciprocating saw

spirits and guitars one

thimbled fingers pluck and strum

hypnotized hands beating the percussion of life's telling drum

not just all but some

young geezers forever young

their song never over

never done

Author's Note

“What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? We are all ordinarily in a state of desperation; such is our life; ofttimes it drives us to suicide. To how many, perhaps to most, life is barely tolerable, and if it were not for the fear of death or of dying, what a multitude would immediately commit suicide! But let us hear a strain of music, we are at once advertised of a life which no man had told us of, which no preacher preaches. Suppose I try to describe faithfully the prospect which a strain of music exhibits to me. The field of my life becomes a boundless plain, glorious to tread, with no death nor disappointment at the end of it. All meanness and trivialness disappear. I become adequate to any deed. No particulars survive this expansion; persons do not survive it. In the light of this strain there is no thou nor I. We are actually lifted above ourselves.” - Thoreau

Reviews

[Carlos Lorenzo Estrada]

An excellent ode to a legendary band black sabbath. This took me back many moons my friend. What I wouldn't give to stand at the shore of that heavy metal Nirvana you have painted and just listen to the pure maelstrom of dark heavenly sound. A wonderful poem indeed.