Health Surface: Poetry

by Adam Yoe

If I'm to trust myself, my spotty memory places me in 1999, slogging halfheartedly through part-time classes at the community college.

In other words, I was hanging out on campus benches, smoking roll-ups and blacking my thumbs on the pages of MAXIMUMROCKNROLL, HeartattaCk, and Cometbus. Zines were my punk community, my tether to a larger scene I was far too intimidated to approach by the light of day.

Though an avid show-goer and record buyer, I was also a dedicated isolationist, gladly avoiding the trappings of scene culture. Instead, I gravitated towards the documentarians, the custodians, and the inadvertent gatekeepers of punk itself - the writers, the artists, and the photographers.

Perhaps it's a strange inclination, but I found the opportunity to participate wholly while remaining peripheral and unnoticed to be the perfect marriage for someone like myself. Yer Scene has my heart and it exists, for me, on the same continuum, every bit a part of the same document, albeit with less staples and Kinko's punk hook-ups. It's a square in our culture's quilt, lovingly stitching together communal moments of some truly inspiring people. The continuum is alive and well in the hands of the beautiful humans here at Yer Scene.

My favorite part of zines has always been the poetry. Here's some amateurish poems: all of them documents of instability, insecurity, coffee, punk rock, longing, searching, trespassing, cutting, loving, and fucking everything up. I love y'all.

I. we're all dying to the tune of post collegiate angst a violent masquerade in the key of death. Thought again today of the crown prince of folk punk croons on cracked and how it's nice to be here tonight but tomorrow i'll teeter on collapse

II. We called him this but his name was that the drifter, the dreamsmith the specter of Main St. a locket of post-war electrolysis held down 100 yards as if he owned it breathed slowly as the first flake fell the train ran him over as the blanket of snow quieted us

III. the reservoir our chapel that summer I sipped pilfered wine as you'd smoke pot and curse while the water cut deep V's into your calves my ankles some things will never last and this is one of them

IV. this industrial tomb we find a pew a holy place to smoke a few a daily stop the vultures sit and rest atop the slow breath of dying smokestacks you wait for a call I wait for my shift to kill me

by Olivia Chenier

V. a dream again delivered a man his face gaunt, raccoonish even a father squeezed and childless lethargic patron of brick and soil back upright and is held by wires starched and straight me at fifty family scattered love having vanquished the remainder of my pigment solo, orderly a mess of pressed slacks and no expectation hair matted and flattened by absence

VI. 4am finds me upright and forceful slinking back into your leather college chair you swear it was stuffed with Polish ghetto's pubic tufts your ancestors whose teeth survived opened flames minutes later my bowels rebelled I questioned whether or not I am alright.

VII. I will need you all very soon I will call upon the blazing heart of this collective one breath for every mouth a flexing arm to serve its time with the flag and baton pillage the forest to forge my crutch idle in your cars under spirals of smoke walk with me hold my hand and let me hear your jokings bring coffee and cards bandage my arms and lie to my mom launder my piss-stained sheets meet me with your jackets on smelling of burnt promise

VIII. Roll me up in burlap work my childish jobs pay my bills and set my 3 alarms for anytime after 9 pretend that the dying words don't mean the end of nights come help me listen to the rain

by Livvy Mitchell

IX. (dedicated to a shitty, problematic, and opportunistic band from Baltimore) your hair is a beautiful, tossed brittle fingernails longish dirtied with boutique soils pints littered 3 parts water to lubricate your skeletal rhetoric. we pander we froth we paw at the shins of purveyors you sing words to make us choke and we ask nothing of you but to live for us spoiled, rash, vicarious you taint your children with a daring 2nd LP but when the Soundscan doesn't pan you run elsewhere I will be there with torn stubs dusty records and gritted molars flattened and tense I am your memory I am your guilt and your distaste for their generation. amped sloganeering megaphones amplify an apathy cloaked in activism my sloth a silent pause, a response to every lyric penned a turned back there's no chorus after the fallout no well-placed string arrangements no reprise for respect you've robbed the scene of intention you made the romper room into a sitting room the visitor center a darkened, locked bedroom into the fucking morgue. but I will wait patiently as you ask us to manipulate ourselves under your airbrushed glossy pin-ups i'll take the ragtag skronk and fart of girls and boys sans delusion playing me their songs that hurt to sing playing me songs I don't already know. you've calculated our capacity to fall in love. from the lofty record label penthouse the meet and greet busy yourselves with box sets and borrowed bridges I'll be in the mud with a stick and a rock. give it to me once and bring it lest we're unimpressed, you're calloused as the lotion rubs away the vulgarity of performance leaves you spotlit nude give it to me one take from memory mono in your basement dried blood on your cuticles salt in the crease of your brow a sole and dangling electrician's bulb you and the band where are you now, soldiers? your protest is problematic as I hand you back your pamphlet

X. your bounty was won in illness. holy places require divine actions and you croon like the golden calf get off the cross we need the wood for the fire