Arose late (seven)
too-cold kitchen; hot coffee
listened to Primus
Primus is like Ween
we discovered; the nineties
when records were cheap
Regional music
more powerful than genre
Claypool and Hammett
prog-funk-jam-metal
they toured with Jane’s Addiction
signed with Interscope
“this sounds good to me”
“it also sounds good to me”
early live album
I walk the snoopy
hear a Jon Hamm interview
on Pete Holmes’ podcast
Hamm calls Don Draper
a sociopath; says he
does not envy him
the dog took a dump
on the steep side of a hill
it was a dumb choice
Made extra coffee
because of TGIF
googled Dead Milkmen
almost time for school
but I have five tabs open
looking for something
it’s a tarot deck
from the fifteenth century
all illustrated
most decks don’t detail
all the minor arcana
but this one; it does
it was re-printed
by hand, in the late nineties
by a German man
He only did a small run
–just seven hundred copies–
I covet one, hard
it isn’t online
you have to email the man
if you want a deck
No, I won’t do it
but I like to know it’s there
weird-ass cool old shit
But back to Primus:
remember the brown album?
How did I have it?
I have forgotten
how you heard music back then
it seems eons past
once, in my Rock class,
I told them about tape decks
they were astounded
the sound of a tape
rattling in your backpack
under the car seat
tape the radio
try to get Violent Femmes
without getting ads
“How did cassette tapes
help you pirate music, though?”
my students! so young
that’s when it happened;
I told them about tape decks
they were dumbfounded
things took so much time
time was long and very slow
we sat quietly
You should bring in the last few cherished mixtapes taped off the radio you have and see how many jaws drop open. Bonus for actually having a tape deck still, or finding one at goodwill. (Does anyone still have one? But I certainly have shoeboxes full of mixtapes).