[Chapters of Diary of an Adamant Seducer]

I was a little kid
Maybe seven
On my parent’s bed
listening to their wood-themed clock radio
This song comes on
Never heard it before
Can’t believe it!
Put the radio on the bed to be closer to it

We built a city on Rock n Roll?
How?
On what?
Music?
Rhythm?
Hope?
Fun?
Ideas?
Ideas about what?
Thought?
Moving thought?
Dancing around?
Being young and free?

Big hair and bright loose fitting clothes?
Positive synths?
Constrained, profitable, but not profit-centered rebellions?

Some kind of driving ideas
Some kind of an organization of thought and attitude
Out of this we’ve built a place to live
an economy
a way of being together

Looking for America?
What’s that supposed to be?
A place with enough for everyone and some left over?
An explosion of fun creative helpful activity?
A magical ever-expanding order?

But there’s a problem with America?
Involving money?

But everything will be OK
because we built this city
we built this city
on rock n roll

We built this city on everybody having a good time together
We built this city on everyone enjoying one another
That’s why it’s gonna work

Oh
please
please let us
reverse engineer this city
so that it be built of pure rock n roll
that it be built of pure, silly, let’s do this! friendship

Oh
please
please let this work
let us work
all of us
let us work together
and let us all together work as people
stripped of all our parades
and buttons
and the tinsel stuck in our hair
after the dance
where we were so pale and red cheeked in the winter night
where we were so alone and unready
where we were not yet our fullest selves
where we were just the clapping in the sky
the darkness of the walk home
from the dance
sweaty in our nice jeans
when that idiot flicked a match at the passing car
and big kids came out en angry (not really probably) masse
and we had to scatter with raised heart rates

I hid behind a pile of logs
I think that’s safe to now disclose
that danger seems to have passed

AW/BW

[Chapters of Diary of an Adamant Seducer]

copyright 9/21/2019 by AM Watson