The Complete History of the Blast

 Jesse S. Mitchell

The Complete History of the Blast

This is Oppenheimer’s future.  Big city, bright lights America.  Autocrats and laundromats, self-service stations and fireworks.  Liquid cooled patriotism, rows of knees that jerk…all in one direction and then again in another.  Highway miles under the margarita mixers, ugly smells, pretend you’ll smother.

Rattlecage Saltzman was a tenderfoot bluesman

Who every night would play at the guitar,

He would strum up and he would strum down…

He made a helluva sound

But he never did get very far.

Playing through the broken glass

Of broken windows,

He would sing out your name 

Whenever you would speed past

I get so tired of looking this world in the eyes, blink blink, I get so tired of staring back into blurs of someone else‘s passing bys.  And I get so very tired of these words, making them go so neatly together.  When I speak to you, you should know me better.  Boom boom, spider light, drowning out the moonlight.

Kitten Cabochon, the royal heiress,

As a lady she was scarce

But with the rare wave of her hand,

She was a highly approachable princess.

Had the loudest voice in all the land,

Had a sound like gravel, gravel and sand.

This is rocketship radio, rattle and hum, rattle and fuzz.  Rocketship radio transistor hum and buzz.  Space age, arms race, computer face, Artificial this, artificial that, can’t help you if you can’t dance.  This Oppenheimer’s America.  Better to misbehave.  Doesn’t matter, nothing here will be saved.

And when the two got together

It was the biggest ball

Wouldn’t have done no good

At all

If it wasn’t for his southern accent,

Grace notes like chalk split all over the wall,

This is the complete history of 

The blast

And none of it, accident.