on the record #10

state radio - us against the crown

you know, someone told me that a record can be about more than just movin' asses. and i could tell you that this record is unknown and unappreciated, that it's like sublime with a conscience, bob marley, and rage all rolled into one baseball spliff. i could say that it speaks politics in a very human and beautiful way. i could even tell you how much better it would be if they dropped "rushian" and put "the legacy of margaret brown" in its place.

but instead, i think i'll tell you about my time in the youth home.

you see, one afternoon, we noticed that there was more to the place than the grease-gray walls whose cracks i'd trace with splayed fingers in moonless midnight. two of us had found the secret the staff had inadvertently revealed. the work they'd left unfinished - the recessed lights in the ceiling - told us that there was something above. i was overjoyed and paralyzed with fear when my friend pushed through the hole and went up into the attic somewhere beyond that white light, in the rafters. i could only imagine what else would be up there and what we could find. but man, i had to leave him there alone and i don't really need to close my eyes to remember the look on his face when i told him that we'd get caught.

so i had to leave him there even though he'd never see me without disdain again. it was near suppertime anyway, and i could hear the others in the courtyard. wood and corrugated tin rafters lined three sides around the perimeter. underneath, in the shade, were splintered wood benches with gray peeling paint. some of us were there sitting or standing noisily in tattered white dirty dress shirts and khakis, frayed bottoms and no shoes. it was dusty there and grass grew in splotches around the courtyard, burned by the sun or shaded in the shadows of scattered cinder blocks. at the front of the courtyard - apart, on the left - she sat, sweet and sad with her eyes cast down and a red scarf about her head.

she was older and out of her teens. sat at the picnic table alone to cut vegetables for all our dinner all day long. she brought that knife down with a rhythmic precision, concentrating bitterly with each press. i could feel the bone crunch when that blade bit greedily into her fingers. i still get sick to remember the red mix with the orange and hear the yelps of the crowd, but most of all i remember her eyes and that no one went to help her.

least of all not the headmaster. he, too, came from the front of the courtyard, but from the right this time. he was carrying the gallows. a ritual at best, a symbol to remind us. but the bastards put it up all the time nonetheless. didn't seem to matter when - what i mean is, there was no schedule for the gallows. it wasn't something like halloween or christmas or the 4th of july. not even necessarily a monthly thing. they seemed to just haul it out whenever they felt like it was needed. no one was getting hanged - at least not since we'd been there - but there was talk. you know how people can be. the headmaster was shouldering most of the burden, but he did allow the front to rest on this kid. a little kid, much smaller than the rest of us. almost still a child. the boy - shaved head, unbuttoned shirt - walked with the wood on his shoulders and two frail arms wrapped at the wrists around the wood. his mouth was open.

when they got it to the spot, the headmaster began to raise it to its frightful position but his grip slipped and the full weight of all the wood fell on that little kid who never saw it coming. he went down like a sack full of ashes and didn't move.

and nobody else did either.

it'd be nice to think that there are songs to sing right then and there. songs to get you to rise. to get shit straight again. to break the walls down even. and you know what'd be even nicer? those songs would be the same you could sing on the outside in the sun, in the field, in love.