BUMMER II

USER GUIDE FOR TRANSITIONING MOTORCYCLE-GANG HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH STUDENTS FROM BADASS POETRY TO RELATIVELY GOODASS POETRY IN ONLY A FEW EASY STEPS…

Yes, in BUMMER I, I detailed how I played Pied Piper of Hamelin, nefariously luring my unsuspecting wannabe belligerents (aka the savage junior EXILES biker gang) into conforming to the strict tenets of the high school English curriculum (aka the poetry unit). And yes, it was touch and go there for a while. However, they don’t call me The Dudley Dooright of Poetry for nuthin’ (he always gets his…… men).

And once I had them somewhat “enjoying” my dark Harry Chapin songs, I obviously had to face the fact that there weren’t that many of them. So I had to line up some ammunition for our future 45-minute classes. I knew I would have to try to wean them off music eventually (but by all means gradually and imperceptibly). But in the meantime, an obvious middle step was protest songs. There are so many of those to choose from, and so that’s where I went next. Protest songs would the ideal buffer zone for moseying on over to real poems. The transition couldn’t be too abrupt.

Always I was re-enforcing the point that singer-songwriter’s song lyrics are POETRY. And so far, so good.

This next one, of course, was one of their favorites. OK, it was one of mine. Check it out on YouTube, too. It’s a hoot and a half. And like all protest songs, rather historical.

“I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag”  by Country Joe and the Fish 
 

Well, come on all of you, big strong men, 
Uncle Sam needs your help again. 
He’s got himself in a terrible jam 
Way down yonder in Vietnam 
So put down your books and pick up a gun, 
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun. 
 

CHORUS 

And it’s one, two, three, 
What are we fighting for? 
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn, 
Next stop is Vietnam; 
And it’s five, six, seven, 
Open up the pearly gates, 
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why, 
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die. 
 
Well, come on generals, let’s move fast; 
Your big chance has come at last. 
Now you can go out and get those reds 
‘Cause the only good commie is the one that’s dead 
And you know that peace can only be won 
When we’ve blown ’em all to kingdom come. 
 
CHORUS 
Come on Wall Street, don’t be slow, 
Why man, this is war au-go-go 
There’s plenty good money to be made 
By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade, 
But just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb, 
They drop it on the Viet Cong. 
 
CHORUS 
Come on mothers throughout the land, 
Pack your boys off to Vietnam. 
Come on fathers, and don’t hesitate 
To send your sons off before it’s too late. 
And you can be the first ones in your block 
To have your boy come home in a box. 

Protest songs were pretty easy pickings, practically a dime a dozen. So I used the above song as a springboard. And since the subject of “Fixin’ to Die” is War, I turned to my vast collection of War Poetry. I wasn’t looking for gory blood and guts though. I wanted something with meaning, something with a little tad of philosophical thinking that even they could dig. Stealthy me.

Basically I told them to look at themselves. What follows is not word-for-word, only an approximation of how I chose to begin.

“Look at you guys. You’re so badass, you don’t put up with anything you don’t want. Honestly? I’m impressed. I even envy you with your commitment to defend your beliefs and your goals. You don’t put up with any crap at all, do you. And then if worst comes to worst, you’re willing to face whatever consequences there are. That’s ultra cool. I like that.

“But you’re also very lucky to have been born in an era where protest has become such a thing. It wasn’t always that way, you know. It wasn’t that way when I was your age. We were brought up to toe the line, to accept whatever your parents insisted on, and also of course whatever The Man told you to accept. You didn’t want trouble, you didn’t want to make any waves. How boring, right? I’m sure you look at my generation as a bunch of wimps compared to yourselves.

 “Anyway, I’m not exactly certain when this protest spirit started to blossom, but it’s tied right in with the Draft and the Vietnam War. Young people started burning their draft cards. They began poking daisies and daffodils right down the National Guard’s rifle barrels pointed at them.

“Bob Dylan has an odd little song reflecting the early stages of the Big Change, where protestors were finding they had have a voice, they could just say NO to anything, even though it was officially mandated. He called it “Maggie’s Farm.” And whenever you hear “Maggie’s Farm” referred to in these lyrics, just think of it standing for The Parents, The School Principal, The Cop, The Draft, or whatever wannabe power was rubbing you the wrong way.”

Maggie’s Farm by Bob Dylan

Oh I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Well, I wake in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin’ me insane
It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel
He hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you’re havin’ a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more

No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks
His bedroom window
It is made out of bricks
The National Guard stands around his door
Ah, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more

No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more
Well, she talks to all the servants
About man and God and law
Everybody says
She’s the brains behind Pa
She’s sixty eight, but she says she’s fifty four
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more

No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They sing while you slave and I just get bored
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

“Maggie’s Farm”went over fairly well with my little scholar-don’wannabes. It didn’t kill them, at any rate, but they weren’t really all that impressed. They’d all heard it before. But I did sense, after going over the individual lyrics as much as they allowed me to, that they were at least somewhat interested in the interpretation of Maggie’s Farm as a metaphor. Anyway, not bad for a biker gang. And I sensed by this point, they might also have begun to take a stand-offish interest in me, the Ichabod Crane at the front of the room, which couldn’t hurt.  Collateral reward. I shamelessly like to think that they perhaps admired my spunk in taking them on in this nearly impossible task: me, a Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, LOL.

So the next step? Continuing on with… well, sucking up to them. And God forbid, trying to slip a pure, unadulterated, non-lyrical “poem” in right under their suspicious noses.  And I had one all picked out though, yeah, I knew it was a real longshot. Especially when, as I was passing out the printed lines of the poem I heard one of my biker boys exclaim. “Oh Jesus, guys, this one’s written by somebody called Jack the Pervert! No shit!”

Oh well, what did I expect, really? (After that, things went something, but not exactly, like this.)

Me: “OK, guys. This one’s written by a guy who was your age around 1915 or so.”

Them: “What, they had perverts back then too?”

Me: “Oh believe me guys, they had them way long before this author was around.”

Them: “This guy sounds stupid.”

Me: “He was a Frenchman.”

Them: “Yeah? That too? Well that figures.”

Them: “Christ, I woulda changed my friggin’ name at least, that’s for sure!”

Me: “His last name was actually pronounced prayVARE. In French. Doesn’t mean pervert. He was a famous movie-maker, writer, and poet. Died in 1977.”

Them: “Of What? Embarrassment?”

Them: “Getting beat up by a motorcycle gang?”

Them: “Jack the famous French pervert. Good riddance.”

Me: “Hey, listen up guys. If you can politely put up with me for just the next fifteen minutes, as scary and tough as that might be, I swear to you the next poem after this one is going to be so raunchy it’ll shock even you. I swear it.”  (I had a couple of Bukowskis up my sleeve as ammo.)

Them: “You wish.”

Me: “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. And I could be wrong. But. Are you willing to prove me wrong, though?”

Them: “How? You wanna make another deal? Like, unless we fall down and drop dead on the floor of fright, we won’t have to do no more poems?”

Me: “Something like that, yeah? Only not with this poem. The one after this is when we’ll deal.”

Them: “Bullshit.”

Me: “Come on, please,  guys. You tried me once. Dare to try me again?”

Anyway, yadda, yadda, yadda, and after more back and forth, I eventually had me a tenuous deal. But they made it clear that I really had to put up, or shut up. I told them I could live with that. So: following is the print out of the poem I was placing on their desks. I insisted on them quietly listening to me read it to them very slowly… and yes, twice (because it was so short and because I believe any poem should usually be read at least twice, if not more), before they could jump in and tell me in no uncertain words what they really thought it, regardless.

THE FAMILY by Jacques Prevert 

The mother knits 
The son goes to the war 
She finds this quite natural, the mother 

And the father? 
What does the father do? 
He has his business 

His wife knits 
His son goes to the war 
He has his business

He finds this quite natural, the father 
And the son 
What does the son find?

He finds absolutely nothing, the son 
His mother does her knitting, 
His father has his business 

And he has the war 
When the war is over 
He’ll go into business with his father

The war continues 
The mother continues knitting 
The father continues with his business

The son is killed 
He doesn’t continue
The father and mother visit the graveyard 

They find this natural 
The father and the mother
Life goes on 

A life of knitting, war, business 
Business, war, knitting, war 
Business, business, business 

Life with the graveyard 

OK, truth? This experiment was pretty much an utter fiasco, as you can imagine. The common adjective they could all agree on was…STUPID! I bet I heardthe word STUPID! about seventy-five times in the follow-up. And when I asked what any of them thought about what the author was trying to put across with this one, they hooted and sneered. “Can’t you read?!” they asked me. “Jeez! It’s all right there right out in front of you, for cryin’ out loud. I mean, it says it over and over: the wife knits, the son goes to the war, and the father has his business! I mean, wow, isn’t that friggin’ interesting story! Hey, dude, if that’s what a poem is, and you like that stuff, then man, it royally sucks being you more than I thought.”

Ah well. You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out. I’d given it he old college try. I did manage to get a couple of sentences squeezed in afterward, despite all the uproar, but it’s pretty doubtful any of them paid much attention to my explanation of”The Family.” However, in the bigger sense, I had won… in that I had secured for myself a chance for another go-round in that rodeo. In the next class, I had three poems in mind that would zap them like a fully-charged cattle prod. And I couldn’t wait!