80s songs and some more poems

Don’t know too much by The Romantics – mostly just this one from 1983/1984 and “What I Like About You” from 1980 (I’m sure many of you have heard that song, it’s heard in many commercials); though their song “One in a Million” is pretty good too. Call me a sucker for 80s music, but I love the bassline in this, the fact that the guitars aren’t too overpowering (I like some melody there, thank you), and the fact there are guitars in this (so many New Wave bands tended to forget that, either for better for worse – in the case of New Order, the guitars accentuated the songs when they were present, and in the case of Depeche Mode, they were not present for a while and the great songwriting by Martin Gore helped the keyboards really shine and work well). Plus, the way the band members all pop up at the beginning is hilarious.

This is one of my favorite songs by the Australian 80s band (started that decade) The Church, who are mostly known for their song “Under the Milky Way” (used in a scene in the 2001 movie Donnie Darko) from their album Starfish (1988). This song rocks hard for an non-metal 80s band – the guitar solos are almost reminiscent of classic rock like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Pink Floyd. I believe these guys have a great sense of melody in not only this song but their others as well – it’s been killing me that I only have one album of theirs, and it’s not even the remastered CD (which does exist, but is mostly readily available on Amazon). For more great guitar riffs, you all should listen to their song “Reptile”.

Death Becomes Me

I wake up in a void
Darkness all around
No sky
No earth
No nothing
Darkness stretching on
As far as my eye can see
I start to walk
For what seems like forever
A light appears ahead
Now I run
And the light becomes brighter
Eventually I reach the end
I see a white world of clouds above
Filled with wondrous singing angels
And a fiery red world below
Full of screaming, rotting demons
That reach for me
With long curled claws
I kick them away
And as I do I float up to the world above
But as I near my final destination
I stop rising
And begin to fall
I scream as I do
But it does not change a thing
Then the fiery world vanishes
I fall back into the darkness
My consciousness disintegrates
I awake again in this void
No memories remain
Of how I came to be here
Am I going through a never-ending nightmare?
Or is this really the end, to live life out
Trapped forever in Purgatory

Another imagery one, and one where I was definitely in a phase where I like using Purgatory in my poetry, and in names for hobbies and such. Sort of using darkness for Purgatory and uses that cliche light at the end of the tunnel thing, and almost some sort of character study in saying that one belongs in Purgatory in that he/she is neither good enough or evil enough to go to Heaven or Hell, in the Christian sense.

Transformation

I can feel it deep down in my soul
My heart shines an unhealthy glow
My mind is twisting and turning
In my throat I feel a burning
As my stomach continues churning
I’m transforming into something
That I do not want to become
My feelings are distilled away
I can no longer see the sunshine of day
The part that held it all together
Floats away like a feather
Desensitized to the pain
Now as tough as a train
I thought I could escape the dreadful land
But it’s as inescapable as my hand
Hurt once too many times
This is my body’s reaction
I must now return
From whence I came
The Great Abyss now calls my name

The second poem that was published in my college’s literary journal, this one’s probably my second attempt at rhyming, and takes it much further than the first attempt. I was only slightly pleased by this one – I think if I want to do rhyming in poetry, I’d have to do a lot better than this; and it wasn’t one of my favorites at all from the ones that I submitted. I was so surprised when this one made it into the literary journal while the others didn’t – I was really in love with the first poem that I had written about my then girlfriend, and was expecting that or one of the other ones to make it in. Anyhow, this uses a sort of Downward Spiral era Nine Inch Nails theme of transformation to something inhuman and follows the rhythm of Black Sabbath’s “Snowblind” from their 1972 album Volume 4.

Hope everyone that watches this blog enjoys, and there should probably be about 4 or so poems left in my early period before it switches over to my middle period (an awkward time when I was depressed a fair amount to only really having about 2 small sets of friends, and just the fear of being alone and not respected or wanted).

~ by isolator86 on December 27, 2007.