everything louder than everything else (2007)

schoolkids sit mutinously in the classroom thinking,
why don’t we ever learn about ____? [not audible]

not these kitschy hymns, but, like…
our screentest, advance, potential audience
*

all vying to jumpstart careers as enfants terribles
(“I hate speech” liquid-papered on the spine of a textbook)

& aspirants, rivals
mimic us whenever we leave the room
*

what we really have to talk about is where our assumptions lie
& what is supervised (here, you can have my copy of the report)

some idiot writes in to the newspaper
saying ‘we’ should be sending a tougher message on drugs

*

DO NOT swing on hoop / this area
is for basketball only

while out on the steps scrawny emo kids pocket dead birds,
erase a few shadows from the world


Note: "everything louder than everything else" is, firstly, part of a remark by Ian Gillan of Deep Purple from their Made in Japan live album: "Could we have everything louder than everything else?" It's also the title of a live album by Motorhead.