PUNK POETRY: Band Practice and the Red Flags Punk Rock Warned Me About by Tinamarie Cox

Band Practice and the Red Flags Punk Rock Warned Me About

His sister and I were sitting side by side,

but we couldn’t hear a single syllable despite the exaggeration of our lips.

We typed our conversation with our thumbs instead,

holding up the messages on our phone screens like passed notes in class.

There were more jokes than logical tunes filling the room,

and I wondered if this was how band practices typically went.

I was at his mercy, without another ride home late at night and

not born with any sense of direction when it came to the city.

And I was pretty sure I’d catch a disease from the bathroom 

in a music studio that looked like it had been condemned for years.

So, when he mocked my admiration for punk rock,

I kept my mouth shut.

But I wanted to say that every punk band on earth

was always going to be more popular than his half-ass attempt at metal.

And that he missed the point of the fast messy beats and sloppy yelled lyrics.

Because the bands I was in love with 

were all angry about the same things I thought were wrong in this universe.

The songs were my escape from the authoritarian forces pressing against me,

their lust for power put above sharing my humanity,

and the shame they wanted me to feel for the bloody harbor between my legs.

And if I could go back to that night,

I’d eat that red flag with his silver spoon and spit it back up on him.

I could have easily filled my belly with all the things I didn’t like about him.

But I struggled to hear my voice in any room at only eighteen.

--Tinamarie Cox