To the Break of Dawn with Michael Robbins

The concluding poem in the Michael Robbins's poetry collection, Alien vs. Predator, does just that: it concludes by outlining and redefining Robbins's aesthetic and approach to poetry through the persona of a bedroom DJ. Like a DJ, or a mashup artist, the MC/speaker blends (and celebrates) their tastes in music and, in this case, literature as a means of reflexively tracing their influences, along with their aesthetic development and experience within the medium/media. For many bedroom DJs, and artists/poets, tracing and then retracing this lineage can be a lonely experience, whether it's digging in the crates for that special beat, that diamond in the rough, among those stack upon stacks of broken dreams in a dimly lit basement; or if it's before an invisible crowd in some studio apartment bedroom--also a bathroom, kitchen, and living room--at 4 a.m., after hearing the sickest set that has finally inspired you to play out or at the next battle; but regardless of whether you will or not, you'll still be spinning plates of wax until the break of dawn, or until your neighbors complain to your landlady who tells you to kill that hippity hop music or get out.

Ah-so, the path of a bedroom DJ/basement MC (poet) is a lonely one: the amount of time that is spent digging and reading; between those moments, far and few between, in which you discover those hits and beats that incite and stir the sublime inside you; whether it's a forty-five of the Fat Boys you spun until you met the grooves of the B-side: a hole left vacant until "Mobb Deep met up with the Alchemist." Until that moment, you wander lonely and faithlessly, trying your hand in another faith: Bob Dylan, until he found God like a stranger taken in by reading The Watchtower some Jehovah-Witness neighbor gave 'em. Hart Crane, until he finally gave in and jumped off the bridge/boat. And then losing faith entirely (for the second time ["To write Nazi poetry / after Auschwitz is barbaric. And so inelegant."]) while standing Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, watching the abrupt change in velocity (delta-v) of planes hitting monolithic buildings/monuments/pillars: the apocalyptic/helter-skelter end of life as we (thought we) knew it, and the beginning of a seemingly meaningless universe instantiated/substantiated by luck a la Big Bang--all in the bang of collapsing buildings. Meanwhile, everything is eyed, skeptically/suspiciously, as jingle-jangle fallacies, never knowing what or whom to trust: the appearances of things vs. their realities.

Eventually, you get over it; you find yourself again; accept both the possibilities and the impossibilities as feasible, bound, determined (pre-), likely, eventual, whatever. How everything can be defined: whatever ("The morning slathers its whatever / across the thing.) Whatever, "I could care less. I couldn't care less / means the same thing." Or maybe not. But what the fuck is gravity? Bob Dylan told me it failed, but I've yet feel the difference, even though Eminem reminded me of the fact. I'm still lonely. What am I talking about? But I can feel Celine and Celan; I can listen to "Turn the Beat Around," or watch the movie of the same title, and feel entertained; I can watch And the Band Played On and feel informed; "The truth, too, is fourfold: [...] 4) the movie never ends, it goes on and on".

Have we considered why there are four parts/sections in/to this collection? Four-to-the-floor or the Four Horsemen? Dunno. More allusions/"use your illusion"/references to the formation of the self vis-a-vis the public, your enemies, sound, youth, and David Bowie. Every time I picture myself as someone else, I'm a second behind. Wittgenstein believed “that the most serious and profound problems and questions and issues could be discussed only in the form of jokes.” Making coffee with the same grounds to replace the water I'm pissing out. What? It all sounds Greek and schizophrenic to me.

Ah-so, any-/either way, we keep on keepin' on, dropping needles on wax and hard Stax, adjusting the pitch control to match the snares, bass drums, and hi-hats of tunes with different rhythms, trying to make sense of our world through art, till death do we part, for the dollar dollar bill, monetary compensation, or the yes yes y'all, affirmation/recognition. You ain't a DJ until you can scratch, and it's easier to scratch and count money with lotion on its skin. Lines serving as definition: "I translate the Bible into velociraptor"; "The truth makes me hurl, the truth's a mistake"; "I replace the mirrors with Rorschach blots"; "Life is but the interpretation of a dream"; "Old pond, frog jumps in, so what"; "just junk in a Safeway cart I'm pushing / down to the recycling center"; "I'd re- your very life arranged". Ugh, fin.