Poetry Spotlight: “1993” by Derek Thiem

DEREK THIEM is a former English teacher and a street poet based in Portland, Oregon. His poetry and lyrics explore recovery, street life, and Portland’s ever-changing pulse. He occasionally dabbles in themes of astrophysics, metaphysics, and erotica, revealing the unexpected breadth of his creative mind. You can find him on Facebook and YouTube under his name, and hear his work set to music on Suno.com under the monikers VioletKeyboard944 and ExasperatingVocoder2004.

1993

Where are the pearls in my jam
I used to slam dance
Through gardens of sound
Meditated and reached Nirvana there
I swear I went through the looking glass
Looking for Alice but I found her in chains
Can’t complain about life
I have piloted planes over stone temples
At least in my mind
If you think I am blind perhaps
Something is wrong in my melon
Once upon a time
A man named Cornell sang like a banshee
And another named Vedder sang who was
A better man with a deep deep voice
And impenetrable lyrics
While I surfed in the oceans
On waves of grunge
And had fun riding them out
Into their little foamy bubbles
Flies in the Vaseline we are
Sometimes it blows my mind
I do keep getting stuck here all this time
Singing Love songs stuck in traffic
On an Interstate highway
While the cool kids hang in a plush
Velvet room consuming flavored vape juice
I don’t need them
Cause today I found my friends
They’re in my head
But there’s something in the way
Keeping me from the next plateau
Maybe if I could compile all
The best unplugged moments
I could get there
It’s past late night
Now in early morning
The roosters are cockadoodling through
And reminding me to wake up
I’m still alive
One more day to rage against the machine
And make no wages
At least now I’ve got tools to use
That I never had before
I’m growing old
My nails are long
Though not quite nine inches yet
They are getting fragile
And I need to cut them
Closer to the cuticle
Time to stop letting things go
While I let other things go
And stop the downward spiral of my life
I live under a government
That is a pretty hate machine
And I wish it were different
But you can’t unsmash a pumpkin
You can’t go back to 1979
And avoid Reaganomics and the
Whole mess we’ve ingested since then
When I was a kid I caught some flies
And put them in a jar to see if
They would live
When I opened it up
It smelled like teen spirit
If you don’t follow that’s alright
Somewhere there’s a man in a box
That has all the answers I think
He says to come as you are and
Ask him questions
For he knows all
Maybe his name these days is ChatGPT
Who knows, he wasn’t around
When I was coming up
Back then boys had simpler names
Like Jeremy
And if you wanted to speak in class
You raised your hand
There were no active shooter drills
In those days I rocked with cherubs
And fought to take the power back
With bomb tracks and anthrax wasn’t
A public enemy in the mail
But they could jam together
A girl named Tori Amos raped me
Of the notion I could get by on
Male privilege and I became a feminist
But with all apologies I do need to
Ask you my girl
Where did you sleep last night
Don’t think I’m a creep for asking
I just need to know
I’ve got attachment issues
All I know is life ebbs and flows
There’s an evenflow you can find
If you ride the right energy
And for a little while
Around 1993 I think we were there
In the sweet spot
We were throwing copper pennies
While lightning crashed
And I alone know what it’s like to be
Finding Nirvana
While sitting in mud honey
I took everything I had and gave it all away
To a kid named Anthony for
A red hot chili pepper and a flea circus
One day under a bridge downtown
I gave all my money to charity
And it was sublime
Loving is what I got in return
It was summer time
And the living was easy
We may have been losers
But we did it in two languages
Soy un perdedor
No need for two turn tables
And a microphone
We set off into a new pollution
Of the future