“I thought we moved here to get away from tractor pulls.”
- Tracy Mills/Seven
Kendra will tell you I'm a letter writer. Over the years I've fired off a good many. Fired off would suggest anger, and there is that. I do now and then write a letter of dissatisfaction (The Major League Baseball commissioner is often a recipient). But, I try hard to send an equal number of complimentary ones, as well.
One of the first letters I remember writing was when I was in undergraduate school here at good old Southwest Missouri State University. The situation was this: Sometime in late 1982, Ozzy Osborn was scheduled to play a concert at the Hammond's Student Arena on campus. However, university president, what's-his-name, put the quietus on the show. Apparently, back in 1977, Black Sabbath played a show there and in their rock and roll zeal, lit some firecrackers in the dressing room. I don't know if there was damage done, but the president, citing concern for the well-being of the facility, cancelled the affair.
Shortly after the announcement of the cancellation, a tractor pull was held in the arena. A tractor pull? I didn't know anything about tractor pulls but they didn't seem like indoor activities. I thought it was preposterous that there was concern for facility welfare when it came to some rowdy Brit rockers, but not with farm machinery pulling maximum loads across the floor.
I wrote the president a respectful, but strongly worded letter pointing out the absurdity that I thought was in play. I was no huge Ozzy fan but I was sure going to go to bat for rock and roll. Generally, writing such letters is just a cathartic exercise. They probably go right in the trash in most cases. But I will say this, Ozzie played a show at Hammond Arena a short time later on March 11, 1983. I know, I was there. Same president at the helm, by the way.
The below Jim Daniels poem reminded me of the Ozzy incident. I read one of Daniels' poems every morning. It gets some words tumbling around in my head. It's like calisthenics for the mind. I have eleven books of his poems. When I get near the end of one I start to get the shakes and begin the hunt for one I don't have. There's only a few left in my current one - time to start lookin'.
MegaEverything
Jim Daniels
The kid with stringy, blond hair
and torn Megadeath T-shirt
plagiarized song lyrics in his poem.
Black Sabbath? I said.
In my tiny office, he idly kicked
the metal desk, not meeting
my eyes, But then, he never did.
1972. Michigan State Fairgrounds
Black Sabbath ripped through the sharp
muzzle of “Paranoid” on the distant stage
where I guzzled malt liquor from quart bottles
on a gloomy Saturday afternoon.
Ozzy stalking onstage scared me
in a familiar Detroit way — like a biker gang
crashing a high school party — I shook
it off. I raised my fist.
He said turning in the lyrics was a test
but would go no further. Had I passed?
Those lyrics, the only semi-coherent thing
he'd turned in all term.
He could've fooled me with Megadeath lyrics.
Perhaps he had. We agreed that he should
Drop the class. He hesitated at the door
like there might be one more thing.
Sixteen. My ears buzzed
with dark-star feedback ---
barking dogs, bloody teeth, fragments
of a thorough ass-kicking.
Ozzy's wire-cutter voice asked
what happened when we died
and where exactly was the soul?
When a thunderstorm arced down on us
no one fled. We stood and took it.
Poetry was all I had that wasn't toxic.
I should've been easier on the kid.
His name was Chris. He slumped away,
black boots clomping against the floor,
and I never saw him again.
The bitter mascara of the unrepentant
and the flawed jewel of self-absorption.
Ozzy hadn't yet bitten the head
off a bat when I saw him in '72.
He only had to do it once. The rest of us,
Chris, we think about it every day
under the black incoherent moon.