Baptized in the muddy Mississippi
I'm from bridges Centennial
And moonless nights on a boat
Watching magnesium fill the sky
To celebrate my independence
Baptized in the sunny Caribbean
I'm from a leaderless island
Swallowed in the vastness of the sea
Watching the police buy drugs
And snowbirds, their eyes all aglow
Baptized in a dirty lake
I'm from the south,
Where towns named for Monkees songs
Come with morality on parade
But the only aptly named comfort there
Comes from a bottle
Baptized again, in the muddy Mississippi
Staring down Huckleberry's highway
“Why you going so fast, boy?
What are you gonna do when you get there?”
2 comments:
Good theme all the way through it, and I liked your word choice for the most part. One thing that tripped me up though was the second line. You have "bridges Cenntenial", which I get, but it might read better if it was "the briges Cenntenial (giving them more presence) or "bridges of Cenntenial". Just reads a littl better I think.
Also, you might want to think about some punctuation. You have commas and question marks in there, but a few periods to help the reader identify the end of a thought/sentence would be a nice finishing touch.
One last little thing would be the two lines that read "Watching the police buy drugs/And snowbirds, their eyes all aglow" sound a little off. Maybe it's because you start the second line with "and", which doesn't quite fit because it's not part of the first sentence. When I first read it I read it as one sentence, and it came off as the police buying birds. Which is not what you are trying to say I don't think. So maybe start with something other than "and". But that would be a stylistic choice really.
Other than that, I really enjoyed reading it. I like the repetition of "baptized in" with each stanza. That's a nice touch. I really just enjoy the theme, it's a little more refined that your other work. It's got your kind of angry/street/punk (for lack of a better word)vibe in there, but it's polished up with a good theme and description of the focal points.
Job well done.
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