by Ace Boggess

I like to think of the Ramones as the Schopenhauer of punk
in dirt of the psyche boldly shouting about wanting
to be sedated, sniff some glue, be somebody’s boyfriend.
Theirs was the fatalistic music of half-believing,
self-entrenchment of a kind that would’ve inspired Dostoevsky
to dance or pound his rugged fist in the air. Of course,
Joey Ramone couldn’t be called an attractive man,
so perhaps he better fit the bill as Nietzsche,
quick-witted in catchy aphorism. Saying What we do for love
is beyond good & evil has the same eviscerating charm
as Beat on the brat with a baseball bat. Music, meaning, &
mayhem—our philosophers thrummed power chords &
faced down the abyss. Isn’t it fun to explore profundity
of simple songs? Doesn’t it leave our lives a little lighter?
We could add the Sex Pistols as punk rock’s Sartre—
a cult of personality (which he was, despite turning down
the Nobel Prize to prevent it—fighting fate
like Oedipus really not wanting to murder his father &
sleep with his mother). Picture the band on stage
strutting through obnoxious, self-indulgent riffs,
professing a powerful faith in nothing at all.

Ace Boggess is author of four books of poetry, most recently I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So (Unsolicited Press, 2018) and Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.