Doped with Religion, Sex and TV “Working class hero, my foot,” Darleen spat. “Pampered British rock star’s more like it. He don’t know nothin’ about no working class,” she sneered, “and that Jap witch he married. She’s probly the one who put them ideas in his head.” Darleen and I worked on the assembly line at the Capitol Records plant, putting fresh-pressed LPs into sleeves, the packaged albums into cardboard boxes, the boxes onto pallets for the forklift guy to take them away to the loading dock. “I used to like some of them early songs. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ but you can have this stuff. Working class hero! Who does he think he’s kidding?” I stuffed my impulse to defend Lennon, point out his poverty in postwar Liverpool, the broken family, the absent sailor father; mainly offended by Doreen’s naked racism, pitying her for the misogyny she’d absorbed from generations of farmers on the prairie. I was a college student, working part...
great draft. i would only tinker a bit if at all. ending is fabulous. the only line where the meter seems a tad off is '...basin you catch it in'. also couldn't tell if that line break was intentional or due to formatting. or is that some kind of concrete and intentional break? at any, rate, that little bit stuck in my craw. otherwise, the whole scans fine for me. 'cease and decyst' is a little cute based on the other lines, but i can live with it. i wonder if that phrase can be hinted at using the same sounds with its explicit usage? just my two cents. ignore as necessary.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Gerry. I appreciate you reading this. I wanted the stark two-letter line, but now I dunno. . .
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