Ballad 1: A Revolution Happens Live

Written in November 2001

Performed at the Bowery Poetry Club and on Union Square, In Newyorkgrad

All:

Sing one song! Late into the night!  

We’re amid a revolution, my revolver shines in candlelight

The clock upon the wall, time means now nothing at all,

We’re waiting for the moment when we make the system fall!

Silverstova:

Turn back the clock give me my life!

Adonaev:

In some ways, you are like her, you know.

Silverstova:

You say the same blatnoy to every woman!

Adonaev:

             And she’s looking at me now like she’s ready to go!

Silverstova:

Tasting things to come! Put down your guns, put down that knife!

Adonaev:

 In many ways you would like her, you know.

 Silverstova:

 Put up your hands, I am your foe!

Adonaev:

         And she’s looking at me now like she’s ready to blow!

Silverstova:

Turn back the clock give me my life!

        Adonaev:

   I didn’t ask to lead a life of constant night.

Silverstova:

All that struggle made us crazy, all that terror all that fight! And he’s looking at me now like he’s ready to go! Your deeds betray you Comrade, this you know. You have things, you have done damage, to the wrong person, to an Oligarchic foe.     

Adonaev:

       We sit down, we sit down!

I once thought I knew this town,

         In different cities. We pieced together

Our interpretation of the future, our impressions of the day.

  There’s a ship there a plane, for my people for my brain,

         Tomorrow night. It’s all going down.

Silverstova:

We are all dying, we all cry! There is nothing left to say!

We are all compromised, in our own immoral way. An altruistic sigh, and we lie. And still we lie, sometimes we lie about the world all day. 

Adonaev:

        We are hunted now! We die and thus we kill, and in vengeance we repay.

Find can, you find,  the clever proverb in a Russian mind, or in low poetic English for sad redeeming things to play, we might, not even,  live to ever truly say.

Silverstova:

HEVAL! YES HEVAL! WITH YOUR BACK AGAINST THE WALL!

Raise your head up!

Riae your spine and raise your glass, now is not  time to fall.

Adonaev:

That’s not how the Story Ends, this time!

“You found your son! I saved my wife! we helped our people win the war!”

Silverstova:

That’s not how the Story Ends, this time!

Your friend Anna Campbell isn’t dead this time,
This is much bigger than Rojava, this is far bigger than a rhyme!

We are so called regular people, we still comprehend the revolutionary side!

Adonaev:

I CONFIDE! I CONFIDE! I GOT TO LIVE WHEN THEY ALL DIED!

I’LL DO MORE, I’LL DO MORE !

Of this long epic thing that sounds like foreign lullabies and gory folklore!

Silverstova:

LULLABIES? she cries, fuck your stupid lulibies, RIFLES WILL DO MORE!

That’s not how the story ends this time!

Tragically as it might be, 

You get to start again. Tell us what you fought for! 

TELL US WHAT WE NEED TO SEE. 

TELL US ABOUT ABOUT KURDISTAN. ABOUT YOUR AGONY!

Adonaev:

No, no, no, this isn’t right, 

I turned my gun on Daniel Newey before the fire fight that night!

Daria’s alone and in fully gilded poverty, 

She’s trapped in Newyorkgrad. What have I done! 

I SQUANDERED MY LAST OPPORTUNITY, to be.

Silverstova:

I TAKE THIS YOU TOOK THAT!

FUCK YOU BLAT! 

ALL AND YOUR AMERICAN DREAM, 

IT MAKES ME SCREAM, IT MAKES ME bleed, it makes you fat!  

It impales you on its sword.

Sebastian is now sealed away for life in a psychiatric ward! 

He should not have picked up that gun! For a fight that can never be won.

Adonaev:

Sad, little Anya’s dead. Blat,

40,000 other friends are also dead, very sad, and Ayar is losing his mind out in Bagh-dad.

Piling and Dan Newey are serving prison terms for life, situations dire,

Afrin fell,

Qandil, Zap and Haftanin are on fire!

    Sad? Who is sad, the impossible is going bad.

Silvetstova:

I’m a caged whore for a guy, old enough to be my dad.

That’s not how the story ends this time!

That’s for sure! I’m a woman not a shot girl, I’m a journalist god dammit not someone’s fucking whore!

What were these hands all grasping for!?  

Tell it better, give us something, give us hope, give us something to believe in! 

Give us guns, or give us rope.

Don’t let your martyrs’ die for nothing, hold out longer dear defeated Afrin!  

Hold out longer up in the Qandil. Fight, fight on with hype or hope.

Sebastian:

That’s not how the story ends this time!

Sebastian finds his mind in chapter three Long live the Kurdish resistance!

 I wonder what immortality Anya can now really see. 

When the lights go out and the rubbing oil turns her to Cleopatra.

But, this is sad long terrible black soliloquy. Resistance was our mantra.

About the things we did, we all did, to we. It was murder carried out like tantra.

IT WAS LIFE- LIVED FREE!

Silverstova:

That’s not how the story ends this time!

Afrin is defensible! Anya is a happy kid. Alive again. Yazan conquers his disease. Sebastian has the strength of lions, of over forty men! 

THERE’S NO SHAME OR BLAME,

But that’s all in your sad Amerkansky mind game!

But now we begin, 

Everyone lost something and it seems hard to think we could ever really win.

It’s over you all lost, things are still the same. But go ahead and Give them something to believe!

Adonaev:

“Give me back my shattered life!”

I am your sword. I am your knife.

Let my people find a way to win.

Or I’ll bring the terror and strife right to your shore. I’ll make you all pay for your apathetic sin.

And she’s looking at me now like she’s ready to go!

Turn back the clock gives us our lives!

Silverstova:

And he’s looking at me now like he’s ready to go! Turn back the clock- Give us our land!

Adonaev:

And she’s looking at me now like she’s ready to go! Ready to blow.

Turn back the clock give us our lives!

The curtains fall on the first act. The blood thirsty future, it arrives.

All:

Sing one song! Late into the night!  

We’re amid a revolution, my revolver shines in candlelight

The clock upon the wall, time means now nothing at all,

We’re waiting for the moment when we make the system fall!

Dastardly were the deeds of our fathers! Blat!

So arcane and so lacking of moral substance! Blat! 

They contrived, economically survived on the brutality of which ‘the brothers’ were not deprived.

Tell me now, I vow, I wonder how despite the previous misconceptions,

And good intentions.

Attempted abortion, yet were still conceived.

For this crime we are not reprieved.

A society basing itself on its own new notoriety, 

A society proclaiming a material utopia,

Yet in all essence lacking the cornucopia on which the foreign masses even stay fed.

Still, they might end up dead,

Instead I I analyze the growing profits, which line the rich man’s pockets,

And the bunker busting rockets,

Make us popular indeed.

In what holy book was that decreed?

No more dialectic, if human nature equals greed?

I am climbing higher, but can’t seem to escape the fire,

As the pillars made of ethics start to fall,

If we flinch, or give one inch the man will take it all.

For the man’s quite good at taking,

He’s been doing it for many years,

And now he’s gaining power, by playing off our collective fears.

They know what playbacks scare you so they play in constant loop,

And reporters flock like vultures, just to try and get the scoop.

Everything, a false conception,

As they improvise another great deception,

Be wary of a man who asks for war!

And all these troops departing, 

Any day now we’ll be starting,

Battle ships with cannons, a flying fortress off the shore. 

But what of the sprawling crush of urban ghettos, the ghastly prisons, and their many, many lies?

The rich are ever getting richer as the poor meet their demise. 

I’d propose a revolution, but we’re a lacking a tried and tested solution, 

And Red Communism failed many in the past.

While the Anarchists renew a scream for “mutual aid”.

I’m sure we’ll end up starving oh too fast.

And in the bunker,

Where ouce the honky babble junky spread his printed word.

His hair slicked back, hair brown not black, to all those that haven’t heard.

Next to him paces his comrade, a man believed to work alone,

His eyes glaze over, he listens carefully, he doesn’t make his intentions known .

They’ve been up for many hours. 

Fueled on adderall or coffee and sometimes also booze. 

The tide is turning quickly. 

Quickly, quickly hear the new social gospel, hear the news!

On the radio, the broadcast lingers.

The pala man in the corner licks his wounds and licks his fingers.

And the wax drips from the candles. Also pausing time.

The streets outside a concrete jungle, and the flames of near battle flicker 

Burning through the ashes and ruins of a now flaming urban grime.

While the leaders converse, 

In the language of tactical insurrection.

The bunker rumbles, concrete walls offer only slight protection,

Gunfire can be heard just right outside.

And with the buildings all now burning,

The rebels are quickly learning,

That all too many of their number that day died.

They recall the fortnight prior, 

Before the city caught on fire,

Rebels dreaming of a visionary world, a brighter day.

Clad in uniform around the table, martyr posters on the walls. 

Talking about that hoped for future, taking risks. 

Come what may.

The lieutenants began reporting, 

On the status of the fight.

One might, despite all previous contraindications,

And resistance depictions, knew a losing battle at first sight.

“We’re in need of ammunition, but not in a good position

Treason is quite serious indeed.”

The RAT TAT TAT of rifles,

Murder can echo in the night! 

As we watch our wounded city slowly bleed.

The barricades for now are holding,

The uprising is unfolding!

Dead and dying are littered in the street.

And don’t be too surprised,

The Revolution’s televised, 

Because CNN wants you glued right to your seat.

All:

Sing one more song! Late into the night!  

We’re amid a revolution, my revolver shines in candlelight

The clock upon the wall, time means now nothing at all,

We’re waiting for the moment when we make this wretched system fall!