In the Company of Them
So I’m sitting here in San Fran
In another used bookstore
On another hipster block
In this fuzzy hipster town
And I’m browsing through the bookstore
And I’m looking through the comics
There are shelves of graphic novels
And I think they must be recent
From the flashy well-done covers
And the hip PoMo technique
So I grab some graphic novels
And I’m setting on the benches
And I’m getting up, and walk around, and find a comfy chair
So I lean back, and I’m comfy, and I open up the comics
Which are trendy, which are clever,
Which have lots of lit-techniques
There’s this one with the stone giant
Who starts out as a hero
Who might be old King David
or George Washington Carver
and he bests the evil villain
who was belittling his race
but now he’s getting bigger
and he just keeps getting bigger
and pretty soon he’s enslaved all the creatures all around
the metaphor was obvious
though the subject imprecise
He might have been Israel
Or maybe Nashville, Tennessee
But the book was tortured, troubled
And so exquisitely drawn
The artist must’ve worked
As long as Karen Hughes been ugly
It was twenty-eight dollars
U.S. dollars
with proceeds going to charity
And I’m looking at these novels
And I’m looking at the shelves
’Cause there’s dozens of these comics
Dozens of these graphic novels
’Cause there’s dozens of these artists
Dozens angry tortured artists
Who sort of kind of made it
In the graphic novel world
But if you walk down through the Mission
Past the chickenhawks and junkies
You’ll find hundreds of these artists
Who will never, ever make it
Though it’s hard to see the difference
Between the published and the losers
Because every artist’s screaming
Every artist’s fucking screaming
Every artist wants to warn us
Of all the evil that we do
They’re all warning and they’re screaming
And they’re bringing up the issues
With their hip PoMo devices
And their so unique techniques
And besides the hundred artists
There’s a thousand folk musicians
With their lyrics tried and tested
And their chords so true and blue
And besides the thousand singers
There’s a million sock-drawer poets
Who’ve put down their San Fran paintbrush
To write of what will happen
To warn the world of what will happen
If we let a madman rule us
If we let the wealthy lead us
If we sign away our neighbors for another cup of Starbucks
And the artists are all drawing
And the folkies are all singing
And the poets all recite their angry lines at open mics
But there’s no one really listening
No there’s no one really listening
And the few who clap politely never do a goddamned thing
But the days are getting hotter
And our lives are getting shorter
And the Fertile Crescent won’t be fertile for four billion years
While MSN reports on Fox News
CNN reports on Slate
CBS reports on Sharpton
And Al Sharpton studies Fox
While the talking heads keep talking
And the bloggers keep on blogging
And the artists keep pretending there is something left to say
—Jonathan Penton