The Submensas’s Newest Song is on Pre-order!
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Blood on the Bands
New song drops today!
https://open.spotify.com/track/0csCV01tmCNtnePJhYLUf1?si=362056a3ce79437e
The Submensas Return to Baltimore!
Plymell Station
For Charley & Pam
“They keep dropping them off”
The cats, you say
But you were always collecting strays
And now they’ve come to you
with their bellies and their purrs
I have seen some feral cats
And they do not act like that –
Must be something special in the air 🙂
***
The cats have claimed Plymell Station
Not the one from the folds of history
Where the wayward and ambitious
Wound their way westward ho
But the one in Cherry Valley
Where the poets thought to go
***
You bought the oldest house in town
The stone is gray and all worn down
Kids with metal detectors come around
But to live in an ancient house
Makes one seem young by comparison
***
The kid found a King George coin
But there are far more treasures here
And you know EXACTLY where each one lies
On the dusty bookshelves and in the files
Or dancing Rockabilly on the screen
With a grin as wide as Kansas
And eyes are bright as the Prairie sky
***
You say the cats have souls
I think a kindred soul – for you
Must know how it is to go away from home
All alone with that brand new car
A future stevedore
A future publisher with very specific memories
of collating and collating and collating
***
A reluctant academic
Yep, someone found you out there and reeled you in
And so Plymell Station moved East
Where you kept collecting strays
Stray writers, stray musicians, stray students
Stray words, stray phrases, stray images
First a sword, a Bedouin sword
given to Pam’s Dad in
World War II, a Brass sculpture
with the great, big crystal,
Then the paintings on the walls,
And the carefully wrapped elegies
And the glorious, furious verses, new and old
And the diploma 🙂
***
You were always collecting strays
And that was me back then
And I’ve come to you again
Another beat in time
A Plymell Station
of the mind.
See the Submensas this Saturday Night!
A Gig 40 Years in the making…
The 1980s live again on May 24!
Nuclear Christ (a poem, 1983)
Nuclear Christ
for Mr. Norman David Mayer
I.
“I have a bomb! I have a friend!
We’re gonna die! Stop to pretend!
Why don’t you listen to me”
This was Norman Mayer’s plea.
We’ve lost control of ourselves
Like masturbating giants
Getting off on death –
We worship the weapons, we
Count them like toys, we
Cannot decide and we
Will not listen, Mr. Mayer
Must die to show this
World, this shot dear world –
He was sixty-six, old and angry not mad –
He could not escape the shackles
Linking all of us together –
Of course you can die, it was
A good day to die, Mr.
Norman David Mayer, hating
Like a Nuclear War, his
Ashes smoulder still in
Arlington National Garden.
II.
He wandered and tried, failed, and tried
Consumed by desire and the Greatest
Fire the World was going to see
His parting – dies as he
Lies bleeding: “I have a Bomb!”
His baby blue snowsuit all a mess
He didn’t expect to make it anyway and
He dies because we love Death
No large surprise He dressed
Like Superman or Captain America –
Mr. Norman David Mayer was
Labeled insane by authorities
Who think they are sane but
Aid the ones with the evil keys to
This massive prison we call Home –
A van full of Air and Will He
Was there at the biggest
Phallic Symbol of them all,
It looks like a missile How
Sleek and defined – Pointed
At God – Now, what
Do they have in mind?
III.
“I have a Nightmare” Three
Years on a beach on an
Island smoking dope Do you
Think that made him crazy now?
Most would say content He
Only knew there’s no escape
No matter where he ran away
So he moved on through his life as we
Cranked the rack The
Walls grow larger He was torn
And He waited and He hated and
He saved like none of us could –
And he gave his life for
Something Undisputably Good you
Know He’s right because this
Very second the Bombs are ticking
Atoms splitting Tomorrow we
May join Him The newspaper
Headline reads “A Victim of an
Unyielding Will” His flesh was
Mortal yet his spirit sails on until…
New! – “Anarchy Love” Re-issue!
Now available again – the revamped version of the revamped version of the original from 1983… it’s safe to say that this song has finally arrived! While “Anarchy Love has the slowest tempo of any other Submensa song, the power comes through as each point in this meditation on love floats on Jim’s ethereal volume pedal before shattering like glass into a thousand echoes. The lyric and vocal delivery of this song is a reflection of a life’s work – begun as a young man, revised in middle age, culminating now in a true epiphany gained from a life lived. Punk rock is the best mode of expression, ever!
Damon Norko 
