Prison Poetry or Emo Lyrics?

Music is not an easy game. You can’t pick up a guitar and let any old string of complete aural feces with a mediocre rhyme scheme pour out of your mouth and get a record label unless your last name is Cyrus or you’re Nickleback. For every band out there that makes it big, 100 never leave the garage and one or two go to a battle of the bands, the drummer goes to the men’s room with this “record exec” he just met and he’s never heard from again. It’s a constant struggle when you’re out there trying to make it big.

Holy shit guys, we totally suck!

Nowhere is the struggle to make it more prevalent than in the dark, dreary lives of emo bands (screamo, posercore, post-emo indie rock and so on also qualify because none of those words actually mean anything). These poor chaps not only have the weight of success on their shoulders, they also have to deal with make up and skinny pants fittings, vampires, morbid yet melodious depression, poor parenting, latent high school anger, unrequited love and rampant astigmatism requiring thick-framed corrective lenses. Who amongst all of mankind could have more to lament than the emo rocker? Felons.

No matter how hard it is for a Wisconsin-born twenty-something with mediocre guitar chops to manage his day to day life of video making, touring and thinking up rhymes for “ennui,” they’re probably hard pressed to go toe-to-toe with a man whose life consists of one hour of exercise in a yard full of violent criminals per day plus thrice weekly sodomy. Nonetheless, when it comes time to put pen to paper, it’s surprising to see that felons and emo bands tend to write the same sort of shit.

I don't think I get this photo. Oh wait...no.

If you’d be so kind as to take a moment and clear your thoughts, try to get into the headspace of a middle class suburban white male whose greatest adversity in life has been having to wear Adidas when all his friends wore Nikes back in grade school and contrast it with a gangbanger who may have murdered several innocent bystanders in a drive by so he could steal a pair of Nikes. See if you can tell the difference from 5 head to head comparisons of men incarcerated for crimes against their fellow man, and men who have yet to be incarcerated for musical crimes against their fellow man.

#1 – The Style: Longfully romantic and expressing touchy feely sentiment

Contestant A

My Brown Sugar, my sure desire,
You set my heart and soul on fire.
From the bottom of my heart, to the tip of my tongue
You need to know that you’re my number one,
Baby, I searched the whole world over to find someone like you,
Someone to make all my dreams come true.

Contestant B

But this time, I mean it
I’ll let you know just how much you mean to me
As snow falls on desert sky
Until the end of everything
I’m trying, I’m trying
To let you know how much you mean
As days fade, and nights grow
And we go cold

Observations: Better stuff a pancake up your ass, there’s a load of syrup pouring out. What manner of deviant, besides Mick Jagger, thinks he can do the brown sugar thing anyway? The first entry seems a little saucy, like maybe he’s lonely as shit but there’s a chance she hasn’t abandoned him completely and he may one day get to see her in a thong and fap to it later. He seems somewhat hopeful that his constant searching will lead somewhere, so that’s nice.

Homosexual rumors? Crazy! Like my kneepads?

The second seems to imply the world is a bit of a dismal, grey toilet, possibly somewhere in North Dakota, but despite that there’s still love to be had. If you’ll just listen. Maybe if we go in out of the bloody cold she’ll be more responsive.

Who’s Who: As it happens, our Mick Jagger homage came from a lifer named Juan S Mack at Smithfield Correctional Institute while the passage dismally obsessed with weather patterns is from perennial sad sacks My Chemical Romance. Notice how the man in prison for life is still waiting for dreams to come true while MCR is simply getting cold until the end of time.

#2 – The Style:  Depression, with some regrets of love gone awry

Contestant A
The way I broke your heart very literally
This ghost haunts me more than it should be
I’m not gonna walk away or turn my head in shame
I never thought it could kill me

Contestant B
Uncaptivate me
comfort my agonies,
brush across my mouth
the moist of your sighs
as if it were crinkled petals
spreading from a rose

Observations: These dudes need women.  Or maybe they don’t because they’re epic fuck ups.  One is on death row after all, and one is an emo band.  They think they need women though, possibly due to being forced to shower with men for the rest of their lives, which is likely applicable to both the felon and the band.  Whatever the case, it seems like they’re both in pain and somewhere in all that is a woman.

He's so adorable! For a serial rapist.

Who’s Who: The first entry is from the band The Used, while the second is death row inmate Demetrius Henderson.  Notice how Demetrius seems like he hasn’t given up quite as much as the Used have.  Likely because he’s a real person and, even faced with death, has no reason to take on the nettlesome persona of an over privileged man-child who’s at once angry and beaten down by the injustices of life in mascara and swoopy hair.

#3 – The Style:  Depression, possibly with a glimmer of hope.  Maybe.

Contestant A
In the midst of the turmoil
The vengeance and hate
We speak out against those
Who try and case our fate
Our voice rings loud
Beyond the shadows of death
We vow to fight the good fight
Even to our final breath

Contestant B
So many
Bright lights, they cast a shadow
But can I speak?
Well is it hard understanding
I’m incomplete
A life that’s so demanding
I get so weak
A love that’s so demanding
I can’t speak

Observations: Here are some folks with a lot on their minds.  One being a Death Row inmate and one being My Chemical Romance (making their second appearance on the list) makes it understandable that everyone is down in the dumps.  Both seem to be suffering the oppression of others, whether it be other inmates raping them on a daily basis or their accountant skimming some of their millions of dollars away.  Life is rough no matter who you are.  But could there be a glimmering light at the end of each tunnel?  Fighting good fights and talk of love?  Well, either way one’s going to be executed and the other will always be My Chemical Romance, so it’s likely a false hope at best.

We might march with the rest of the band. Or not. We don't care.

Who’s Who The first entry was a poem by death row enthusiast Nicholas Acklin, who probably wonders why he sounds less depressed than a band of 20-somethings who wear make up and, you know, aren’t about to be executed.  The second is, of course, My Chemical Romance who some people think aren’t emo, even though they dress like that and have at least two songs about vampires.  If they’re not emo, then pussy rock is apparently a sub-genre we just hadn’t heard of yet.  In any event, given that their last album went platinum, their forced depression shtick seems odd at best.  Unless they really do live in a vampire infested neighborhood, in which case we suggest they move.

#4 – The Style: Total sense of emptiness and some self pity

Contestant A

Is that the sound of the gate coming down? No flashing lights, no warning?
When we press our ears to the ground we feel the shake.
But it’s under the skin, so we wilt like violets.
Can’t get up, to put the petals in their place.

Contestant B

There’s a world that exists
that people hear of but don’t see of
It’s a world within a world
with no emotion-
then it can’t be broken

When you breathe in the air
some fall with despair
for they realize where they are
knowing now you’re in its grasp

Observations: Things are grim in the prisons and coffee houses of the world today. Gardening and despair abound and it seems like there’s a lot of hidden world shit going on. Psychologists would probably say that has something to do with isolation or chronic masturbation or some such. Who knows, this wasn’t really reviewed by a psychologist at all.

I'm so depressed. Plus I wank myself raw quite frequently.

Who’s Who: The curious obsession with flowers in number one comes to us thanks to screamo innovators Thursday who want you to know that burning down cities and wilting violets has something to do someone getting hit by a train. It’s kind of hard to tell. Our second sample from DS Barnard in Yatala Labor Prison all the way in Australia suggests labor prisons are not unlike the cold, vile talons of grandma, grasping at you and never letting go until lipstick smudged lips that stink of Vapo-Rub and mothballs have had their way with you.

#5 – The Style: Introspective and melodramatic

Contestant A

By my alone time
I can see for the first time
Hurtful words wont go away

I watch my dreams die off
It hurts to believe that words are just words

Dwelling on my own thoughts
Choking on self proclaimed asperation
Circumvent my own faults
For shadows collapse in my heart

Contestant B

I close my eyes
only to arise,
like a thief in the night
walking in eternal darkness
in this land of the heartless,
caught in a web
and friends with death.
I inhale and exhale
my last breath.
So tell me
is it just a dream?

Observations: We’ve got some fainters here. These are the people who get “the vapors” and pass out when there’s too much commotion going on. They may also cut themselves to get attention. Everybody’s having terrible, lonely dreams of horror, solitude, bleak…uncaring..ZzzzZzz zzz..hmm? Oh yeah, what was going on again? Right, mounds of bullshit.

Oh, I feel faint. And look like a bag of smashed assholes in a tiara.

Who’s Who: Contestant A is suffering through a nightmare of hurtful words. Indeed, since it’s Taking Back Sunday, it’s possibly those words were “you suck!” accompanied by a bottle full of piss being hurled from the centre of a crowd of people who came to see a band that doesn’t sing about shit that includes the word “circumvent.” B is brought to us by Ramon Morales at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institute who, in fairness, has to sleep in a building full of men who may turn a tin of canned peaches into a weapon they’ll use to tear open his anus at any moment, so his dreary feelings may not be so misplaced.

Score Card

0-2 Correct – If you can’t tell the difference between emo lyrics and prison poetry then give yourself a pat on the back. Science tells us there’s no logical reason for you to be able to differentiate these things. Recommend you continue listening to your MP3 player and enjoy your unfelonious day.

3 Correct – You’re slightly above the curve in a bad way. It may have been dumb luck that got you here, like how you passed a multiple choice quiz once by guessing C for every answer, but you’re pushing it. Your knowledge of the poetic leanings of felons and emo kids may be dangerously unsafe. Recommend that you listen to AC/DC’s Back in Black immediately and refrain from any acts of arson for at least a month.

4-5 Correct – Eat some meat and throw out any soy products you have in the house but for the love of God remain calm. You’re either adept at chance guessing, an emo fanatic or have recently been released back into society yourself. In the latter two cases, please do not harm the author. Your knowledge is unsettling and, worse, kind of pointless. Perhaps reading a book on useful trivia will help flesh out your misplaced knowledge of substandard musicians and/or men who have wronged society. Recommend you find religion and avoid men who wear eye liner indefinitely.