Had instructions on how to remove your fingerprints
In their liner notes. Their music unraveled easily,
It frightened me. They were the hardest Dischord
Band to listen to, the most revolutionary.
My friend Sean, who used to hit the all-ages shows at the Black Cat
Told me one night the Nation of Ulysses showed up and set
A dumpster on fire and rolled it, burning, into the middle of the street.
I don't know why, nearing middle age, I remember this
As the first cool wind to end summer rolls over me on my back porch.
Where are the Nation of Ulysses now, with so many gluttonous dumpsters
There in the alley or bristling with the shredded paper of K street?
What would Ulysses think of his wild and ravenous children,
Full grown now, lost in the forest or else mute under the manager's eye?
