Rooftop Poetry Club - Brian Lampkin

Brian Lampkin

Bio:
As a writer Brian Lampkin is nearly invisible. His most pathetic claim to fame? It’s his blurb on the back of the 2nd hardcover printing of Samuel Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. Lampkin continues to write poems, the odd essay, a blog and song lyrics from his home in Tarboro, NC where he recently directed (to the puzzlement of much of the local population) Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. The absence of media in his rural part of eastern North Carolina frustrates his career as a media prankster. So he teaches film, theater and a Visiting Artists Seminar (any Buffalo artists interested in visiting him in Tarboro will be put to work) at various institutions in the area.

Raw Deal Bio:

Raw Deal is an experiment in collaborative long-distance songwriting. Begun in 2006 when I handed a couple of poems/lyrics to Gubb Cooper on the last day of Gubb’s visit to my house in Tarboro, NC, Raw Deal is largely dependent on Cooper’s reading of what I write. The lyrics are not necessarily pop song ready and often present significant roadblocks to musical coherence. Oh well. Cooper is a serious and generous reader and Raw Deal has an undeniable sound—intricate guitar work and an intimate troubled voice wondering how it will all hold together. In just over a year we’ve put together 15 songs with several more well on their way, but there’s a secret behind Raw Deal. Gubb and I are old—not Rolling Stones old, but getting there—but Gubb’s son Sam Gillam is not. Sam, 17, contributes to all the Raw Deal songs and he will be the reason you remember this Rooftop event. Years from now you’ll lean back in your rocker and say you saw him when. Friends and lovers worry over the undeniable misery pervading Raw Deal songs. They’re fictions, but they are close to home. Call them songs at the moments where things teeter.

American Rubble

Extremism is always a vice
Extremism is always a vice
Extremism is always a vice

Goldwater had it all wrong
Czoglosz had it all wrong
McVeigh had it all wrong

Extremism is always a vice

Sharon all wrong
Atomic Dog all wrong
Even John Brown all wrong

Because absence is permanent beauty

Oklahoma City is beautiful forever
McKinley beautiful forever
Slepian beautiful forever

Even the world trade center now beautiful forever

Because absence is permanent beauty and extremism is always a vice

Always reducing the human complex into virtue

Virtue is always a vice
God disappears into virtue
And even god is beautiful when he’s gone

Oh power will you ever relent

CIA wrong
FBI wrong
SLA wrong

Can power ever relent

Napalm in the forest wrong
Bulldozers in the desert wrong

Everett and sand creek wrong

Munich 72 wrong
Atlanta 96 wrong

Extremism is always a vice

Extremism reduces life
Extremism reduces life
Extremism reduces life into virtue
God becomes virtue
Patriotism becomes virtue
Revenge becomes virtue

Extremism is always a vice
Extremism is always a vice grip on the other’s throat

And virtue makes others of us all
Virtue makes others of us all
Virtue is always a vice
Revenge is virtue
And virtue is American rubble
And extremism is always a vice

And America will be beautiful forever

Desire

I’ve always wanted

I’ve always wanted
To say it simply

To then feel it

To then feel it
That way.