works by w.pham

works by william pham, 2005-present
Sing a Mighty Song

Sing a mighty song out the cracked walls of a warehouse
that was once so strong, Achillean drain-pipes will expel
the flooding of your verses and guide from tongue to tongue,
and we will drink your song with thirsty eyes, we will see
the refrain in every grain of roof-gravel and whether we want
or not, we play the role of roof-critics and shout demagoguery
across roof-tops we shout and shout and shout and then we
collapse into heaps of cotton and denim and college educations.
Sing this song for us and it will travel through the bones
of this city what was once so strong and in her osteoporosis
we will know the tablature of your song.

Stand like Edie Sedgwick, you factory girl.
Smile like Robert E. Nixon, you goddamn crook.

And should you fall under the weight of your song, should you
succumb to your infallible burden, the corpse of
a colossal squid in all its record-breaking dimensions
defying what we once knew, now residing beneath the skin of
your neck and spreading all that vicious ink, should this
happen then we will finally understand if just for
the briefest of moments, within the gap of time between
the last call and the crushing of the asphalt beneath our feet,
such a mystery this has been, we will finally understand,
we will know the violence of your song.

If only you could see us know then you would be so proud.