May 2007
Exene Cervenka
I AM A STATUE WITH VACATIONING EYES
am a statue with vacationing eyes
swimming in your eyes
sharky and veiled in black
seeing the same midnight.
Angels and saints carried around
in our sacred hearts abound.
We are blood and stone, flesh and secrets.
Our deepest dimensions are always
hollering for more in our dusty highway hideouts.
But we know that hallowed ground
is simply a place called home
•
--Exene Cervenka, 2007
Kristine McKenna wrote: "In August of 1976 Exene moved to Los Angeles, because she knew she had to get out of Florida. She arrived in town with $80 in a paper bag and wound up living with 5 people in a 1-room apartment in Ocean Park. A short time later she began working in Venice in the library at the literary arts center, Beyond Baroque, where she was allowed to live upstairs. X, the punk band formed in 1977 by Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom, John Doe, and D.J. Bonebrake, came along just in time for those of us coming of age in the mid-'70's who were discovering that the conventional path through life wasn't an option. In Los Angeles at that point in time our numbers proved to be legion, and we found each other at L.A.'s seminal punk petri dish, The Masque." These days Exene is writing poetry ("she gets up in the morning, brushes her teeth and writes another poem," said Mr. Doe), creates artwork, writes songs, and performs with her band The Original Sinners, with X and with The Knitters.
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here's a baby Jesus hanging in a tree
rick buildings all look the same
