#title Mick Vranich, 1946–2010 #author Christine Monhollen #SORTauthors Christine Monhollen; #date 2010 #source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/383-summer-2010/mick-vranich-1946-2010]] #lang en #pubdate 2014-02-10 #notes Fifth Estate #383, Summer, 2010 Our friend and comrade, Mick Vranich, died March 29 following a terrible construction accident in February. If you ever met Mick, you wouldn’t forget him. You may have seen him perform his poetry, punctuating lines with a stoic stare or watched him play guitar, amazed at his ability to perfect each note, each chord in sync with poetic ease. Perhaps you attended one of his benefits calling for freedom for Leonard Peltier. Maybe you just stopped by his Solstice campfire in the middle of Detroit and were offered a cup of coffee and some real, true talk, or poems like the ones of his on this page. *** PURGE THE EXCESS high seas the threat of sharks the thrashing machine strapped to your brain with bailing wire embarking on one more step into the water to avoid stripped of your defenses. The community has lost a friend whose warmth and generosity transcended the generations. He was an amazing poet, and guitar player, who championed those who were dealt a bad hand by the justice system. Mick made his living as a carpenter and lived in an always to be restored Victorian mansion in the Detroit’s Cass Corridor with his wife and founder of Alley Culture, artist, Sherry Hendrick. Besides his legion of friends and cultural collaborators, he leaves behind four books of poetry and dozens of recorded music and spoken word CDs. *** SUN DOWN SUN UP another notch off the slice of time here on the edge of the millennium looks like we got more to do than we set out to do when we first put the spirit boat into the water yanked on the lines the sails filled with the sweet winds of dawn but the storm kicked up so unpredictably darkness crashed down like a muddy heel we had to find the other source of strength to propel the vision fling it through space like an alchemical flashlight winging it over the lakes. When reading or playing with his band, Mick would often tilt his head slightly and stare out from blue eyes to clear the path ahead, our flashlight into the millennium; gone; there is a new darkness. *** CLOAK OF SKIN by Mick Vranich surrounded and left alone more marks that don’t connect movies with the faces as big as worlds of flesh in bright light on the thin screen. i don’t have anything to say about it you should talk to someone else like the wind working up into a frenzy in the trees bending and breaking branches thrown to the ground like a blanket made of sticks the ceremonial fire is raging. no one is watching maybe a few are seeing it in the corner of their eyes the axis is crooked the hole is getting bigger. I am nothing just the dream of becoming in this cloak of skin hear what I’m saying the cloak of skin has a mouth to talk with the shadows here that won’t go away until they see what happens to it all what happens to it all. But i am nothing in this cloak of skin dragged through the streets at the end of a rotting rope unnoticed because the big screen is showing how the faces should look with the smiles riveted in place put behind the glass examined carefully thrown in the heap like the rest of the bulldozed bodies still warm still quivering. i am nothing just this cloak of skin with a mouth saying don’t kill everything so soon. while you load your rifles while you slit a throat while you fill the lung with poison gas ravage the earth to the bone incinerate the bones to run the conveyor belt pile up the goods for the ones who traded in their souls for a shoe shine. don’t talk to me about what you do your words don’t mean anything to me you think you are someone because you have something a gold watch a gold car a gold house a gold chain around your neck a gold shackle around your leg a big smile your words have no meaning to me i am nothing a cloak of skin with a mouth saying don’t kill everything so soon.