The Underground: Golden Shovel - By: William McEwan

Original Song: Turn the Page, popularized by Metallica, written by Bob Seger

line : Yeah, most times you can't hear 'em talk

Other times you can

All the same old clichés

Is it woman, is it man?

And you always seem outnumbered

You don't dare make a stand

Make your stand

The show stage feels very small when you get on it, yeah.

Even though the stage is about the size of a tennis court, feel as if i’m in the in the band looked at the most

Even though we’ve had much more accessible bands beforehand. There are times

Where they sucked, you

Do too. Can’t

Even play the solo the way it was written, let alone hear

If you could. Your bandmates are idiots. You can hear em’

Bickering about how they are gonna “blow away the competition”. Man, your singer can’t even sing, let alone talk.

The dread starts to fill you. The other

Bands are finishing up packing. Times

Like these you

Come to understand the embarrassment you are about to feel, and you can

Feel all

Of the practice and patience you had, the

Sheer number of hours you put in makes you feel like you’ve lost years off your life. Who are you kidding, you’ve practiced, same

As everybody else. But your bandmates are old

They are the only ones that take it seriously, not really. They actually show up to practice but they suck. “Break a leg”, clichés.

Man you were sick of them. But that is,

Was all the songs you wrote. It

Is not the same, because you never write anything anymore. The woman,

In the crew, she is telling us to pause for a second, Is

The snare head broken? Are the cords frayed? It

Is like you are looking for any reason to escape, even if it costs you your own equipment. Your drummer, well, his stage name, The Man

Is being called to the back, maybe he's being kicked out, please, please make it so. And

He’s just being told to grab his sticks. Fuck, no backing down now. You

Pick up your guitar, pick, and plug in. Sound check time, you always

Always hated this part. It felt like you were bending over for the whole crowd to see. You seem

To feel outnumbered

This club feels different, they are cheering. Do they know you? You only have like 500 monthly listeners. How could this be possible? You

Check your soundcloud, oh my god. You Don’t

Believe it. You only started this band because of a dare,

How could you have 50,000 listeners? Now you can’t mess up, you make

Music now. This is your

Life now. You stand

Scared, in awe, shock, terror and sweet euphoria you test the mic. Your singer is completely oblivious to what is happening, he’s probably high. Make

A sound, you force yourself to say “test”. The mic is at max volume and you just had the biggest voice crack ever. The audience laughs, and continues cheering. Your

Fingers are trembling. But you walk up to your spot. This is music, this is your life, this is your stand.

Please give a detailed explanation about the meaning and main idea of this poem.

This poem is loosely based on my life but the main idea is an underground artist achieving fame when he least expects it. I wanted to give a feeling of accomplishment and I was trying to make it as realistic as possible though I doubt this would ever happen

Please explain your writing and thought process regarding this poem.

I tried to have it relate to the actual verse it was based off of. The song, turn the page, is about around the same thing however the person singing does not really accomplish anything.

Why did you choose to write this poem?

I really liked the song lyrics and the verse specifically stood out to me. So when my creative writing teacher told us about golden shovel-style poems this was the first thing that came to mind.

Do you have any tips or anything to share with the youth writers who may be reading this?

To read it the way it's supposed to be read it needs to be read in a document size of 11'' x 17'' with both margins set to 10.