Punk Pantoum

PUNK
is not a fashion statement
and it is not a commodity
every time you sanitize it
we will re-infect it
every time you clean it up
we will dirty it again
It is, essentially two words
the first word is "fuck"
and the second word is "you"
Not because we are not
capable of saying much more
but because you are not
capable of understanding
anything less

The Punk Revolution was born in the 1960's and was most popular through the 1970's. Punk was really a way of saying f-that. People were punk, not so much because they hated the world, but because they are bothered by the conformity of the world. Punks fight the power, The Man. The American Revolution was really an older form of punk. A bunch of rich, white, slave owning men didn't want to pay their taxes, so they fought against it. Thomas Jefferson said, "A little rebellion was good every once in a while...It keeps the government from having too much power."  Now punk isn't thriving, but it will never die because everyone has some punk in them...just some more than others...

In Punk Pantoum a man asks his lover to take her life as he takes his. If the speaker is 'the punk', then the aristocratic lifestyle in which he lives is 'the man'. We know he lives in a rich neighborhood, Eutaw Place was originally known as Gibson Street (a place for the wealthy) and we know what he thinks of them, "rats, a severed fetlock, muscle, bone and hooves".
The speaker feels since the man keeps putting him and his lover down they should run away. That would be something logical to do, you don't like something so you get away from it. But how can you run away from the entire world? The man will always find you, and he cannot die!...but you can.
Death can be a satisfication, relaxation or a new experience. "There's a new song out just for you and me" Nobody can tell you what death is like becuase nobody really knows. Death is whatever you want it to be. The speaker and his lover have the same belief in it. In death they really can love each other for all eternity, unbothered.

The first and last line of the pantoum are basically the same. In the Punk Pantoum the first line is
"Tonight I'll walk the razor along your throat"
and the last is
"Tonight, dragging the white-hot razor across our throats, and back..."

There is a definite shift in tone here. 'Walk' to 'dragging' indicates movement, painstaking work or even hardship. The last line describes the razor as 'white-hot'. From thefreedictionary.com white-hot means in a state of intense emotion. The first line has little or no emotion and the last is in a state of intensity because they are about to kill themselves. The transition from 'your throat' to 'our throats' symbolizes their connection. They will live forever in death, unbothered.
'And back...' means that they are not done here. There will be more that happens. In this particular poem it means that there is an afterlife. The '...' probably means etc. It means literally, 'and back, and back, and back, and back, and back...' forever because death is an eternity!