Poetry for Kurt
Richard Cory
Whenever
Richard Cory went downtown,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he
was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he
was rich -- yes, richer than a king --
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we
worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
- Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1897
This is a poem that
someone sent into the HSMB that seemed to be about someone
similar to Kurt Cobain. Thinking it was cool, I've decided to put
it up here.
8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain
by Jim Carroll
Note: Jim Carroll wrote "The Basketball Diaries", which is actually an autobiography of his early life. It's an unbelievable book and my favorite movie (with Leonardo DeCapri playing Carroll). The following is not some cheap work from a fan or admirer, but a priceless work from a true literary artist. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do. -mike
-1-
Genius is
not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties
can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance
Pills and
powders only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift
Your Body
becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese whiz and guns
Whose
triggers are shaped tenderly into a false lust
In timeless illusion
-2-
The
guitar claws kept tightening, I guess on your heart stem.
The loops of feedback and distortion, threaded right thru
Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverberating
In your mind
And from
the stage
All the faces out front seemed so hungry
With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding
From
where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving
And
instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth's own blood
And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds
-3-
You
should have talked more with the monkey
He's always willing to negotiate
I'm still paying him off...
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings
Your will
could have sped it up...
But you left that in a plane
Because it wouldn't pass customs and immigration
-4-
Here's synchronicity for you:
Your
music's tape was inside my walkman
When my best friend from summer camp
Called with the news about you
I
listened then...
It was all there!
Your music kept cutting deeper and deeper valleys of sound
Less and less light
Until you hit solid rock
The drill
bit broke
and the valley became
A thin crevice, impassable in time,
As time itself stopped.
And the
walls became cages of brilliant notes
Pressing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you
-5-
Then I
translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"
The words
kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun
-6-
And you
shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that's where the pain came from
That's where the demons were digging
The world
outside was blank
Its every cause was just a continuation
Of another unsolved effect
-7-
But
Kurt...
Didn't the thought that you would never write another song
Another feverish line or riff
Make you think twice?
That's what I don't understand
Because it's kept me alive, above any wounds
-8-
If only
you hadn't swallowed yourself into a coma in Rome...
You could have gone to Florence
And looked into the eyes of Bellini or Rafael's Portraits
Perhaps
inside them
You could have found a threshold back to beauty's arms
Where it all began...
No matter that you felt betrayed by her
That is
always the cost
As Frank said,
Of a young artist's remorseless passion
Which
starts out as a kiss
And follows like a curse
© 1994 JIM CARROLL
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