RIP
Jim Carroll8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain 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 powdres 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 reverbrating
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 them...
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, impassible 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 Roma...
You could have gone to Florence
And looked into the eyes of Bellinni 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 curseCheck out the
Village Voice.
And the Frank in the above poem is in reference to Frank O'Hara, oh
my heart.Speaking of Frank's heart, I had the immediacy of a bad movie . . . the big overproduced first-run kind this weekend. But don't take my word for it, here's what a
real critic had to say about a film I'm so indifferent to it's not worth mentioning the title.
On a related note: Who's ever heard of one critic seeing or not seeing a movie based on the opinion of another critic? I'm not saying you should see a movie you don't want to see, I'm just asking since when do you need the opinion of another to back it up? We are such odd creatures . . .
The movie 9 was not without its flaws (the ending and the storyline being huge ones). But I think that any movie that touches upon the fear of too many technological advances being our downfall is NOT something to be overlooked. There was a certain earnest naivety to the film that I sort of enjoyed. I just wished Acker had woven it in deeper into the storyline and characters . . . it was just sort of there, looming over the film attached to a few anchoring words and phrases such as, "pieces of my soul." Don't take my word for it, see it for yourself and then tell me Acker didn't base 3 and 4 on my favorite Jersey born female twin savants
Flo and Kay.
This Celtics Blog
"POst" by Master PO made me smile. How is the view from that Lone Dr. Seuss
Truffula Tree?
Simile time: Love is like a
Brontosaurus. Sex is like a Velociraptor.
tunes from the left end,
While You Wait for the Others, Grizzly Bear. Make it all worth while.
You Can Make Him Like You, The Hold Steady.
Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors, Radiohead.
Ocean Breathes Salty, Modest Mouse. You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste death?
