April 10, 2006

• 8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain

  
  

  By Jim Carroll

  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 curse
  
   

  
  

  —————————————–

  
  

  —————————————–

  
  

  Jim Carroll
  Song: People Who Died Lyrics

  
  

  
   

  Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old
  Fell from the roof on East Two-nine
  Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug
  On 26 reds and a bottle of wine
  Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old
  He looked like 65 when he died
  He was a friend of mine
  
  
  Those are people who died, died
  They were all my friends, and they died
  
  G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten
  So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan
  Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head
  Bobby OD’d on Drano on the night that he was wed
  They were two more friends of mine
  Two more friends that died
  
  Those are people who died, died
  They were all my friends, and they died
  
  Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room
  Bobby hung himself from a cell in the tombs
  Judy jumped in front of a subway train
  Eddie got slit in the jugular vein
  And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others
  And I salute you brother
  
  Those are people who died, died
  They were all my friends, and they died
  
  Herbie pushed Tony from the Boys’ Club roof
  Tony thought that his rage was just some goof
  But Herbie sure gave Tony some bitchen proof
  “Hey,” Herbie said, “Tony, can you fly?”
  But Tony couldn’t fly, Tony died
  
  Those are people who died, died
  They were all my friends, and they died
  
  Brian got busted on a narco rap
  He beat the rap by rattin’ on some bikers
  He said, “Hey, I know it’s dangerous, but it sure beats Riker’s”
  But the next day he got offed by the very same bikers
  
  Those are people who died, died
  They were all my friends, and they died
  
  Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old
  Fell from the roof on East Two-nine
  Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug
  On 26 reds and a bottle of wine
  Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old
  He looked like 65 when he died
  He was a friend of mine
  
  Those are people who died, died
  They were all my friends, and they died
  
  G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten
  So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan
  Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head
  Bobby OD’d on Drano on the night that he was wed
  They were two more friends of mine
  Two more friends that died
  
  Those are people who died, died
  They were all my friends, and they died
  
  Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room
  Bobby hung himself from a cell in the tombs
  Judy jumped in front of a subway train
  Eddie got slit in the jugular vein
  And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others
  And I salute you brother
  
  Those are people who died, died
  They were all my friends, and they died
  
  

  • 4:53 pm
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