14 September 2009

Like a Plutonium Coughdrop

Jim Carrol - R.I.P.
Bill & Jim
 
 

I turned one night the other way, faster than I should have and this beam of purple light shot slowly from your wrists like a tired lazer, straight to my eyes...and dyed them blue, I swear...then I tilted back my head to suck it to my lips, and felt it melt down in layers like a plutonium coughdrop...I turned the other way to hear the reverberations of purple light in the hollow of its flux, it was the sound that steals snowbirds from the wire to sing...we sleep, we sleep without dreams, too distant from the mirror...imitating clarity... disguising childhood terror. I turned the other way...always turn the other way. One night you kissed me you were drunk. I thought of Candy Darling in 1971, the back room of Max’s Kansas City with Jackie Curtis, leading me out the back door with Lou, changing places in the alley-way until the circle was full and the snow turned to fire while the birds wept on the wire for the purple light to sing. We went back inside...it was empty and we didn’t care. Candy was dying and she didn’t care... Ginger, why don’t you smile next time they take your picture? Why are you looking so sad in each photograph? 

©1980 - Jim Carroll 

Goodnight Sweet Prince, 

2 comments:

  1. Fuck me. I missed this one completely.

    Another good one bites the dust.

    Thanks for the poem; the original and the transcription both.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Before we do anything we ask ourselves... What Would JC Do?

    ReplyDelete