Summer that year came with black wings
rising over green suburban trees
and found my blood-beat
like a smiling intruder delivering a shiv.
There is a horror of violation,
a new vocabulary of panic spoken
in chambers where
lions and phantoms trespass the flesh.
It gets dusky inside the mind,
The hiss of a projector spinning out a movie
made of gin and dope,
actors who live in graves offering their gray stars.
The god-surgeon, numb expert bastard
taught his flunkies torture
and gave me a new face.
I crawled through a radio for fifteen years to slash his memory.
When you always feel wrong, the world is a camera
and your crime is breathing.
There is an underworld with bootleg cures, so you go,
a parade of the altered, weird strangers, sudden sisters
Who come out blinking, holding high
the severed heads of devils, and unafraid of anything.
__________
I had major surgery when I was 16. That summer, "Love Her Madly" and "Riders On The Storm", both by the Doors, were getting heavy play on the radio I had at the hospital. Jim Morrison died right around that time.
My title is, of course, taken from Rimbaud, a favorite of Morrison's and of mine.
You had me at the first line. Wow. The pain and suffering of that time come through clearly. I resonate with always feeling wrong, back then, and the crime of breathing.
ReplyDeleteI agree about Rimbaud and Lost Little Girl is one of Morrison's most haunting songs. I never get tired of him. Love all of this but that last line, first stanza caught me in the throat.
ReplyDelete"..actors who live in graves offering their gray stars..." This poem is full of shattering, of being shattered, of the looming audience who always seems to be watching for us to slip, especially when we're young. Your command of imagery and the faultless simile has never shown to greater advantage Shay, and there are scalpels in every stanza, with a bright slash at the end that says Hell is just another street for angels to walk singing.
ReplyDeleteI was ten years older than you that summer ... no time for getting lost with four little ones to corral. My escape when I could manage one? Heading up to our attic, dancing madly to 'Love Her Madly' .. emerging ready to take on the world/kids. A great challenge, Shay and a memorable poem.
ReplyDeleteWell darn, Iooked at the 1967 date on the video and assumed you were sixteen in 1967. Wrong no doubt? I was twenty-six in 1967.
DeleteI was 16 in 1971.
DeleteWow Shay, so much resonates I found myself taking deep gulps of airs at the end of this, finding it difficult to breathe through the horror and pain and abuse that comes through, a cloistered hell with no escape. The poem reads like a Sophoclean tragedy, a catharsis., with a chorus from the "underground." The line, "I crawled through a radio for fifteen years to slash his memory" hit me like a ton of bricks. Could it be said better? Not even by Plath. To find a language of release, of escape, of freedom: a gift of music, poetry. You have that gift, my friend. And that last couplet is simply magnificence, a distillation of triumph. Breathing is so much easier.
ReplyDeleteShay, I am always amazed at your ability to capture moments and hit us with words/images that evoke so much emotion.
ReplyDeleteThis was another excellent bit if writing Shay! “…a parade of the altered, weird strangers, sudden sisters who come out blinking…” …the soft parade.
ReplyDelete“of” …sorry
DeleteI don't know where to start. Every line shattered, shattering. These:
ReplyDelete"actors who live in graves offering their gray stars."
"I crawled through a radio for fifteen years to slash his memory."
"a parade of the altered, weird strangers, sudden sisters"
"Who come out blinking, holding high / the severed heads of devils, and unafraid of anything".
Oh God. Adore, adore, adore, adore, adore! Need I say more! This is really powerful. I love how you don't pull punches with your choice of word imagery. It's somehow always as beautiful as it is dangerous. These lines though:
ReplyDelete"a new vocabulary of panic spoken
in chambers where
lions and phantoms trespass the flesh."
"The god-surgeon, numb expert bastard
taught his flunkies torture
and gave me a new face."
"When you always feel wrong, the world is a camera
and your crime is breathing." - these lines made me so emotional, I really felt them <3
"...sudden sisters
Who come out blinking, holding high
the severed heads of devils, and unafraid of anything." - I love this powerful ending. It's the Kali goddess risen.