tragedy.

//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

[[image:deadend.jpg width="282" height="371" align="left" caption=""DeadAndRusty" by iTopher" link="http://http://flickr.com/photos/74655092@N00/146336780/"]]
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 through 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 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


==  Excerpt from __The Great Gatsby__  ==


 "There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water was the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water. It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, **and the holocaust was complete.**"

Excerpt from //A Streetcar Named Desire//
by Tennessee Williams


 * Blanche**: I don't know you - I don't know you. I want to be - left alone - please!
 * Matron**: Now, Blanche!
 * Echoes [//rising and falling//]**: Now, Blanche - now, Blanche - now, Blanche!
 * Stanley**: You left nothing here but spilt talcum and old empty perfume bottles - unless it's the paper lantern you want to take with you. You want the lantern?

[//He crosses to dressing table and seizes the paper lantern, tearing it off the light bulb, and extends it toward her. She cries out as if the lantern was herself. The Matron steps boldly toward her. She screams and tries to break past the Matron. She screams and tries to break past the Matron. All the men spring to their feet. Stella runs out to the porch, with Eunice following to comfort her, simultaneously with the confused voices of the men in the kitchen. Stella rushes into Eunice;s embrace on the porch.//]

[//She tries to break from Eunice's arms.//]
 * Stella**: Oh, my God, Eunice help me! Don't let them do that to her, don't let them hurt her! Oh, Go, oh, please God, don't hurt her! What are the doing to her? What are they doing?


 * Eunice**: No, honey, no, no, honesy. Stay here. Don't go back in there. Stay with me and don't look.

//"Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."// -Holden Caulfield, __Catcher in the Rye__ by J.D. Salinger

go back (to love.)

to the tragedy connection.

onward to memories!