Tuesday, April 05, 2011

hey hey we're the junkies

two poems spin could publish for napomo

About Kurdt

I already felt like a junkie, so...
but there's a difference, so I've been told,
between playing the Blues and
living them,
the difference between a mindset
and chord structures
and a style that's not so fashionable.
ain't it a shame shame shame shame?
The spinning pages dig up your corpse every April,
as the money keeps rolling in,
and she's what she always was, a drugged-out whore and
a narcissist,
a coattail rider, made over media show...
Speed by, just slow enough not to get noticed,
runny nose hunchback,
in drag and sunglasses and sharp skin-rotting stench,
bleached white,
like a snow-pure prostitute scrubbing
blood and bone
flesh raw
to hide the blemishes she's sure give her away...
like the son she purged
with the umbilical scar of a hangman's knot.
Yet, still holy, in spite,
like the tourettes sermon of a preacher.
All services rendered and
it paid well, and along came boredom and age;
and the true tragedy is the little girl left with Pete's
now trite line
haunting her for the rest of her life;
maybe it's not so tongue-in-cheek,
but look on the bright side
and milk it for all it's worth...
Not to be sappy,
    my generation forgets as quickly as they buy
and shit breaks—
the value of the flea market is lost on us...
so here's a deep thought, or perhaps
one more quirky cliche phrase,
you were never a rock god, to me;
you were what i wanted to be.
it was comfortable to be not yet
ten, and safely stuck in my head,
smashing my self in beautiful reckless abandon,
through peaks and troughs.
"I think I'm dumb,
                     but maybe just..."




4/20

*bubbling bong rip*
shp shp shhure god's all-powerful;
but does he have lips?
whoa...

 It was on the fifth—
     a day stained grey
        by Seattle
               April rain showers...
    Asked around
          and found out
        where the junkies
                                    applied.
   Needle and the speedball
                        damage done.
Bargain basement
                               Junkhead;
  and they still sing like him,
                                  fucker,
      'cause he's dead;
         but what the hey?
            hey
                     my
                           my
dead man in his box for
              two weeks
                   putrid rot
         empty room sets the scene
     starving cats picked slow,
                            slumped
                                         fiend.
She willed the rain. So?
                  So, are you defamed?
20 hours...
no milk carton photos
         But what the hell?
               Gotta rest—
        escape
             hate to feel the
                               creeping head,
  the aching pain in the chest.

The godsmack act is
      fun and games
   tongue in cheek
("This song is about pain.")
            schtick;
'til that shit's sustenance.

Welcome to the machine,
                                     boy.
Did you think it wasn't
                      a sludge factory?
Do you feel a little
                            bitter, now?

Bearing true witness to
   this barrel of monkeys,
this dude came down to
  touch the mother...
Dude ain't here no more.

On a personal note, Facelift
was my first musical purchase.
That was sometime around '93.
Nine months from now,
       I'll be 28.
              I'm still young.

14 comments:

Marian said...

yeah, spin should get on those for sure.
he is still dead, isn't he?
they all are.

ian said...

i think i spent most of the rest of 94 with a dull sort of numb disbelief that the bitch killed kurt. years later, i saw the news about staley. that was a bummer, less of a shock (if anything, the shock was that he lived as long as he did), but a bummer none-the-less. if there's a take away lesson, it's that ultimately, one way or another, such is the way of the needle.

but, od'ing, rotting in your apartment for two weeks, and getting eaten by your cats is a pretty fucking rock-n-roll way to go.

elvis said...

yeah, I wouldn't feel so bad if a cat ate me.

ian said...

exactly.

Marian said...

yeah, sigh. also elliott smith, maybe not your bag but really haunting.
i was actually kinda broken up about mike starr dying a few weeks back. just so bleak, all that.

ian said...

yeah, stabbing yourself in the chest, not once, but twice is pretty brutal.

ian said...

and yeah, mike star has always been sad to me because, well, his drug problem got him kicked out of alice in chains. damn.

Marian said...

right? damn.

ian said...

dare could save a lot of money (depending on licensing costs) and be way more effective by playing some jefferson airplane and follow it with jefferson starship; then play some aic (or mad season) followed by class of 99.

new dare speech (a la hicks), "look, kids. not all drugs are good; some are great. but you have to be smart about it..."

Marian said...

by the way, did you submit these to spin or are we just whining about how ah wah someone should notice us?

ian said...

spin publishes poetry? i thought they just hump as many dollar bills out of rock stars until they die, then they hump the corpses...

Marian said...

ah, just whining. just checking :)

Anonymous said...

Loved the title!
Both poems are powerful and I like your style - very strong and in control.

ian said...

thanks for reading, jessica.

marian, i'm totally whining, most days, about most things.