a good bit of my time has been spent regretting the death(s) of those who died younger than
me (younger than i was at whatever point in time i was in (at that time))
i dont know how old i was when this started (or) when i became aware that it was something that
had (already) existed in me for some time
i (actually) think it (probably) began as a sense of (just) how (frickin) awful it is when talented
genius artistic beauty types die (unnecessarily) young
i can definitely remember being in middle school and reading a newspaper article about the
lynyrd skynyrd plane crash
and (then) john lennon got shot
and then jim morrison died at twenty seven when i was fourteen (?) (for me, i mean it was
fourteen year old me who learned about (and (deeply) regretted) his death twelve yeers
before)
(well, as deeply as a fourteen yeer old can plausibly go) (it felt like a horrible fucking loss, the twelve yeers of no songs, no poetry (missing songs/poetry) between his death and my sense of loss
(or) may be it was when i played juliet in a class enacted scene styrofoam cups for breasts with
chalk stuck into the cups bottoms for nipples...
at what point did the deluge begin ? (for me)
i lost hamlet (too young) for the first time in eleventh grade
(did you know shakespeare was only fifty-two when he died ?)
f scott fitzgerald (and zelda) the villanelle in the notes at the end of the bell jar
i was (probably) a senior in high school when we went to a space
where a band was playing (classmates, peepholes i (actually) knew) and i had never seen a show like that
somebody i kinda half-knew screaming out a punk version of means to an end
(and) another friend later explaining (to me) by dropping a needle on a spinning disc
that was joy division he said and told me the story...
for now, lets (just) skip ahead forty yeers or so and a (good) guess is.....
neerly half (if not more) of the writers singers artists i care (most) about
have died younger than i am now
(and) in six months i’ll be the age when clarice lispector died
ten years older than dead frida kahlo
six years older than dead rilke sixteen years older than dead kafka nineteen years older
than dead van gogh...
and they (just) keep frickin dying in the past so that theres nothing we can do (about it)
except (maybe) to keep adding names to the list we started yeers ago
where we (actually) calculated the (exact) number of days (months, yeers) they had been alive
[it was here we discovered (?) that delmore schwartz and david berman had lived the exact
same number of days a fact which (until you read this) i believed i was (likely) the only person
on earth who (might) have been aware of it…]
but, is this (really) about ian curtis you (might) (rightfully) ask...
well yes (and no) (and may be) i might (vaguely) answer
as i scroll through my fifteen page document... (spans, i call it, with a subtitle, durations)
coming to my note(s) on ian curtis: (here i cut and paste from the original document):
Ian Curtis 7.15.56-5.18.80 8709 days 23y 10m 4d 286.4 moonths 4.6.80 first attempt 5.18.80 final attempt,hanging
im not (so very) sure but, if memory serves, his first attempt was drowning (or) maybe it was
over dose ?
either way six and a half months later john lennon was shot (one i actually knew about in real
time) (if there is such a thing)
like every yeer it was a bad yeer for tragic deaths and (despite appearances) im not always
one hundred percent sure ive (we’ve) survived it... (or (just) outlived it)
ten yeers ago i watched a show on satellite tv (nee streaming) (and) (i believe it was the final
episode) one of the scenes shows a little boy turning himself into a warrior (of sorts)
and joy divisions atmosphere is playing
and it was (one of) the most powerful scenes id ever seen... (i thought)
i downloaded the song to my ipod (nee walkman) (my record collection long since gone)
and i listened over and over (while driving) to ian curtis tell me...
dont walk away in silence....
ten yeers (or so) later i saw his face embedded in yer pome
and joked to you (as yet unknown to me)
dont make me write about ian curtis
and you responded
dare ya ! dont walk away... (from a challenge)
(excuse me, for taking liberties with punctuation and spacing and parentheses while (ostensibly) quoting
you) but
just like paul westerberg (the replacements)
i will dare...
here is
my poem about ian curtis
in the late eighties
i would stand
in the record store
looking through all
the band posters
for albums, for songs
for tours...
you were dead
before you came here
you only came through sound
and image (images)
and other peeple
singing yer songs
i dont know how old i was
when i first
saw you moving
on a screen
i dont know
what i was expecting
(it (certainly) wasnt
what i saw)
i couldnt believe
it was you
(that i was seeing you)
moving on a screen
this was before yew toob
(you couldnt (just) see
whatever you wanted to see)
when the way
you think of things
completely changes
nothing (from the outside)
looks any different
but (sometimes)
(from the inside)
every thing looks different
for a while.
you died when i
had (just) turned twelve
and waited there
(in death)
for the rest of us...
we’re coming (we say)
(reluctantly)
just give us time
(not) to walk away...
please like, etc if you like, etc (and thanks)
Challenge executed and punctated perfectly. Have you seen the movie 'Control'? These stats are morbid, I'm well over halfway there.
Boffo, a good one