Why Do Geniuses Die So Young?

For some people it seems living an ordinary life wrought with slow decay is not a possibility. For some, a life packed with explosive creativity ending in a bang seems the only solution. When these people also happen to be extremely beautiful and charismatic - legends are made - and remain ever young.

I am thinking right now of Jeff Buckley - talk about good looking guy, and the songs he wrote, and his voice. It is a crying shame that he was taken from us at such an early age - I cannot help but wonder what he would have done had he been allowed to live out his life.

One of the utmost tests of a singer songwriter, other than writing good stuff yourself, is taking on Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah (everybody does it). Probably one of the best tunes ever written, gripping, gut wrenching and totally over exploited. Taking on that song, and making you hear it - it is a feat in its own right. And when Jeff Buckley does it - he makes me feel like, like a transcendent being.

But then again, maybe he got what everybody gets - a lifetime. Whatever it was, he spent it well.



Also check out: Jeff Buckley - Grace and Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

Laughing and Crying - You Know its the Same Release

Have you ever been a casual observer at a party? Have you ever relaxed enough to just watch what people actually do? If so, I'd like to talk to you because you are probably an extremely interesting person.

Me? No never, I am to busy actually enjoying myself, or working up the nerve to talk to some cute girl, or feeling out of place, or getting drunk, or dancing - to actually see people around me in that situation.

If you've ever been a casual observer at someone's party. Maybe you noticed something along the lines of what Joni did in her song.



The lyrics:
All the people at this party
They've got a lot of style
They've got stamps of many countries
They've got passport smiles
Some are friendly
Some are cutting
Some are watching it from the wings
Some are standing in the centre
Giving to get something

Photo Beauty gets attention
Then her eye paint's running down
She's got a rose in her teeth
And a lampshade crown
One minute she's so happy
Then she's crying on someone's knee
Saying laughing and crying
You know it's the same release

I told you when I met you
I was crazy
Cry for us all Beauty
Cry for Eddie in the corner
Thinking he's nobody
And Jack behind his joker
And stone-cold Grace behind her fan
And me in my frightened silence
Thinking I don't understand

I feel like I'm sleeping
Can you wake me
You seem to have a broader sensibility
I'm just living on nerves and feelings
With a weak and a lazy mind
And coming to peoples parties
Fumbling deaf dumb and blind

I wish I had more sense ot humor
Keeping the sadness at bay
Throwing the lightness on these things
Laughing it all away
Laughing it alI away
Laughing it all away

A Joni Mitchell Inspired Text

I love Joni Mitchell, no - I really do. Nothing breaks through my emotional barriers like her music and her words. She's like a shortcut to real shit.

Anyway, so this is a confused - artsy fartsy text involving some rather outlandish moves between a woman and her reflection in a dark window. The inspiration was Joni's song Chelsea Morning.

Here goes:

She was gone.

Stella swept aside the thin white fabric draping her window and stood to her toes. She leaned in to cut out the light from the room. But the river was still invisible in the darkness. Only her baconian reflection peered back at her under innumerable eyelids.

Lowering its gaze her reflection allowed her to see the paper boy stride around the corner. At the first door he stamped his feet to get rid of the crust of snow. The muffled sound seemed to reach her somewhat later. As do many things in pleasure and pain. The life she had lead these last three years had been a charade, only it had been exquisitely pleasurable. At last she had had something no one man could touch, although in the end, of course, one man had.

The paper boy had left his bulging paper cart outside. The topmost morning papers flapped promisingly when weak gusts of wind created whirling streams of prickly snow along the curb. Papers laying, waiting to blow away.

She stood down again and waited for her spectral cousin to level its gaze. Standing thus awhile the question took form. Whom could she tell that She had already been dead for two hours? Her reflection was a mad accusation, nightmarish in its smudged bodies.

Many were the times she had held her, many the times she had cupped her sleeping hand on her own face. As she had done this last night: held her empty body, kissed her cooling palms. But never before had she forced open her sleeping eyes to meet the distant glare of an infected carcass. Whom could she tell that She was dead?

She felt the surge of a void in the water of her mind. Then her eyes and mouths wide open, inviting pain. And so she screamed, because for her, all things were at an end.

“You’re my dancer in the dark.”
“And you, my old man.”

The Architecture of the Trees

I have nothing to say about this one, I don't remember writing it... but I really like it.

The Architecture of the Trees

It is so beautiful,
the vibrant colours of dying leaves,
the emerging patterns in the naked trees
and you can almost feel the fabric of the wind
when autumn has almost entered
into that dry, bare stage we know so well,
grumpily we prefer to shun it
rushing quickly yearning warmth

but,
in the architecture of the trees
it should be plain for all to see
someday even seasonal death
will cease to be

All My Parts

So this one happened quite a few years ago when I was going through a really rough patch of doubt and self examination. It took a while but basically I lightened up and stopped feeling sorry for myself. When I look at these words now I can't help but laugh at the vanity of them - even so, I think it is quite good - it served a purpose. As it describes where I was at, we all go through these things. And there really is no point in scolding oneself for it. If people didn't feel bad once in a while there wouldn't be any poetry out there.

Even so, if you're like me, a white guy in a developed country, with decent people around you and with a decent social security net. You probably don't have much real shit to QQ about. Lost loves? Feeling lonely? Most people in the world are worse off, try dealing with some Darfur-grade shit for a while and then write some poetry, chump.

On that note: please read this book What is the What by Dave Eggers. A total eye opener, a must read if you feel like being humbled in your cushioned existence.


All my Parts

I want to be seated in the darkest of corners
I want to barely perceive your cold fingers
pricking my skin like a water from a country of dusk

I will turn inside
and tear at myself, and rip my skin,
I will grow silent, and slowly separate
all my parts

Into Some Other Luminous

Into Some Other Luminous

I put one hand
over my eyes
and one over my mouth
still you knew the few words I didn't say
that I wish you all the best
as long as it's with me

the moments we shared were fractured
and scattered perhaps
but together: glorious, intense
and so I wish I could have a word, a mark of remembrance
a keepsake lodged in my being
a memory of joy, ever present
a might-have-been of the unity of two bodies

but now I see,
what was ours will fade
and other loves will look at you and smile, I hope
and mourn, I know
for that is the lot of mortal races

already,
I see you running into the distance,
you will arrive into some other luminous
the strength in you that I love, ever stronger
and you will find some other home,
or travel until your time to rest has come

and now I wish
that your hands were in mine
for I have kisses waiting to be placed
two on your closed eyes
and one on your open mouth

Food Buddies

I wrote this when I'd realised that I was in love with someone - and how it came to be. How that feeling of sharing, togetherness and intimacy appeared not only through... well... sex. But apparently also, by eating food... together.

Food Buddies

we had made our dexterous camp
of laughter and sweat
of bodily work in sheets
of fucking you real hard
of looking at your back

and then we shared a meal
and then I fell in love