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POEM OF THE WEEK #16
Richard Hell
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New York punk
was always secretly the most literary of music scenes -- remember
Patti Smith's
Rimbaud reveries. But who would
have expected that the author of anthems like
"Blank Generation" and
"Love Comes in Spurts" would turn
out to be a formidable novelist (Go Now,
Scribner, 1997), poet, and -- dare we say? -- man of letters
(Hot and Cold: essays poems lyrics notebooks pictures fiction,
powerHouse Books, 2001), though still, rest assured,
"with the same blue flame of misfit insight and desperate beauty"
(Bookforum). He was the editor of a series of
poetry chapbooks under the CUZ Editions
imprint and excerpts of his new novel,
Godlike, have been published in... spurts, of course...
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Untitled
It seems I feel more like
the inanimate temporarily endowed
with perceptions and initiative, etc.,
than I feel like something alive
that must someday die. That said,
I'd like my living space to have
an inspiring style. I'd empty out
everything and start with one couch
shaped like Kentucky. There'd be a
few stuffed, life-like, birds -- common
ones, like maybe a song sparrow
or a cedar waxwing, though
a cedar waxwing might be too sad.
The room is white. (Another room would have
walls covered with painted scenes.) I'd
keep my prized book collection in
glass fronted floor-to-ceiling cases. Wooden
like old medical school cabinets. That
said, I'm getting tired of this poem.
I'll leave the rest of the apartment
to your imagination, where
I'm lying now, alone, attractive, undressed.
POEM ARCHIVE
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© 2004 KultureFlash
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