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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



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 thru

Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverbrating

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

