TWO POEMS
Lester Bangs Talks Scottie
PSH (1967–2014)
It’s not enough to say “sad,” alright,you need a flood. You need a linelike a serrated knife edgeto even get started, an anti-riff, likewhatever the violin that can’t keep its chin upcrawling out from under the worried trombonesays in the bathroom mirrorto “Kashmir” or “Should I Stayor Should I Go” or something, likeyou take a spiral ring notebook, right? andyou fill it. You fill it with lust and shameand real beauty and the feverish,trembling trustor babies, anybody truly new, who knowswhat they need absolutelybut they’re half a planet from havingany way to actually say itbut they go and wail toward it anyway, rightthey wail with their mouths and their arms,their thighs, it’s a caterwaul attacked byanother caterwaul in the dark, it’s comingfrom the cheese-brained heartsat their crying, lurching, gaping, hopingcenters—you call it cock, you call it cunt,you call it yearning, kissingas a respiratory emergency, it’s likewaking up on a beach, what beach?I don’t know / nobody fucking knows,you get more clinical if you have tobut the notebookand then you rip the metal spiral outand you put the paper in the driver’sseat of a stupid car / you almost wantthe car to kiss the boy and everyonewatching they didn’t even knowthey could want the boy to be kindto this other boy, this off-kilter, discomfitingboy, yawn and sigh made fleshlike an Orange Julius with feelingsuntil they see what’s left, and you know, that flaming, wrinkled,stabbed with ink hope chestbut it’s not the same notebookand you know it / the pages don’t turnthe bottoms of significant moments curland disintegrate in a dirty mistand it’s as bad as you think,it’s worse and then there’s seeing it and beinganother human, fucked and wired to loveand protect whatever we think we areto the point of inventing murderingwho we aren’t, who we are / we are soembarrassed, dumb want is the long shadowof every light in the cosmosstuffed into short shorts a size too smalland how is that pain beautifulto us, how is that beauty so disgusting?Oh Scottie. Is that the upset apple cartof questions you leave us with,like a pile of 8-tracks with goo all over it,is it some other order of intervention?How much Scottie can you stand, I meanhow much Scottie can you standto recognize you are?
