vvvvvvI wrote you a song.
vvvvvvI then put it in a drink, swallowed it down. I was sitting at
a cold bar; the Back Alley, there is no roof there.
The rain coming down,
through the cracks in the sky,
felt like nails as the dead end of the bass line

broke away. It felt as real as a strangulation; my tears hissed.
I wrote you that song and then
I smashed the guitar.
vvvvvvI wrote the song,
even though I never knew you... you were
the first girl who ever made love to me after I lost my eyes.
vvvvvvIt was not a real song.
It was the best song ever written. I could
feel the damp brick walls as the notes squeezed between the rain

drops. You said I reminded you of Osiris,
the name coming out from the
back of your throat like souls drowning,
and that was also the name of
your horse. The rain had turned black.

vvvvvvI wrote you a song,
threw it out of a window in Greenwich Village;
watched as the thin wind blew it down the street between
the concrete canyons, the
brick asphalt jungle walls.
The words grew wings and flew up over the city with the
crows, the pigeons and pieces of my heart.
I think much more than I ought to

think, drink much more than I ought to drink.
I look at a picture of you, and
you had always thought it strange
when I looked at pictures. A man with no
eyes should only listen, and I suppose
there is a point in that.

vvvvvvThe song I wrote for you is not
really a song. But I sing it anyway, and watched
you as you walked out my door. I crushed it in my hand
and tossed it at you. You turned
and you smiled, I think, but I’ll never truly know.
That smile hurt more than your song could
ever have felt my pain.

vvvvvvI wrote you that song, anyway.
Did it ever mean anything? Now I’ve been inside you
and you know the secret of my lies how I never was
a man even before I had lost my eyes. That
night long ago when I could have stopped
the train but jumped in the river instead,
saving myself. I could not read the morning news
that following day, but I know what it said.

vvvvvv(I still have my eyes, they just don’t work).

vvvvvvYou said I had no choice,
and I loved you for that. So, I wrote you a song and you
walked away. I never even knew you, never even knew your name.
We lived in the same room,
shared the same bed, but I still needed to call you
whenever I wished to say ‘hello.’
And you'd say, ‘goodbye.’

vvvvvvFrom far away, down the black river, I heard the notes crying and I knew I must write
you a song. I dreamed I saw your face while I was dying and I heard your song. It opened up the
wounds of a thousand goodbyes, it was the most beautiful song ever sung. Did you know that could
ever be possible? To feel that music like headless acrobats, like kisses falling from the tongues of
butterscotch flowers; it’s so hard. You could never expect it to be real,
vvvvvvand there it was

vvvvvvand I threw it away.
Flushed it down the toilet, tossed it in the river, ripped it up into a hundred pieces

and put it in my fireplace. Watched the notes burn,
the letters turn to ash.
I could not see any of this, but I saw it all.
Each duration of sound a colour only
I could see, and only you could know.
From the middle C to passing tones,
each scale a grace of murder and mayhem.
The euphony of our souls cruel and blue.
vvvvvvAnd beneath it all the

subdominant expressions: the perception of
arpeggiated paradigms as complete
as Vivaldi’s fifth season and the lost trees
of paradise as brushed by Raphael.
How I can taste your smell. I wrote you
this song and you slammed the door
on my dead eyes. You were the only one
who ever saw me outside of whiskey bars,
outside of empty hotel rooms, outside of
passing out in taxi cabs. You saw me like
the bullets fired from a punishing god,
as Jacob who wrestled with angels,
as guitar strings strung around
vvvvvvmy bruised neck.

vvvvvvAnd, still, you never called me Jack.

vvvvvvI wrote you this song,
and it has become further and further away from
anything familiar. You liked Billie Holiday
and called me William Blake,
you called me a dead man.
And when I asked if you knew my song for you,
you pulled out a gun and shot me.
And then you called me Nobody.
Nobody could ever love a man with no eyes,
so only I could love myself.
But when you held me against your flesh
I felt your heart,
I felt your heat,
and inside you I was healed.
vvvvvvAnd then you watched me

die. I wrote you a song, it spoke of Genesis
and Hell and gardens of pain;
of lovers in Paris and the
towers of Babylon;
of your face in poetical sketches
sleeping with the sun.
I would print your words in my bones,
paint your words with my blood,
vvvvvveverlasting or whatever there was.
vvvvvvI wrote you a song, I cannot remember the words.

vvvvvvI wrote you a song,
it was hard, it was soft, it was full of holes.
You laughed and you danced and you thought me mad
because I looked in the mirror whenever I brushed my teeth.
Why did you come home with me?
Oh, sweet Grendel, why did you sleep with me?
In you I have walked through
purgatory, pity my paradoxical eyes.
Should I continue on to the inferno,
knowing there is no paradise?
vvvvvvHow can a man die when he cannot see his path?

“Through me the way into the suffering city,”
vvvvvvI walk with the Heretics,
with the shadows, by a narrow path. Watch as
your song disappears into the walls of this city;
the notes hang silently above
the car crashes, above the loud dogs.
“Through me the way to the eternal pain,”
and your song bleeds into gasolene, into smoke,
into dusted profanities. Listen,
those are my footsteps,
“through me the way that runs among the lost.”
From the broken window above the theatre sign
falls the suffocation of a saxophone, something
from Miles or Coltrane, and I stand here
beneath these mean streetlamps
with a brown bag bottle of booze,
your song in my hand.
vvvvvvTrembling,

the words turn to ink, to poison, and seep into my flesh.
I could never be your Elvis or your Jesus Christ,
but I will always be your mess.
Around the corner the junkies are
hanging Infinity up on a telephone pole,
and further away the prostitutes are fucking Hysteria.
These are my hallucinations, my illusions, my intoxications.
vvvvvvI use these things in your song

vvvvvvAnd I drop it in a trash can.
vvvvvvThe rats call me king.
Drowning imperceptibly along the way.
Intricate in all the jazz bars,
the night clubs,
and bass lines thirty miles long;
the rhythms separate and drift out to sea.
You could have been a movie star,
deceptively unreal.
I could have been your bass guitar.
Flickering and

fluttering into all the cocktail lounges from
Sinatra at the Sands
to Dylan in the Village
and Buckley at the Chateau Marmont.
Turning Hollywood into waves,
the curves of night seducing while your
mouth sucks me in,
the taste of your tongue in midnight ochre.
Wearing your smile in a raincoat,
your love in an ashtray.
But in all these different endings
you would have murdered me
anyway.

vvvvvvSo fuck you,
I’ll never write you a song.
Sweet Grendel, is the song
good enough for you?
Never good enough for you.
I wrote you this song,

and I threw it away.











 

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