*~*~Jim's Poetry~*~*
Refrain:
Those are people who died
Those are people who died
Those are people who died
Those are people who died
They were all my friends, and they died
G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten
So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan
Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head
Bobby O.D'd on Drano on the night that he was wed
They were two more friends of mine
2 more friends that died/I miss em, they died
Repeat Refrain
Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room
Bobby hung himself from a cell in the tombs
Judy jumped in front of a subway train
Eddie got slit in the jugular vein
And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others
And I salute you brother/This song is for you my brother
Repeat Refrain
Herbie pushed Tony from the Boy's Club roof
Tony thought that his rage was just some goof
But Herbie sure gave Tony some bitchin' proof
"Hey", Herbie said, "Tony, can you fly?"
But Tony couldn't fly........Tony died
Repeat Refrain
Brian got busted on a narco rap
He beat the rap by rattin' on some bikers
He said, hey, I know it's dangerous,
but it sure beats Riker's
But the next day he got off'd by the very same bikers
Repeat Refrain; repeat song to Eddie
Music/Jim Carroll Music
ASCAP (1980)
Refrain:
I was a Catholic boy,
Redeemed through pain,
Not through joy
I was two months early, they put me under glass
I screamed and cursed their children when the nurses passed
Was convicted of theft when I slipped from the womb
They led me straight from my mother to a cell in the Tombs
Repeat Refrain
They starved me for weeks, they thought they'd teach me fear
I fed on cellmates' dreams, it gave me fine ideas
When they cut me loose, the time had served me well
I made allies in Heaven, I made comrades in Hell
I was a Catholic child
The blood ran red,
The blood ran wild
I make angels dance and drop to their knees
When I enter a church the feet of statues bleed
I understand the fate of all my enemies
Just like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane
Repeat Refrain
I watched the sweetest psalm stolen by the choir
I dreamed of martyrs' bones hanging from a wire
I make a contribution, I get absolution
I make a resolution to purify my soul
Repeat Refrain
They can't touch me now
I got every sacrament behind me:
I got baptism,
I got communion,
I got penance,
I got extreme unction,
I've got confirmation.
'Cause I'm a Catholic child
The blood ran red
The blood ran wild!
Now I'm a Catholic man
I put my tongue to the rail
Whenever I can
Music/Jim Carroll
ASCAP (1980)
Each night another room
without changing, the white
walls grow less bright, like
color returning to the joints
of a hand that feared flying
but no longer cared
It comes with a Bible and
a print of Paris under grey
winter, women walking in couples
toward a monument that endures,
room to room. Night to night,
the faces of the women grow closer.
I am trying to read their lips.
Give me a week and I'll succeed.
And I'll regret having done it.
For now I make out a single word
and a name..."Caesar Augustus"
and "abattoir."
Aside from this
There is little else....
I get in late
And sleep until someone calls.
Then I go, leaving everything
As it was...a bed, a bright-
colored chair. Perhaps a desk.
It's like a poem.
The smaller the room
The neater it must be
Once you're done with it.
There is a wind that seeks the crevice
under my heart
the way insects file at night
beneath the doorway
It's edges are rough, it slits
the cords. It trips my steady breathing.
When it comes there is no one
I can trust
It seems, at times, I have designed
too well this vision of you.
I cannot survive your eyes
when they are scarred with a need
for some lesser form of love.
I admit to this conceit.
And though you will not accept it
You love it nonetheless
It is just like you. Our desires
will always be kept sharp
by a kind of perversity. A need
to be each forever alone....
It's color is violet, like lips
that have been smashed by night
or robbed of blood by lack of breath.
The wind I was speaking of does this.
I can feel it now.
Hr>
Fear of Dreaming
Jim Carroll
Too many teeth
in this city
are bared
What I want is to sleep
inside a strange language,
trimming the bonsai under glass,
it's redolent needles clipped
precise as The Budda's fingernails.
Yet I'm nervous to sleep,
afraid to dream,
and yet fearful as well,
of waking too late.
Wary of the end of this century,
it's bloodthirsty and dead weight.
Poem
Jim Carroll
The people down
the hallway who
stab each other
each Friday night....
Is that a ritual?
Or just something terribly unresolved?