(SR) L’Intermidi I: THE SAGA OF THE YOUNG KURT COBAIN – In Utero
L’Intermidi I
THE SAGA OF THE YOUNG KURT COBAIN: In Utero
PART ONE: In Utero
They laugh at me because I’m different;
I laugh at them because they’re all the same
Kurt Cobain
For Matthew Waddington
I want a hero, or an ‘anti’ one
Some mortal who could change the world with song
& moving chords, a maestro, paragon,
Whose melodies & lyrics leap along
Who’ll make us dance & think, perchance upon
A higher plane of consciousness, among
The sibilant hauteurs of humankind,
Whom, hissing, never listen – Nevermind!
Most epic poets plunge ‘in media res,’
That is ‘the middle’ for those not winning
School Latin prizes, (yes, res rhymes with ease)
But not today, with a poem spinning
On the young Kurt Cobain, if you please
I’ll begin his tale at the beginning,
For round our childhood deeds & people swarm
Which, piece-by-piece, our grown-up fabrics form.
T’would better be if humans flew like geese
Migrating come the cold & heartless rain,
Alas, when Aberdeen’s timber-mills cease
Production, all them laid-off just remain,
Devoid of great ambition, find release
In drinking, some brief respite to obtain
From drudgery, like dancing with single mums –
One day Chuck Frandenberg packs up his drums…
… & sets them up to play a dinner dance
His young ‘Beachcombers’ band the best around
Thro’ Louie Louie’s Cuban influence,
& other hits, harness a varnish’d sound –
Chuck’s sister, Wendy, took a sly half-glance,
At Don Cobain, a flash of heaven found
His eyes on her – a dream, a blur, a bed!
In Couer d’Alene, down Idaho, soon wed.
From copulation comes the miracle
Of this existence, in consistent form
If singeth Fate a song most lyrical,
The Angels bring us babies to be born –
& so, lets go, Gray’s Harbours Hospital
Already beaten-brow’d by crown of thorn
Out of a bloody uterus, thro’ hurt,
A boy for all of us, a boy call’d Kurt.
His life shall form the substance of this song
Whose mould ordain’d as Ottava Rima
In cantos of seventy stanzas long
Projected by poetical dreamer
Well, me that is, whose need to write surfs strong
Impulses, deep as the first kalima,
Reviving most poetic lives on earth
In finest lines disconfining rebirth.
A boy was born in windy Aberdeen
Among the forests, by the ceaseless sea,
Of dreary rain, of sunshine rarely seen
Of difficulties & delinquency,
Crack-rocks for breakfast, jocks lacking hygeine
& now, among them, lone starchild set free
Y’know, the ones on earth most seldom born,
Like single poppies in a plain of corn.
From Carrickmore his father’s bloodline sprang
A tiny Tyrone town without pizzazz
Don’s Uncle Delbert as a tenor sang
Beside Bing Crosby, & the kings of jazz,
As Aberdeen’s grey weathers overhang,
Upon the Cobain menfolk, each bloke has
Depression, drinking problems, with the odd
Gunshot in the dark, on a date with God.
There’s nothing like loving thy first born child,
When every waking day’s a nursery
& sleeping is a myth – toys & nappies pil’d
In spating months Kurt’s curiosity
& sharpen’d perceptions would lead to wild
Excited, explosive precocity –
Whose toddling tantrums something to endure
But, damn! That kid is talented, for sure!
‘Is this a dagger‘, hallucin‘d Macbeth,
& did not Caliban, with ‘southwest blow,‘
Threaten Prospero with subhuman breath,
Thus poetry’s the place where spirits go
Like paper kites, flying ‘twixt life and death
With rich alchemic feeling, embryo
Resurrection, paints bones & blood & flesh –
So look, wee Kurt‘s been taken to a creche,
Where all who saw him wobble out, then in
Respond to his sunny disposition,
A choice wee boy rejoicing in his skin –
But there was something else, like a mission
Sent from heaven, Wendy would stroke her chin,
Watching him watching the television
Fully aware which one’s were Vietcong,
& life’s not always fair, & right from wrong.
Three years beyond the cold baptismal font,
Kurt entertains squads of aunts & uncles,
Whom, begging to babysit, with a want
Somehow bewitch’d – planets round a sun, gulls
At scraps – Arlo’s Alice’s Restaurant
& others of Simon & Garfunkles,
He sang with cherub sweetness, sheer delight
Did fill their lives with Elfin fairy-light.
Sensing a love of music in the boy
Aunt Mari bought a bass drum that became
Within a minute his favourite toy
That with a wildness none of them could tame
He’d bang & bang & bang & bang, annoy
The house & all the neighbourhood, first fame
For his performances, as marching round
The Streets of Aberdeen all heard his sound.
Aunt Mari was a musician herself
She’d gigg‘d in bars for years, even releas’d
A single, that she lifts down from a shelf
& plays it Kurt, whose love for her increas’d
“Auntie you are famous!” her little elf,
Squeez’d hard her hand, as solemn as a priest
Says, “one day I’m gonna be just like you!”
“What’s that?” “A singy star, I’ll be one too!”
“In that case you’d better listen to these…”
& carefully selecting some albums
Rewards him with Beatles & the Monkees –
In a flash a Mickey Mouse set of drums
Was his for Christmas, with a kiss, cos she’s
“The best mum in the mummyverse of mums!”
Thrash-smash-bash-crashing, splash-crashing, ev’ry day,
That by the spring was far too trash’d to play!
On each & ev’ry bedtime, as he lies
Upon his back, & to the roof did gaze
He’d talk to diff’rent people in the skies
Those ones who’d beam’d him down with lazar rays,
For he was really alien, in guise
Of human boy, concocted in the bays
Of some vast spaceship, whose parents on Earth
Adopted him, & fak’d a human birth.
As earth-days broke he woke up with a smile,
Rejoicing in the rising of each sun,
When, up & down the street, mile-after-mile
He’d ride his bike with effervescent fun;
Then, after lunch, this restless juvenile
Then plays at cowboys with a plastic gun
Til Donald look’d at Wendy, with a sneer,
“I think our boy is hyperactive, dear.”
In an age when pharmaceuticals reign
Doctors dismiss holistic vitamins
Prescribing crap that drags a wild kid sane,
But leaves them hook‘d on drugs – of ritalin’s
Properties, anti-narcoleptic brain
Like one subsum‘d by base amphetamines,
Which leaves wee Kurt awake, again, all night
Back-issue comics flicking by torchlight.
When Star Wars came to town Kurt‘s powers bloom‘d,
For he knew he was watching relations,
On Tatooine a memory exhum’d
Of visiting, with the delegation
Of some red planet (by two suns illum’d) –
But, cursing his human limitations
Kurt wish’d he could just Jedi back to base
At hyperspeeds, leave Earth, of him, no trace.
One day he gave his grandfather some art
With Donald Duck so accurately drawn
He was accus’d of tracing, so did start
Another drawing straightways! When alone
With papers, markers, comic books, apart
From other human beings, he would spawn
Aliens & monsters, from time-to-time
Added words for fun, even some that rhyme.
He watch’d the choppers rising from Saigon
& just-like-that the war in Vietnam
Was over, one they never could have won
His uncle home return’d a diff’rent man
Who, walking with his nephew, said, ‘Kurt, son
There’s not much work these parts, but if you can
Avoid the US Army, witness’d I
Such sights long sleepless nights still horrify.
His father was a Chevron mechanic
With neither love for learning or the learn’d,
But border’d, watching sports, on the manic
Of baseball scores grew trueliest concern’d,
& basketball he watches in nigh panic –
Each football Sunday felt his sad wife spurn’d –
“I don’t think I ever really loved him,
Most nights there’s only me & Kurt & Kim.”
All thro’ his life, blew suddenly, sea-change,
That night, all night, he heard his parents shouting,
& slamming doors, next meal-times things strain’d strange,
& now, of life‘s loveliness, Kurt‘s doubting
& no, he doesn‘t like it, as thoughts range
Cross awful possibilities – pouting
Hard, he heard the news, consum’d with hate,
His parents, on a doomsday, separate.
What is the point of living if this life
Is laid on false foundations, why, at all
Would anyone pretend they’re man & wife,
Injecting children in an urban sprawl
If all they do‘s succumb their states to strife,
Not constant be, whatever might befall –
Why can’t they just be friends & just get on –
Kurt sat, kerb-down, & cried for all that’s gone!
As moodiness hard overcame the child
The tiniest of slights would make him mad
From sleeping cat to tiger in the wild
From angel good to very-very bad;
One day his marker pen white walls defil’d –
‘I HATE mum,’ ‘I HATE dad,’ ‘I am so SAD,’
As riding out his pains & ritalin,
Around the room his brain in fits would spin.
With selfish wrists divorcing parents pour
Into our bitter childhoods cups of salt,
When, sundering our fragile system’s core,
We‘ll blame ourselves, convinc’d its all our fault,
We‘ll traumatize, with whinings, to restore
A status quo made derelict, & halt
This desperate, obliviating slide
To flaking pits where shits the Lion’s pride.
All of Kurt’s joys invert to hurt & pain,
‘He’s from a broken home’ he’d hear them quip,
Or thought he did, with prestige on the wane,
His school a purgatory he must skip,
At ten-years-old he felt his youth was slain,
As when a tarr’d hulk, turn’d to fireship,
Is set adrift towards opposing fleets –
With frozen toes he walks the lonely streets!
Kurt’s trapp’d in a world of mute dysfunction,
Where finite trees of ancient lineage,
Plunge in a plight of resource reduction,
Hampering lay-off lives, from Wishkah Bridge
Droop ropes of hanging men, dull conduction
Of closing mills, with nothing in the fridge,
The old prosperity has fall’n away,
Leaves Aberdeen tooth-aching with decay.
So where were we? ah, yes, when divided
A family still has to rear the kids
A decision anciently decided
The mums’ll get ’em, even invalids
Some might call the custom quite misguided
Others, just our link to the arachnids
When, after mating, females set a tomb
Inside their gullets, nourishing the womb.
Kurt stays with Wendy, with his sister dwells
In Aberdeen, population sixteen
Thousand, six hundred & sixty seashells
On shores where days of sun – few, far between
With nothing much to break the mundane spell
Of life in this backwater, piss-filled spleen
Of a town of ten-pin, televisions,
May parades & chainsaw competitions.
Kurt knew his mum was very beautiful
Attracting street attention, she soon found
A man to sex her from dysfunctional –
Alas, as prospers often on rebound,
She met a loser, reprehensible,
He beat her, mind & body, to the ground
Who told her son was better if he scramm’d –
A cuntish “fuck you mum!” as front-door slamm’d.
His dad moves Kurt to Montesano, where
Their prefab home truck’d to some trailer park,
That with a party was assembl’d there
Warm beers & beef & banter into dark
By morning‘s low a brand-new home to share
With his dear son, a modern Noah’s ark
Without the women folk, but with the dogs
& rodents, paradise among the logs.
Whatever young Kurt wanted Kurt soon had,
& did whatever too, his dad did teach
Him shooting, how to smile & just be glad
They lived near nature Don was no Nietzsche
But knew where to tickle his son when sad,
&, one evening, when camping down the beach
Kurt pleading, “Dad please don’t marry again?”
Says Don, “I promise, son, I won’t…” most plain.
The walk to Montesano’s High School took
Less than ten minutes, one morn, time to kill
Shortcutting thro‘ thick woods, retorting ‘fuck!’
He saw a human hanging, twisted, still…
For more-than-time Kurt stood there & just shook
Useless limbs to life, crepuscular thrill,
But nothing happen’d, suicide is real
No more to think, to drink, to stink, to feel.
Then came the day Kurt wish’d he would have stay’d
In Aberdeen, his dad fully reneg‘d
Upon his promise, just so he’d get laid –
Promptly remarried, furthermore was plagued
Step-siblingly, blood loyalties betray’d,
As when the British soldier ‘Gen’ral Haig’d’
& blindly thrust at trenches empty promis’d
Those ruthless maxim bullets did the rest.
Within a house of larger yards & bulks
This just-add-water family took root
Whose basement grew a cauldron ditch of sulks,
A pit to lock the door, shut out, refute,
This mad reality, a pile of Hulks,
Thors, Spidermen, & always this string’d lute
Whichm play’d with incredible excitement,
Expung’d the bullshit from his life’s indictment.
However much his ‘second mother’ tried
He‘d always spurn her soft felicity,
Grieving for his own family that died
Descending into animosity
He’d bully his step-brother ’til he cried
& fought his father to adversity,
Begging his mother always on the phone,
“Can I come back…” “I’m sorry son…” &…. groan…
Don tried the best he could in his own way,
I mean, some kids have never seen the face
Of their fathers, to work each Saturday
Don took his son, given the run of the place,
Kurt makes prank phone-calls, log-piles climbs at play,
The scampers to Don’s truck, his special place
Where Queen‘s ‘News of the World’ play‘d constantly
‘Til sound cuts-out when drains the battery.
Some of us born to that small percentile
Who’ll detect injustice just by instinct:
About his classrooms, searching all the while,
For someone to fit in with, make a stink
Wear a wacky haircut, a punkophile –
But nothing, no-one, all his classmates think
Kurt was the kid most likeliest to bring
An AK into school & start shooting.
Thirteen years young, live on Saturday night,
The B52s, blasting down his ear-cans
Pledging a songbird to its fledgeling flight,
A nexus point for focussing all plans
Kurt paints on sneakers little black & white
Squares, just like Fred Schneider’s checkerboard vans
& wore them, next day, proudly into school
Some laugh’d, some diss’d him, some, tho’, thought it cool.
Upon the day Kurt’s fourteen years now are,
His Uncle Chuck offers a brand new bike
Or an old electric six-string guitar
Made in Japan – well, Kurt, what would you like… –
As when whaleship see blips on a radar,
Or finger slips out of a Dutch boy’s dike –
From tranquil scenes futurity explodes
In scudding floods, ferocious overloads!
As heaven‘s manna fell on Kurt‘s lithe hands
He picks up Louie Louie, so he thought,
The one song play’d by all the North-West bands
De facto anthem, with a chunk he caught
The change of chords, the strangest plain expands
Of sounds achievable, if when them sought
He’d sit down, & with patience at his back
He’d spin each finger-fumble to a knack.
Then comes the fatal gym class, skipping rope
He trips & slips a disc, scoliosis
Evolves, a pain so rough most barely cope,
For, spinal curvature, one prognosis
There is no cure, no respite & no hope,
“I never ask’d for, I never chose this,
How can bodies transform in such strange ways,”
Mulls hurting Kurt thro‘ his painkiller haze.
His Uncle Chuck’s guitarist came along
& sat him down, & ask’d him what he knew
The boy play’d ‘Louie Louie’, got bits wrong
& was corrected there, the pair soon flew
Thro‘ three fast months, & many a new song
“My Best Friends Girl” & “Back in Black” but two,
Another‘s, “Another One Bites the Dust”
&, overall, Kurt pull‘d them off… well, just.
Kurt found himself three-chord structures strumming
& settl’d them to soft, yet metal grooves,
Then, switching rich melodies, throat humming
Sounds, internal editor approves,
& mouths their shapes, syllables keep coming
Like a lyrical instrument, that moves
Together with guitar, tapping a beat beat
With those chequerboard sneakers on his feet.
Eureka! with his special purpose found,
Or mission, even, Kurt would play & play
& play all day, experiment with sound
Grew out his hair, & practice what he‘d say
When interview’d by journalists, who’d hound
His ev’ry move, while schooling, day-by-day
Fell by the wayside, flunking ev’ry class,
Except for art & music‘s sacred mass!
To social skills & schoolwork’s detriment
Kurt practic’d his guitar, his father sat
Him down one day & on the next was sent
To join the best boys on a wrestling mat
A chance his inner furies to unvent,
A smash of shocks, a flash & down jocks crash
Transforming this shy guy from nerdy squirt
To hyper-daemonical extrovert!
Coach told Don, “Kurt’s one of the best I’ve had!
& I want him to represent the school,”
So came the match, the first made Don mad
The second shock’d, the third time felt he fool
After the fourth he storm’d out, red-fac’d, mad‚
How could the little bastard think that’s cool,
Just folding arms & getting himself pinn’d
With no resistance, his roof I’ll rescind!‘
So, back in Aberdeen, back with his mum
Too stoned for geeks, too geeky for stoners
Oblivious to fame’s fate meant to come
This maharaja king of the loners,
Now stalks the lonely sidewalks, chewing gum,
Cursing happy windows of homeowners
Kurt, snorting gas & dropping LSD,
Abus‘d his mind & rues reality…
With birthday dough Kurt bought his soul’s release,
A brand new amp beyond 11 turn’d,
With broomstick-thumps did Wendy beg surcease;
As walls & windows shook Kurt grinn’d & spurn’d
The neighbourhood, be-throttled from its peace
By constant crunchy dirge, that gurning churn’d
The manticles of panting manticore
That fills its jaws with earth – so rich, so raw!
Come summer, deepest crimson creeping west,
When witness’d from the State of Washington,
Upon the beach, when barbecues taste best,
Beside the ocean, partying, the sun
Splitting gigantic trees on ev’ry crest,
& with a sense the world could yet be won,
No wonder, here, the music of the spheres,
Descended in these halcyonic years.
Let one identify with written word
In hicksville towns, as means to them escape,
Kurt Beckett loves, & Burroughs, from the herd
They stood apart, like him, behind a drape
That kept away those carry-ons, absurd,
Of Peyton Places episodes on tape;
Of watching, judging, from life’s little slots,
Like sludge stuck in the holes of pepper pots.
One lunch-break in the school refectory
In swaggers hugest creature from elsewhere
Whose kindest smile cast contradictory
Signals – Kurt drill‘d within him, with a stare,
& felt his spirit some fun factory
Of frolicking, working so hard in there,
Yet, something else – Kris Novoselic smil’d
At Kurt, that moment two souls reconcil‘d.
His mom met Pat O’Connor, & was wed
Before the real man she realised
Who, thro‘ his life philanderingly sped,
& drinking heavily, & phantasized
But never did a thing thus promis-ed
Kurt all their ceaseless bickering despis‘d
While tempers raged & voices raisd the roof
He strumming, sat, from ma & Pat, aloof.
With no bands to watch, nor clubs to dance in,
Them both were round pegs in a dead square hole,
“Aberdeen’s a boil that just needs lancin!”
Moans Kurt, etching in trees with eager scrawl,
Sex Pistols logos – instead of romancin’
Teenage girls, torn angst would overthrall,
His essence, setting inner demons free,
Brooding for hours on the Raincoats LP.
Of all his classes only one fired Kurt
With a quotient of enthusiasm
That class was art, where with each eager spurt
His crayons convers’d with ectoplasm
The next desk on saw Krist with Shelli flirt
Teenage gigglings verging on orgasm
& all the while Kurt curs’d the radio
With negative saercasm, blow-by-blow.
Kurt woke up to another argument,
Just after dawn, Pat’s home, has tried to sneak
Back into bed, but analeptic sent
His ma, of other women Pat did reek
As, off to work, in fury, Wendy went
Their raft of marriage sprang a major leak
Of whiskey liquids swigging, glug by glug
His wife back home, Pat stood & tried a hug
“Oh fuck you!” spat Wendy, shotgun grabbing
All in a flap, Pat fearing for his life,
“Tell me who your cock has been a-dabbing
Or I’ll shoot you dead!” – luckily his wife
Couldn’t load Pat’s gun, she starts nabbing
All of his weapons, rifles, army knife
Pistols, belts of bullets bagged up & tossed
Into the Whishkah, “fuck how much they cost!”
Kurt, sharp as ever startled by the shout
Observes the goings on, each sinking gun,
So paid some local kids to fish them out
Then took them to a dealer, deal soon done
With winnings, what to do with, had no doubt
& bought an amp, his very first, not gone
Yet, was the money, so went to buy weed
Got stoned, & jamm’d so loudly, proud indeed!
Our children could be anything at all
Some sports obsess’d, some staunch political
Some natural parents, some hate the role,
Some heavenly & some heretical
Some total seafarers, some hometown small
While some turn out to be poetical,
Dismissing standard schooling, “What’s the point?
When knowledge reach we thro’ a reefer joint.”
A half-retarded sister of a friend,
Invites Kurt’s visit, casually stripp’d
In front of him, for she did full intend
Their union by foreplay – penis gripp’d
She guided him intercourse – which did end
The moment kurt inhal’d her kiss-breath, slipp’d
Out & away as fast as possible
Morose, remorseful, feeling horrible!
Twas during lunchbreak the rumours started
That reach’d her dad by afternoon recess
Who briefly swoon’d, like the broken-hearted
Then rose for retribution from distress
& charg’d to school, but before he’d started
His daughter’s martyrship, must acquiesece
Upon a point of law, being eighteen
Her right to give consent them pass’d between.
Kurt plung’d in karma of a different kind
The mayhem of his classmates’ spite-attacks
with ‘retard fucker’ assuaging mind
He went to lie down on some railway tracks
Cement bags on legs & ches, heard the grind
Of a train approaching fast – shrugs off sacks
& stood & dived & saved himself from death
In brambles tangl’d, & panting for breath.
Kurt went back home & cried & would not speak
& hides himself away from knock & call
& skiv’d away from school an entire week
The thought of more abuse him did appall
Until, one sleepless night, thinks ‘I’m a freak
Anyway, in all their eyes, so let’s just roll
With it, just smile & whistle, & look weird
For, after all, it’s time I grew a beard!’
Now ev’ry time Kurt swallow’d food he’d wince
& clench the muscles of his sorry guts;
It made no diff’rence, mash’d potato, mince,
Fish, soup, stew – twas death by a thousand cuts
So took to drugs these pains to ease & rinse
But not the cocaine of the cartel mutts,
Whose bright effects too sociable made Kurt
When he sought out oblivion, inert.
Kurt deems jocks vulgar brash-head idiots,
Macho oxen from the working classes
Whom, tit-for-tatty, detested faggots
In dungarees, cardigans & glasses
Them taunted were, squash’d like flies’ maggots
Whenever in the corridor one passes
Metal lockers, slamm’d against them with force
& screaming cheap expletives until hoarse!
Kurt tends now to skip school each second day,
Bored, tired, stoned, all things unfascinating,
The State has plac’d a dung heap in his way
He’s needing two years credits back-dating
Without which list of numbers, come what may,
There’s won’t be a chance of graduating
& did he even want to, he would ask
Himself when fac’d by such an awkward task.
Yes, without all those credits there’s no doubt
He’d schooling lose, but still possess’d, he, youth
Enough, & time to pass & figure out
His destiny, so High School left uncouth
His mother gave a banshee angry shout
The day she learnt the embarrassing truth
The ultimatum‘d leave or find a job
Her house, no harbour for a teenage slob.
This was the moment, should I stay, or go,
Say we stood at the sliding of the doors
To buckle down upon a rung-drop low,
With mop & bucket scrubbing someone‘s floors,
Or offer faith to our manifesto
& leave it to the Gods who‘ll only know
Which of their chosen attest invention
By forces of divine intervention
& so he hugg‘d his mum & left her home
Felt chilly at the shutting of the door,
A poet-singer with the right to roam
As erstwhile the Provencal troubadour
Thro‘ foreign courts tour‘d his conservatoire,
Sophisticated, if a tad footsore;
But that sad night Kurt got not very far
& slept, uncomfy, in some scrapsoon car.
Mumble Words 