“Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us” – Jim Carroll
“I’ll Die For Your Sins If You Live For mine.”
A wee bit of homage for Jim Carroll. I never knew him, I read his poetry on occasion, and I certainly enjoyed his musical adventures…
Don’t try to look up his poetry on the web at this point, there seems to be a tonne of attack sites advertising it with some nasty malware attached… I think Jim would of found that funny or sad.
He was a poet who developed his style through his pain, the monkey on his back and the life he pursued. He was an original, and I think his voice has been stilled way to early. I was interested on how he would develop as he got older. Now of course, we won’t get that chance.
From what I understand, he was sitting at his desk, working at poetry when he died. What poet wouldn’t like that?
Here is to you Jim. May your poems be spray painted on walls and sidewalks. May your books of poems be handed out freely in the streets.
I hope it was a quick journey across the river, and I pray the Muse greeted you on the other shore..
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
On The Menu:
Some Jim C. Linkage
Jim C. Quotes
I Am Alone
Biography
8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain
Catholic Boy w/lyrics
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Some Jim C. Linkage:
Jim’s website… Catholicboy.com
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Jim Carroll Quotes:
“I love this mansion, though it is too many windows
…to open halfway each morning
…to close halfway each night.”
“Our team is good at getting dressed real quick, because we’re the type of team that wears their uniforms all day.”
“Violence is so terribly fast . . . the most perverse thing about the movies is the way they portray it in slow motion, allowing it to be something sensuous . . . the viewer’s lips slightly wet as the scene plays out. Violence is nothing like that. It is lightning fast, chaotic, and totally intangible. “
Jim Carroll (Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries: 1971-1973)
“all right
buddah gets a backstage pass
but all his friends have to pay”
Jim Carroll (Void of Course)
“That, I realized, is the great beauty of dreams: the devil may inevitably find a way to jerk you off, but you can always wake up before he makes you cum.”
Jim Carroll (Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries: 1971-1973)
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Jim Carroll – I Am Alone
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Jim Carroll (1949 – 2009)
Jim Carroll (born August 1, 1949 in New York City died September 11, 2009) was an author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician. Carroll is best known for his 1978 novel The Basketball Diaries, which was made into a movie in 1995 starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Raised in New York City, Carroll attended several Catholic Grammar Schools from 1955 to 1963. In fall 1963, he entered public school, but was soon rewarded a scholarship to the elite Trinity High School (a private school). He entered Trinity High School in 1964.
Apart from being interested in writing, Carroll was a passionate basketball player throughout his grade school and middle school career. He entered the “Biddy League” at age 13 and participated in the National High School All Star Game in 1966, hence the title of his most famous book.
As a teenager, Carroll was a heroin addict who sometimes prostituted himself to afford his habit. The novel The Basketball Diaires concerns his life in New York City’s hard drug culture and his struggle to rid himself of his addiction.
Carroll published his first book, Organic Trains, at age 17. Several of his poems have been published in such magazines as Paris Review and Poetry. In 1970, his second collection of poems, 4 Ups and 1 Down was published. That same year, Carroll started working for Andy Warhol. At first, he was writing film dialogue and inventing character names; later on, Carroll worked as the co-manager of Warhol’s Theater. Carroll’s first above-ground publication, the collection Living At The Movies was published in 1973.
He formed the Jim Carroll Band, a New Wave/punk rock group, in 1980. Their biggest commercial success was the single “People Who Died,” from their debut album, Catholic Boy. He has also collaborated with many influential punk and hard rock musicians, including Lou Reed, Blue Öyster Cult, Boz Scaggs and Rancid.
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8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain by Jim Carroll
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
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Jim Carroll – Catholic Boy
I was born in a pool, they made my mother stand
And I spat on that surgeon and his trembling hand
When I felt the light I was worse than bored
I stole the doctor’s scalpel and I slit the cord
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
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
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
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.
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