Half the stanzas of the first canto of
Damo’s new epic poem
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 think & dance, perchance upon
A higher plane of consciousness, among
The sibilant hauteurs of humankind,
Whom, hissing, never listen – never mind!
Of all the gifts of mind the Balladeer
Presents an art to us most magical
In which real peoples of the past appear
As powerful as if them Biblical;
Vivid, moving, breathing, soothing, sincere,
So much it proves a lucid miracle,
They live again! those, whom in history,
Did mark their mark thro restless mystery.
The Twenty-seven Club glows emphatic
When titans of drugtaking finally
Find bodies gone on strike, a lunatic
Deviant at the wheel, to supinely
Lay them down, comatose, paralytic,
Often with a demeanour divinely
Accepting the ultimate high of death –
Ten thousand crackpipes in a final breath.
There is a modern member of that gang
A master singer & a brother bard
Who knew just how to tune a guitar twang
To hypnotise the Hellhounds in his yard
Who crooning with the old tramps as he sang
Each word the turning of a tarot card
Would mystify us, energize, inspire
Our souls like faces shining by a fire.
His life shall form the substance of this song
Whose mould ordain’d as Ottava Rima
In cantos of a hundred stanzas long
Projected by poetical dreamer
Well, me that is, whose dragonyear sends strong
Impulses, deep as the first kalima,
To mind, the most poetic lives on earth
In finest lines revive them with rebirth.
Most epic poets plunge ‘in media res,’
That is ‘the middle’ for those not winning
School Latin prizes, (& res rhymes with ease)
Where was I? Oh yes! a poem spinning
On Kurt Donald Cobain, when, if you please
I’ll begin his tale at the beginning
For round our childhood deeds & people swarm
Which piece-by-piece our deeper fabrics form.
Let us begin with the ‘Aberdeen Curse’
Being the continental terminus
Ocean next stop or star-stitch’d universe
Attracts th’interminable verminous
Thinking, ‘well, things cannot get any worse,
I might as well stay put – the sperm in us
That seeks a host, he’ll spread his DNA
By the shores of Gray’s Harbor’s ria bay.
From copulation comes the miracle
Of this existence in consistent form
When singeth Fate at thy most lyrical
& Angels bringeth babies to be born
As when upon Gray’s Harbour 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
A boy was born in windy Aberdeen
Among the forests, by the endless sea
Of ceaseless rain & sunshine rarely seen
Of difficulties & delinquency
Crack rocks for breakfast & the jocks are mean
To one starchild of cyclic mystery
Y’know, the ones on earth most seldom born
Like single lilies in a plain of corn.
Soon as the babe left the baptismal font
He’d entertain squads of aunts & uncles
Who, begging to babysit, with a want
Somehow bewitch’d, planets around 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 Elven fairy-light.
There’s nothing like loving thy first born child,
When every waking day’s a nursery
& sleeping’s a myth, as toys & nappies pil’d
In only months Kurt’s curiosity
& perceptive sharpness would lead to wild
Excited, explosive precocity
Whose tantrums becomes something to endure
But, this toddler, was talented, for sure!
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 the sound.
And every time his bedroom lights did dim,
Out came his first imaginary friend,
For Boddah any bed could comfort him,
Kurt knew he would be right there to the end,
More tangible his monkey was, Chim-Chim,
On both of them, just them, could Kurt depend
For festered at the gateways of his mind
He fostered hatred for all Humankind.
Aunt Mari was a musician herself
She’d play’d in bars for years, even releas’d
A single, she produc’d it from the shelf
& play’d it Kurt, whose love for her increas’d
“Auntie you are famous!” her little elf
Did squeeze her hard, as solemn as a priest
Said, ‘one day I’m gonna be just like you!”
“What’s that?” “A singing star, I’ll be one too!”
“In that case you’d better listen to these…”
& carefully selecting some albums
Awards him the Beatles & the Monkees
Before long 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
One day he gave his grandfather some art
With Donal 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
He added words, & even ones 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 of you can
Avoid the US Army, witness’d I
Such sights my sleepless nights still horrify.
In an age when pharmaceuticals reign
Doctors dismiss holistic vitamins
Prescribe, instead, what drags the wild kids sane,
Dependency on drugs thro ritalin’s
Properties, anti-narcoleptic grain,
That’s more a borderline ampetamine,
Which wears, off leaving Kurt awake all night
Reading back issue comics by torchlight.
As waking dreams reality defies
& promises of better times instils
He shut out all their arguments & lies –
As Wordsworth saw a host of daffodils
Whenever he clos’d his Westmorland eyes
Kurt too saw things – from bad birth control pills
Swarm’d weird flipper babies with lizards tongues
Singing discordant sentences as songs.
Love! ye men of the marrying kind,
Tho’ in the main how they’ve hen-peck’d you all
& as for thee, whose bridal pledge survives,
Why should it be such vows protect you all
Not every couple’s hugging magic thrives
Better it handl’d intellectual
Until at last the smother’d fire goes out
& puts the business past all kinds of doubt.
His father was a Chevron mechanic
With neither love for learning or the learned
But watching sports border’d him on manic
& of results grew trueliest concern’d
Watch’d basketball matches in nigh panic –
Basketball & baseball – his wife felt spurn’d,
“I don’t think I ever really loved him,
Most nights there’s only me & Kurt & Kim.”
Whenever a family is divided
Somebody’s gonna have 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.
So Wendy got the boy, but beautiful
She soon attracts attention, & soon found
A man to fuck her from dysfunctional
But, as often deliver’d by 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 mov’d out to Montesano, where
His prefab home truck’d to a trailer park,
& with a party was assembl’d there
With beers & beef & banter in ter dark
By morning glow a brand new home to share
With his dear son, a modern Noah’s ark
Without the women folk, but with the dogs
& mice, a paradise among the logs.
Whatever Kurt now wanted now he had
& did whatever too, his dad did teach
Him how to shoot, to smile & just be glad
They lived near nature, he was no Nietzsche
But knew where to tickle his son when sad
& when, one evening, camping on the beach
When pled, “Dad please don’t get married again?”
Don said, “Son, I promise 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, a dimly-lit thrill,
But nothing happen’d, suicide is real
No more to think, to stink, to drink, to feel.
Wondering what this discovery means
Some prescient portent of life story
Reflecting family suicide genes
Of trigger-pulls, collapsing all gory,
Into deep’ning chats with the same old teens
Slots, “I’ll go out within flames of glory
& kill myself a famous superstar
For drums & songs & strumming my guitar.”
When Star Wars came to town his powers bloom
He knew he was watching his relations
On Tatooine a memory exhum’d
Of visiting, with the delegation
Of some red planet, by two suns illum’d,
When cursing these human limitations
Kurt wish’d he could just Jedi back to base
At hyperspeeds, & leave to Earth no trace.
Then comes the fatal gym class skipping rope
He trips & slips a disc, scoliosis
Soon evolves, pain so rough most barely cope
For spinal curvature’s long prognosis
No cure intends, no respite & no hope,
“Nobody ask’d for, nobody chose this
Why do bodies transform in such strange ways,”
Mulls Kurt Cobain in his painkiller haze.
Then came the day Kurt wish’d he would have stay’d
In Aberdeen, his dad fully reneged
Upon a promise, just so he’d get laid,
Promptly remarried, furthermore was plagued
Step-siblingly, old loyalties betray’d,
As when the British soldier ‘Gen’ral Haig’d’
& blindly usher’d t’wards trenches promis’d
Empty – when 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 strung lute
Which playing with the tenderness of youth
Expung’d the bullshit from this living truth.
However much that weird woman tried
Her second mother’s 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
Some kids have never seen their father’s face
& took his son to work each Saturday
Where, letting him have the run of the place,
Kurt makes prank phone calls, climbs log-piles at play,
The scampers to Don’s truck, his special place
‘News of the World’ by Queen plays constantly
‘Til sounds cut out at drain of battery
Upon the day Kurt’s fourteen years now are
A choice from Uncle Chuck, a brand new bike
Or an old electric six string guitar
Made in Japan – well Kurt, what would you like
As when a whaleship blips on a radar
Or finger slips out of a Dutch boy’s dike –
From tranquil seas futurity explodes
In scudding floods, ferocious overloads!
The mysterious manna from Heaven
Which thro our art unproven consumes us
& drives us blindly to our obsession
That uses, confuses & illumes us
Remnants of ectoplasmic possession
Oozes thro juvenilia, dooms us
To dedication & a wasted life,
Or not, for Art is Art & Art is Life!
Such manna fell on Kurt Cobain’s lithe hands
& pick’d up Louie Louise, 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 vale expands
Of sounds achievable, if when them sought
He’d sit down, & with patience at his back
He’d spin a finger-fumble to a knack.
His uncle’s band’s guitarist came along
& sat him down & ask’d him what he knew
The boy play’d ‘Louie Louie’, got bits wrong
& there corrected was, the pair soon flew
Thro three fast months & many a new song
“My Best Friends Girl” & “Back in Black” but two
Another, “Another One Bites the Dust”
&, overall, Kurt learnt them all, well, just.
Kurt found himself three chord structures strumming
& settl’d them into soft metal grooves
In moments rich melodies was humming
Which his internal editor approves
Mouthing their sounds, syllables kept coming
That like a lyrical instrument moves
Together to the guitar & the beat
He’s tapping out in time with sneaker’d feet.
‘So this is what it’s like to write a song,’
Kurt thought, committing soulparts to the page
‘The one’s that people like to sing along
When they are sung before them on a stage;’
The need to write another song grew strong,
As steers the noblest poets of an age
Running to the sun of procreation
Shining on their wonderful vocation.
As golden ratios thread the dance of scales
Like planets realigning with the stars
Impenetrating mating chords of Whales
& throbbing hums of market day bazaars
A driving beat divides them into bars
Whose even punkwork frames, whose wild wassails
When yellin’ & a hollerin’ on top
Wades us thro’ sonic guts like hogs in slop.
To everything else’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 & jocks splash-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!
A teenage body rack’d by double pain
His stomach screaming at his I.B.S.,
Like random lightning striking thro the rain
While ever ached his ccurv’d scoliosis
That domineer’d his back, the brutal reign
Of arthritic emperors, but far worse
For soreness over vigour’s life’s worst curse.
Being born in the post-nuclear age,
With Reagan’s button-finger’s puppet-poise
Set to send destruction, with silent rage
The Cold War wages, with its lethal toys
Array’d in red & blue upon the page
& TV screens, news dribbling ruesome noise
Of who was winning, whom the stock-pile star
America or the U.S.S.R..
Our kids they 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 hometowns small
Whiel some turn out to be poetical
Surmising standard schooling, “What’s the point?
When knowledge chieves us thro’ a reefer joint.
One lunchbreak in the school refectory
In swagger’d a huge creature from elsewhere
Quite confident of coming victory
Kurt could not help but drilling with a stare
Into this spirit, felt a factory
Of frolicking was working hard in there,
Yet, something else, Kris Novoselic smil’d
At him & shimmer’d as a summer’s child.
Alone, again, into those muddy streets
A boy, barely halfway to thirty
Pockets with copies of ‘Perfume’ & Keats
Passing houses ramshackily dirty
A time to tear out triumph from defeats
To funny be & foxy & flirty
& with electric geetahs in his hand
Light up the world, the front man of his band
Unable punk to buy in Aberdeen
He’d have to make his own, his amp’s ten watts
Full power strained, screaming for Halloween
He wailed a prototune called ‘Papercuts’
& slumped exhaustedly, asweat, serene,
After the blast, he felt it in his guts,
With just three chords he would have, after all
Something to contribute to rock & roll.
Aunt Mari had a four-track, now & then
He’d songs record, percussion wooden spoons
Upon an empty suitcase, denizen
Of low distortive holes, guttural croons
Evolving slowly into something ‘zen’
That once or twice resembl’d actual tunes
& now, with ‘Fecal Matter’ he’d record
A formal demo where his soul outpour’d.
The demo did the rounds of Aberdeen
‘Illiteracy Will Prevail,’ it’s name
With screeching gusto agitating spleen
& perfect grounds to hurt, to hate, to blame
On one song Kris Novoselich grew keen
& made the call, the birth of all his fame;
“Het Kurt, its Kris!” “Hey, man”, “I’ve listen’d to
Your tape, I’m really loving that ‘Spank Thru.’”
Mumble Music 