Trouble: a poem (not mine!)
Read this just now in The New Yorker, August 11 & 18 issue, and immediately wanted to share it with Kevin. Anyone who's ever wanted to die and doesn't now will understand.
Trouble
Marilyn Monroe took all her sleeping pills
to bed when she was thirty-six, and Marlon Brando's daughter
hung in the Tahitian bedroom
of her mother's house,
while Stanley Adams shot himself in the head. Sometimes
you can look at the clouds or the trees
and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground.
The performance artist Kathy Change
set herself on fire while Bing Crosby's sons shot themselves
out of the music industry forever.
I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears. The French
philosopher Gilles Deleuze jumped
from an apartment window into the world
and then out of it. Peg Entwistle, an actress with no lead
roles, leaped off the "H" in the HOLLYWOOD sign
when everything looked black and white
and David O. Selznick was king, circa 1932. Ernest Hemingway
put a shotgun to his head in Ketchum, Idaho
while his granddaughter, a model and actress, climbed the family tree
and overdosed on phenobarbital. My brother opened
thirteen fentanyl patches and stuck them on his body
until it wasn't his body anymore. I like
the way geese sound above the river. I like
the little soaps you find in hotel bathrooms because they're beautiful.
Sarah Kane hanged herself, Harold Pinter
brought her roses when she was still alive,
and Louis Lingg, the German anarchist, lit a cap of dynamite
in his own mouth
though it took six hours for him
to die, 1887. Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned
and so did Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Virginia Woolf. If you are
travelling, you should always bring a book to read, especially
on a train. Andrew Martinez, the nude activist, died
in prison, naked, a bag
around his head, while in 1815 the Polish aristocrat and writer
Jan Potocki shot himself with a silver bullet.
Sara Teasdale swallowed a bottle of blues
after drawing a hot bath,
in which dozens of Roman senators opened their veins beneath the water.
Larry Walters became famous for flying in a Sears patio chair and forty-five helium-filled
weather balloons. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet
and then he landed. He was a man who flew.
He shot himself in the heart. In the morning I get out of bed, I brush
my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best.
I want to be good to myself.
-Matthew Dickman
I love typing this poem. It makes me very aware of the line breaks, for instance, and the pacing. Because it's just this list of famous people who have killed themselves, interrupted by the odd occasional, other kind of fact. Something commonplace, or pretty. So I ask myself, what is this list for? And then he starts to tell me. He starts by telling me about his brother. After he says that he ends two lines with "I like", as if he is hunting for things to find beautiful: reasons to live.
The last few lines make my eyes burn even the second and third times I read them, and I think of Kevin. He drew my attention to the flying patio chair guy. Those lines, "He was a man who flew./He shot himself in the heart." They strike me like a blow to the chest. What follows is sweet, the good life and sunshine on clean floors of our domestic life. Just last night we talked about how good our life is. Kevin said it, and after a very difficult evening, so it has weight.
I checked, and Larry Walters did it the way the poet says.
Trouble
Marilyn Monroe took all her sleeping pills
to bed when she was thirty-six, and Marlon Brando's daughter
hung in the Tahitian bedroom
of her mother's house,
while Stanley Adams shot himself in the head. Sometimes
you can look at the clouds or the trees
and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground.
The performance artist Kathy Change
set herself on fire while Bing Crosby's sons shot themselves
out of the music industry forever.
I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears. The French
philosopher Gilles Deleuze jumped
from an apartment window into the world
and then out of it. Peg Entwistle, an actress with no lead
roles, leaped off the "H" in the HOLLYWOOD sign
when everything looked black and white
and David O. Selznick was king, circa 1932. Ernest Hemingway
put a shotgun to his head in Ketchum, Idaho
while his granddaughter, a model and actress, climbed the family tree
and overdosed on phenobarbital. My brother opened
thirteen fentanyl patches and stuck them on his body
until it wasn't his body anymore. I like
the way geese sound above the river. I like
the little soaps you find in hotel bathrooms because they're beautiful.
Sarah Kane hanged herself, Harold Pinter
brought her roses when she was still alive,
and Louis Lingg, the German anarchist, lit a cap of dynamite
in his own mouth
though it took six hours for him
to die, 1887. Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned
and so did Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Virginia Woolf. If you are
travelling, you should always bring a book to read, especially
on a train. Andrew Martinez, the nude activist, died
in prison, naked, a bag
around his head, while in 1815 the Polish aristocrat and writer
Jan Potocki shot himself with a silver bullet.
Sara Teasdale swallowed a bottle of blues
after drawing a hot bath,
in which dozens of Roman senators opened their veins beneath the water.
Larry Walters became famous for flying in a Sears patio chair and forty-five helium-filled
weather balloons. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet
and then he landed. He was a man who flew.
He shot himself in the heart. In the morning I get out of bed, I brush
my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best.
I want to be good to myself.
-Matthew Dickman
I love typing this poem. It makes me very aware of the line breaks, for instance, and the pacing. Because it's just this list of famous people who have killed themselves, interrupted by the odd occasional, other kind of fact. Something commonplace, or pretty. So I ask myself, what is this list for? And then he starts to tell me. He starts by telling me about his brother. After he says that he ends two lines with "I like", as if he is hunting for things to find beautiful: reasons to live.
The last few lines make my eyes burn even the second and third times I read them, and I think of Kevin. He drew my attention to the flying patio chair guy. Those lines, "He was a man who flew./He shot himself in the heart." They strike me like a blow to the chest. What follows is sweet, the good life and sunshine on clean floors of our domestic life. Just last night we talked about how good our life is. Kevin said it, and after a very difficult evening, so it has weight.
I checked, and Larry Walters did it the way the poet says.