then awoke at 3: 40 AM
from a dream in dim flat light
could hardly see what was going on
even though my dream
street, no sidewalks, large trees looming
the dark wind of tears falling
onto wounded rooftops of decrepit houses
when Irving said,
“I saw Lou Reed’s ass at the Chelsea Piers
last night.” Both swim there. Possible.
His computer graphics web site nowhere for two years
then wants to interview me
on his radio station soon to appear
from his apartment, needing only FCC approval,
as the RABBI, former All Star wrestler from Alabama
when I only did that one summer
and who’d remember,
thinking I’m all he can get,
finally red bells under an ancient sea
Trakl’s voice pushing into mine, trying,
not possible, his life there, like
many of my narratives, drug abuse, insanity, suicide
and Irving so happy
never seen the lad so happy
Lou Reed’s ass sending him into artistic delirium
and what could I say having been bumped
into oblivion by those illustrious buttocks.
“My chance, Bernstein. I interview him
and everything’s gonna take off.”
Like the soft brains of that soldier splattering
into Trakl’s skull doing him in,
and beyond the door stretched necks
dangling on forlorn trees, too much, stuffed cocaine
into his veins with a sledgehammer
death the final solution
and Irving dreaming
never so happy as when dreaming
but never of his mother’s suicide
eight years ago, or the two
she spent inside a German whorehouse
in Bergen-Belsen
only twelve
and lost
ever since.
Charles Chaim Wax
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/last-night-reading-trakl/
