Failed Suicide, 1993
Her moans from the sunroom on 117 South
Grand were the first tracks of her betrayal;
later those cabins at Allerton she looked on
the young father from west illinois and found
another someone new to replace me she had
always had that list of boys/men
―the farmer-poet, the would-be Vallejo,
the jazz-drummer—methedrine in his blood stream,
the saxophoner from the punk band, food & money
singing about Argentina, “land of meat”.
She sent that one mash notes. Her spirals were
composed of bitter, innocent stories,
her passions avoiding the real issue:
her father's religious requirement
to void the dark lust that lived like
a dead snake deep in his armor,
a ghost snake a snake of hatred.
And my catholic pre-occupation with
her pain primed me to take her path
too many times (my) mind overlain
with an extra-terrestrial reality.
She fucked me over boys.
The truth is, she got tired of me.
Tired of the same old stories,
too much like her sick grandfather.
And then the bad chance, the poet laureate,
he didn't come through for her.
Left her living in a garret
with my five year old daughter in
a sad neighborhood in Bloomington.
Is this history or just a long-awaited panic?
I let the pain take me to the hardware store.
I bought the plastic and
walled myself in the kitchen,
turned on the gas.
She almost killed me.
I am certain that was her plan.
Fuck her. And fuck her minor art.
She could have been the real thing.
If only she could have gambled honestly.
If only she could look in the mirror
And open her eyes.
Grand were the first tracks of her betrayal;
later those cabins at Allerton she looked on
the young father from west illinois and found
another someone new to replace me she had
always had that list of boys/men
―the farmer-poet, the would-be Vallejo,
the jazz-drummer—methedrine in his blood stream,
the saxophoner from the punk band, food & money
singing about Argentina, “land of meat”.
She sent that one mash notes. Her spirals were
composed of bitter, innocent stories,
her passions avoiding the real issue:
her father's religious requirement
to void the dark lust that lived like
a dead snake deep in his armor,
a ghost snake a snake of hatred.
And my catholic pre-occupation with
her pain primed me to take her path
too many times (my) mind overlain
with an extra-terrestrial reality.
She fucked me over boys.
The truth is, she got tired of me.
Tired of the same old stories,
too much like her sick grandfather.
And then the bad chance, the poet laureate,
he didn't come through for her.
Left her living in a garret
with my five year old daughter in
a sad neighborhood in Bloomington.
Is this history or just a long-awaited panic?
I let the pain take me to the hardware store.
I bought the plastic and
walled myself in the kitchen,
turned on the gas.
She almost killed me.
I am certain that was her plan.
Fuck her. And fuck her minor art.
She could have been the real thing.
If only she could have gambled honestly.
If only she could look in the mirror
And open her eyes.
Labels: Becky Bradway
posted by As Bjorn at 11:27 AM
3 Comments:
How did the pain take you to the hardware store? Pain is just so. How we relate to pain... that is the interesting thing, your way of receving it, processing it, dealing or not dealing with it. She is not as interesting as you are. Is the romance of suicide different than the reality of it? Swimming out to sea to drown... sounds quiet but is it? What happens that is eventually swollowed up by the salt water? Is the body as sure of the decision as is the swimmer? How does the body like the gas you feed it in the hermeticly sealed kitchen? What battle between you and life happens in those gassy moments as the sour onion smell alarms your senses?
I tried to douse myself with brandy that day, September 15th, 1993. I had found a story of Becky's and read it that morning. In it a figure clearly based on her had intimate relations with a figure clearly based on Kevin Stein, who Becky was definitely hot for at that time. They were both on the board of directors of Illinois Writers, Inc. (the red herring group) and got together in Bloomington fairly often. Becky was quite convinced that certain poems in Kevin's book, Chance Ransom, were totally based on her. Later on when Stein was poet laureate of the state of Illinois, I wrote him about an earlier version of this poem and he basically punted on the whole question, though he did tell me that he had to get a court order to get Becky to leave him alone. I still go to Allerton and walk past those cabins and think about Kevin and Becky sneaking into each other's rooms when they were there for the summer conferences that IW put on in those days.
As for me and for the gas, I clearly was responding as Sylvia Plath responded to her husband's infidelity with Assia Wevvil. She taped up her doors and put her head in the oven. Why she succeeded and I didn't, I don't know. Maybe she was just a greater artist than me, born to a kind of success of vision that I will never know. Maybe I just couldn't let go of consciousness. Lady knows I tried, I tried hard. I do believe that Becky knew I would commit suicide and that she was counting on it, to end up with Paige and the house and me out of the way. She was certainly pissed when I failed, but at least she moved out the next week. There was some release from the terrible pain, in a certain way, though I begged her on my knees not to go. Still, I survived and for that I am grateful to the Lady. Kimberly would never hurt me like that. Becky did it almost constantly for several years. Becky was wounded by her father's sexual abuse of her, and frankly by my stupidity about our sexual relationship. I should've known to get away. But she lied to me so many times about so many things. She lies mainly to herself. But, don't we all?
As for drowning in the ocean, I think that might be cold, too cold. They say though, that once you start breathing water, the peace comes. Jerzy Kosinski (Being There) killed himself with a plastic bag pulled over his head. You just breath and the air fills with carbon monoxide and eventually you have breathed that in and you go to sleep. That's the story, anyway. I do love Dorothy Parker's poem though: "you might as well live."
Actually, Stein's book that I was referring to in the previous comment was "Circus of Want", not "Chance Ransom". That came out many years later.
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