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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