GRAY SKIES

in tribute to Kurt Cobain (1967-1994)

In the house down the lane, its wooden sides as gray
As the cloudy Seattle skies, there lived, for a very short while,
A voice.
For a time, the voice, it Smelled Like Teen Spirit,
(Until, that is, Teen Spirit became ugly and twisted.)
And the artist, the man who held the voice and kept it close,
Because it was the only friend he had,
Pulled out a chair, pushed it up against a window,
Scraped out a gun, a very loud, very deadly gun,
And looked sadly out the window, onto the gray sky
Reflecting in Puget Sound.
His mind must have buzzed, his mind must have sung,
Almost as loudly as he,
About all the things he was and wasn't,
All the things he could and couldn't,
Until he couldn't take it anymore.
The gray skies began to weep.
Did he?
What song did he hold, in that brilliant mind,
As he tasted the metallic tang in his mouth?
Which one of his works was resounding inside the mind
That created the art that made me sit up and scream,
"That's it! That's just how I feel!"?
Was he dreaming of diseased infants and children gone wrong?
Was he dreaming of pain, cancer growing inside,
The source of such pain that only beauty can grow?
Would he have hated me?
This I wonder, in my stupid, selfish head,
Would he have liked me?
I wonder just what he would have thought if he met me,
All glasses and smiles and loud-mouthed demeanor,
While he was so quiet and so introspective?
And I wonder, beyond all logical thought,
Beyond every conceivable understanding of possibility,
Was he thinking of me?
But I forget that, and I return, to the house, back to what was,
More important than what is.
And in the gray house, under gray skies, his thumb
Slowly pushed back on the trigger,
And the bullet shattered the brain,
The brain that I would die to have,
Into a billion pieces.
And the gray house,
That once Smelled Like Teen Spirit in better times,
Now can only smell
of death.
Gray skies weep.
And so do I.

by P. C., West Buxton, ME