WEBVTT

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Several months ago, the
wonderful cabaret singer,

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Susannah McCorkle,
jumped out the window.

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I think it was a top story
window of her apartment

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building in New York City.

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And of course, everybody goes
whoa, what a terrible thing.

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Who knew?

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Well, she did have depression.

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And yeah, she was
worried about her career.

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But Suzanne, she was always
so upbeat, blah, blah, blah.

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And the nature of the
event and the report,

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the response to the
event was a textbook case

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of the etiology of someone
who was suicidally depressed

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and how people, even people
who are closest to her,

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deal with it or not.

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And this poem was not
written after that event.

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This poem was written
long before that event.

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But I like to just
dedicate the reading of it

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to the memory of Susannah
McCorkle, a wonderfully

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gifted person.

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Thing about suicidal depression
is that it insists on solitude

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and then it feeds
off that solitude.

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And my local streetcar
stop is at the intersection

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of Coal and Carl.

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In San Francisco, there's
a little park there.

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The title of the
poem is "Stanzas".

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"At the Coal and Carl dog
run park, mutts and poodles

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sniff grass, couples laugh, the
N-Judah sharks from its tunnel.

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I'm druggy while my
doctor fools with dosages

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to stagger my soul's
bad chemistry.

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I need a looser world
and words for it.

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Last night, I watched the
dog star burn, blue, then

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frosted mercury.

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Late show station
break, I write lines

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like these, looking for
exacter, plainer poetry

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while more stars appear.

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I hate mornings.

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My bed, a mud like
writing pulls me from.

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Poetry's muscled homemade demon
sits on me and asks what next?

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A mockingbird sings from
its nest dark or light,

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the same singing end to end
while the kitchen light curls

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me over short, easy books dumped
cross words and Vanity Fair.

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Then life's casual rush stops.

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Everywhere I look,
the lymph in things

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goes dead, though the world
still shines the same.

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Medicated to this
willowed balance.

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I don't weep now to see
dogs run or wild fennel

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bend to winds, kiting a turn
from its brilliant marsh.

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I don't get sick with fright
to hear an eyelash click

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across the street.

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Little lab rat gods
rattling in my jar.

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Keep me close enough to smell
dog fur and fresh cut grass.

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Take away whatever you
want, but deliver me

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to derangements of sweet
ordered derelict words."

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