Tom D'Egidio reads Three Elegies

Last November Tom D'Egidio read Three Elegies at KGB. Cookie Mueller, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kathy Acker, and I shared the same exciting time and place in the East Village in the early 1980s before the AIDS and Crack epidemics hit the fan. As I remember them, they remain beautiful, forever, and young.

What follow are Tom D'Egidio's three elegies as he reads them in the video. Enjoy.

(COOKIE MUELLER: March 2, 1949-November 10, 1989)
“COOKIE SWEARS BY GO-GO DANCING FOR THE BEST ASS EVER”
You walked down the street
with your friends, singing each to each
like it was a party happening:
Procession, part of the downtown whirlpool’s drift.
Mermaid’s conjunction of grace and song.
Your slow-burning happiness,
so legible it made photographers famous.
Bringing up the rear, more present tense than any of us
could ever be, you walked down Prince Street,
like it was a party happening.
Slow burn of your happiness
leaves a trace there yet
where you turned, smiled,
all-heart, your lips forming the word “hon”.

...

For JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
(December 22, 1960-August 12, 1988)

“TO ATTRACT GHOSTS”
When you disappeared at the height of summer
your paintings knew nothing of your death.
There was just the phone ringing and Jennifer’s voice
saying the stark words “Jean’s dead” on the other end.
Soundtrack for the movie of you across the table, crying.
Your bad boy antics never helped you feel any better.
I have to admit that I enjoyed watching you throw
your garbage out your studio window, timing it perfectly
to land on the heads of that collector couple exiting below.
Making paintings was the only real escape for you Jean.
You scrawled the words “To repel ghosts” across one of them.
Should I risk having my words attract your ghost Jean?
What’s the worst that could happen? One of your trademark
stink bombs? Your tears staining my manuscript page?

...

For Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947-November 30, 1997)
“Kathy Acker Wants To Put Her Tongue In You”
(A Sonnet):
Everything flickers when you blow into town,
full-on smash and grab mode,
begging Susan Sontag, that night at the Mudd Club,
to teach you English, “please, for free”.
Your real life is still happening far away.
You need to write it in the self-propelled chaos,
that is your Parisian coffeehouse,
in the Europe of the Downtown Scene,
where your words, like tongues, taste only wreckage.
You are the Pirate Queen in a sea of pirates.
The song you inspire is Jill’s “Don’t steal my boyfriend”.
You fight to keep the dark weight of your novels
from smothering you in your sleep,
to steal back reality, in order to see.

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