"it all ends in tears anyway"

by chance i found out something i should have known, but these things flee one's mind. matters very little how much love or affection you truly put into their subjects--dates of birth and death and such memorable seconds of life, which to some are blank pages on a calender--and to some, as myself, mystic imaginings of supposed events.

i learnt a few seconds ago that allen died 14 years ago this very day. it is quite depressing here today, to be honest, rainy and all, not at all like april should be. careful though i am not appointing meanings beyond my power to strange happenings, rain can fall regardless of allen's death, or perhaps in a universe more just and poetic than this one, it can rain to commemorate him.

poets come bearing several marks. some do, at least. some you make up marks for. now allen is none of the above, but he in his writing and in any second of footage i've ever seen him (this is what we have today once the thunder is gone: still moments of perfect clear footage that fools one into thinking you now know someone) has been so gentle yet bursting with such-ness that he is often scary. of all those poets who pretend to put distance between themlseves and the world those who stand back a bit--none achieve such frightfullness. it is not a bad thing, don't take me the wrong way. it is in allen's openness that you see something contradicting life--something untamed and excessive and something fearfully courageous--i've seen even in my limited years of age so many who was brave at the moment to sit still or to throw a punch or to mock another but i've seen none brave in telling of love and of emotions.

and for that he scares me. to this day. i have this notion that if i had ever met allen, i would have been terrified to talk to him. but thankfully little consideration is wasted upon matters of such in one's internal existence, and there i've been just as courageous and fearless as allen and have directed so many words and questions to him that we had very little choice but to bond--and i have bonded with him.

and now once such affections are placed, one feels a sudden void in one's stomach on days such as this one.




we are all in one kind of rockland or the other, after all.

and now i'm with you, allen.