You’d read anywhere, in the rain
At Pierrepont Street, in a dark cellar
To three people on a dirty beach.
I never saw you laugh; you hid like the sphinx
In silence. Like all the fine monsters, you were apart.
You never tried to make even your friends comfortable.
Barbara, I can’t imagine you voting. Who’d represent
You? Sometimes lovers do. You had a boyfriend, gay,
Who sold coke. I wonder whether the two of you
Made much love. If you did, I want a tape.
But some people are better poets than lovers.
They’re intimate with ghosts. They kiss
What’s invisible. Barbara, you were built
From twigs; your mouth was a batrachian grotto.
Your voice was a snarling whine of brass.
Barbara- you were meant to scare people.
2
That’s what we do; we scare people.
We’re important; people like us are like pizza.
Terror makes people alert. They get tired of sleep.
They turn off the television, put off the caresses
And float into the street. We take them on something
More than a vacation. You buggered them on a broomstick.
They didn’t know who their guide was. Could Virgil
Be a sick insane beggar? We see in the subway mendicant
With his shuffle and piteous salestalk all the panic
And fear we discover in a city nightmare. You
Were that idol of horror. We shivered. Laughed.
Thanks, Barbara.
3
Barbara, I don’t think they need Artists in Heaven.
Everything is clear. A shaman in Paradise can only
Bring you down. Come back. Let’s have another meal
At Pennyfeather’s. We need you here on Earth, here
In the darkness. I want to go to your next reading, Barbara.
Where will it bc? Where will you threaten people?
The bums aren’t good enough. Most poets are boring.
The Vampires are all working uptown; I hear them cry out
In the bath houses: Barbara, Iím not frightened enough.
The horror movies are nothing like you!
