Failure Loves Company

Jim Carroll died on September 11, 2009 at his desk while working.  According to this obituary, it was because of a heart attack.

I found out about Jim Carroll through some of his music as part of The Jim Carroll Band and his work.  I didn’t start with his early work as a poet, but with his last collection Void of Course and it was the most amazing collection I’ve ever read.  His early work didn’t affect me like this book did.  There’s lots of poems I like in the collection.  However, the last poem in the book resonates with me even to this day.  He recorded it with a haunting instrumental for his last major label album, Pools of Mercury, and on the album it was titled “My Ruins”.  In the collection, it’s just titled “Poem”.  I’m posting it here.  Seek out the album or at least download “My Ruins”.  You’ll understand why it hits home.

Goodbye Jim.  I should have seen you when you were in Orlando when I had the chance.

“Poem” – Jim Carroll

Nobody is going to ruin me
If I have to I will ruin myself

I’ve spent too much time
Expended angelic energy
On my own disintegration to hand the contract over
To another now
As if it were
A finished painting
Needing only a signature

You are not going to get to me
You are never going to be with me
As once was

There will always be the poem
I will climb on top of it
And come

In and out of time
Cocking my head to the side slightly
As I finish shaking, melting then
Into its body, its soft skin

Is not a lie.  I’m glad you are at peace,
But every thing you know leads to ruins.

It’s a neat trick
My body rising above the city
Watching the boroughs recede
Into blots of pumice and amber, amethyst

It’s a harder trick
Turning love that’s lost in betrayal into something
Beside bitterness into anything beside this rage