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J.D. Rage
Crucifried
37 pages
$3.25
"I live in awe of her
writing," Robb Allan.
order form
J.D. Rage Page
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I saw a man change his socks
on Chambers Street
he only had half a foot
and that bloody greenish half
didn’t look so good
I saw a man in an expensive
silver sharkskin suit
laying in his vomit
outside my door on East Fifth Street
a suitcase slung around his neck
he looked like a traveling man
I saw a wooden box
of gleaming varnish
and curlicued engravings
I knew the woman in that box
an epileptic with cerebral palsy
not able to open her front door
to cry for help
she choked at thirty-five
asphyxiated by her food
I wonder if there is a heaven
I saw a little house in the schoolyard
on East 4th Street made from
a sheet of dirty plastic draped
across two shopping carts
and baby carriage
someone was asleep in there
but I don’t think the children
from the schoolyard will
feel the need to cry
I saw a dummy in a sweatshop window
on Broadway near Canal
spectacularly dressed by some
eccentric soul
When I went by, something moved
I looked quickly and caught the dummy
in long white dress and matted gray beard
waving his hand at me
I saw a motorcycle split in half
two empty helmets lay side by side
in the street
the ambulance wailed away
I saw a schoolboy drinking beer
on Avenue B
a book bag on his back
a Budweiser in his hand
when joined by another boy
they discussed their need of guns
and where to get them
this is the modern loss of innocence
I make my essential observations
as we head toward the apocalypse
the day the sun comes down to
melt our souls
unless we lose them first
I can do nothing else
but jump over already dead bodies
and soon to be dead junkies
on my way to Rivington Street
and hope that I am hallucinating
that what I saw
is only a part of some
nihilistic nightmare
The Importance of the Needle
Why was the needle
the needle filled with blood
the most important thing?
the spoon yes
and the matches
and the bubbling liquid
but the needle
it didn’t hurt
especially not my first drunken time
four needles I jabbed unfocused
like Billy Sid who never
had the patience to probe for a vein
he lived with his mother
in Queens when I met him
before the spell came over him
that punk music punching out
through a wall like the Hulk
grabbing him around the neck
with its' fist of sweating and
gleaming steel
and changing his hairdo
and changing the innocent look
in his eye
he said he was seventeen
but I never believed it
for a minute
Kenny has turned to bare white bone
now -- eight years after the fire
consumed him
That was a long hot summer
and I wish I had Kenny’s skull
to keep me company
I’d sit it next to my computer
so he could grin at me
tell me lies about
the beautiful models who went for him
talk about cooking up some fake cocaine
for his customers
who were always so drunk
they never noticed that they didn’t get
no higher than they already were
on the drugs they bought from him
he was careful about his choice
of customer
but his models weren’t so hot
their problems were so ugly you never
had time to admire their bodies
their faces shone with views from the inside of hell
yeah I’d keep Kenny’s skull
though his teeth were in
quite bad condition
after that lovesick superintendent broke
his jaw with a two by four
when Kenny stole his girlfriend
but I’ll give Kenny one thing
he never gave up
he never allowed for the possibility
of death
and now I want him back
at least his skull
even though I sometimes hated him
like when he stole money from me to
get a haircut
and when he borrowed my clothes
and looked better in them
than I did
and never brought them back
and I hated him when he
took my used works
my used needles
after that no one
could convince me
the sealed works
you buy on the street are clean
so it was a little bit of blue
plastic and a steel needle
that I cared about then
before Kenny
before flesh
because I wanted to see the blood
and I hated him when he said
he would fall in love with me
if I lost weight
Billy Sid
wanted me to be his girlfriend
I was already older than his mother
drinking more than a Bowery bum
weight was his last consideration
I didn’t give a shit about him
other than to let him follow me
like a puppy
then one day on my way down the drain
I ran into him -- all tall and thin
but big and imposing
he was with a woman who
was more intense than Nancy Spungeon
he was all grown up and made
Sid Vicious seem like a mild mannered
classical music fan
then I felt the jealousy
I wanted to be him not to be with him
I wanted to be him
until the night he asked me to
shoot him up
I was a junkie and I loved
watching his blood rise
while I gave him wings
he turned into Kenny
right before my eyes
and I was back to not caring again
when he didn’t meet me at
the Jane West Hotel for the
hardcore show
Kenny is somewhere
bare white bone
he’ll never turn me on
to another house connection
he’ll never run after me down
St. Mark’s Place like Ratso Rizzo
screaming that I was a stuck-up cunt
he’ll never steal quarters
or buy me a used blue cashmere
coat for ten dollars
Kenny burned up in a fire
in a derelict building
on East Eleventh Street
he is eight years under
Billy Sid probably grew up
and became a lawyer for the corporation
He probably learned to
love his real mother and bring her flowers
I’d put flowers on Kenny’s grave
if he had one
and I would remember the day we spent
in Central Park after my lawyer
got him released from Bellevue’s
prison psychiatric ward
one of the nicest memories of my life
just a few hours before he stole the quarters
and flooded my roommate’s apartment
when he took a shower
I would think about how well he played
harmonica on a stolen harp
but I won’t wear the panther ring
he gave me that I still have
it turns my finger green
it all happened
just like I said
because the needle
the needle filled with blood
was the most important thing
