Organic trains

One of my favourite writers is Jim Carroll. He was inspired by the poet Frank O’Hara and whoever else he read while high and on the nod in Upper Manhattan. I gotta read some of O’ Hara’s stuff soon I think.

But while I can admire the creativity of all artists, I am more intrigued by the person they are.

Jim wrote a diary when he was a young teen growing up in the boroughs of New York during the 60s. I’m not thinking I’ll write a summary of his coming of age or whatever; I just want to highlight how experience can give anyone powerful thought, if its looked at enough. Experience is anything really.

He was an all star basketballer as a mid-teen, though he was also a heroin user from thirteen and sometimes a prostitute in the toilets of wherever the rich middle-aged men of America went to spend their cream. That is a raw youth, and I am not trying to romanticise with that lifestyle, but from that comes beautiful thought. And he put it to paper all the time.

This ones nice:

2nd TRAIN (for Frank O’Hara)

Today at the Long Beach Station
every thing was amazingly white
and sand was stuck in my tennis sneakers
that seems to be the way things
are going lately I was forewarned
about the clocks falling on me
so all I felt was 8 colors as my
wrist watch flew into the sky’s cheek.
watches are very symbolic of security
they remind me of Frank O’Hara. Frank
O’Hara reminds me of many wonderful
things, as does the vanilla light
which is dripping from his January eyes.