With a love a madness for Shelley
Chatterton Rimbaud
and the needy-yap of my youth
has gone from ear to ear
I HATE OLD POETMEN!
Especially old poetmen who retract
who consult other old poetmen
who speak their youth in whispers,
saying.--I did those then
but what was then
that was then--
O I would quiet old men
say to them:--I am your friend
what you once were, thru me
you'll be again--
Then at night in the confidence of their homomes
rip out their apology-tongues
and steal their poems.
------
This is the poem Laure gave to Gilles in the movie, from the American poet Gregory Corso's 1958 collection of poems Gasoline. After Laure committed suicide, Gilles tore this page from the collection and burned it as a memorial to Laure.
In that shot, the camera inadvertently caught a beetle climbing a tree trunk. Laure seems to be reborn in the beetle, which is exactly what the poem says "thru me / you'll be again." The trees are graffiti and the marks carved by the blade, and the beetle climbs between and beyond art and violence climb. That shot is beautiful.
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