This clouded heart where the rain begins and the traffic dies. We cry a little because of the bricks showering from the broken buildings, the windows divided into pieces of pictures, the incomplete dirt and sallow gardens….

I was talking with a friend today…he was telling me about a guy, a poet, who had some really interesting, dark things to say.

Steven Jay “Jesse” Bernstein. He was going along, writing interesting poetry, performing in clubs, getting good responses, until one day he decided to slash his throat. It took him three slashes to get the job done, so I guess he meant business. Seems the constant echoes, the demons, of his unusual, non-traditional (read: horrific) childhood finally got the best of him, and he simply could not take it anymore.

This is a neighborhood of padded mud, wheels gone all the way, kisses like the electric wires inside eels, nervous knives, pretty pistols, mothers, gods, fathers, cops, leaning with shame.

Steven Jesse Bernstein. The more I read, the more I’m amazed. He was a "grunge poet," known in Seattle, opening for groups like Nirvana and Soundgarden, and performing at such unlikely venues as the state penitentiary in Monroe, WA. His was a raw, dark style.
He and I have a few things in common though, like having being given up on, thrown away and all the things which come with that, like knowing where all the best bus shelters are (i.e. places to sleep), and the best dumpsters, (dinner!), etc. We each have tales to tell. Where we part ways is that he became famous for actually telling those tales, in twisted sordid fashion, and I became just another average person living an average American Pleasant Valley Sunday kind of life.

Good for him! Me, I go around trying to appear normal, hoping that people don’t find out about me (and then fervently praying they won’t coldly reject me when the truth finally, inevitably oozes out), whereas he went around throwing it out at people, shoving it in their faces, and they loved it! That’s so cool. Except… seems like he was celebrating his self-loathing. How else could he have ever gotten up on stage with a live rodent inside his mouth, for example?

Now the crumbling artifice of the black sky cracks into orange lines, the traffic is a conveyor belt of brown candy bars. I put my mouth to the road and suck. Can you cry? I cannot cry. I do not cry….

Neither of our outcomes is particularly average, given our starting blocks. Personally, I think it’s more normal, under the circumstances, to end up sucking your thumb while vacuously rocking back and forth in a mindless trance. Regardless, it’s still kind of a lonely existence at times because the essence of having been discarded like yesterday’s newspaper never quite leaves you; it pervades your life which is marked by not being surrounded and supported by a loving extended family, and you never, ever will be. You can survive the disaster, but can you really ever escape its effects? (I say YES! But it requires strength, hope and a sense of purpose).

How come the hole in the roof isn’t big enough so I can fly out but it’s big enough so the rain can get in?

 

In a world of full of families with family ties, there is sometimes a lonely ache in knowing you haven’t got any. You are left to fend for yourself and to hope that your friends will be there when you really need them. In general, friendship is open-ended; there are no assurances, no promises. The popular song "Lean on Me" is largely a myth, a huge wish, so when you truly need that kind of support from a friend, all you can really do is hold your breath and hope. You must don the cloak of invincibility and pretend it doesn’t really matter.

 

I’m very lucky in that respect. There are friends who are my family and I am honored and blessed to have them in my life. Cool!!

 

If you live your life focused on the negative, unable to find ways to overcome, or to simply accept things the way they are, there can be an overwhelming tendency towards wondering whether anyone would really notice your absence from the planet, should you decide to take your leave.  The trick is to find beauty everywhere, as much as possible. It’s there, you just have to look. And to find the good in people, instead of seeing the bad — that’s too easy.

The cops taking away the night for something it did. Shatter lines across the moon where it used to shine. Heaven up in jail, God splintered by bars, drinking out of the toilet

Here’s a little excerpt from one of Steven’s lesser-known poems called Letting the Horses Go which made me ache in recognition, for it is the saying goodbye to someone you accidentally allowed yourself to form a bond with (stupid, stupid thing to do! What were you thinking???) which brings on a most horrendous searing pain to some people, i.e. those who as children were put on a bus to nowhere, or confined to an institution — put away, out of sight — or who watched parents drive out of sight with no intention of returning. He ached, really ached. I feel his heart.

"Letting go is letting your love come and go; when it brings visitors, you are gracious enough to feed them. When the visitors wish to leave, you give them something to take with them, brush their coats and hold the door open. Birds fly in and out of the windows: if you close the shutters against them, you’ll never hear them sing; if you put them in cages their songs will be songs of homesick captives."


That’s not the stuff that made him famous though.

No, he was known for being dark and provocative and sardonic. People liked that. His poem No No Man Pt. 2 was featured in the film Pulp Fiction. Check it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfOAnB-GmyI


Too bad he was already dead when the movie came out. He had a lot to say. But I guess he wasn’t able to get it all out before he did himself in. If you get up on stage all the time to recite really dark poetry that comes from deep within you, as an outlet for expressing your own entrenched self-hatred, and people applaud you for it, do they hate you or like you? If they like you, they like the darkness of your soul, so you must continue finding new ways to hate yourself in order to maintain your audience’s approval. There’s no possible way to leave it behind, to let it go, when your audience craves the dredges of your blackness. And it does not seem possible to go to the darkest place in your soul, day after day after day, without seriously contemplating suicide.


If you dare condemn my life, it will come after you with a sharpened rake!
 

Although I generally hold the view that suicide is a selfish act of extreme weakness and cowardice, I know that Steven Jesse Bernstein was, in many ways, much, much more courageous than I will ever be.

I saw you in my clouded heart.