AUTOBIOGRAPHY
long before I wanted a drink I wanted a drink and it’s been
that way ever since long before my grandfather fed
me these lines about wanting a drink his grandfathers fed
him the same in German Welsh Queen’s English Southwest
Philadelphian everyone knows long before anyone owns up
to it we all had a drink over it and thought deeply about
genetics and addictions and their chemistries about
civilizations which wrecked the lives of boring ordinary
people every day without raising itself to do a goddamned
thing boring ordinary people like me my grandfathers and
theirs and theirs who never gave themselves
enough credit and it’s been that way ever since the
chaotic boredoms of Kierkegaard and his god my god
too my god we just wanted a drink
PRIMO[1]
someone called out or you heard a voice from the
stairs or both or not from the stairs from the column of
air the stairs wrap around that you fell through without
a sound they said what’s it matter fell jumped it only
matters as much as Turin does or did before it had an
Auschwitz tattooed on the backs of its eyelids meaningless
everblue baptismal tattoo and it doesn’t matter how it
was the last thing you saw or it wasn’t as the stairs flew
by and by and up until you reached the voice
[1] Primo Levi was a Jewish-Italian chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor. Levi died in 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-story apartment landing. His death was officially ruled a suicide, but some have suggested that the fall was accidental because he left no suicide note, there were no witnesses, and he was on medication that could have affected his blood pressure and caused him to fall accidentally.
