Death & Disaster Series was written by Lonely Christopher during his early twenties when his mother was dying and shortly after she died, writing poems instead of committing suicide. I too had a hard time surviving my twenties so I can relate. I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to do it, lacking the experience that only time gives. I knew that I needed to write although my parents and family were telling me to get a job. It was a tough row to hoe, and as I read Death & Disaster Series, I knew that Lonely Christopher had hoed it too.
He toils even today with the capacity to read many books, see many movies and write essays about them. During his terrible twenties when he wrote his indulgent Death & Disaster Series, he also wrote a screenplay with the wherewithal to gather funds to pay good actors, hire a director and produce a movie I really admire called Mom. Watch it.
Good poems are worth rereading so it makes sense to have Death & Disaster Series reprinted for a generation that hasn’t read it yet.
The book’s in three parts, the first is “June,” a short month, but the cup runneth over here; there are thirty-five poems, many of them short, in the moment, letting what comes come, off the cuff
The hospital blanket
chaffing the throat
that cracks a family
open like candy.
Or describing indescribable joy:
There’s a blue tinge of joy
in the air here’s why it’s there
to ask questions. Why
does my spine
quiver at the sound of a violin
bow caressing a string.
How do good things happen.
Why does the dominion
haunt the waking
writing in the pencil
as joy’s writ on the air
when you breathe
it disappears.
“Crush Dream,” the second part, puts words where they belong and with just the right sound. And the sound of words abound. Here there are adventures going on. In “No,” nouns become verbs. The poet dinosaurs blank space and Decembers indolence. I had a lot of fun.
The third part, “Challenger,” is full of disasters the poet survives although he tells us that he dies, but just like his reprinted poems, again he’s born. With love.
Idumea
Everything is red. The ground is red,
The blood. For some
of us there is a future, though I’ve had
my doubts. For some
of us are haunted by loves beyond love.
We walked through the mall or I never
met you. There is a lens marked terror
and when I look through it,
all I can see is my own failure.
Fleeting as it is, it cannot stand, not
against you, virtuous and muddled motherhood,
delighting in a clear day and raked through
by circumstance, left standing, out of force,
getting old, having it all taken out of you,
surgically, piece by piece, till science
steals away your body, till I can’t look
at your picture for the pain.
And I can’t remember your voice.
Everybody gets burned down to the ashes
of everlasting love. Am I born to die?
Yes—but why?
Be quiet now, but sear a coal-strong fury
through everything within me, every day.
There’s nothing left and no reason but to
Carry the world inside you.
What will become of me?
Might I take the voice and the strength
That you left and see the flaming skies.
There is the despair of the heart
And the horror of the spectacle
But they are by no means the same thing.
………………..This is America
………………..or,
………………..I love you, Susan.
I went over to Brooklyn to record Lonely Christopher. He shares his apartment with his partner, Venn Daniel, and Lucy, his pit bull, who loved me a lot and laid by the tripod to knock it with her tail in her slumber, but only in moments of silence so that I could edit out the sudden tremors the gentle Lucy caused. You have to walk blocks to get there, but it’s worth it, on the corner of a park. Lonely was ready to page through the book reading by chance what came along. He doesn’t make one flub because he knows what he is doing. It’s all in the Vimeo below. Enjoy.
Death and Disaster Series is published by Roof Books. You can check it out here:
https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781931824972/death–disaster-series.aspx