"I Remember You Well, in the Chelsea Hotel..."

[Medusafern]

The House of Usher Revisted
For Nancy Spungeon

"I hate this wretched willow soul of mine,
patiently enduring, plaited or twisted
by other hands." ~ Karin Boye


When the staircase began to crumble in my dream,
I knew the streets beyond the balcony
would soon be crawling with cars.
I knew the German woman next door would soon shriek
out her orgasm, and then begin to paint
her grey walls pink and yellow-orange.
Then, that woman from the Factory, the Warhol Skeleton,
would tell her six year-old son to stop hanging
out the window.
She must be old now, I assumed.
She never combs her hair.

But by then my dream moved faster.
I, a flash of black slip on sallow skin, heaving upwards,
hurled higher than the Hotel really stood.
Where rockslide steps compressed their Dead,
their junkies, their poets, their ghosts still sick
from the final binge, and I, a hollowed-out doll, haunted,
the Wall-Spirits reeling me in.

The Chelsea Hotel was talking again.
The walls still trying to decide
whether I was better dead. Or barely alive.

Then Michelle gave me work.
A haven, safe from sanity,
my nights spent bent for bruise and lash.
I bent, I went in taxis to the East Eighties, trembling hands,
to trade my skin for cash, cocaine, a high ~
where Faithfull could sing that Whiskey is Mother,
and I could cry in that dark room,
that round, stained bed covered
in others' crimes.

But Chelsea called, and I returned.
That dawn of urgent bodies, taxi-glimpsed,
who having slept, would know,
I had not, could not show my face in light.
That I had been a slave the night before.
The cab-man knew I was a whore, but I said,
"No. Not me. I do not ever sleep with them."

But Nancy, she kept bleeding on the tile where she died.
I'd see it leaking every night from underneath her door.
I'd hear her death-calls when her needles did their work.
I'd see her punctured body jerk and fall. My sister.
And all I wanted was to stroke her hair.
To make the dogs stop barking as they passed our floor.
To set her free, like she thought she'd be, in death,
but I knew she never got beyond her room.

The Chelsea Hotel does not let its limbo roam or flee.
It keeps its Dead. It counts its Souls.
It wanted me.

Hillary Hays
1991

[lizzytysh]

I'm believing you must be Hillary Hays, Medusafern, and that you are an accomplished and published poet. Is that your photo, as well? When and how did you find us? I'm certainly glad you did. I'm very moved by the account of your sister's death, and the credibility with which you speak of the Chelsea, others, and your own life. If I am wrong in any of this, I'm amazed ~ even moreso ~ by you . Welcome . I'm very anxious to read your "Letter to the Divine ~ for Leonard," and am going there now.

~ Elizabeth