Joy Exhibition

he died eleven years before I was born
aged only twenty-three
even younger than Keats
when his name was writ in water
 
yet Curtis fascinated me
when I was young and strange
(and now just old and strange)
 
the legend that he once
writhed on a bed of broken glass
the spasmodic grace of his dance...
 
my Catholic Saint
my Saint Teresa…
 
I do not venerate the dead
who die by suicide
as if their last despair
was all they had to give
 
but sometimes mood
is captured like a photograph
 
and this Manc lad
who died before I woke
is wrought in Polaroid…
 
(he lived what I couldn’t
but I’m still here
and he’s away
so things balance out
like night into day…)
 
the dank despair
of melancholic youth
the vision that never matured
but lingers in the dooryard of
the atrocity exhibition
 
with sunken eyes
and pale face
and close-cropped hair
and button-down shirt
 
so far and yet so close
to the joy division