For James Dean

 

Rest in Peace

September 30, 2021 marks the 66th anniversary of his death

For James Dean 

Welcome me, if you will,

as the ambassador of a hatred

who knows its cause

and does not envy you your whim

of ending him.

 

For a young actor I am begging

peace, gods. Alone

in the empty streets of New York

I am its dirty feet and head

and he is dead.

 

He has banged into your wail

of air, your hubris, racing

towards your heights and you

have cut him from your table

which is built, how unfairly

for us l not on trees, but on clouds.

 

I speak as one whose filth

is like his own, of pride

and speed and your terrible

example nearer than the siren's speech,

a spirit eager for the punishment

which is your only recognition.

 

Peace! to be true to a city

of rats and to loved the envy

of the dreary, smudged mouthers

of an arcane dejection

smoldering quietly in the perception

of hopelessness and scandal

at unnatural vigor. Their dreams

are their own, as are the toilets

of a great railway terminal

and the sequins of a very small,

very fat eyelid.

                       I take this

for myself, and you take up

the thread of my life between your teeth

tin thread and tarnished with abuse.

you still shall hear

as long as the beast in me maintains

its taciturn power to close my lids

in tears, and my loins move yet

in the ennobling pursuit of all the worlds

you have left me alone in, and would be

the dolorous distraction from,

while you summon your army of anguishes

which is a million hooting blood vessels

on the eyes and in the ears

at the instant before death.

                                         And

the menus who surrounded him critically,

languorously waiting for a

final impertinence to rebel

and enslave him, starlets and other

glittering things in the hog-wallow,

lunging mireward in their inane

moth-like adoration of niggardly

cares and stagnant respects

paid themselves, you spared,

as a hospital preserves its orderlies.

Are these your latter-day saints

these unctuous starers, muscular

somnambulists, these stages for which

no word's been written hollow

enough, these exhibitionists in

well veiled booths, these navel-suckers?

 

Is it true that you high ones, celebrated

among amorous flies, hated the

prodigy and invention of his nerves?

To withhold your light

from painstaking paths!

your love

should be difficult; as his was hard.

 

Nostrils of pain dawn avenues

of luminous spit-globes breathe in

the fragrance of his innocent flesh

like smoke, the temporary lift,

the post-cancer excitement

of vile manners and veal-thin lips,

obscure in the carelessness of your scissors,

 

Men cry from the grave while they still live

and now I am this dead man's voice,

stammering, a little in the earth.

I take up

the nourishment of his pale green eyes,

out of which I shall prevent

flowers from growing, your flowers.

~ Frank O'Hara ~

BIO: James Dean died in a car crash on September 30, 1955. A coroner's jury determined that he had been speeding at the time of the crash. His death shocked the nation because he had become a familiar face on the Big Screen. His most famous movie, Rebel Without a Cause, made him a Hollywood legend. He is still remembered as the troubled Bad Boy who just couldn't get a break. Dean started his career in television, then got his big break in the movies. He also enjoyed playing on stage in Broadway and Off Broadway productions. He openly admitted to being bisexual and often used his sexuality to get special favors. He was only 24 years old when he died.