Richard Maxfield lives (after Diane Wakoski)
If I cough right now
someone might record it
but it won't be
Richard Maxfield
For these times
are the future
And these times
are different
If I cough right now
I might as well
jump out of the window
Sabotage myself
Or stay at home,
they say
Which is why
I'm writing this
in an empty park
which I broke into
which someone else
has broken into
before me
Richard Maxfield
would approve
And he likes our coughs
And I miss someone
who likes my coughs
And I miss the trees
the emptiness
in this mythology
And, I tell you,
animals are stunned
A lizard in my path
an ant on my leg
staring suspensively
Not sure if they
missed me
I remain unmoved
because who knows when
Richard Maxfield
will blow his
head off
until it all
falls apart
'Better stock up
for the future'
It was not music
It was your cough
"If you cough very hard
do you think you
fall apart?"
It was not music
But I heard the missing note
Richard you poor old bugger
These times are different
In these times
You live on
The Story of Richard Maxfield
He jumped out of a window.
Or did he shoot himself?
Was there a gun
or was it pills?
Did anyone see blood?
Was he holding water in his lungs?
Or was he right about the CIA conspiracy and killed by one of them
because he knew their plan?
Richard was an electronic composer.
He wrote a piece called ‘Cough Music’ made up of the coughs
of hundreds of people at concerts.
He was brilliant and well organized.
And then he fell apart.
He was homosexual and took drugs.
He was brilliant and well organized.
I loved ‘Cough Music’ and could not see how such a fine composer could
fall apart as Richard fell apart.
This is the story of Richard Maxfield.
He died in California.
It does not make me as sad that he died
as that he fell apart.
We all die.
We do not all fall apart.
‘Cough music’ was a beautiful piece of music.
I went to a
concert tonight
and heard many people coughing,
especially during the encore, which was a piano piece by
Debussy, delicate and sparse,
like a dress you can see through,
and everyone seemed to have to cough during the piece.
If you cough very hard,
do you think you fall apart?
I once had a bad cough
and now realise that for two weeks I coughed during every
poetry reading and concert I went to.
I wonder if anyone recorded my cough?
I wonder how many readers and performers
not only did not feel sympathetic towards
my bad lungs and the symptomatic cough
but also wanted to shoot me for coughing?
A fortuneteller once said I would die of TB. I wonder if that’s
why I like ‘Cough Music’?
Perhaps I should have my lawyer
write into my will
“I would like to have ‘Cough Music’ played at my funeral.
Someone would think that in bad taste.
No one likes to think that after you die you still have
bad taste,
Even if you had it in life.
What bothered me about Richard Maxfield was that
he had the bad taste to fall apart;
dying after you fall apart is actually a rectification
of bad taste.
Richard was so brilliant and well organized
I could not imagine how he fell apart.
And ‘Cough Music’ is just one of his very beautiful concrete tapes.
They say the men he loved destroyed him.
But he was brilliant and well organized and I find it hard
to believe some not-brilliant and poorly organized man could destroy him.
You see, the story of Richard Maxfield is one I do not understand.
But I have always loved ‘Cough Music’
and when I heard the beautiful Debussy tonight
and thought of a man I love
who for many reasons I cannot see or be with
and I heard the audience coughing, flashing every once in a while
like light catching a strip of aluminium which blows on a fruit tree,
I understood that I would never fall apart,
though I did not know why,
and for a moment I thought of the involuntary action of
coughing, and I understood perhaps
why he jumped out of a window
though I knew that just as I would never fall apart,
I would also never jump out of a window,
and I also refrained from coughing, though just at the end of the
Debussy,
I wanted to/ maybe just to join the whole crowd.
There are many ways to die,
but none of them is subtle.
Why do people cough so much
at concerts?
I cannot touch the piano.
I cannot touch you.
If the King of Spain gave a concert
no one woud cough.
The story of Richard Maxfield is one I do not understand,
but I thought of it tonight,
listening to people cough their way through Debussy,
Only Richard Maxfield made music out of coughing, and he is dead.
Richard Maxfield is dead.
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