How is it friends’ beings
can enable one’s own even
if there’s not any contact? My
friend Tom has died, and even
though we opposed each other
and hardly spoke for nearly
fifty years, I can’t understand
that he’s ceased to exist

nor how it is that it diminishes me
when I never saw him nor liked him
for such a long time.

I think he’d be furious
that I presumed to speak of him now.

I’m only thinking
sympathetically.
It’s not unearned emotion.

I remember Ted Berrigan’s elegy for Jack
Kerouac: “Bye-Bye Jack.
See you soon.”
But they hardly knew each other
and Tom and I won’t be seeing each other again.

We spent the most impressionable days of our lives
together, each the other’s support and audience.
It takes an audience to make a person real.
It’s even more true
now that he’s dead
because if he weren’t
he’d probably contest what I’m saying.
I wonder how he would have felt
if I’d died first.
One of the most shocking things
I’ve learned with age is that my
long assumed most-practical means
for guessing how to behave
toward another I care about
in a confusing situation, namely
by imagining how I’d want to be treated myself
if the tables were turned (the Golden Rule
I suppose) is useless
because people are not that much
alike, not even that much like themselves.
It all comes to naught
but whatever it was before that
Tom was there with me.

I came across a piece of information that heartened me a little in the online chatter following Tom’s death… This guy, name of Buzz Poole, who’d invited me to write a foreword for the 2006 book he edited of photos of the graffitied walls of CBGB (CBGB: Decades of Graffiti), tweeted on 29 Jan 2023: “In 2006, I was working on a book about CBGB graffiti. We reached out to #TomVerlaine about writing a foreword; his reply was basically: ‘I can’t stand the guy, but you need to have Richard Hell write this.’ I’ve always found that quite touching. And Hell did write the foreword.”

24 Feb 2023
I saw Tom in a dream this morning. It was in a little candy store on the south side of East Houston Street. He was kind and warm. Patti was with him. At one point for some reason my shirt was off and she came over and fondly, funnily, sweetly touched my naked back. As they were leaving, Tom turned around and came back to ask if I’d like to go with him soon to a certain auction of interesting papers and books and objects, which invitation made me glad.

23 March 2023
I’ve always been so hard-nosed about not catering to human psychology rather than to the facts, for instance disdaining religion, or, say, astrology, or any other superstitions, or psychological reflexes, even though they bring many comfort. But, after Tom’s death I had a small experience that has changed my mind a little bit. For days and days, after I heard he’d died, I felt sad and empty and troubled, it wouldn’t go away. But I finally made a small gesture at my site, acknowledging his death and obliquely admitting that it had messed me up. I put up a link to a song/performance of his I loved [“The Scientist Writes a Letter” from Flash Light], and added, “I can’t write about him yet; too soon.” Only that, very few words, but somehow it gave me relief. I immediately felt more serene, less pained and agitated and confused. I don’t understand why, but just saying out loud, even only implying, that I loved and missed him, brought me some peace of mind, even though I don’t understand what the difference is between saying it and feeling it.