So I don't usually run very dark themes on my blog regarding Bobby's life. I suppose that's because, the darkness is something we all know about -- it seems to have defined his memory these fifty years since his death. I prefer to focus on the light I catch peeping through the cracks every so often, the light that was Bobby's true spirit underneath the layers of pain and addiction.
However, we cannot ignore that the darkness
did exist. It was part of what molded him, what sculpted his mind and heart, and if we say we love and appreciate who Bobby was as a person, that does include an understanding of his world -- darkness included.
Therefore, when I ran across this poem, I decided I wanted to paste a portion of it here due to give us a glimpse into what life was like for Bobby during his addiction. I have no way of knowing, actually, if the guy who wrote this actually did sit across from Bobby at a table at a drug dealer's pad or whether he just imagined all of this from hearsay. I tried to contact him, but can find virtually no trace of him on the internet.
But, whether this particular poet did run into Bobby or not, the scene he depicts in his words is a scene we can know we would have seen, had we followed Bobby into his places of bondage.
This poem, published in a book of poetry by Keith Althaus called
Ladder of Hours: Poems 1969-2005.
Treasure Island: For My Son
Beside me
on the couch,
finally quiet
after running all day;
his knees stick out
like a pair of bruised peaches.
The room is bright,
a box of light
floating in darkness.
Windows on three sides open
so it's almost out-of-doors.
The noise of the swamp
drifts in: peepers,
and unknown wings
flapping, shaking loose,
bugs bouncing off screens,
the corners murmuring.
Although he can read now,
he'd rather listen,
like getting a ride
and watching the trudging
miles go by.
What does he see
as I read the description
of the bluff above the cove
where the pirate ship
lay anchored?
A hill nearby
where Truro
curves around the bay?
And he's Jack Hawkins, I'm sure,
but who's the Squire, the Doctor,
and Long John Silver?
Citronella circulates
its smell from childhood,
now mimicking hashish,
and the lighthouse
from a mile off
casts its weak strobe
over land, together conjuring
another treasure hunt
begun before you've got
an idea what you're
looking for, only
what it is not.
Behind the laced sugar water
taste of the metal of the spoon,
like blood, and hear again
the heroic music turning tinny,
as everything slows
like a film caught until
it burns in front of
the projector's naked bulb,
a light behind the eyes
that won't go out.
That time is kept alive
like a match cupped
against the wind, a candle
in a skull, flickering tonight
in uneven breaths,
as sleep,
the dark sub-text,
the undertow
in the story-teller's voice
pulls him under, and carries
him off to an island
overgrown with the vegetation
of dreams and peopled
by composites
from the day's dismemberment
by clock hands.
Then, subtly altered, its mass
magnetized, his head
is charged with dreams,
and leaning next to mine
generates their waking
counterpart: wishes,
but all in the negative:
may he avoid this,
be spared that,
not have to go through
something else... the list
cuts out a silhouette, faceless,
blind with bliss,
while I revisit another night,
an afternoon stretched into evening
in a dealer's pad on Eleventh Street,
across the table from Bobby Driscoll,
who, someone told me later,
"played the kid in Treasure Island."
Even the small town paper I was reading a few years later
carried the wire service obituary,
an overdose:
a clear proof of something
still unclear.
That night
when his connection came
he broke off talking
and tied his ascot
around his arm
and hunted for a vein,
then leaned back, eyes filled
with appreciation, overwhelmed
as soundless applause
spanned the living pain
separating the same person
years apart.
The dark is lined with fur,
fins, and feathers
rustling and fluttering,
their sudden silence
a trip wire across the lawn
leading to the swamp
where the tireless lighthouse
flashes its ambiguous message:
equal parts safety and danger,
and its strobe shows
the night at work:
its jumping eyes, and vines
of climbable shadows,
and interlocking circles
like magician's rings
spreading across the water
as rain brings music,
changing tempos, slowing, adding
a thousand strings
in all directions: so many
leaves struck, grasses bent,
and branches glazed.
He stirs at its cold scent;
a shiver runs through him,
then me. It's late.
I mark our place.
*****************
From what I can gather, this is more or less about a dad who shared the Treasure Island book-reading experience with a beloved son, and as his son fades into sleep, he finds himself thinking of all the things that could be for the little "Jim Hawkins" lying next to him. In his semi dream-state, he then visits another time when he saw another Jim Hawkins making far different decisions than he would ever have his son make.
How sad would it have made Bobby -- bright-eyed Bobby with the adventurous and kind spirit, who was said to have loved children -- to see that he had turned into the kind of person parents were afraid of their kids following the example of?
For Althaus, the magic of childhood truly
could turn to dust, and had before his very eyes. Of course, as mentioned before, this could have been a scene he wrote out of assumption, not based on an actual experience he'd had with Bobby.
Addiction. It's a terrible beast of a thing, and my heart hurts to think of the shame Bobby must have carried around, particularly in a world when so few people understood or had much patience with it whatsoever. It is my feeling that -- as it so often is even today -- the biggest hook addiction had in Bobby was held by the company he kept. It sounds as though he began a relationship with narcotics out of a desperation to fit in in high school with a brand of people who would accept him... and from there, the madness spiraled outward. It's difficult to understand exactly what the Beatnik influence was on Bobby's drug use, as most Beatniks were known to be drug users, yet in
Semina Culture it was stated that Wallace Berman wouldn't let Bobby come around him when he'd been using drugs. This feels like a mixed message... but I know far too little about Beat Culture to know how much responsibility to place there.
We know Suzanne Carrier/Stansbury was a drug user, which served as a major bonding agent in Bobby's relationship with her. Sharon Morrill was likewise a major addict and a criminal to boot. The fact that Bobby filled his need for love with these women he also used drugs and committed felonies with didn't supply him much motivation to get clean, either.
Regardless of the reasons, Bobby made his choice. But I can't help but feel he would be relieved to see how far addiction science has come since his own years of struggle. I've thought about that alot lately as this month, September, is National Recovery Month.
I'm sad he wasn't around to see the progress.
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