Poem for Lou Reed

Truly singular, an outsider’s outsider,

He learned well life’s hard truths, and was walking proof that

Your thoughts are only as deep as your faults.

Subjected to psychic savagery in his youth,

His mind took on an ever-changing persona

Always shifting between fame and failure.

A misfit, a hustler, a rake, a transformer,

A rogue, but not a charlatan, an objector,

But not a coward, never a coward.

An expert spinner of verse, he possessed a knack

For feel, impact, attitude, style; he always knew

Which words were those worth the listener’s while.

His means and his methods were fittingly erratic:

He would spend his days crafting curiosities

Only to then neglect and forget them.

What was important, though, wasn’t his works or quirks,

Nor his talent for causing a storm at a stroke,

But what he and his friends set in motion.

They would, unwittingly, forever change the way

We’d hear the sounds the mind thought it already knew,

Revise what it meant to be musical.

They showed us the primacy of the primitive,

And that talent and worth are only as real as

People’s fondness and fanaticism.

When the wheels came off, the wagon just kept rollin’,

But still we wondered if there’d be a price to pay

For always living life on the wild side.

So, was he killed by all the things that made him?

Perhaps, but not quite as we would have imagined:

Even at his end he refused to conform.

A long struggle underpinned by a glint of hope,

His death an apt reflection of his life and songs:

The satellite’s gone up into the skies.