Archive > Vol. X no. Z

Baron Wormser

Upon the Death of the Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, from “Acute Drug Intoxication”

Don’t you do it. Don’t lose yourself so soon: A moral for a walk down Despair Street. You might have flown past the cold of the moon, That distance within you, that pointless tune Your life kept humming: an actor is incomplete. Don’t you do it. Don’t lose yourself so soon. You enter another once-famous tomb. The walls have sagged. There is no star to greet. You might have flown past the cold of the moon As try to explain your sorry self to the wound That roved from role to role and lived on grief. Don’t you do it. Don’t lose yourself so soon. Stand beneath a balcony, hear Romeo croon While Lear searches for a darker heath. You might have flown past the cold of the moon Where no final lines conspire with stormy swoons: Eloquence throbs with blood’s bleak heat. Don’t you do it. Don’t lose yourself so soon. You might have flown past the cold of the moon.