Recalling Kurt & the Creepy Smiley Nirvana Tee

a poem

Poetry time!

This Nirvana tee is as popular as I was back in ‘94. Back then, the Gen Xers rocked it- and now I see the Gen Y and Z kids. Funny, I have caught this tee about a dozen times. Everything comes back again.

Recalling Kurt & the Creepy Smiley Nirvana Tee

    Caught six teens or 20 somethings passing by

Wearing a Nirvana tee at the '21 town fair

In a span of 3 hours

Woah- flashback ‘90s! 

Wonder if those Gen Zers can recall

A song besides Teen Spirit...

Or if they even know any

One of them at all?

4 of them donned the black Nirvana tee 

With the creepy yellow smiley on it

Wonder where they bought the shirt

at the mall, Wal Mart or Target?

Kurt would have cringed,

been at the end of his wits

Having band merch sold

At such dreaded corpo outfits.

Oh wait...Nevermind! 

Nirvana tees had already been 

Hangin' on the big selling rack and bin

And selling out back then 

I never did get a Nirvana tee

But wore the hell out of my tape

Of Nevermind. In Utero too.

Oh, those days of tangled ribbon! 

Gen Zers don't know those days

They be like, "whatza ribbon?"

What do you mean by "tape"?

Sad music's not so tangible nowadays…

Although the cool kids nowadays

Turn and embrace vinyl 

Some of them shelled out big

On Nirvana. Right on! 

I write on, and digress...

God rest Kurt's soul.

After 28+ odd frickin years,

He still wears on me

Although I don't wear the tee 

And don't shed tons of tears

like I did after hearing that he died

Now I have him close to heart.

All these years later, just over

the 27-year lifetime of Kurt Cobain,

I scrolled the net and inadvertently 

saw his bloody crime scene body.

Just brutal. He was done ... slain

Such 20-gauge, .38 caliber finality!

Did I really see remnants of a head?

Or an abstract Picasso instead?

And now the conspiracy generates

in me after more than a generation 

later… was his demise actually suicide? 

Or another music biz murder-sacrifice?

Was Courtney that cruel as to...

No- or maybe… Who knows who?

If only that bloodied wall 

could give crucial testimony...

Kurt’s resting in peace since '94 

in his own kind of Nirvana

away from menace and madness

of the manipulating M.I.C. whore.

I go on simply as his fan 

and a Nirvana fan- but not a fanatic,

not a fair weather nor a phony 

fan who just fashions the creepy smiley tee.