My friend Clayton died just before Christmas. He threw himself from the forty-fourth floor of the Marriott Hotel. Clayton Brooks was a poet, an actor, a taxi driver, a playwright, a drug addict, and a lover of humanity. He was also a retired professional gambler — although he came out of retirement last year, when a syndicate hired him to play poker in Palm Springs. He left twenty thousand dollars in a men’s room by mistake, and was fired.
Another time, HBO hired him to make a pilot for a show called Taxicab Confessions. It was modeled after Cops and consisted of videos of real-life cab rides. Clayton drove a cab fitted with hidden cameras. He picked me up on my corner one Saturday at 9 A.M., and we pretended to be strangers. Clayton subtly led the conversation around to my theory that dead people should not be on postage stamps. On Bleeker Street, the HBO people met us, gave me five bucks, and had me sign a release. I tried to act surprised. The show won an Emmy, but our conversation never aired.
Clayton’s greatest success, though, was as a playwright. I saw his play Jesus Christ, Satan, and the Easter Bunny at the West End Cafe, and I got that electrified, slightly fearful feeling I get around real talent.
But Clayton told his story in his poems.
Life was very painful for Clayton. I don’t know why — perhaps he was molested as a child, as a telephone psychic once told him, and as he later came to believe. Clayton struggled with suicide much of his life, and his poetry is a record of that battle — a humorous, tragic, angry record.
Two days after he died, I searched my pile of little magazines and found these poems of his (in City of Dis and Lusty Mover, respectively):
Self-Image
on some days the only thing i’m really comfortable doing is — killing myself. 2 packs of smokes. drugs. it feels good. i feel productive. i feel like i’m accomplishing something.
Belief
i was driving a cab in new york city & trying to be an actor & i was so fucking miserable i woke every morning in absolute terror & as the day went by it only got worse but every night i drove the taxi i would open up to certain people & tell them that for me it was an immense struggle to stay alive that i was desperately trying not to kill myself & these people they tried God how they tried to comfort me i would watch their faces as they searched with such passion & anguish to be of help & none of them could find the magic words or the right thing to say but that didn’t matter what mattered was they tried so hard to keep me alive & i believe they did.
Five days later, the new issue of LUNGFULL! arrived — with a poem by Clayton inside. Brendan Lorber, the editor, had eerily titled the issue “Leaping off the Roof . . . of Your Mouth!” Here is Clayton’s poem:
Smoking
fucked-up real fucked-up in a lot of pain i put sixteen cigarettes out on my arms the next morning i’m just glad i don’t smoke cigars
Poetry kept Clayton alive, as much as anything. When he wrote poems, he wrote for that someone who understood his suffering completely.
“Clayton” and “To Clayton, on Your Suicide” previously appeared in LUNGFULL! Clayton Brooks’s poems are reprinted here by permission of Joseph Williamson, administrator of the estate of Clayton Brooks Williamson.
— Ed.
