Feedback Prayer for Kurt Cobain by Stefano Donno

 1. Feedback Prayer 

In the crackle between stations

you found your god, Kurt—

a low growl rising,

feedback like a prayer that refuses to resolve.

Flannel prophet, stomach on fire,

you carried Generation X in your gut,

literal, metallic, unrelenting.

The amps hummed Reagan’s leftover dreams

while kids in basements slammed

against the wall of your voice.

Smells like teen spirit—

Smells like teen spirit—

but it was always the rot underneath,

the sweet burn of selling out by the ounce.

You plugged the void in and let it scream back.

The crowd surfed your disintegration

like it was entertainment.

Heroin whispered softer than any encore.

You scribbled in notebooks the color of coffins:

I am not here.

When the gun finally spoke,

it was the cleanest chord you ever hit.

No distortion.

Just the sudden, perfect silence

everyone still tries to fill.

2. Greenhouse The greenhouse was always too small for what you carried. Orchids bent under black light, leaves curling like the corners of unsent letters. Courtney moved through the rooms like cigarette smoke caught in stage lights—sharp, beautiful, impossible to hold. Frances Bean laughed once and the whole cracked world leaned in to listen.You wrote: I am not here. The pen bled the same blue as your veins. Outside, Aberdeen rain kept perfect time with the drip of the IV.You wanted quiet. A father’s hands without calluses from barre chords. A body that didn’t betray you every morning. Instead the myth grew louder, louder, until the only honest sound left was the one that ended everything.

The shotgun in the greenhouse.

No reverb.

No second take.

Just pollen settling on the barrel

and the orchids finally still.

3. Pages, Looped 

They sell your t-shirts in malls you would’ve burned.

Your scream compressed,

looped into playlists

for ears that never bled.

But the fragments remain—
journal edges torn,
voice cracked open on tape,
daughter carrying your eyes like loaded dice.You didn’t ask to be the voice.
You just wanted the noise to stop
long enough to hear your own breathing.Yet here we are,
still humming the distortion,
still mistaking the howl
for salvation.Better to burn out—
the words hang like smoke rings
above the stage that outlived you.
Perfect circles.
Empty.
Beautiful.
Still refusing to fade