Seven paternity claimants

Alison

With a taste for barbiturates,
she drifts through Wyoming,
collecting buskers, then back in her attic
with a four-track for a session
that, first-hand, sounds close to God
but, on second listen,
is just the repetitive noise of orphans,
like a chain that’s skipped its cog.

Blake

Whose mother keeps a picture
on the mantelpiece of Jim-with-beard,
from the era of Paris
and pastry: a man living
off a sun-trace of his previous self,
the parasite’s parasite, with Rimbaud
in his pocket. While Blake went on
to study law at Stanford,
where he met his wife, Maya,
and, to this day, he steps off the dancefloor
at the intro to Light My Fire.

Patrick

MorrisonMemorabilia.com
began after Patrick’s Mum
said that this was the towel
with which Jim dried his hair.
And the note he’d left
to say: Anna, last night was a blast,
come see us in San Diego!
And one of his shirts
with half the buttons
popped off.

Sam

Self-professed: son and heir,
whose band – “Of Perception”
– played the Viper Rooms
in LA, who has snorted heroin
and survived, whose lionine hair
is an homage to his father,
who is now thirty-seven
and has a second album
looking for a label.

Poppy

Born three weeks early
with palsy, and could have
been paralysed down one side
but for luck and physio.
The only remaining symptom:
a crooked left hand
as though she’s hiding a coin.
Now she works in the library,
practices power yoga, writes poems:
is working on a sequence
entitled My Father’s In A Band.

Anthony

Tone leads corporate drum workshops.
He believes both his parents
are still alive and they live in Miami.
He has never really listened to The Doors.
.
Anya

Has her own gravestone
in an East Bay cemetary,
and a microcosm of stardom:
each week a Berkeley student’s
hand-written ode: For Anya, For Jim
because she changed her family
name by deed poll, from Bakhtin
to Morrison. She would have liked
to make it to twenty-seven,
no further,
but at eighteen she was sucked
off a platform
and under a union train.