At 47, Jim Carroll, with his mop of strawberry blond hair, seemed incredibly boyish standing behind the lectern, in his black jeans, T-shirt and jacket, Saturday at Little Brothers for his sold-out spoken-word performance.Best known for “The Basketball Diaries,” an account of his teenage years in New York City as a basketball prodigy and heroin addict, Carroll resembles an older, more weathered Leonardo DiCaprio, who portrayed Carroll in the 1995 movie based on the book.Audience members ranged from those in their thirties to those who looked as if they had just turned 18, from the leather-clad and pierced to the baseball-capped and clean-cut. Regardless of differences in appearance, everyone, save a few drunken stragglers, fell into an awed hush as Carroll donned a pair of glasses and began the show with a piece from “Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971-1973” titled “A Day at the Races.””The French call them ‘papillons d’amour,’ that is ‘the butterflies of love,'” Carroll began reading in his distinct New York accent. “I call them crabs, the tiny parasites of the crotch.”So went the introduction to his story about the discovery of the intruders, and his lover’s decision to keep the crabs in a jar – after they had been plucked from their respective hiding places – so the couple could race them.”We spent the next hour establishing the best of our respective stables and enjoyed the rest of the day at the races,” Carroll concluded. “My God, what a woman who could turn an ailment into a viable recreation.”Even more amazing is Carroll’s storytelling ability. Undoubtedly, very few can captivate an audience with a tale of genital affliction, yet Carroll has his own tongue-in-cheek style that can transform odd, perverse and, at times, morbid subject matter into something humorous and entertaining.However, Carroll displayed his more serious, poetic side with the next reading from the novel he is currently writing. It is about a successful artist named Billy, who becomes a recluse after going to a Diego Velázquez retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and realizes that his own paintings lack spirituality. The excerpt described Billy’s revelation and subsequent behavior in Carroll’s unique poetic prose, which included phrases such as “nursery rhyme sacrifices” without seeming pretentious or inaccessible.Carroll told the audience that Billy’s problems later in life partially stem from an experience earlier in the character’s life. The author then put aside the notebook from which he had been reading and simply told the story of the character, who, along with a friend, went to the friend’s 16-year-old brother, Marco, for sexual advice. Marco recommended using a raw veal cutlet during masturbation to simulate a woman.”So then I – no, not me – Billy, the character,” Carroll corrected himself with a laugh, causing the audience to laugh as well. “It’s not at all biographical,” he insisted with a sly grin. “That’s why I like this book.””Billy” then locked himself in the bathroom with a picture of Barbara Streisand in People magazine and a veal fillet he had purloined from the refrigerator and put Marco’s method to the test. Unfortunately, this happened to be the day President Kennedy was assassinated, and when his mother burst into the bathroom to tell Billy the news, she found her son using a portion of that evening’s dinner in very unusual circumstances.”America lost its innocence that day ,” Carroll commented, “but think about him – he lost more innocence that anybody in America.”The story of an older Billy after his period of seclusion was the topic of the following reading in which the character finds two pictures of the same couple – one of them happy, and the other, taken ten years later, of them distant and sullen.”The two pictures lay there like weed that had grown overnight less than a foot apart from each other, the beginning and the end,” Carroll read.Carroll then recited some of his poems, starting with “8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain,” a poem inspired by the 1994 suicide of the Nirvana frontman. Carroll also read a few pieces from an upcoming book of poetry he said will be published sometime next year. Carroll removed his glasses and half-sang, half-spoke “I Want the Angel” from “Catholic Boy,” the Jim Carroll Band’s 1980 release. He also performed “The Beast Within,” from a record he is working on of songs and spoken words set to music.”Some say it’s a lie/Some say it’s a sin/If you knew why it ended/Why did you let it begin?” he sang, moving around the stage, microphone in hand.Unfortunately, Carroll had to compete with the noise level in the club, which steadily rose as the alcohol consumption increased, much to the annoyance of many of Carroll’s fans who threw disgusted looks in the direction of the bar. After reading a few more poems, Carroll concluded with a poem he wrote about an ex-girlfriend.”I actually left this message on her answering machine,” he said with a smile before he read the poem. In it he uses a river as a metaphor for himself, claiming the woman will forever be tossed, trapped in his current.Only the creative genius of Jim Carroll can create art out of an answering machine message, not to mention other subjects explored Saturday evening, including an unruly cat who developed a taste for ejaculatory fluids and a boy who huffed paint.