Hosanas, Rants and Incantations

Hosanas, Rants and Incantations

By

David Gottfried

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1968

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1968

When the Empire Teetered at Tet

When Molotov cocktails made such a starry night

When Jimi’s purple haze scented the soundwaves lilac

When Bobby ascended the cross in Los Angeles

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1968

When I knew there would be a revolution in less than a year

When Dean Kirk said students’ rights are mere strawberries

When Diana Ross channeled Joan of Arc and sang “Love Child”

When age sliced deeper than race and youth was a joyful lion

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1968

When we chanted, “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win”

When bourgeois liberalism would bleed in the gutter

When my hatred clung like Napalm and Glue

When I knew I would ejaculate lava

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1968

When Ginsburg’s “angel headed hipsters” mailed marijuana cigarettes to 1000 names in the New York Telephone Directory.

When Mc Cartney’s silly love songs were manifestos in the name of love

When we shouted, screamed and killed the king
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1968

When Jackie Kennedy was our red queen

Wrathful and Radiant, she scowled at the camera as she toured Cambodia

Privy to the Witchcraft of Madame Ngu and South Asian harlots

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She knew who Killed Abraham Martin and John

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Fundamentalism

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The words withered on the vine

The colors cleaned by turpentine

Water comes from what was wine

Three dumb men have come to dine

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Unleavened bread can not be found

Your bloody wine does not astound

The silly priests have now ungowned

The pious prayers are not profound

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The shofar shouts but is quite mute

The papal bulls are neutered, moot

The Incense burns just to pollute

No mortal sins can they commute

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The Imam conquers and he kills

We all regress to fish with gills

The witches burn on all the grills

The Middle Ages have sequels

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Death’s Escort

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I know that life is very short

And most of it is death’s escort

And the joy that you report

Will very suddenly abort

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The pot holed road will give you jolts

The jalopied car breaks, revolts

The wheels run off like brash young colts

The beaten cart just summersaults

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The mechanics are on holiday

The medics in their white display

And glaring knives in fine array

Will mold and shape you just like clay

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The alcohol will burn with joy

The seething water won’t destroy

Microbes as they sneak, deploy

Throughout your whole house of Troy

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The bandages will bind you tight

And shut out light like blackest night

Staunch not blood but breathing’s fight

You beg for air contrite, polite

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And soon your mummied for a tomb

Helpless as in Mother’s womb

The death and doom is in full bloom

Smell the sweet, palsied perfume

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TOO MISERABLE TO FIND A TITLE

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The eddy draws me in

The quicksand covers me up

Entombed, marooned, the jig is up

The fire has burned its last

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But I hover in the winds

A wafting witch of doom

Bequeathing certain gloom

My member becomes a broom

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I am a cancer and a curse

Ejaculating lava love

I seed eternal disbelief

I desiccate every dove

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I am evil, evil, to the core

My laser eyes glare and bore

Like a magnifying lens

I summon fires to the fore

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That burn and singe your petty heart

And take every organ apart

Into your balls I throw my darts

And clot your vessels with infarcts

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Dissected, Resected and never respected

Your half dead body writhes in pain

Your mind is stupid or insane

Your buggered belly’s pierced, distended

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And when I look upon my deed

The debasement of a fine young man

I realize why my ancient creed

Was so irate at his elan

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We cannot love and so we hate

We cannot create, so we destroy

The pride, the Phallus, we’ll ablate

While we declaim we’re god’s envoy

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THINKING OF THE JUDGES OF WRITING COMPETITIONS

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We are the lords of poetry

We’re smug and snide, unkind

Submit your works and you will see

How winners are assigned

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We spit on writers quite unknown

It makes us feel so strong

And with polemics overblown

We chastise what is wrong

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If your verse has rhyme and meter

And tries to sing a song

We’ll prescribe strong saltpeter

Music doesn’t belong

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We are academics sworn

To uphold an arid faith

A Byron would be quite forlorn

A ridiculed mere wraith

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In our world so new and sterile

We’re doctors of all ills

Expunging those things manly, virile

We castrate writing skills

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So do pay us a reading fee

And we’ll review your verse

With unctuous grace and amity

We ready you for your hearse

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Copyright, David Gottfried, 2005

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Looking at Tricia Nixon when I was 15

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She looked like her chlorine pool

Her upturned nose said you were a fool

Her angry tears stung like the water

The blondest beast gave no quarter

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Her ravishing rage was eloquent

A lake devoid of sediment

A fluid approximating fire

Her arias arrogated the choir

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A sparkling queen all aquamarine

The tartest speech that loves to demean

Her eyes glared like the radiant sun

Your skin shriveled as she won

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Her bathing suit licked her skin

The buttocks were like mescaline

A curvy dream of the wiggily sweet

The damn desire she’d defeat

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The Women, Blond and Brilliant

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They don’t capitalize their I’s

Know they’re kind and bright and wise

Their beatific angel eyes

Are laser beams that cauterize

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Their voices flutter, say hello

As gentle as a fairy doe

With hearts as pure as driven snow

Their Lyme disease is sown, will grow

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Their lithe bodies wiggle and dance

And beckon you to take a chance

Submit to fortune, happenstance

Primordial snakes snare, advance

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Exhaling idealism’s breeze

Their hearts are worn upon their sleeves

But calculating by degrees

You’re locked in an asthmatic wheeze

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Their lips are red as cherry wine

The healthful blush becomes quinine

Drink the nectar quite divine

You’re stupefied, stunned, supine

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And when you’re hurt they feign surprise

Devise a thousand alibis

Quite content you won’t surmise

That everything is lies, disguise

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Mating

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I ride the horse so black and brave

I swim through currents cold and cruel

And if you think I am a knave

I’ll show you who’s the bigger fool

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You’ll quiver like a chastened slave

You’ll be my pliant, passive tool

And on your flesh I will engrave

A tattoo of my raunchy rule

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Submit to me, the man you crave

Your pleasures are a meager gruel

My spike will make your life less grave

Don’t be a stupid, stubborn mule

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And do not cry and rant and rave

Your freedom is a whirling pool

Your tumult will not let you save

Or cherish life as its lived dual

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AN ODE THE YOUTH OF DAVID GOTTFRIED

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I had the face of Jagger

The hair of Brian Jones

I walkedp with a swagger

You wished you were my clones

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My aura of audacity

My blitkrieging sun

My otherworldly energy

Would singe and scream and stun

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I walked off of the lyric sheet

Of a Lou Reed song

My subversion was complete

I was religiously wrong

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I could eat a strawberry

And see John Lennon’s face

Make a vaulted sanctuary

Of dreams you couldn’t erase

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I savored weed that wormed its way

Into my commodious mind

The feral sultry night held sway

New vices were divined

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I drove my cars like mighty tanks

And sped quite unsurpassed

Other cars of lesser ranks

Were smartly charged, harassed

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I howled in the bowels

Of sordid basement apartments

Betrothed to sainted struggles

Where masses marched in torrents

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Of rain and hail and snow and sleet

Of every emotion enlarged

All discretion was in retreat

My lava was discharged

Copyright, David Gottfried, 2003 to 2017