I’d Rather Saunter on Saturn’s Saucers
(Or, as “The Move” might say, “See the Building Start to Really Burn.”)
By
David Gottfried
Some people opined that my last post proved that I was a homophobic son of a bitch. To disabuse them of the sentiment, I am posting my poem “Ode to Brokeback Mountain,” which I wrote shortly after the film was released. The Brokeback poem is succeeded by many more poems, with varied subject matters. Also, although the brokeback poem is rhymed and metered, many of the succeeding poems are not. The Brokeback Peom is, perhaps, not representative of these poems. Therefore, if you don’t like Brokeback, read the succeeding poems.
ODE TO “BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN”
..
Is my mind shuttered
Hopelessly corrupted
Religiously cluttered
..
With lies, alibis
Am I asinine
(Do I dare to eat that peach)
..
But do I derive
Something alive
Manna to thrive
From a beautiful song and the man singing the words
..
Herds of sheep on Brokeback Mountain
I hear the lines, “Oh captain, My captain”
I hail, I hallow, that brotherly bastion
That tent in the woods, my Mecca, my mansion
..
I love that man, I love his eyes
No drug will anesthetize
Or sublimation ever disguise
My stabbing aches and pleading cries
.
Storm the dungeon of my heart
The relentless melody of the tart
The irony, like a rampart
Against what love can impart
.
Put down the quill, enjoy the thrill
Don’t espy it from a windowsill
A warm chest for winter’s chill
And burn taboos on a grill
.
The fire’s down, the embers gleam
Cold air blows in a steady stream
The warmest arms embrace, redeem
The manly force of love supreme
.
Although his steps were soft and slaked
The boots on his feet were muddy and caked
It seemed as though the earth had quaked
Our hard embrace could not be braked
.
Touch those jeans and feel the heat
The weight, the heft, the sinuous fit
Stand erect and beam conceit
Relish strength and true grit
,
Touch striations of muscled love
The rump, pale like the white of a dove
Manners be damned, the cock will shove
The aperture fitting as sweet as a glove
,
The howling night, the dusty shrub
The mean and common monotonous grub
Those grunting gasps you’ll never dub
The seed, the stain, you’ll never scrub
,
Whisker to whisker, hear him whisper
Savor the breath with the force of a twister
To be each other’s sovereign brother
A bulwark, a brace, against disaster
.
The seasons stark, the natural reign
The real intention spoken plain
Shouting at the world’s disdain
Growling softly in my brain
.
His voice so soft to me resounds
The strength, the sweet, so fused, astounds
On all the playing fields and grounds
His memory overtakes, surrounds
.
But coyotes and jackals intervene
Braying, heaving, reeking spleen
Cleaving to their means obscene
Their Jesus real as plasticene
.
The prohibition that always detains
The prosecution that always arraigns
That never, ever, ascertains
The loneliness lodged in our brains
.
Now soil’s moist, the dew like tears
They once rejoiced, so many years
Their flag was hoist, but disappears
Their love was voiced, but doused by fears
.
So do not dare to stifle and bridle
And make me lonely and so suicidal
Bereft of the force virile and vital
Silence and Bury that bible recital
.
That cowboy, that manboy, that man of no means
Exposes Pharisees as Philistines
His beauty and balls, staunch evergreens
Surpassing the straight, perverted and mean
.
I want to laugh, I want to smash
Barriers and bullshit and doctors’ cant
I must, I will, I shall do it now
Redeeming acts my steely vow.
..
FUNDAMENTALISM
The words withered on the vine
The colors cleaned by turpentine
Water comes from what was wine
Three dumb men have come to dine
.
Unleavened bread cannot be found
Your bloody wine does not astound
The silly priests have now ungowned
The pious prayers are not profound
.
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
.
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
..
THE NICEST GUYS I KNEW DIED OF AIDS
.
The sound of his voice was like the smell of a far too sweet perfume
A kindness gone rancid it was something to exhume
Sterilize and sweep-up with a vengeful cold vacuum
Go back and kill it in its hopeless bewitched womb
.
His high notes scratched like woolen leggings worn
By little boys in kindergarten, lost and forlorn
Scraping and scratching and leaving smooth skin torn
Like a nipple or a phallus plainly pierced with scorn
.
The weak and weary whimpers and Monday morning whines
The schoolyards of taunts, assaults and freezing lines
Dreading those smacks on his slight and too soft spine
And a world of gloom so incessantly assigned
..
The muffle in his breath betrayed an early death
A little bird that failed to make his desperate southern trek
Squashed and degraded like a helpless insect
Alone, without brothers, and no strength left
..
AGING IN AMERICA
..
To be aging in America is to be so amazingly single
Stooped and Shrunken and doddering down the road
Eating peas and bread for dinner
Scented by the ubiquitous kitty litter
..
To be aging in America is to be so laughingly stupid
And in their delightful incapacity
We mock the old
The way we picked on kids in school
..
To be aging in America
Is to become income to doctors
Who get money from Medicare
Which pays for filling out the proper form
And cares not a whit
Whether you live or die
..
And aging is catching in America
AARP admits people in their fifties
And men get unnecessary biopsies
And become incontinent at Fifty Five
..
To be Aging in America
Makes you spit on Life
That torturous time and the token end
When trinkets arrive in watches and cakes
And the hardest of the golden bodies glare
With an incandescence that lights up every wrinkle in your face
..
Aging is always ugly
The jaw slackens, the hair lost, the cheeks drawn and quartered
The breasts dying disgusting flat, the butt a soggy, rotten prune
The penis as innocent as pink string on a Christmas gift
..
To be aging is a Sin that G-d Murders
With a most miserable death.
..
THIS IS THE END
.
When the wind and the water and the whirling all died
And no one was left to be your bride
And your only thought was homicide
And god was a gutless guide
,
When Aaron couldn’t speak and Moses couldn’t raise his staff
And no prophet could pass a polygraph
And the witch in triumph was heard to laugh
That the temple was borne of death and graft
.
When Jerusalem is an arid beast
And Holidays are heathen feasts
And Christmas Trees are Burning Crosses
And all the world joins Hitler’s forces
.
Then Death has vanquished life
And the Ghouls and witches are blithe
The rats are bigger than cats
And the night has eaten the day
.
DEATH DRIVE
There was vermin in his verse
It will take you to your hearse
Like a castrato with a curse
You know you’ll curtsey and far worse
..
Your very being’s now subverted
Male and female inverse
A boy with pomades in a purse
A pantomime to rehearse
..
So cruelly you’re traduced
To a midget you’re reduced
Regression is induced
And the penis is recused
..
And your expanding girth
Will subsume your manly worth
You won’t find a speck of mirth
On the sordid, wicked earth
..
Under Oath
,,
Do you swear to tell the truth
To curb the tenderness of Ruth
Cut it down like Charles Wilkes Booth
Extract it like a rotten tooth
..
And tell the truth that's sort of whole
Exclude the parts that like a mole
Disrupt a prosecutor's role
Expunge the messy heart and soul
..
To tell the truth and nothing but
Like a golf ball being putt
Quite rehearsed, of course corrupt
The corporate state's good little mutt
..
Will you say so help me God
With Bible closed, a blunted rod
The prophets peas all in a pod
Stamped-out, crushed by trial's trod
..
My love letter to Emily Dickenson
..
This is my death threat to the world
That gave weak tea sans sympathy
My angry banners are unfurled
I shout my mordant majesty
,,
My lines of love will lacerate
Succumb, submit to my tirade
The hot and holy fevered hate
In martial quatrains that parade
..
A Stern and harsh Yankee march
Syllables clipped, cutting stark
Dressed up fine with lots of starch
The colors subdued, rather dark
..
A Cotton Mathered mouth of curses
On spinning wheel of lady love
The fabric's softened 'till the verses
Become a perfumed, poisoned dove
.
THE COCKTAIL PARTY
..
They grin and glide around the room
They will not tell you what they mean
I can not begin to presume
What animates the face serene
..
A smile or a smirk that taunts
An invitation or a dare
Eyes scrutinizing all your faults
With rays that singe and flare and glare
..
And they'll have another glass
Something dry, sedate and chic
Don't count on vino veritas
Lip pursed passions never leak
.
All commendations qualified
All criticisms compromised
Discernment is always defied
With mincing speech, perfected, prized
.
And hands that beckon, then wave away
Capricious as a weather vane
My back that longed to dance and sway
Stiffened like an old man's cane
.
Grandmothers, Rats and Nazis
.
There was a dreariness in the smell of my grandmother’s house
It was a moist, slightly feral smell
Like a furry shawl becoming a water rat
Its tail snapping my nuts
As I lay in my Grandmother’s bed
.
Mostly, it was a clean house
Indeed, the super was a proper german burgher
And his wife had a picture of Hitler on the wall
And his wife and my grandmother angrily grated potatoes
And dreamed of their own special third world war
.
Of Jews against Germans, Jews and Germans and our combined rage
Will blow up the earth
As it should be blown-up
At it’s written in our bibles
And we promise to blow it up as we eat potato pancakes
.
And when we didn’t eat we became shrimps
No bigger than our miserable penises
Lacerated by our Fathers, experimented on by Germans
And under the bare bathroom light
The old ladies cackle about the niggers and the gooks
.
Monica Lewinsky and all that jazz
.
Lucianne was leonine
In a quiet way
Democrats to the guillotine
She archly did inveigh
.
And Missy Tripp, that sugar cube
Sucked up all the shit
Displayed it on our picture tube
And wrote a jealous writ
.
And Kenneth Starr seems so mild
Sedate, serene, genteel
Declaiming sex is wanton, wild
Like a woman in a veil
.
My Autism
..
I love love in the abstract
The names and faces you can redact
A noble gas, I don’t interact
I barked a bitter, lonely tract
.
If you love me I can’t react
I’m married in a death pact
I’ve lost all friends who were extant
My hateful humor is all intact
.
The sickness in me I can’t extract
Doctors’ attention I sorely lacked
No one ever has my back
And I can’t change a fucking fact
.
I can emit frigid tact
And of bad habits I’m surely sacked
I have a sunny impact
But I only talk; I never act
.
DEATH TAKE ME
.
When you can’t woo a woman
And you can’t win a man
Your entire life-plan
Transcends the human clan
.
When your sex is nil
And your muscles decompose
Don’t speak to me of will
Your life is at a close
.
When all sopranos seem shrill
All Baritones braggarts
When opera makes me ill
And rock lost Lennon’s heart
.
When reading becomes a chore
And writing’s just a bore
When my feats are only lore
Death take me I implore
David Gottfried, Copyright, 2006 to 2017
.
(I am sorry if the formatting of this poem is awry and in contravention of your rules. I am having scads of computer problems)
😢