By
David Gottfried
Given the spate of flying objects which have entered United States’ airspace in recent days, my readers may want me to pontificate on that issue. At this juncture, I am not sure what to say, but I have a few preliminary thoughts:
Although I am generally left of center, I do not equate leftism with pacifism (In England, in the 1930’s, conservatives were, for the most, soft on Hitler because they saw him as a uceful weapon agaist Russia), and I do not subscribe to that decadent, dreary “liberal” attitude that tends to suck up to foreign antagonists.
Given the immense hatred that China may feel toward us, anything is possible. Do not forget that in the 19th Century the British fought and won on Opium War against China. The Chinse resented that Brits were makng a fortune making millions of Chinese opium addicts. The results of the Opium War: China was forced to let Britain continue to sell opium to the Chinese and to pay money to Britain in reparations for having had the gall to try to make the the Brits stop. America is in large measure one gigantic New England, and China’s anatagonisms toward Britain have now been transferred to us.
As I said in my last essay on substack, there are some poisonous vibes in the world as of late which have tended to romanticize and lionize war, tumult and strife. In this country, the yearning for cataclysmic battles is undeniable. Some Trumpers are salivating at the prosepct of “Rassenkreig,” or race war. Mentally unhinged people everywhere are picking up their guns and are ansty for action. Maybe we should sing that line from Country Joe and the Fish’s old anti draft standard: “Whoopee, we’re all gonna die.”
In any event, back to today’s piece:
In praise of rock n roll and the joyous catharsis of screaming at the top of one’s lungs and putting one’s fist through a door:
On Making a Roof a Floor
…
When Jimi Hendrix went down on his guitar
Ecstatic squeals leapt like leopards dueling for love
My brain was so inflamed
And this lamb became a lion
…
When the Stones sang “Street Fighting Man”
I thought I would burn my neighborhood down
I screamed. I railed. I severed all connection with right and wrong and Law.
My hair swirled like potions boiling in a flask
I became a Communist comet
…
When the Beatles played “Helter Skelter”
I shot up in a rocket straight to the moon.
I learned war from Mars and Kingship from Jupiter
I danced on Saturn’s saucers and sauntered through sin
I drank celestial wine in goblets made of Pluto’s diamonds
…
I glittered like Bowie floating between the sexes
Like a spirit springing between life and death
Screwing the world and screwing myself
I declaimed my dominance and danced to defeat
…
And when I heard John Lennon Sing
I heard David pleasing G-d
I saw Abraham sparing Isaac
I saw Ishmael given his due
…
But this bird has flown
…
…
Oh, to be
…
Oh, to be a mad dog and an Englishman
To fight with the panache of Bernardo in West Side Story
Assuming a stance, like a knight with a lance
Reveling in the gorgeousness of Renaissance garb
..
To wear shorts so short they stun like a retort
To wear T shirts so tight they incite a Latin night
To wear socks so high they tower with preening pride
To don the sneaker as fortuitous as Cinderella’s Slipper
..
To be as tough as the mightiest straight guy
To be as pretty as the loveliest homo dancer
To revel in cosmetics with florid French names
To scream like Elizabeth Taylor, to kill like a Marine
..
To be the heroic hybrid of countervailing dreams
To be a corpus collusum that welds my selves together
That unites the antipodes without cancelling them out
Like a ten inch dick and a ballet ass.
..
..
Jagger Singing “Street Fighting Man” in 1969
…
He looks like a gorgeous queen hurling Molotov cocktails
Silks, satins, swords stab high in the forbidding night
Making love to the Moon with the ardor of hot noon
The acid queens are screaming, spewing deranged delight
...
Not ephemeral and rather feral he can be rather fay
Slurring his words with wintry wit he’s neither straight nor gay
An apostrophe to coming, iridescent, glistening, white
A blitzkrieg of the will. Villainous, volcanic might
…
He impersonates the sultriness of the letter S
His lean body simulates curves without reserve
In a swagger that swerves to and fro like a ho
His eyes seduce you like a muse that will accuse
…
A vagabond of feeling, the calm are given a scorching psalm
An anthem of the wicked wild to make you dance and fight
The guitar chords, like warring hordes, rail without respite
The magic of the mayhem thunders through the scarlet night
..
..
Lose your Dreams or You Could Lose Your Mind, In Life Unkind
“Lose your dreams and you could lose
Your mind, in life unkind”
“Ruby Tuesday” The Rolling Stones 1967
…
The rubies and Tuesday afternoons
Of the Moody Blues and the headiest Stones
The scarlet sunsets of blood shot eyes
The love that shined and its demise
..
Weed and Cream and the jagged Jeans
Frayed and framing the butt and the crotch
The plaintive voice, the foolhardy choice
To plant your lips on the bravest boy
..
To strive to seek to never yield
So Camelot, convincing, so Kennedy, so dead
And your fair and golden hair
Blushes with red, fleeting and fair
..
That ass, that alabaster mast
That muscles your way into the port
Uncorking the wharf’s kegs of beer
All cops as impotent as a steer
,,
The sun also rises and falls
The horizon bleeds with softer reds
The oxygen was poached and preyed
Starved of love and the lustful shade
..
..
To Walk As Tall As G-d
…
To go higher and higher and leap over bastions and barricades
Like divas storming the octaves, like Stalin storming the occident
To see the antipodes of my sexualities come together and make
Holy Nuclear Fission
..
To be that singular, inhuman white light
Of imperial disdain
..
To focus my eyes like a magnifying glass and make people burn
..
To singe and make you cringe and to pierce like a syringe
..
To breathe fire and Ice, splice vile and nice, at the throw of the dice
..
To walk as tall as God
To have jewels for eyes
The orbs the center of gravity in every bewitched room
My lashes black as polished onyx
My whites, pearls
My pupils, Lucy’s kaleidoscope eyes
And the stare and glare as kingly as Lawrence Olivier
…
To wear capes and scarfs of linen, silk and satin
To eat off the China of Manchu emperors
To don the glowering crucifixes of Popes who ordained War
...
To howl like the dungeons of German castles
To scream like guillotines,
To convulse like electric chairs
To erupt like Mount Vesuvius and lay waste to the world
..
..
SECTIONAL BEAUTY IN THE UNITED STATES
..
I’m Drinking Italian Ices in 1967
Knivey shards of glass
Flavored Blackberry and Orange
As pretty as Liquid napalm dropped on South Vietnam
..
Almost as beautiful as Robert Kennedy or the Beatles
Or Jackie held high on clouds of esteem
..
Oh, Jackie, Zakleen
Your hair Bouffanted up to Jesus and Marie
So much more French than Mary
..
I can smell the French Pastry puffing in the rollers that do your hair
..
But LBJ is President and the rollers smell of Lard and Monday
..
So we hallucinated Rubies and Tuesdays and a groom leaving the tomb
..
Ashen and pale, a perfect complement for your deathly, stately face
..
Dignified and deified
Jackie, let me eat of your body and drink of your blood
..
..
The Senior Boys in Stuyvesant Science High School
..
My idols were the senior boys in Stuyvesant high school
Who threw sulfuric acid at NYC police
When Nixon invaded Cambodia.
..
I felt so spunky and cool
Shouting through the Streets
“Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
The NLF is gonna win”
..
I broke into Republican rallies and cursed Der Fuhrer
Richard Nixon
And barely came out alive
..
When I was 14 and told that I was a faggot because I opposed the War
I threw bricks on my antagonists
(I was on a roof atop a building adjacent to the schoolyard at McKinnley Junior High)
and was duly arrested (This is True)
…
And five pigs said,”Up against the wall.”
Pilloried and bludgeoned
I knew I had become a man
..
..
AN ODE TO THE RIOTS OF 1968
..
I will march into the gates of Hell
Very, very proud
Like a Buddhist Monk ablaze on a Saigon Street
Like A Vietcong fighter throwing a grenade at a Marine
..
I will rain Tet’s Diamonds on your fat, fetid face
My crystalline blisters are Redder than Wrath
Taking a torch to the red, white and blue
My hatred will cling like napalm and glue
..
My logic so lucid will lacerate lore
Of Patriots, Protestants, breeders of gore
Of Churches besmirching the face of Paris
Like pustules of death of the plague’s calumny
..
The goblets of greed are filled with the nectar
Of peasants whose blood pours like the Flood
Monsieur Marat throws back the stone
Your kingdom of Saints is overthrown
..
I want to breathe, I want to sing
I want to smash windows and dance very free
I adhere to the hottest of all of the creeds
Revolution, rebellion wherever it leads
..
..
WHY I LOVE ALLITERATION
..
My friend said, “go easy on the alliteration”
But alliteration is all the dominoes lined up and ready to fall
Like New Hampshire and Wisconsin and Bobby crucified
In the City of the Angels.
Like Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and Thailand
Seething with vermillion, vehement communism
..
Alliteration sets the stage for a sweep
The common denominator of one leading letter
Making language cascade and dance and prance across the palate
As rapid as Prussians across France
As rash as rioters with banners red and bloody
..
One letter slices into dozens of words
A verbal viron skewering thousands of cells
A virile, virulent, mellifluous little bastard
Embalming your brain in a singular sound
..
Jared Kushner
..
Jared Kushner is such a heterosexual faggot
He smiles and never speaks
You know Ivanka spanks his fanny
When he walks he skips,
Like a cotton candy cocksucker in lederhosen
..
He is happy and evil and such a German Jew
Like Dizzy Disraeli currying favor with Bismarck
His master says: “Der alte Jude das ist der Mann”
He’s a Bar Mitzvah boy with a soft spot for David Cassidy
Laden with the luxuries of New York’s rich and sissy suburbs
..
He is like Bernie Bergman, an Orthodox Rabbi
Who made millions by abusing old Jews in nursing homes
He is Bernie Madoff, he is Ed Koch,
He is the sveltest incarnation of every lie
In the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”
..
He is Kirchner’s painting “Street Berlin”
A picture in which two guys point umbrellas at their butts
So fey, so urbane, so diplomatic and deceitful
He is a wicked faggot ala Roy Cohen
He wouldn’t have given a dime for AIDs research
Jared, we will tear the smile off of your face
Nothing will be funny any more
..
Anorexic Women
..
I love Anorexic Women
They have the highest standards
In a tutu
Breast Cancer in Situ
They dance with a fever of one hundred and five
And I am but a moth for her fire.
..
High fevers, like high notes, get closer to heaven
Chaste and luminous, their vaginas don’t have a speck of hair
In their penislessness they are perfect penitents
And they slavely salute all their impediments
..
They are Spanish Sufridas, Yiddishe Mamas
Their children is their art
They welcome daggers to their heart
..
A real woman is a tragedy
She is more Jesus that Jesus
She dies after labor exuding pus
A Deadly diamond surrounded by rust.
..
..
Let Every Cup of Coffee Be a Crack Pipe
..
I want everything to be extreme
I want hot coffee to jolt me like a crack pipe
I want the color red to scream blood bath
I want a law condemning subtlety and gentleness
I want the summer to burn like the Sahara
I want Cleopatra’s asps to bite a Diva a day
I want the winters to Freeze like a Russian Icon
(Its lunar glare Mortifying you like Siberian Snow)
I want the East to rise like Alexander Nevsky
I am a communist to the day I die
..
..
A MEDITATION ON THE SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION OF THE WORD SUBLIME
..
“Sublime, Latin, sublimis, to the limit
To evaporate a substance directly from the solid into a vapor state and condense it again. For example, metallic iodine on heating does not liquefy but forms directly a violet gas.”
..
Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, Eighteenth Edition, 1997
..
I want to light fires and see violet gasses
A jubilant inferno that ravages, harasses
I want to have a fever of a hundred and five
I want to be convulsive, committed alive
..
I want to see the zenith that excels, surpasses
Every fevered fury that smashes the masses
The fired exaltation that fails to survive
That resounds in memory as a blessed archive
..
I want a hurricane that enraptures, crashes
The flaming cold water alabaster, amasses
After the floods you will not dare to revive
Arch grand chaos is what I will contrive
..
I want to feel the fright of status asthmaticas
A strangulating clutch of inelastic hiatuses
Of air that the fates will smugly deprive
End banality; let me soar or nosedive
Nice. I could see this poetry made into a book.
Wow. This could have been 10 newsletter posts. Your words paint kaleidoscopic pictures, and leave me not knowing how I feel. But I feel I know your writing by now, it still surprises me in a way that Christmas did when I was 5. Your poems are great. Extremism doesn’t quite get deep enough to describe these. Thanks, David!