By
David Gottfried
I have been busy and haven’t had any time to write anything new. But that really should not prevent me from posting new stuff on substack. My Misc 2 directory alone has over 4000 files. So here are some oldies but goodies:
WHY WE CONSERVATIVES SMOKE MARLBOROS AND DECRY EVERY OTHER BRAND OF CIGARETTES
..
I want the classic glory of Marlboro
It's off to war with a tally ho
To be a wasp with a deadly blow
A Christian soldier against the foe
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Spare me the Camel of the orient
Unwashed heathen who don't repent
Saladin's slaughters and our lament
For Crusader blood, like rivers spent
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And if I see a box of Newport
It's menthol miasma is like a retort
To letters, learning -- the mind's consort
Be off -- you breying subway sort
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I do not approve of Parliament
The whigs, like twigs, spineless, bent
Their somber clothes should all be rent
For my threads millions are spent
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Virgina Slims is a prickly dame
Gaudy and gauche, reaching for fame
Like Diana all passions aflame
The girl deserves discipline, blame
..
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SPLIT DOWN THE MIDDLE
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I'm a poet to the lawyers
And a lawyer to the poets
Severed serrated soul
My genius is too whole
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A gay to the straights
And a straight to the gays
Entertaining all urges
I am subject to all purges
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I add the lilt of art to logic
And the steel of reason to art
To make a science that sings
And an art of savage stings
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A rock and roller to the staid
Starched and suited to the rowdy
My fickle emotive spring
Spans the spectrum to each wing
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I was named for Saul's heir
My last name means free of God
Imbued with chosen rays
I swear to singe the common haze
..
..
THE FIRST PERSON
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I wanted to kill every poet of the academy who told me not to speak
in the first person
Because I am the first person
After Adam and G-d
…
My neurons do not cross
The wall that is my skin
I will never feel your pain
…
I am, I am, I am the lord Iambic
Gorgeous and gushing with reddish blond locks
Astride my steed with a sword so long and silver
Gouging out the innards of the beastly boorish mob
…
The top of my car is resolutely down
And the wind makes my hair the burning bush of G-d
And my head a dazzling diadem
A stunning psychotic in make up with a gun
..
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CURSED WITH EVIL
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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
..
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
..
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
..
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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OLD AGE IS DISGUSTING
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Old age is disgusting
Because Death is disgusting
Each new wrinkle
Is like the crevice from a nail dragged across your face
Branding you decayed
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Old age is gray
Black and white married to make a creed of death
Bloodless, colorless as an x ray
Exposing your cancerous lungs
Two legs naked and ashamed
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Ashamed as Adam before G-d
Fallen from the perch
Of Glistening, golden youth
Of Bar Mitzvas when we did no wrong
To Dreyfus in the dock who was always wrong
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The wrong hair, the wrong face, the wrong muscles
Mother Nature swallows her children
And your penis is concealed by her aggressive belly
Tree trunk thighs became spindly, tentacled and sick
The hands that held the liberty torch too weak to come together
In begging, pathetic prayer.
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Old age is disgusting
Because being incapacitated is disgusting
Because it is disgusting to depend on medical attendants who
Harass you as happily as
A ten year old
Burning matches On a kitten’s ass
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My last act of self love
Will be setting myself on fire
Extrication from organic mire
My smoke a heavenward spire
I shall die like a geyser
..
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AN ODE TO THE RIOTS OF 1968
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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
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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
..
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WHY I LOVE ALLITERATION
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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
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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
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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 protocals of the Elders of Zion
..
He is Kirchner’s canvas “Street Berlin”
A painting 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
..
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Anorexic Women
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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
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They are Spanish Sufridas, Yiddishe Mamas
Their children is their art
They welcome daggers to their heart
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A real woman is a tragedy
She is more Jesus that Jesus
She dies after labor exuding pus
A Deadly diamond surrounded by rust.
..
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SEEING TRICIA NIXON, WHEN I WAS 15, AT AN ANTIWAR DEMONSTRATION AT A COLUMBUS DAY PARADE IN 1972
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I stood 10 feel away from Tricia
And we shouted,
1, 2, 3, 4 we don’t want your fucking war
And
..
She looked like her chlorine pool
Her upturned nose said I was a fool
Her angry tears stung like the water
The blondest beast gave no quarter
..
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
My skin shriveled as she won
./
Her bathing suit licked her skin
Her buttocks were like mescaline
A curvy dream of the wiggily sweet
The damn desire she’d defeat
..
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SEEING “TAXI DRIVER”
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I'll never forget when I saw “Taxi Driver” and dropped acid
Down my throat
The morning mists of Washington Square Park
(Or the exuberance of New York's
"F" subway line)
Carried me aloft to Fifty Ninth Street
Where all the big movies played
In spanking new theaters
..
And the concession stand came from Penny Lane
and Strawberry Fields
Sugarcoated foreplay before the Fuck
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(Spitting in your eyes
Drilling through your ears
Simulating jismic dreams of plenty
A lust that lasts for years)
,,
And when the show was over
All the mannequins of nearby Bloomingdales gave me a hard on
The spring was turning to summer
Sweet limbs loomed large and smooth
Street lights all seemed to twinkle
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And then it was time to go home
And I looked for the "F" train to go home
I walked round and round the street
But I couldn't find it because I was high
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I still haven't found it
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TAXI DRIVER, POSTSCRIPT
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My favorite thing
Is letting the phone ring and not picking up
Hearing your voices on the answering machine
Imploring, pleading
Go ahead and beg some more
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Cry baby
Cry me a song of sweety pie tears
Of strawberry nose
And blackberry eyes
You have no allies
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AN ODE TO THE ACTRESS GLENDA JACKSON
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Glenda Jackson is the loveliest lemon
Her lapidary syllables shine
Soar above the muck of life
Like rarest, whitest wine
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She slices, dices all objections
With the archest speech
With grandest, mad soliloquies
All powers she’ll impeach
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Her hair of gold gleams like the sun
Her limbs are taut and quick
A coiled, crafty grandest dame
She’ll burn you to the wick
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Every part that she embarks
Becomes her property
A vaulted, vain, victorious stage
For her profundity
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She emits the sparks of life
She sizzles, yes she does
Bursting, beaming, always blithe
One thinks one is but was
..
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Splendour in the Grass
(Starring Wordsworth, Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty)
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Beautiful faces
Connote beautiful hearts
While crows’ feet sinks the sun into the horizon
An unblemished eye
Beams with bliss and bespeaks sweet noon
..
While the rivulets of wrinkles
Dissipate the Niagara of Life,
A smooth and glowing face
Beckons like a plum you long to eat
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When bared limbs lay longingly in the grass
When sweat was a snack like salt water taffy
When your clothing was an appetizer
When magazine centerfolds
Gave me irrepressible hard-ons
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When your farts were but a funkier form of chocolate
When the refuse becomes the reward
When exhausts are virginal oxygen
When the perverted is pristine
When the clock draws back
To the innocence of dawn
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The Hindenberg
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Nazi Sausage
Fat Matron's Breast
Blond Beast's Corsage
On Heaven's Chest
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Oober ocean
Witch's Broomstick
Plying Passion
In withered wick
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Awaiting War
Sparks that glisten
Bombastic Boor
Pure and Christen
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Surveys New York
Hebraic Hordes
The savage Stork
Unsheathes its swords
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Sizzling City
Ingites to fight
Ghettoed glory
Will blight the night
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Old testament
Eternal, true
Pummels Portent
Of Prussian crew
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Beer Belly Heaves
Infection spurts
The bile seethes
Appendix Bursts
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The Purpose of Poetry
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Pardon me if I reject a poetic norm
Appear didactic, not too warm
My interest is my brainy storm
Not a sweet aesthetic form
..
Oh I'll give you meters rhymed
But my quatrains are assigned
To espouse ideas divined
To this purpose I'm consigned
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An exposition rather rude
Follow the root; look at the nude
Over the beastly I will brood
Do you have the fortitude
..
Or will you simply turn away
Pretend you're on some holiday
Subsist on art that will not bray
As meek as children's harmless play
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MANHATTAN (Written before 9/11)
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I think that the entirety of Manhattan Island should be
Blown to smitherines
Everything from Sardis to a bodega's old saltines
The pharisees of the law courts and Broadway's philistines
The Holy Street of stocks and bonds that violently careens
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The liberals in their luncheons drinking champers nibbling brie
Enjoying the finest pleasures, living so luxuriously
They love to wax rhapsodic about the scourge of poverty
And toast their divine beauty when they young and gallantly
,,
Floated in from Harvard yard and other special spots
To march and charge the system with the most vile plots
They wrote a brilliant thesis stating the monied world rots
And now they feel oh so fine relaxing on their yachts
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And when they're gay they're oh so fey, fickle and feline
All the shops, all the stores, must bring them goods divine
While they lie quite lazily, supercilious and supine
Becoming the incarnation of all things vulgar and porcine
..
And if they're Jews you know their pews are in no synagogue
Their moral view occluded by a cadillac's smog
Impassioned acts for right and wrong suggest the demagogue
And so they hide in sophistry, a Talmudic, legal bog
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And the blacks, run in packs, suggest a terror attack
Some muslim manic mayhem that seems incited by Iraq
The whole of Harlem seems a vast army barrack
Committed to giving America unceasing ferocious flack
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Italians are a tribe of sorts exalting certain foods
That seem to be quite congruent with medieval attitudes
Their vast repasts of wine and pasta serve as interludes
Between the mob killings and their foul, fetid moods
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The feminists are furious, and loving it just the same
Desperately seeking new things male to stigmatize and blame
Each poem, book, contract, deal entitles them to fame
They are the chosen, chaste smart sex they adamantly exclaim
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The Cocktail Party
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They grin and glide around the room
They never tell you what they mean
I can not begin to presume
What animates the face serene
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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
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Womanhattan
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Sleek and Vertical
Physically fit
Chrome and Steal to smash you to bits
A graphic that gives you the finger
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Its womb is a rectangle called Central Park
That breeds infections in the dark
The crimes committed for a lark
Darling, sweetie, don't we look smart
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It narrows at the Southernmost tip
A Chinese empress's foot rather limp
But at the point of uttermost crimp
The jewels primp on proud promenade
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A polyglotted polygon
The earth decurved like a pentagon
We soldier for dollars until we are gone
For Bergdorfs, Bloomies, emeralds of Oz
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The lady of liberty stands like a man
Exuding a matador's deathly elan
Her torch has the air of a battering ram
Of luminous lava of maddening span
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Its crown is a series of spikes in the sky
That knive through the night with a radiant shine
With electric pulsations to mock the divine
So Gaudy and gauche, and very porcine
David Gottfried, Copyright 1990 to 2015