Make Love Not Book
Punkinhead
roughrider for Chitown’s Yiddishkeit Mob
on
the illiterate immigrants’ turnip truck circuit
wrangled
a killing but no living wage playing
havoc
with landsmen’s thin paychecks.
Me
I was raised on the Southside where till age ten
I
sold papers and numbers at a newsstand corner of
71st
and Jeffrey where Teddy paid moi in Marilyn
Monroe
nudie calendars that my Mom threw out.
Barely
survived Depression/ WWII/ Holocaust
after
which Pops moved us to the Golden State
and
there his core values evolved toward shady real estate
while
the mogul’s scion morphed into a granny glasses hippy.
During
college I returned to the old Chiraq hood --
Avis
wouldn’t rent me no car-- for sorta peace rally
at
the old corner where Steinways’gone, Walgreens’
still
there but most of the drugs were sold by gangs.
Battle
of the Flavors
Back
in the course of my parents’ Never-ending War,
during
the Chicago phase which we siblings
now
remember best for beginning during a
Cubs’ game
at
Wrigley Field,
I
became Daddy’s surrogate by favoring Spearmint
while
Sis sided with Mom’s Juicy Fruit though both cost
only
5 cents when Ike was President before their divorce.
up
fronts
detentional
as his son while Pops in a drinkers’
bar
-- no socializing, my Granny’s dealio is,
If
ya eat my food, Boy, we gotta talk…
cutting
a fool's way, many decades wandering,
avoidant
dishwasher years were the best but
brass
balls pimping women ‘n drugs was hard.
sure
I fell in love too often, much too easily.
great
and terrible, you were the only man
who
everevereverever touched me…
whiteass
banana noise armed to the teeth,
broke,
bored, foot in da graveyard, the otha
one
ona reefer peel,stead of yellin funky, laid
back
vibe of crack reality’s releasin lotta black
savagery,chords
not so happy anymore strikin
up
pimp walls, flashin hip-hopper Raiders' hats
lookin
fo The Man's spot-on product, thinkin
every
nigga's selling narc on Compton cops'
warpath
-- theysa gang but mo organized,
RKing
uprising on the hunt blazes doors
blown
off suburban albino Valley Girls
droppin
crème brûléecurls down on
musky
weed ‘n dirt…back east Bronx
hoodrats
start doin’ Peppermint Lounge
whereas
Studio 54’s left to you Manhattan
aristocrats,
but perfect marriage we both
be
snortin’coke ‘n screwin’ pussy, silk
and
satin backwashing thru cracked veins,
powder
monkeys zulu a few zooks of porn
weed
plus tobacco until Simple Simon
comes
on -- it’s all over now, baby blues…
down
south sober living, mosquitoes killing
more
of our people than ODs, we dirt poor
coffee
farmers joined Los Narcotraficantes
for
the joy of children’s clothes, shoes, food
—
please
find a way in your hearts to love us
if
not their coca…after a few years
Chicago hole
in
the wall clubs this
here autistic shit it must stop,
OutKast
gotta get straight in the studio, run verses,
remix
tracks with our instruments zilch samplers.
About the poet: Gerard Sarnat’s recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He’s authored four collections: Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016), which included work published in Gargoyle, Lowestoft, American Journal of Poetry, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Tishman Review plus was featured in New Verse News, Songs of Eretz, Avocet, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords, Floor Plan. Dark Run, Scarlet Leaf, Good Men Project, Anti-Heroin Chic, Winamop, Poetry Circle and Tipton Poetry Journal new feature sets of new poems. “Amber Of Memory” was the single poem chosen for my 50th college reunion symposium on Bob Dylan; the Harvard Advocate accepted a second. Mount Analogue selected Sarnat’s sequence, Kaddish for the Country, for distribution as a pamphlet in Seattle on Inauguration Day 2017, as well as the next morning as part of the Washington, D.C., and nationwide Women’s Marches. For Huffington Post/other reviews, readings, publications, interviews; visit GerardSarnat.com. Harvard/Stanford educated, Gerry has worked in jails, built/staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO of healthcare organizations and Stanford Medical School professor. Married since 1969, he has three children, four grandkids.
“My family drives through Indiana's vast dunes on vacation. I still go back to Granger (near South Bend) to visit a first cousin who lived a block away from me for our first 10 years.”