anthonyhadenguest.com -- Verse

This is verse, not poetry.

The difference is rather like the difference between cartoons and fine art, I think.

The Rhythm Section

FOR A NEW YORK WOMAN: I
(She knows who she is)

Do not, please, transplant her heart
Split her genes or change her sex
Save her from interactive art
And gropers in the Cineplex

Let her dress up with great elan
But not go gaga over fashion
Let her not have a secret fan
Who loves her with a deathly passion

Keep her out of penny stocks
Or other brilliant investing
If bombings rock her, let the shocks
Be only mildly interesting

Let her be somewhat sceptical
Of scouts from Talent Agencies
May pills and powders quickly pall
Without causing dependencies

Keep strychnine from her drinking waters
Save her from earth or air pollution
Spare her from WAP. Likewise the Daughters
of the American Revolution.

Don't let her use the Internet
To bond with mooks in cyberspace
Let her at least run with a set
That know each other, face to face

Mad dog sniper on the roof
Son of God with germ or knife
She knows you had a troubled youth.
Just let her, please, get on with life.

Let her behave much as she pleases
But be particularly wary
And not pick up those foul diseases
That make this prayer so necessary

FOR A DIFFERENT NEW YORK WOMAN
(She knows who she is too)

I'll write her private number down
On public walls in loathsome places
And I will hire a circus clown
To strut behind her, making faces

I'll send her fifty Chinese dinners
I'll send cards changing her address
I'll print her name among the winners
Of some huge fictional largesse

I'll put her on the mailing lists
Of the Scientologists,
The holocaust revisionists,
And the Aesthetic Realists

I will describe her inmost dreams
On some talk show on TV
Why she's not the way she seems
Some things nobody knows but me

I'll say she's only snorting meth
Because she doesn't want to scar
And how she bores her friends to death
By whining that she's not a star

I'll have a flack announce that she'll
Soon be marrying a rat
Next day the tabloids will reveal
It's off because she got too fat

I will insert the very wildest
Photograph of her in Screw
Listen! These are just the mildest
Things that I intend to do.