funny i never go for the
square-jawlined J. Crew
blondehaired
Ken doll (blonde means
nazis, ku klux klan, and
WASP Yale
roommates with names like
"Childsy" and "Muffy"
preceding all adjectives
with prefix
"super")
i can't get a heartbeat
at a Robert Redford 6
foot 3 hard-abdomen
broad shouldered
Adonis gallivanting
in the blonde-oriented
culture chariot of
adulation and fanmail,
i feel no comfort
when they open the door
and it is a
Father Knows Best,
sensibly shoed, wise maxim spouting
bedrock of
All American apple pie
wheat and corn stability,
no-i prefer
deep
Jewish pain
deep Jewish pain
has dark brown hair
and high prescription
glasses-he'll never
grace a cover of
GQ magazine (and
even if he could, he
wouldn't want to,
because he's not made
of the pop soda
insipidity of
the reigning Wonderbread and blonde
clones placed at every
corner for us to aspire to)
and he reads
Heidegger, Marcuse,
and Foucault
and all those compatible
with their European-
bred salty slicing of
societal convention and
pyramided lies;
deep Jewish pain
is endearingly neurotic,
childlike-pure,
and when i
stand next to him
i can't keep my
mind straight on
what he says about
Foucault's historicity
because it is too
utopian-sublime
flying over the mountain
a thousand sunflowers bursting
in bloom, tendermost bliss
to be close to him,
like this consolation-hearth
healing of a warm fire in a stone
cabin, inside away from the
attrition of bitter snow cynicism;
and all i want to do
is tell jokes
because the Innocent resuscitate
my heretofore derailed
laughter;
and i can't believe the
miracle that humans
could still be capable
of this baby tip
fragile-breath
unflinching, unmeasured
tenderness
(tenderness is the flip
side fringe benefit
other side of the coin, illuminated
moon counterpart to
screaming wound barbed
wire annals of pain
a sublimation of it-
the one
the most spiked and
fenced in
has the most capacity
for tender)
for deep Jewish pain,
scrawny is good-or at
least not large,
not having a deep voice is
preferred,
traditional masculinity, power
tools, and football play
quoting commentators with broad shoulders
are repellent,
but the most identifying
characteristic of
my idolized
(whitehot) intense adore
deep jewish pain
is his bravery to be
vulnerable
to me,
is that, to him it
makes sense to spill
all his broken-bandaged
disappointment-chiseled
wounds,
without
year-end profit targets
and all the sullying
humanity has indelibly
been tainted by;
why, he's just a baby
undefended
unbrutalized
and i love him
and i'll give him anything,
with every breath in my
body that has hated the L.L. Bean
WASP-de-emotionalizing Pine Sol
sanitization of the human condition
is every breath, turned around
on its obverse
that worships, adores
this miracle
hidden cathedral in the
wood,
deep jewish pain.
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