hi sooth sayers



Your comments the other day (yesterday?) really cheered me up! Cara, I love what you wrote. The LA Weekly fucked up the name of Lenny Bruce's routine, though: It's called "To Is a Preposition; Come Is a Verb."



I have been "feeling" Lenny Bruce a lot lately. Just feeling him around me. I found a poem recently that I wrote in college about him. Warning: there are some "pot" references.





poem for lenny



Lenny I love you

because you never tried to pass

for straight or goy

happy dumb or dead

You shook your grassy ass in the face of fascism

You did many bad things very well

and I wish I could have done them with you.

I want you to come and do bad things with me.

I'd pray to you but I think that might disgust you.

Sometimes I do it anyway though.

Well, you're sort of dead, but you need to know

that I think about you a lot

and your picture hangs next to my dirty toilet

And you always look like you're waiting

for an answer to a question you just asked me.

The answer is Yes, Lenny. I promise.

I saved a bowl for you.

You never could take No for an answer.









I have this funny book of transcriptions of his stuff--his syntax is so fantastic, his syntax and rhythm alone, beyond the literal meaning, say everything about freedom, music, awkwardness and drugs. On the page at times it reminds me of Lester Bangs, and I'd guess that's because both these guys were jazzy types. They use words like bebop guys. Plus, you know, the drugs.



Lenny goes, "Chicks are boss. Just boss boss." He means, like, well--I'll let him say it: he goes, "Chicks are always calling you a faggot. Yeah, it's really weird. Chicks are boss. Yeah. Chicks are boss boss. For every Frick, Carnegie, Du Pont, and Big Daddy Mellon, there's always that one chick that he'll pay the dues for. Yeah, I know that [Lyndon] Johnson stands in his underwear for some chick, like a schmuck, saying (PLEADING MALE VOICE): Just touch it once. Will ya just touch it once? Please, touch it once."



....



There's a whole bit about touching it. Then he goes: "We're all the same people, man; that's what I dig about it, man. And it discourages me that we try so desperately to be unique. Man, we're all the same cats, we're all the same schmuck--Johnson, me, you, every putz has got that one chick..."



I don't know about you, but to me, that sounds real romantic and shit.





xoxox

me

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