I think the lyric also offers a gateway to the possibility & responsibility
of human relationships, though the poem I wrote is about an imagined murder.
jd
On 9/1/07, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Joseph Duemer wrote:
> > I walk 47 miles of barbed wire,
> > I use a cobra-snake for a necktie,
> > I got a brand new house on the roadside,
> > Made from rattlesnake hide,
> > I got a brand new chimney made on top,
> > Made out of a human skull,
> > Now come on take a walk with me, arlene,
> > And tell me, who do you love?
> >
> > I used that as an epigraph to my poem "Superstition" --Magical
> > Thinking<
> http://www.amazon.com/Magical-Thinking-Poems-Joseph-Duemer/dp/0814250874/ref=sr_1_5/105-2115151-2458852?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188692138&sr=8-5
> >(Ohio
> > St. University Press 2001). I remember hearing the song in the 1960s &
> > falling inside that repeated question: Who do you love? Who do you love?
> > It's both a plea & a challenge. It is a moral fucking imperative if
> there
> > ever was one.
> >
> > j
>
> The right words. Fucking. Moral. Imperative. In February 2001 the
> title struck me as representing the gateway to the Hell of human
> relationships. It was outright threat and intimidation. Give me
> yourself or I will destroy you. Give me yourself and we will destroy
> one another. There may be good sport along the way but neither of us
> can win because this is not a game. Handy-dandy. Because we need the
> eggs. Now take off your goddamned dress.
>
> KW
>
> --------------------
> Ken Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com
>
> We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
> We'll do the best we know.
> We'll build our house and chop our wood
> And make our garden grow...
>
> Bernstein/Wilbur, "Candide"
>
--
Joseph Duemer
Professor of Humanities
Clarkson University
[sharpsand.net]
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