Nah, it should be a poem. You should hear me sing it. Ok, sing Cante and then sing Cante Cante Cante Cante. First and fourth parts. With tango underneath etc. I'll get right on it.
In the meantime those who will can listen to Books 12 through 24 of the Limerick Odyssey.
thejeunessedoree.libsyn.com/
MC Ward <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
This is a wonderful piece, Joe, but it feels as if
you're forcing it into a (sentence-based) poem. Why
not recast it as prose and see what you get?
Candice
--- joe green wrote:
> Argentinian Black Catholic Jew
>
> I.
>
> Cante
>
> He was an Argentinian Black Catholic Jew
> It’s too bad but I am one too.
> How sadly I think of my father!
>
> After Mass he would play
> Hernando’s Hideaway
> Then the Blues, then yell at my mother.
>
> After Mass he would play
> Hernando’s Hideaway
> And bitch of the Schwartzes and Yentels.
>
> Then damn the Ofays
> And, in his own special way,
> Evict some of the Yids from his rentals.
>
> II. Cante Cante
>
> Take a Jew. Take my father.
>
>
> Born in the beginning of the 20th century –
> that century of universal disaster.
>
> Born in the USA to a family of neurotic
> vaudevillians:
>
> African American Jews who disguised their
> Jewishness
> and pretended to be an Argentinian family of tango
> dancers.
>
> An African American Jew dancing the tango:
> the one dance that, above all, speaks of fatality,
> of destinies engulfed in pain. It is the dance of
> sorrow.
>
> Then take this Jew (my poor Papa)
> and arrange it so that he falls in love in Berlin
> months before Hitler takes over …
>
> Falls in love with that fatal woman: Ilsa.
>
> The rest of the family flees while my Papa -- the
> fake gaucho -- is drawn inexorably into the darkest
> of the dark underworlds that existed in Berlin:
> the Nosferatau: the secret society of decadents
> with their Vampire balls and Grand Guigonal orgies
>
> and my father and Ilsa dancing El tango de la
> muerte there while Europe descended into madness and
> my father danced –
>
> danced to the dark music of the bandoneon and the
> violin:
>
> A long stillness as the watchers waited in the dark
> and my father and Ilsa waited frozen on the stage
> and then
>
> the quick motion that begins the tango!
>
> stillness…
>
> and then the sudden violence –
>
> the dynamic of a frozen world suddenly shattered,
>
> the apotheosis of the twentieth century!
>
>
> III. Cante Cante Cante
>
> I stepped out into the night from the funeral home
> remembering
> how horrible it must have been for my father
> to pretend he was a Catholic.
>
> This explained his strange melancholy
> during my first holy communion and,
> as I remembered more of the story he told me,
> I thought back to those times when,
> my mother gone to Novena,
> how he would lock himself into the bedroom
> and all we could would hear was "Hernando's
> Hideaway"
> on the old record player and
>
> the sounds of my father shuffling about,
>
> breathing …
>
>
> IV. Cante Cante Cante Cante
>
> Ilsa said "I am IRA.
> And I think I can get us away.
> But you must be baptized
> And then in disguise
> We’ll go to the U S of A!"
>
> They fled cross the dark Irish sea.
> My mother was Ilsa you see
> And they remained in good health
> And Pope Pius the Twelfth
> Cried fie and fiddle dee dee!
>
> Then they came to these shores at last
> But the fad for the tango had passed
> What could a Jew do
> So he did a soft shoe
> Grateful that he wasn’t gassed.
>
> He starred in some old minstrel show
> Papa said he wanted to go
> Mama said “You Black Jew
> You’re working for two.
>
> Dance – it’s all that you know."
>
>
>
>
> Fredonia 7/18/-07 5:11 P>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Got a little couch potato?
> Check out fun summer activities for kids.
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
Pinpoint customers who are looking for what you sell.
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/
---------------------------------
Got a little couch potato?
Check out fun summer activities for kids.
