DANIEL NESTER

selections from "GOD SAVE MY QUEEN: A TRIBUTE"

Modern Times Rock ‘N’ Roll

The interrupted spectacle. The procured great big dance. The muffled classic, the universal muff dive. The crapola ass we can tell the difference from a hole in the ground.

The spectacle interrupted. The dance, great and big and procured. The classic, muffled. The muff dive universal. The ground with a hole in the ground we can tell the difference from an ass, crapolaed.

Look out!

Father to Son

That skipped word, Father, now revisits dissent in a backbeat roundelay.¹ So here I am recollecting all of this, all of this, as I sing and terminate ideas, start up others. Water goes right into the bones, Father. Right into the bones.

Famous voices come in each ear as winter comes round. An octave for each. When thunder bursts above the earth, it becomes rain and makes people glad. And then it starts again, and each time there is an accretion of sweetness.

Water flies into bones I got from you, Dad! My bones = = your bones.
 

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¹ Del Rubio Triplets, cover version of Lennon and McCartney’s “Hey Jude” (Three Gals, Three Guitars, 1988).
 

Ogre Battle

All the elements, backward. And is this air analogous? Again, a scream to be returned to. And time still separates us. Needs tutoring. So many moving parts to attend to.

To wit—I can’t work on my self-portrait while listening to some boy-girl story. This is what truly separates us. Fuckin-A right. The sullen artists are not poets, as many suspect, but re-creators who search for essence while ridiculing.

Rock ‘n roll don’t need no referent. Fuck ’em if they think so. ¹
 

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¹ Bon Jovi, “Runaway,” self-titled debut album, 1984. “Even with the men I love/This is/the guilt/that kills me”—Ed Dorn, “From Gloucester Out,” 1964.
 

Fat Bottomed Girls

I almost forgot the night I offered my cock to two big women in a Camaro, feather joint clips, Jordache and feathered hair. I put it in the window, wheelied my Huffy against their back bumper.

One wrestled me down, sucked me off in the smell of baby powder, hum of neon, traffic circle horns, the 7-11 parking lot. I slept awhile beside that road, smelling my fingers, thinking of those big big bodies, so much flesh against the backseats.

My thighs filled with skin, and jabbed the seats before I could come. ¹
 

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¹ Bonus Bottom Strophe

I wanna go back to Montreaux, lines of coke on the amps. I wanna lay down with a lopped-off microphone across flight cases, the stenciled winds of Lake Geneva—just an A and a D chord at sundown, and the sound of my own voice, over and over again.
 

selections from "GOD SAVE MY QUEEN II: A TRIBUTE"
 

Mother Love, Second Attempt

When I think of a meticulous God—
That is, the continuous chain
Pulling us West—I ask,

On which exact date does
Gladness end?  That is,
When does its welcome

Committee disband? 
Or when does it finally engage?
I think of tall fences surrounding our house—

The dispassionate lattice of love turned cold.
And I extend my hands to you—that is,
I place them around the small of your back.

Lower them, lover.  My life, take it, make it warm.
That is, we love, gloriously,
We love only our own.
 

Under Pressure (Live Version)

In voice, for sure, but confusing.

The restraint, the Bonham-Moon. ¹

The absolute thud of a second album release.

The TV commercial for Greatest Hits. A hornéd baseball cap.

Go ‘head and bitch, I say. No invocation—just marked-up, a cassette continuation of this career, this, this well-thought-over jukebox gravy train.

Really the solo hit Freddie never had.

A Muppet Show bass line, still plagiarized. Ho ho ho. [Old men’s laughter in the balcony from the show, grandfatherly hecklers.]

Word to my mother. Word to yours.²

Who is addressed?

Love be not innocent and anonymous tonight.

Be not innocent.

Love be not innocent and anonymous tonight.

Love be not a greatest hit.

Love be not a vocal compromise.

Be not innocent. Tonight.

Be not a greatest hit.

Be not a vocal compromise.

Love. Love. Love. Love.

A new wave arena, a gay ready-made.

Love be not innocent and anonymous tonight.

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¹Keith Moon’s drums on The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” (Who’s Next, 1971).

²        Keep my composure when it's time to get loose
        Magnetized by the mic while I kick my juice

—Vanilla Ice, “Ice Ice Baby” (To the Extreme, 1990).
 

Daniel Nester has been a Queen fan since he was 12 years old, which, not incidentally, was also when he started writing. Besides being the author of God Save My Queen (Soft Skull Press), his work has appeared in various journals and magazines, including Open City, Nerve, LIT, and Mississippi Review. A poem of his is slated to appear in The Best American Poetry 2003. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, teaches writing, and edits the online journal Unpleasant Event Schedule.