Tuesday 24 August 2010

Live Fast

I wanna be a Kennedy
I wanna be a big heartbreaker
Live fast and for real
And you can follow it in the papers

I wanna be a Kennedy
I wanna shake hands with heroes
And kiss the girls of centerfolds on the tongue
And die young

I'll be brave tonight
Either live or die
I'll be brave tonight
Standing tall and bright
Such romantic eyes
Got me hypnotized
And if I had my chance I'd never let you go
And if I had my chance I'd never let you go

I wanna be a Kennedy
I wanna be tall and handsome
I'd conquer the world
And you'd see it on television

If I could be a Kennedy
If I could be a real heartbreaker
I'd watch you crash into my arms
We're the stars under the barrel of a gun
We'd die young

I'll be brave tonight
Standing tall and bright
Such romantic eyes
Got me hypnotized
And if I had my chance I'd never let you go
And if I had my chance I'd never let you go




"One of my teenage heroes was Harry Crosby. He was a poet from the 1920s, and, frankly, his poetry sucked. But his lifestyle was legendary. The nephew and godson of J. P. Morgan, he hobnobbed with Ernest Hemingway and D. H. Lawrence, was the first person to publish parts of Joyce's Ulysses, and became a decadent symbol of the lost generation. He lived a fast, opium-enhanced life, and swore he would be dead by the age of thirty. When he was twenty-two, he married Polly Peabody, the inventor of the strapless bra, and persuaded her to change her name to Caresse. For their honeymoon, they locked themselves in a bedroom in Paris with stacks of books and just read. At the age of thirty-one, when he realized that his lifestyle hadn't killed him yet, Crosby shot himself."

- Neil Strauss, The Game

2 comments:

Steven Fama said...

Anybody who says Crosby's poetry "sucked" hasn't read it. It's uneven, yes, but there is plenty in it that strikes hard today, decades after being written.

Jose said...

hey there, haha i definitely haven't read crosby's poetry but i was quoting that author's writing to convey a pretty different message. i do think harry crosby's life sounded extremely intriguing though, and i'd like to give his poetry a try.