Afterword and Poem for "Gang of Souls"

I was thinking about that “look” I mentioned, that Lydia Lunch would sometimes throw at the camera in the documentary, after she ended her reading or recitation or performance or whatever; the same look that came out of Gregory Corso sometimes.

There’s something about Corso that has always annoyed me, beyond the fact that in other documentaries he’s complained about how people always think of the other Beats first—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs—not him—when they think of “Beat Writers.”

So I was thinking “What was that look?—The look I saw in the documentary?

Now I realize it’s related to something I see in videos of William S. Burroughs—an exceedingly odd individual, responsible for the fable novel Naked Lunch, which I am now about 40% of the way through reading.  “The Look” has something to do with delivering unwanted opinion, unappreciated points of view, perhaps; delivering the Bitter Truth to people who, we believe, certainly don’t want to hear it; delivering that truth, perhaps, with secret enjoyment.  Maybe not actually enjoying it, per se—but determined to Spit Out The Bad News anyway!

So here’s a poem I wrote about that.

“Tentative Interpretation of Gregory Corso and Lydia Lunch”

The performance poet Lydia Lunch has been called “confrontational.”

Gregory Corso, the Beat poet, and Lydia Lunch—what bothers me about them?

“Confrontational?”

As in the following, which is what I feel like they’re saying:

“Here’s the deal:

We don’t care what you think.

We don’t care if we offend you.

Maybe we intend to offend you,

To confront you,

To be ‘in your face.’”

(And maybe they don’t care whether you understand them or not.

Maybe they aren’t trying to explain—or communicate!

Maybe they’re just expressing themselves—

And you happen to be the person just now

In front of them. 

Maybe it isn’t personal.

But there it is anyway.

So there

<grin?>).