Annoying Leporello Poem by gershon hepner

Macho sometimes, sometimes melismatic,
I vary my technique depending on
the babes I am pursuing, and get vatic
before I take them to my pantheon,
predicting they will find more satisfaction
from me than from all other men they’ve had.
This is the way I manage to get action.
It’s true I never tell them I am bad,
and when they find out, they may feel so rotten
they tell me it is time to mend my morals;
past triumphs, though, aren’t easily forgotten,
and I refuse to rest upon my laurels,
but take more steps to fill my catalogue
with women who find macho men most mellow.
As soon as I find any, we both snog,
and leap to love, annoying Leporello.

John Pareles writes about Usher in the NYT (“That Ladies’ Man With Some New Lines, ” NYT, May 26,2008) :

What do women want? Usher knows what works in the suave come-ons that have made him male R & B sex symbol for a generation. His voice splices Michael Jackson’s insistence to Stevie Wonder’s melismatic turns; his sons are macho enough for hip-hop collaborations, but he’d rather seduce than battle. “This ain’t sex, ” he insists over a sparse, Prince-flavored vamp on “Here I Stand, ” his fifth studio album. “This is a symbol of the true makings of love…The album see-saws between Usher’s old ladies-man instincts and his current commitment. Two versions of “Love in This Club” propose sex in public: one with pulsating synthesizer chords and Young Jeezy rapping, one a dialogue with a hesitant but willing Beyoncé––she sings, “You must be crazy/ I got a man, you got a lady” ––punctuated by a slurred, satisfied rap from Lil Waynee. Usher insists, in the title song and “Before I Met You, ” that the days are over when he “had a new one every night, and sometimes I had two. He strives for husbandly allure in slow-motion ballads: “Love You Gently” and the role-reversing “Trading Places, ” in which he calls for herto be the aggressive one and offers to make breakfast the next day. But tension, not bliss, creates the album’s best songs. In “Moving Mountains, ” a collaboration with C. (Tricky) Stewart and Terius (The-Dream) Nash, he’s trapped in a romance gone cold. In “His Mistakes” he warns his lover to stop expecting the worst from him after another man’s abuses. And over minor chords and sparse, programmed tracks in “Appetite” and “What’s a Man To Do, ” he grapples with his urges to stray. For once he’s saying things a partner may not want to hear.


5/28/08