ALLEN

GINSBERG

COLLECTED

POEMS

1947–1997

Collected Poems 1947–1997 is a compilation of the texts of
Collected Poems 1947–1980, White Shroud: Poems 1980–1985,
Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992, and
Death & Fame: Poems 1993–1997.

The Estate would like to express gratitude to Eliot Katz for his dedication and assistance in preparation of this manuscript, Danny Mulligan at HarperCollins for attentive coordinating, and Jeffrey Posternak at the Wylie Agency for his tireless intermediation.

COLLECTED POEMS 1947–1980

“Things are symbols of themselves.”

Portions of this work have appeared in the following Allen Ginsberg books:

Airplane Dreams. House of Anasi, Toronto/City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1968.

Angkor Wat. Fulcrum Press, London, 1968.

As Ever: Collected Correspondence Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady. Creative Arts Book Company, Berkeley, 1977.

Empty Mirror, Early Poems. Totem/Corinth, New York, 1961.

The Fall of America, Poems of These States 1965–1971. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1973.

The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems, 1948–1951. Grey Fox Press, 1972.

Howl & Other Poems. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1956.

Indian Journals. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1970.

Iron Horse. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1974.

Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties. Grove Press, New York, 1977.

Kaddish and Other Poems, 1958–1960. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1978.

Mind Breaths: Poems 1972–1977. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1978.

Planet News. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1968.

Plutonian Ode: Poems 1977–1980. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1982.

Poems All Over the Place: Mostly Seventies. Cherry Valley Editions, Cherry Valley, NY, 1978.

Reality Sandwiches: 1953–1960. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1963.

Sad Dust Glories: Poems Work Summer in Woods 1974. Workingmans Press, 1975.

Straight Hearts’ Delight: Love Poems & Selected Letters, by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Edited by Winston Leyland. Gay Sunshine Press, 1980.

To
Naomi Ginsberg
1894–1956

Louis Ginsberg
1896–1976

Author’s Preface, Reader’s Manual

Arrangement of Text

Herein author has assembled all his poetry books published to date rearranged in straight chronological order to compose an autobiography. Collected Poems includes seven volumes published in City Lights Pocket Poets series: Howl, Kaddish, Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, The Fall of America, Mind Breaths, and Plutonian Ode, backbone of three decades’ writing.

Books circulated less widely by delicate small presses (excepting song experiments in First Blues) fill gaps in the sequence. Youthful poetries were printed in Empty Mirror and The Gates of Wrath. Three odd books, Angkor Wat, Iron Horse and Airplane Dreams, interleaf poems of the 1960s. Poems All Over the Place flash on spots of time from President Kennedy’s assassination day, through 1972 Presidentiad, to author’s meditation practice in his fiftieth year.

Among half-dozen poems taken from prose journal and letter books, one singular rhapsody, “The Names,” falls into place, with motifs from “Howl” particularized in 1958.

“Many Loves” manuscript, detailing first erotic encounter with a lifelong friend, not printed till now for reasons of prudence and modesty, completes a sequence of writing that included “Sunflower Sutra” and “America,” Berkeley 1956.

Advantages of Chronological Order

The Gates of Wrath’s imperfect literary rhymes are interspersed with Empty Mirrors raw-sketch practice poems. Disparate simultaneous early styles juxtaposed aid recognition of a grounded mode of writing encouraged by Dr. Williams, “No ideas but in things.”

“A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley” precedes “A Supermarket in California” because it was composed on top of the same page, originally one poem in two parts, here rejoined.

Travel poems Calcutta-Saigon-Angkor Wat-Japan, 1963, mixed through three separate books, now cohere in sequence.

Cross-country Auto Poesy chronicle starts 1965 at Northwest border (The Fall of America), continues through Wichita vortex East (Planet News), recrosses U.S.A. Oakland to New York (Iron Horse) and tarries 1966 East, returns via Chicago North of vortex 1967, and comes back through Northwest passage 1969 (The Fall of America).

*   *   *

Reader exploring Collected Poems mass of writing will find Contents divided into ten sections, roughly indicating time, geography, and motif or “season” of experience.

Reader may further observe poetic energy as cyclic, the continuum a panorama of valleys and plateaus with peaks of inspiration every few years. This chain of strong-breath’d poems links “The Song of the Shrouded Stranger of the Night,” 1949, with “The Green Automobile,” 1953, “Siesta in Xbalba,” 1954, “Howl,” “Sunflower Sutra” and “Many Loves,” 1955–1956, “The Names,” 1958, “Kaddish,” 1959, “TV Baby,” 1960, “The Change,” 1963, “Kral Majales,” 1965, “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” 1966, “Wales Visitation,” 1967, “On Neal’s Ashes,” 1968, “September on Jessore Road,” 1971, “Mind Breaths,” 1973, “Father Death Blues,” 1976, “Contest of Bards,” 1977, “Plutonian Ode,” 1978, “Birdbrain!” and “Capitol Air,” 1980.

Texture of Texts

“First thought, best thought.” Spontaneous insight—the sequence of thought-forms passing naturally through ordinary mind—was always motif and method of these compositions.

Syntax punctuation Capitalization remain idiosyncratic, retaining the variable measure of nervous systematics. In many poems, semi-irregular indentation of verse conforms to divisions of original notation or spacings of first thought-speech mindfully recollected. “Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.”

Nevertheless some touches are added here and there, adjustments made after years of reading works aloud, changes few and far between. Defective passages or words are excised from several poems, including “Sunflower Sutra” and “Wales Visitation.” Author has altered a dozen or more phrases that consistently annoyed him over years, eliminated half-dozen foggy adjectives or added a half-dozen factual epithets to clear up the sense of dated verses, notably in “America.”

Typographical errors, misalignment of verse on pages of previous printings, and unintended grammatic quirks are corrected. Apparent solecisms were judged, approved or cast out.

Assembled Appendixes

“Notes” transmit cultural archetypes to electronic laser TV generations that don’t read Dostoyevsky Buddha bibles. Karma wants understanding, Moloch needs noting. Mini-essays hint further reading for innocent-eyed youths. Author took opportunity to verify ephemera in his poetry, interpret recurrent reference images for peers and elders.

Dante, Milton, Blake and Smart footnotes were made by scholars. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote extensive commentaries for Percy Shelley’s posthumous collections. Wordsworth and Eliot favored readers by composing their own notes; their practice had precedents.

The back of this book preserves old title-page “Epigraphs” and “Dedications,” artifacts of original pamphlets which played their part in the drama of breakthrough from closed form to open form in American poetry. A small-press culture revolution helped change hyper-industrialized public consciousness from provincial wartime nationalist-history-bound egoic myopia to panoramic awareness of planet news, eternal view of both formal charm and empty nature of local identity. “Acknowledgments” alphabetize an extravagant list of publications that first printed these poems throughout three decades of explosive humor during which legal censorship broke down. Present gratitudes find place here. Artisans who collaborated on this volume are specified. William Carlos Williams’s “Introductions” to two early books are retained, as well as “Author’s Writ,” jacket-blurb prose-poetries once composed as précis for each book.

“Index of Proper Names” is designed to make this large volume “user friendly.” Collected Poems may be read as a lifelong poem including history, wherein things are symbols of themselves. Cross-reference between texts and notes can serve as rough concordance to the book’s mythic actualities, from Cassady to CIA to Sakyamuni. “Index of Proper Names” and “Index of Titles, First Lines, and Original Book Sources” complete the work.

ALLEN GINSBERG

New York City
June 26, 1984

“White Shroud,” 1983, dream epilogue to “Kaddish” and title poem of book subsequent to Collected Poems, is late work of true inspiration in this sequence.

I
EMPTY MIRROR:
GATES OF WRATH
(1947–1952)

In Society

I walked into the cocktail party
room and found three or four queers
talking together in queertalk.
I tried to be friendly but heard
myself talking to one in hiptalk.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said, and
looked away. “Hmn,” I mused. The room
was small and had a double-decker
bed in it, and cooking apparatus:
icebox, cabinet, toasters, stove;
the hosts seemed to live with room
enough only for cooking and sleeping.
My remark on this score was understood
but not appreciated. I was
offered refreshments, which I accepted.
I ate a sandwich of pure meat; an
enormous sandwich of human flesh,
I noticed, while I was chewing on it,
it also included a dirty asshole.

More company came, including a
fluffy female who looked like
a princess. She glared at me and
said immediately: “I don’t like you,”
turned her head away, and refused
to be introduced. I said, “What!”
in outrage. “Why you shit-faced fool!”
This got everybody’s attention.
“Why you narcissistic bitch! How
can you decide when you don’t even
know me,” I continued in a violent
and messianic voice, inspired at
last, dominating the whole room

Dream New York-Denver, Spring 1947

The Bricklayer’s Lunch Hour

Two bricklayers are setting the walls
of a cellar in a new dug out patch
of dirt behind an old house of wood
with brown gables grown over with ivy
on a shady street in Denver. It is noon
and one of them wanders off. The young
subordinate bricklayer sits idly for
a few minutes after eating a sandwich
and throwing away the paper bag. He
has on dungarees and is bare above
the waist; he has yellow hair and wears
a smudged but still bright red cap
on his head. He sits idly on top
of the wall on a ladder that is leaned
up between his spread thighs, his head
bent down, gazing uninterestedly at
the paper bag on the grass. He draws
his hand across his breast, and then
slowly rubs his knuckles across the
side of his chin, and rocks to and fro
on the wall. A small cat walks to him
along the top of the wall. He picks
it up, takes off his cap, and puts it
over the kitten’s body for a moment.
Meanwhile it is darkening as if to rain
and the wind on top of the trees in the
street comes through almost harshly.

Denver, Summer 1947

Two Sonnets

After Reading Kerouac’s Manuscript
The Town and the City

I
I dwelled in Hell on earth to write this rhyme,
I live in stillness now, in living flame;
I witness Heaven in unholy time,
I room in the renownèd city, am
Unknown. The fame I dwell in is not mine,
I would not have it. Angels in the air
Serenade my senses in delight.
Intelligence of poets, saints and fair
Characters converse with me all night.
But all the streets are burning everywhere.
The city is burning these multitudes that climb
Her buildings. Their inferno is the same
I scaled as a stupendous blazing stair.
They vanish as I look into the light.

II
Woe unto thee, Manhattan, woe to thee,
Woe unto all the cities of the world.
Repent, Chicagos, O repent; ah, me!
Los Angeles, now thou art gone so wild,
I think thou art still mighty, yet shall be,
As the earth shook, and San Francisco fell,
An angel in an agony of flame.
City of horrors, New York so much like Hell,
How soon thou shalt be city-without-name,
A tomb of souls, and a poor broken knell.
Fire and fire on London, Moscow shall die,
And Paris her livid atomies be rolled
Together into the Woe of the blazing bell—
All cities then shall toll for their great fame.

New York, Spring 1948

On Reading William Blake’s “The Sick Rose”

Rose of spirit, rose of light,
Flower whereof all will tell,
Is this black vision of my sight
The fashion of a prideful spell,
Mystic charm or magic bright,
O Judgement of fire and of fright?

What everlasting force confounded
In its being, like some human
Spirit shrunken in a bounded
Immortality, what Blossom
Gathers us inward, astounded?
Is this the sickness that is Doom?

East Harlem, June-July 1948

The Eye Altering Alters All

Many seek and never see,
anyone can tell them why.
O they weep and O they cry
and never take until they try
unless they try it in their sleep
and never some until they die.
I ask many, they ask me.
This is a great mystery.

East Harlem, June-July 1948

A Very Dove

A very Dove will have her love
     ere the Dove has died;
the spirit, vanity approve,
     will even love in pride;

and cannot love, and yet can hate,
     spirit to fulfill;
the spirit cannot watch and wait,
     the Hawk must have his kill.

There is a Gull that rolls alone
     over billows loud;
the Nightingale at night will moan
     under her soft shroud.

East Harlem, July 1948

Vision 1948

Dread spirit in me that I ever try
          With written words to move,
Hear thou my plea, at last reply
          To my impotent pen:
Should I endure, and never prove
          Yourself and me in love,
Tell me, spirit, tell me, O what then?

And if not love, why, then, another passion
          For me to pass in image:
Shadow, shadow, and blind vision.
          Dumb roar of the white trance,
Ecstatic shadow out of rage,
          Power out of passage.
Dance, dance, spirit, spirit, dance!

Is it my fancy that the world is still,
          So gentle in her dream?
Outside, great Harlems of the will
          Move under black sleep:
Yet in spiritual scream,
          The saxophones the same
As me in madness call thee from the deep.

I shudder with intelligence and I
          Wake in the deep light
And hear a vast machinery
          Descending without sound,
Intolerable to me, too bright,
          And shaken in the sight
The eye goes blind before the world goes round.

East Harlem, July 1948

Do We Understand Each Other?

My love has come to ride me home
To our room and bed.
I had walked the wide sea path,
For my love would roam
In absence long and glad
All through our land of wrath.
We wandered wondrously
I, still mild, true and sad,
But merry, mad and free
My love was. Look! yet come love hath.
Is this not great gentility?

I only remembered the ocean’s roll,
And islands that I passed,
And, in a vision of death and dread,
A city where my soul
Visited its vast
Passage of the dead.
My love’s eternity
I never entered, when, at last
“I blush with love for thee,”
My love, renewed in anger, said.
Is this not great gentility?

Over the road in an automobile
Rode I and my gentle love.
The traffic on our way was wild;
My love was at the wheel,
And in and out we drove.
My own eyes were mild.
How my love merrily
Dared the other cars to rove:
“But if they stop for me,
Why, then, I stop for them, my child.”
Is this not great gentility?

East Harlem, July 1948

The Voice of Rock

I cannot sleep, I cannot sleep
until a victim is resigned;
a shadow holds me in his keep
and seeks the bones that he must find;
and hoveled in a shroudy heap
dead eyes see, and dead eyes weep,
dead men from the coffin creep,
nightmare of murder in the mind.

Murder has the ghost of shame
that lies abed with me in dirt
and mouths the matter of my fame.
With voice of rock, and rock engirt,
a shadow cries out in my name;
he struggles for my writhing frame;
my death and his were not the same,
what wounds have I that he is hurt?

This is such murder that my own
incorporeal blood is shed,
but shadow changes into bone,
and thoughts are doubled in my head;
for what he knows and I have known
is, like a crystal lost in stone,
hidden in skin and buried down,
blind as the vision of the dead.

Paterson, August 1948

Refrain

The air is dark, the night is sad,
I lie sleepless and I groan.
Nobody cares when a man goes mad:
He is sorry, God is glad.
Shadow changes into bone.

Every shadow has a name;
When I think of mine I moan,
I hear rumors of such fame.
Not for pride, but only shame,
Shadow changes into bone.

When I blush I weep for joy,
And laughter drops from me like stone:
The aging laughter of the boy
To see the ageless dead so coy.
Shadow changes into bone.

Paterson, August 1948

A Western Ballad

Copyright © 1972 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg

A Western Ballad

When I died, love, when I died
my heart was broken in your care;
I never suffered love so fair
as now I suffer and abide
when I died, love, when I died.

When I died, love, when I died
I wearied in an endless maze
that men have walked for centuries,
as endless as the gate was wide
when I died, love, when I died.

When I died, love, when I died
there was a war in the upper air:
all that happens, happens there;
there was an angel at my side
when I died, love, when I died.

Paterson, August 1948

The Trembling of the Veil

Today out of the window
the trees seemed like live
organisms on the moon.

Each bough extended upward
covered at the north end
with leaves, like a green

hairy protuberance. I saw
the scarlet-and-pink shoot-tips
of budding leaves wave

delicately in the sunlight,
blown by the breeze,
all the arms of the trees
bending and straining downward

at once when the wind
pushed them.

Paterson, August 1948

A Meaningless Institution

I was given my bedding, and a bunk
in an enormous ward,
surrounded by hundreds of weeping,
decaying men and women.

I sat on my bunk, three tiers up
next to the ceiling,
looking down the gray aisles.
Old, crippled, dumb people were

bent over sewing. A heavy girl
in a dirty dress
stared at me. I waited
for an official guide to come

and give me instructions.
After awhile, I wandered
off down empty corridors
in search of a toilet.

Dream, Paterson, Fall 1948

A Mad Gleam

Go back to Egypt and the Greeks,
Where the Wizard understood
The spectre haunted where man seeks
And spoke to ghosts that stood in blood.

Go back, go back to the old legend;
The soul remembers, and is true:
What has been most and least imagined,
No other, there is nothing new.

The giant Phantom is ascending
Toward its coronation, gowned
With music unheard, but unending:
Follow the flower to the ground.

New York, January 1949

Complaint of the Skeleton to Time

Take my love, it is not true,
So let it tempt no body new;
Take my lady, she will sigh
For my bed where’er I lie;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.

Take my raiment, now grown cold,
To give to some poor poet old;
Take the skin that hoods this truth
If his age would wear my youth;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.

Take the thoughts that like the wind
Blow my body out of mind;
Take this heart to go with that
And pass it on from rat to rat;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.

Take the art which I bemoan
In a poem’s crazy tone;
Grind me down, though I may groan,
To the starkest stick and stone;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.

Early 1949

Psalm I

These psalms are the workings of the vision haunted mind and not that reason which never changes.

I am flesh and blood, but my mind is the focus of much lightning.

I change with the weather, with the state of my finances, with the work I do, with my company.

But truly none of these is accountable for the majestic flaws of mind which have left my brain open to hallucination.

All work has been an imitation of the literary cackle in my head.

This gossip is an eccentric document to be lost in a library and rediscovered when the Dove descends.

New York, February 1949

An Eastern Ballad

I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild.

1945–1949

Sweet Levinsky

Sweet Levinsky in the night
Sweet Levinsky in the light
do you giggle out of spite,
or are you laughing in delight
sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky?

Sweet Levinsky, do you tremble
when the cock crows, and dissemble
as you amble to the gambol?
Why so humble when you stumble
sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky?

Sweet Levinsky, why so tearful,
sweet Levinsky don’t be fearful,
sweet Levinsky here’s your earful
of the angels chirping cheerfully
Levinsky, sweet Levinsky,
sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky.

New York, Spring 1949

Psalm II

Ah, still Lord, ah, sweet Divinity
Incarnate in our grave and holy substance,
Circumscribed in this hexed endless world
Of Time, that turns a triple face, from Hell,
Imprisoned joy’s incognizable thought,
To mounted earth, that shudders to conceive,
Toward angels, borne unseen out of this world,
Translate the speechless stanzas of the rose
Into my poem, and I vow to copy
Every petal on a page; perfume
My mind, ungardened, and in weedy earth;
Let these dark leaves be lit with images
That strike like lightning from eternal mind,
Truths that are not visible in any light
That changes and is Time, like flesh or theory,
Corruptible like any clock of meat
That sickens and runs down to die
With all those structures and machinery
Whose bones and bridges break and wash to sea
And are dissolved into green salt and coral.

A Bird of Paradise, the Nightingale
I cried for not so long ago, the poet’s
Phoenix, and the erotic Swan
Which descended and transfigured Time,
And all but destroyed it, in the Dove
I speak of now are here, I saw it here,
The Miracle, which no man knows entire,
Nor I myself. But shadow is my prophet,
I cast a shadow that surpasses me,
And I write, shadow changes into bone,
To say that still Word, the prophetic image
Beyond our present strength of flesh to bear,
Incarnate in the rain as in the sea,
Watches after us out of our eyes.
What a sweet dream! to be some incorruptible
Divinity, corporeal without a name,
Suffering metamorphosis of flesh.

Holy are the Visions of the soul
The visible mind seeks out for marriage,
As if the sleeping heart, agaze, in darkness,
Would dream her passions out as in the Heavens.
In flesh and flesh, imperfect spirits join
Vision upon vision, image upon image,
All physical and perishing, till spirit
Driven mad by Time, a ghost still haunted
By his mortal house, goes from the tomb
And drops his body back into the dirt.
I fear it till my soul remembers Heaven.
My name is Angel and my eyes are Fire!
O wonder, and more than wonder, in the world!
Now I have built my Love a sepulchre
Of whitened thoughts, and sat a year in ash,
Grieving for the lost entempled dead,
And Him who appeared to these dead eyes,
And Him my wakened beating mind remembered,
And Love that moved in substance clear as bone,
With beautiful music, at the fatal moment,
And clock stopped by its own, or hidden, hand.
These are the hollow echoes of His word.

Ah, but to have seen the Dove of still
Divinity come down in silken light of summer sun
In ignorance of the body and bone’s madness.
Light falls and I fail! My youth is ending,
All my youth, and Death and Beauty cry
Like horns and motors from a ship afar,
Half heard, an echo in the sea beneath,
And Death and Beauty beckon in the dawn,
A presage of the world of whitening shadows
As another pale memorial.
Ah! but to have seen the Dove, and then go blind.

I will grow old a grey and groaning man,
Hour after hour, with each hour a thought,
And with each thought the same denial. Am I to spend
My life in praise of the idea of God?
Time leaves no hope, and leaves us none of love;
We creep and wait, we wait and go alone.
When will the heart be weary of its own
Indignity? Or Time endured destroy
The last such thoughts as these, the thoughts of Dove?
Must ravenous reason not be self-consumed?
Our souls are purified of Time by Time,
And ignorance consumes itself like flesh.

Bigger and bigger gates, Thou givest, Lord,
And vaster deaths, and deaths not by my hand,
Till, in each season, as the garden dies,
I die with each, until I die no more
Time’s many deaths, and pass toward the last gates,
Till come, pure light, at last to pass through pearl.
Take me to thy mansion, for I house
In clay, in a sad dolor out of joy.

Behold thy myth incarnate in my flesh
Now made incarnate in Thy Psalm, O Lord.

New York, March 1949

Fie My Fum

Pull my daisy,
Tip my cup,
Cut my thoughts
For coconuts,

Bone my shadow,
Dove my soul,
Set a halo
On my skull,

Ark my darkness,
Rack my lacks,
Bleak my lurking,
Lark my looks,

Start my Arden,
Gate my shades,
Silk my garden,
Rose my days,

Whore my door,
Stone my dream,
Milk my mind
And make me cream,

Say my oops,
Ope my shell,
Roll my bones,
Ring my bell,

Pope my parts,
Pop my pot,
Poke my pap,
Pit my plum.

New York, Spring 1949

Pull My Daisy

Pull my daisy
tip my cup
all my doors are open
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts
all my eggs are broken
Jack my Arden
gate my shades
woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden
rose my days
now my prayers awaken

Bone my shadow
dove my dream
start my halo bleeding
Milk my mind &
make me cream
drink me when you’re ready
Hop my heart on
harp my height
seraphs hold me steady
Hip my angel
hype my light
lay it on the needy

Heal the raindrop
sow the eye
bust my dust again
Woe the worm
work the wise
dig my spade the same
Stop the hoax
what’s the hex
where’s the wake
how’s the hicks
take my golden beam

Rob my locker
lick my rocks
leap my cock in school
Rack my lacks
lark my looks
jump right up my hole
Whore my door
beat my boor
eat my snake of fool
Craze my hair
bare my poor
asshole shorn of wool

Say my oops
ope my shell
bite my naked nut
Roll my bones
ring my bell
call my worm to sup
Pope my parts
pop my pot
raise my daisy up
Poke my pap
pit my plum
let my gap be shut

Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & Neal Cassady
New York, Spring-Fall 1949

The Shrouded Stranger

Bare skin is my wrinkled sack
When hot Apollo humps my back
When Jack Frost grabs me in these rags
I wrap my legs with burlap bags

My flesh is cinder my face is snow
I walk the railroad to and fro
When city streets are black and dead
The railroad embankment is my bed

I sup my soup from old tin cans
And take my sweets from little hands
In Tiger Alley near the jail
I steal away from the garbage pail

In darkest night where none can see
Down in the bowels of the factory
I sneak barefoot upon stone
Come and hear the old man groan

I hide and wait like a naked child
Under the bridge my heart goes wild
I scream at a fire on the river bank
I give my body to an old gas tank

I dream that I have burning hair
Boiled arms that claw the air
The torso of an iron king
And on my back a broken wing

Who’ll go out whoring into the night
On the eyeless road in the skinny moonlight
Maid or dowd or athlete proud
May wanton with me in the shroud

Who’ll come lie down in the dark with me
Belly to belly and knee to knee
Who’ll look into my hooded eye
Who’ll lie down under my darkened thigh?

New York, 1949–1951

Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City

If money made the mind more sane,
Or money mellowed in the bowel
The hunger beyond hunger’s pain,
Or money choked the mortal growl
And made the groaner grin again,
Or did the laughing lamb embolden
To loll where has the lion lain,
I’d go make money and be golden.

Nor sex will salve the sickened soul,
Which has its holy goal an hour,
Holds to heart the golden pole,
But cannot save the silver shower,
Nor heal the sorry parts to whole.
Love is creeping under cover,
Where it hides its sleepy dole,
Else I were like any lover.

Many souls get lost at sea,
Others slave upon a stone:
Engines are not eyes to me,
Inside buildings I see bone.
Some from city to city flee,
Famous labors make them lie;
I cheat on that machinery,
Down in Arden I will die.

Art is short, nor style is sure:
Though words our virgin thoughts betray,
Time ravishes that thought most pure,
Which those who know, know anyway;
For if our daughter should endure,
When once we can no more complain,
Men take our beauty for a whore,
And like a whore, to entertain.

The city’s hipper slickers shine,
Up in the attic with the bats;
The higher Chinamen, supine,
Wear a dragon in their hats:
He who seeks a secret sign
In a daze or sicker doze
Blows the flower superfine;
Not a poppy is a rose.

If fame were not a fickle charm,
There were far more famous men:
May boys amaze the world to arm,
Yet their charms are changed again,
And fearful heroes turn to harm;
But the shambles is a sham.
A few angels on a farm
Fare more fancy with their lamb.

No more of this too pretty talk,
Dead glimpses of apocalypse:
The child pissing off the rock,
Or woman withered in the lips,
Contemplate the unseen Cock
That crows all beasts to ecstasy;
And so the Saints beyond the clock
Cry to men their dead eyes see.

Come, incomparable crown,
Love my love is lost to claim,
O hollow fame that makes me groan;
We are a king without a name:
Regain thine angel’s lost renown,
As, in the mind’s forgotten meadow,
Where brightest shades sleep under stone,
Man runs after his own shadow.

New York, March 1949

After All, What Else Is There to Say?

When I sit before a paper
   writing my mind turns
in a kind of feminine
     madness of chatter;
but to think to see, outside,
in a tenement the walls
     of the universe itself
I wait: wait till the sky
     appears as it is,
wait for a moment when
     the poem itself
is my way of speaking out, not
     declaiming of celebrating, yet,
but telling the truth.

New York, Early 1949

Sometime Jailhouse Blues

Sometime I’ll lay down my wrath,
As I lay my body down
Between the ache of breath and breath,
Golden slumber in the bone.

Thought’s a stone, though sweet or sorry,
Run-down from an uphill climb:
Money, money, work and worry,
And all the aimless toil of Time.

Sometime I look up in light
And see the weary sun go West;
Sometime I see the moon at night
Go hidden in her cloudy rest.

Sometime tears of death will blind
All that was worldly, wise or fair,
And visioned by the death of mind
My ghost will wander in the air,

And gaze upon a ghostly face,
Not knowing what was fair or lost,
Remembering not what flesh lay waste,
Or made him kind as ghost to ghost.

Brooklyn, April 24, 1949

Please Open the Window and Let Me In

Who is the shroudy stranger of the night,
Whose brow is mouldering green, whose reddened eye
Hides near the window trellis in dim light,
And gapes at old men, and makes children cry?

Who is the laughing walker of the street,
The alley mummy, stinking of the bone,
To dance unfixed, though bound in shadow feet,
Behind the child that creeps on legs of stone?

Who is the hungry mocker of the maze,
And haggard gate-ghost, hanging by the door,
The double mummer in whose hooded gaze
World has beckoned unto world once more?

Paterson, May 1949

Tonite all is well… What a
terrible future. I am twenty-three,
year of the iron birthday,
gate of darkness. I am ill,
I have become physically and
spiritually impotent in my madness this month.
I suddenly realized that my head
is severed from my body;
I realized it a few nights ago
by myself,
lying sleepless on the couch.

Paterson, Summer 1949

Fyodor

The death’s head of realism
and superhuman iron mask
that gapes out of The Possessed,
sometimes: Dostoievski.
My original version of D.
before I read him, as the dark
haunted-house man, wild, agèd,
spectral Russian. I call him
Dusty now but he is
Dostoyevsky What premonitions
I had as a child.

Paterson, June 1949

Epigram on a Painting of Golgotha

On a bare tree in a hollow place,
A blinded form’s unhaloed face;
Sight, where Heaven is destroyed,
The hanging visage of the void.

New York, Summer 1949

“The road to a true philosophy of life seems to lie in humbly recording diverse readings of its phenomena.”

—Thos. Hardy

I attempted to concentrate
the total sun’s rays in
each poem as through a glass,
but such magnification
did not set the page afire.

New York, Summer 1949

Metaphysics

This is the one and only
firmament; therefore
it is the absolute world.
There is no other world.
The circle is complete.
I am living in Eternity.
The ways of this world
are the ways of Heaven.

New York, Mid-1949

In Death, Cannot Reach What Is Most Near

We know all about death that
we will ever know because
we have all experienced
the state before birth.
Life seems a passage between
two doors to the darkness.
Both are the same and truly
eternal, and perhaps it may
be said that we meet in
darkness. The nature of time
is illuminated by this
meeting of eternal ends.

It is amazing to think that
thought and personality
of man is perpetuated in
time after his passage
to eternity. And one time
is all Time if you look
at it out of the grave.

New York, Mid-1949

This Is About Death

Art recalls the memory
of his true existence
to whoever has forgotten
that Being is the one thing
all the universe shouts.

Only return of thought to
its source will complete thought.
Only return of activity
to its source will complete
activity. Listen to that.

Mid-1949

Hymn

No hyacinthine imagination can express this clock of meat bleakly pining for its sweet immaterial paradise which I have celebrated in one gone dithyramb after another and have elevated to that highest place in the mind’s angelical empyrean which shall in the course of hot centuries to come come to be known as the clock of light:

the very summa and dove of the unshrouding of finality’s joy whence cometh purely pearly streams of reves and honey-thoughts and all like dreamy essences our hearts therefrom so filled with such incomparable and crownly creaminess one never knew whence it came,

whether from those foul regions of the soul the ancients named Malebolge or the Dank or the icicle-like crystal roads of cloudless sky called Icecube or Avenue where the angels late fourteen there convened hang on and raptly gaze on us singing down

in mewing voices liturgies of milk and sweet cream sighing no longer for the strawberries of the world whence in pain and wit’s despair they had ascended stoops of light up the celestial fire escape no more to sit suffering as we do one and all on the thorn

nor more we shall when the final gate is opened and the Diamond Seraph armed with 3 forks of lightning 7 claps of thunder 11 bursts of laughter and a thousand tears rolling down his silken cheeks bares his radiant breast and asks us in the Name of the Lord to share that Love in Heaven which on Earth was so disinherited.

September 1949

Sunset

The whole blear world
of smoke and twisted steel
around my head in a railroad
car, and my mind wandering
past the rust into futurity:
I saw the sun go down
in a carnal and primeval
world, leaving darkness
to cover my railroad train
because the other side of the
world was waiting for dawn.

New York-Paterson, November 1949

Ode to the Setting Sun

The Jersey Marshes in rain, November evening, seen from Susquehanna Railroad

The wrathful East of smoke and iron
Crowded in a broken crown;
The Archer of the Jersey mire
Naked in a rusty gown;
Railroad creeping toward the fire
Where the carnal sun goes down.

Apollo’s shining chariot’s shadow
Shudders in the mortal bourn;
Amber shores upon the meadow
Where Phaëthon falls forlorn
Fade in somber chiaroscuro,
Phantoms of the burning morn.

Westward to the world’s blind gaze,
In funeral of raining cloud,
The motionless cold Heavens blaze,
Born out of a dying crowd;
Daybreak in the end of days,
Bloody light beneath the shroud.

In vault dominion of the night
The hosts of prophecy convene,
Till, empire of the lark alight,
Their bodies waken as we dream,
And put our raiment on, and bright
Crown, still haloed though unseen.

Under the earth there is an eye
Open in a sightless cave,
And the skull in Eternity
Bares indifference to the grave:
Earth turns, and the day must die,
And the sea accepts the wave.

My bones are carried on the train
Westward where the sun has gone;
Night has darkened in the rain,
And the rainbow day is done;
Cities age upon the plain
And smoke rolls upward out of stone.

New York-Paterson, November 1949–1950

Paterson

What do I want in these rooms papered with visions of money?

How much can I make by cutting my hair? If I put new heels on my shoes, bathe my body reeking of masturbation and sweat, layer upon layer of excrement

dried in employment bureaus, magazine hallways, statistical cubicles, factory stairways,

cloakrooms of the smiling gods of psychiatry;

if in antechambers I face the presumption of department store supervisory employees,

old clerks in their asylums of fat, the slobs and dumbbells of the ego with money and power

to hire and fire and make and break and fart and justify their reality of wrath and rumor of wrath to wrath-weary man,

what war I enter and for what a prize! the dead prick of commonplace obsession,

harridan vision of electricity at night and daylight misery of thumb-sucking rage.

I would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping in my veins,

eyes and ears full of marijuana,

eating the god Peyote on the floor of a mudhut on the border

or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman;

rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun;

rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati;

rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies;

rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles, raised up to die in Denver,

pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain,

come down roaring in a blaze of hot cars and garbage,

streetcorner Evangel in front of City Hall, surrounded by statues of agonized lions,

with a mouthful of shit, and the hair rising on my scalp,

screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality,

screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world,

blood streaming from my belly and shoulders

flooding the city with its hideous ecstasy, rolling over the pavements and highways

by the bayoux and forests and derricks leaving my flesh and my bones hanging on the trees.

New York, November 1949

Bop Lyrics

When I think of death
   I get a goofy feeling;
Then I catch my breath:
   Zero is appealing,
     Appearances are hazy.
     Smart went crazy,
     Smart went crazy.

*

A flower in my head
   Has fallen through my eye;
Someday I’ll be dead:
   I love the Lord on high,
     I wish He’d pull my daisy.
     Smart went crazy,
     Smart went crazy.

*

I asked the lady what’s a rose,
   She kicked me out of bed.
I asked the man, and so it goes,
   He hit me on the head.
     Nobody knows,
     Nobody knows,
   At least nobody’s said.

*

The time I went to China
To lead the boy scout troops,
They sank my ocean liner,
And all I said was “Oops!”

*

All the doctors think I’m crazy;
The truth is really that I’m lazy:
I made visions to beguile ’em
Till they put me in th’asylum

*

I’m a pot and God’s a potter,
And my head’s a piece of putty.
   Ark my darkness,
   Lark my looks,
I’m so lucky to be nutty.

New York, March-December 1949

A Dream

I waked at midmost in the night,
Dim lamp shuddering in the bell,
House enwracked with natal light
That glowed as in a ghostly shell.

I rose and darked the hornlike flare,
And watched the shadows in the room
Crawl on walls and empty air
Through the window from the moon.

I stared in phantom-attic dark
At such radiant shapes of gloom,
I thought my fancy and mind’s lark
So cried for Death that He had come.

As sleepy-faced night walkers go,
Room to room, and down the stair,
Through the labyrinth to and fro,
So I paced sleepless in nightmare.

I walked out to the city tower,
Where, as in a stony cell,
Time lay prisoned, and twelfth hour
Complained upon the midnight bell.

I met a boy on the city street,
Fair was his hair, and fair his eyes,
Walking in his winding sheet,
As fair as was my own disguise.

He walked his way in a white shroud,
His cheek was whiter than his gown.
He looked at me, and spoke aloud,
And all his voice was but a groan:

“My love is dreaming of me now,
For I have dreamed him oft so well
That in my ghostly sleep I go
To find him by the midnight bell.

And so I walk and speak these lines
Which he will hear and understand.
If some poor wandering child of time
Finds me, let him take my hand,

And I will lead him to the stone,
And I will lead him through the grave,
But let him fear no light of bone,
And let him fear no dark of wave,

And we will walk the double door
That breaks upon the ageless night,
Where I have come, and must once more
Return, and so forsake the light.”

The darkness that is half disguised
In the Zodiac of my dream
Gazed on me in his bleak eyes,
And I became what now I seem.

Once my crown was silk and black;
I have dreamed, and I awake.
Now that time has wormed my cheek,
Horns and willows me bespeak.

Paterson, December 1949

Long Live the Spiderweb

Seven years’ words wasted
waiting on the spiderweb:
          seven years’ thoughts
harkening the host,
          seven years’ lost
sentience naming images,
narrowing down the name
to nothing,
          seven years’:
fears
in a web of ancient measure;
the words dead
flies, a crop
of ghosts,
          seven years’:
the spider is dead.

Paterson, Spring 1950

The Shrouded Stranger

1
The Shroudy Stranger’s reft of realms.
Abhorred he sits upon the city dump.
His broken heart’s a bag of shit.
The vast rainfall, an empty mirror.

2
A Dream

He climbed over the rim
of the huge tower
looking down afraid,
descended the escarpment

over sheaves of rock,
crossed railyard gullies
and vast river-bridges
on the groundward slope

under an iron viaduct,
coming to rivulet
in a still meadow
by a small wood

where he stood trembling
in the naked flowers,
and walked under oak
to the house of folk.

3
I dreamed I was dreaming again
and decided to go down the years
looking for the Shrouded Stranger.
I knew the old bastard
was hanging around somewhere.
I couldn’t find him for a while;
went looking under beds,
pulling mattresses off,
and finally discovered him
hiding under the springs
crouched in the corner:

met him face to face at last.
I didn’t even recognize him.

“I’ll bet you didn’t think
it was me after all,” he said.

4
Fragmenta Monumenti

It was to have a structure, it
was going to tell a story;
it was to be a mass of images
moving on a page, with
a hollow voice at the center;
it was to have told of Time
and Eternity; to have begun
in the rainfall’s hood and moon,
and ended under the street light
of the world’s bare physical
appearance; begun among vultures
in the mountains of Mexico,
traveled through all America
and ended in garbage on River Street;
its first line was to be
“Be with me Shroud, now—”
and the last “—naked
on broken bottles
between the brick walls,”
being THE VISION OF THE SHROUDED STRANGER OF THE NIGHT.

Paterson-New York, 1949-September 1950

An Imaginary Rose in a Book

Oh dry old rose of God,
that with such bleak perfume
changed images to blood
and body to a tomb,

what fragrance you have lost,
and are now withered mere
crimson myth of dust
and recollection sere

of an unfading garden
whereof the myriad life
and all that flock in blossom,
none other met the knife.

Paterson, Early 1950

Crash

There is more to Fury
Than men imagine
Who drive a pallid jury
On a pale engine.

In a spinning plane,
A false machine,
The pilot drops in flame
From the unseen.

Paterson, Early 1950

The Terms in Which I Think of Reality

a.
Reality is a question
of realizing how real
the world is already.

Time is Eternity
ultimate and immovable;
everyone’s an angel.

It’s Heaven’s mystery
of changing perfection:
absolutely Eternity

changes! Cars are always
going down the street,
lamps go off and on.

It’s a great flat plain;
we can see everything
on top of the table.

Clams open on the table,
lambs are eaten by worms
on the plain. The motion

of change is beautiful,
as well as form called
in and out of being.

b.
Next: to distinguish process
in its particularity with
an eye to the initiation

of gratifying new changes
desired in the real world.
Here we’re overwhelmed

with such unpleasant detail
we dream again of Heaven.
For the world is a mountain

of shit: if it’s going to
be moved at all, it’s got
to be taken by handfuls.

c.
Man lives like the unhappy
whore on River Street who
in her Eternity gets only

a couple of bucks and a lot
of snide remarks in return
for seeking physical love

the best way she knows how,
never really heard of a glad
job or joyous marriage or

a difference in the heart:
or thinks it isn’t for her,
which is her worst misery.

Paterson, Spring 1950

The Night-Apple

Last night I dreamed
of one I loved
for seven long years,
but I saw no face,
only the familiar
presence of the body:
sweat skin eyes
feces urine sperm
saliva all one
odor and mortal taste.

Paterson, Spring 1950

Cézanne’s Ports

In the foreground we see time and life
swept in a race
toward the left hand side of the picture
where shore meets shore.

But that meeting place
isn’t represented;
it doesn’t occur on the canvas.

For the other side of the bay
is Heaven and Eternity,
with a bleak white haze over its mountains.

And the immense water of L’Estaque is a go-between
for minute rowboats.

Paterson, Summer 1950

The Blue Angel

Marlene Dietrich is singing a lament
for mechanical love.
She leans against a mortarboard tree
on a plateau by the seashore.

She’s a life-sized toy,
the doll of eternity;
her hair is shaped like an abstract hat
made out of white steel.

Her face is powdered, whitewashed and
immobile like a robot.
Jutting out of her temple, by an eye,
is a little white key.

She gazes through dull blue pupils
set in the whites of her eyes.
She closes them, and the key
turns by itself.

She opens her eyes, and they’re blank
like a statue’s in a museum.
Her machine begins to move, the key turns
again, her eyes change, she sings

—you’d think I would have thought a plan
to end the inner grind,
but not till I have found a man
to occupy my mind.

Dream, Paterson, Mid-1950

Two Boys Went Into a Dream Diner

and ate so much the bill was five dollars,
but they had no idea
what they were getting themselves into,
so they shoveled

garbage into a truck in the alley
to make up for the food.
After about five minutes, wondering
how long they would have

to work off what it cost, they asked
the diner owner when
their penance or pay would be over.
He laughed.

Little did they realize—they were
so virginal—
that a grown worker works half a day
for money like that.

Paterson, Mid-1950

A Desolation

Now mind is clear
as a cloudless sky.
Time then to make a
home in wilderness.

What have I done but
wander with my eyes
in the trees? So I
will build: wife,
family, and seek
for neighbors.

          Or I
perish of lonesomeness
or want of food or
lightning or the bear
(must tame the hart
and wear the bear).

And maybe make an image
of my wandering, a little
image—shrine by the
roadside to signify
to traveler that I live
here in the wilderness
awake and at home.

Paterson, Mid-1950

In Memoriam: William Cannastra, 1922–1950

He cast off all his golden robes
and lay down sleeping in the night,
and in a dream he saw three fates
at a machine in a shroud of light.

He yelled “I wait the end of Time;
be with me, shroud, now, in my wrath!
There is a lantern in my grave,
who hath that lantern all light hath.”

Alas! The prophet of this dream
is sunken in the dumbing clime:
much is finished, much forgotten
in the wrack and wild love of time.

It’s death that makes man’s life a dream
and heaven’s splendor but a wave;
light that falls into the sea
is swallowed in a starving cave.

Skin may be visionary till the crystal
skull is coaled in aged shade,
but underground the lantern dies,
shroud must rot, and memory fade.

Who talks of Death and Angel now,
great angel darkened out of grace?
The shroud enfolds your radiant doom,
the silent Parcae change the race,

while the man of the apocalypse
shall with his wrath lie ever wed
until the sexless womb bear love,
and the grave be weary of the dead,

tragical master broken down
into a self-embodied tomb,
blinded by the sight of death,
and woven in the darkened loom.

Paterson, September 1950

Ode: My 24th Year

Now I have become a man
and know no more than mankind can
and groan with nature’s every groan,
transcending child’s blind skeleton
and all childish divinity,
while loomed in consanguinity
the weaving of the shroud goes on.

No two things alike; and yet
first memory dies, then I forget
one carnal thought that made thought grim:
but that has sunk below time’s rim
and wonder ageing into woe
later dayes more fatal show:
Time gets thicker, light gets dim.

And I a second Time am blind,
all starlight dimmed out of the mind
that was first candle to the morn,
and candelabra turned to thorn.
All is dream till morn has rayed
the Rose of night back into shade,
Messiah firmament reborn.

Now I cannot go be wild
or harken back to shape of child
chrystal born into the aire
circled by the harte and bear
and agelesse in a greene arcade,
for he is down in Granite laid,
or standing on a Granite stair.

No return, where thought’s completed;
let that ghost’s last gaze go cheated:
I may waste my days no more
pining in spirituall warre.
Where am I in wilderness?
What creature bore my bones to this?
Here is no Eden: this is my store.

September 1950–1951

How Come He Got Canned at the Ribbon Factory

Chorus of Working Girls

There was this character come in
to pick up all the broken threads
and tie them back into the loom.

He thought that what he didn’t know
would do as well as well did, tying
threads together with real small knots.

So there he was shivering in his shoes,
showing his wish to be a god of all the knots
we tended after suffering to learn them up.

But years ago we were employed by Mr. Smith
to tie these knots which it took us all
of six months to perfect. However he showed

no sign of progress learning how after five
weeks of frigid circumstances of his own
making which we made sure he didn’t break

out of by freezing up on him. Obviously
he wasn’t a real man anyway but a goop.

New York, Late 1950

The Archetype Poem

Joe Blow has decided
he will no longer
     be a fairy.
He involves himself
in various snatches
     and then hits
a nut named Mary.

He gets in bed with her
     and performs
as what in his mind
would be his usual
     okay job,
which should be solid
     as a rock
     but isn’t.

What goes wrong here?
     he says
to himself. I want
     to take her
but she doesn’t want
     to take me.

I thought I was
     giving her * * *
and she was giving
     me a man’s
position in the world.

Now suddenly she lays
     down the law.
I’m very tired, she says,
     please go.

Is this it? he thinks.
     I didn’t want it
to come to that but
I’ve got to get out
     of this situation.
     So the question
resolves itself: do
     you settle for her
or go? I wouldn’t
     give you a nickel,
you aren’t much of a doll
     anyway. And he

picks up his pride
and puts on his pants
     —glad enough
to have pants to wear—
     and goes.

Why is it that versions
     of this lack
of communication are
     universal?

New York, Late 1950

A Typical Affair

Living in an apartment with a gelded cat
I found a maiden—and left her there.
I seek a better bargain; and that aunt,
that aunt of hers was an awful nuisance.

Seriously, between us, I think I did right
in all things by her. And I’ll see her again,
and we’ll become friendly (not lovers) because
I have to work with her in the shoestore.

She knows, too. And it will be interesting
tomorrow to see how she acts. If she’s
friendly (or even loving) I will resist:
albeit so politely she’ll think she has

been complimented. And one night
drunk maybe we’ll have a ball.

Paterson, December 1950

A Poem on America

America is like Russia.
Acis and Galatea sit by the lake.
We have the proletariat too.

Acis and Galatea sit by the lake.
Versilov wore a hair shirt
and dreamed of classical pictures.

The alleys, the dye works,
Mill Street in the smoke,
melancholy of the bars,
the sadness of long highways,
negroes climbing around
the rusted iron by the river,
the bathing pool hidden
behind the silk factory
fed by its drainage pipes;
all the pictures we carry in our mind

images of the thirties,
depression and class consciousness
transfigured above politics
filled with fire
with the appearance of God.

Early 1951

After Dead Souls

Where O America are you
going in your glorious
automobile, careening
down the highway
toward what crash
in the deep canyon
of the Western Rockies,
or racing the sunset
over Golden Gate
toward what wild city
jumping with jazz
on the Pacific Ocean!

Spring 1951

Marijuana Notation

How sick I am!
     that thought
always comes to me
     with horror.
Is it this strange
     for everybody?
But such fugitive feelings
have always been
     my métier.

Baudelaire—yet he had
great joyful moments
     staring into space,
looking into the
     middle distance,
contemplating his image
     in Eternity.
They were his moments
     of identity.
It is solitude that
produces these thoughts.

It is December
almost, they are singing
     Christmas carols
in front of the department
stores down the block on
     Fourteenth Street.

New York, November 1951

Gregory Corso’s Story

The first time I went
     to the country to New Hampshire
when I was about eight
     there was a girl
I always used to paddle with a plywood stick.

We were in love,
     so the last night there
we undressed in the moonlight
     and showed each other our bodies,
then we ran singing back to the house.

December 10, 1951

I Have Increased Power

over knowledge of death.
(See also Hemingway’s
preoccupation.) My
dreamworld and realworld
become more and more
distinct and apart.
I see now that what
I sought in X seven years
ago was mastery or
victimage played out
naked in the bed.

Renewal of nostalgia
for lost flair of those days,
lost passions …
          Trouble with
me now, no active life
in realworld. And Time,
as realworld, appearing vile,
as Shakespeare says:
ruinous, vile, dirty Time.

As to knowledge of death:
and life itself as without
consummation foreseeable
in ideal joy or passion
(have I exaggerated the
terror of catastrophe?
reality can be joy or terror—
and have I exaggerated the joy?):
life as vile, as painful,
as wretched (this pessimism
which was X’s jewel),
as grim, not merely bleak:
the grimness of chance. Or as
Carl wrote, after bughouse,
  “How often have I
  had occasion to see
  existence display
  the affectations
  of a bloodthirsty
  negro homosexual.”

December 1951

Walking home at night,

reaching my own block
     I saw the Port Authority
Building hovering over
     the old ghetto side
of the street I tenement
     in company with obscure
Bartlebys and Judes,
     cadaverous men,
shrouded men, soft white
fleshed failures creeping
in and out of rooms like
     myself. Remembering
     my attic, I reached
my hands to my head and hissed,
“Oh, God how horrible!”

New York, December 1951

I learned a world from each
     one whom I loved;
so many worlds without
     a Zodiac.

New York, December 1951

     I made love to myself
in the mirror, kissing my own lips,
     saying, “I love myself,
I love you more than anybody.”

New York, December 30, 1951

A Ghost May Come

Elements on my table—
     the clock.
All life reduced to this—
     its tick.
Dusty’s modern lamp,
all shape, space and curve.
Last attempts at speech.
     And the carved
serpentine knife of Mexico,
with the childish
eagle head on the handle.

New York, December 30, 1951

I feel as if I am at a dead
end and so I am finished.
All spiritual facts I realize
are true but I never escape
the feeling of being closed in
and the sordidness of self,
the futility of all that I
have seen and done and said.
Maybe if I continued things
would please me more but now
I have no hope and I am tired.

New York, Early 1952

An Atypical Affair

—Long enough to remember the girl
who proposed love to me in the neon
light of the Park Avenue Drugstore
(while her girl friends walked
giggling in the night) who had
such eerie mental insight into my
coldness, coupled with what seemed
to me an untrustworthy character,

and who died a few months later,
perhaps a month after I ceased
thinking of her, of an unforeseen
brain malignancy. By hindsight,
I should have known that only such
a state of deathliness could bare
in a local girl such a luminous
candor. I wish I had been kinder.
This hindsight is the opposite,
after all, of believing that even
in the face of death man can be
no more than ordinary man.

New York, January 1952

345 W. 15th St.

I came home from the movies with nothing on my mind,
Trudging up 8th Avenue to 15th almost blind,
Waiting for a passenger ship to go to sea.
I live in a roominghouse attic near the Port Authority,

An enormous City warehouse slowly turning brown
Across from which old brownstones’ fire escapes hang down
On a street which should be Russia outside the Golden gates
Or back in the middle ages not in United States.

I thought of my home in the suburbs, my father who wanted me home,
My aunts in the asylum myself in Nome or Rome.
I opened the door downstairs & Creaked up the first flight.
A Puerto Rican in the front room was laughing in the night.

I saw from the second stairway the homosexual pair
That lived in different cubicles playing solitaire,
And I stopped on the third landing and said hello to Ned,
A crooked old man like Father Time who drank all night in bed.

I made it up to the attic room I paid $4.50 for.
There was a solitary cockroach on my door.
It passed me by. I entered. Nothing of much worth
Was hung up under the skylight. I saw what I had on earth.

Bare elements of Solitude: table, chair & clock;
Two books on top of the bedspread, Jack Woodford and Paul de Kock.
I sat down at the table & read a holy book
About a super City whereon I cannot look.

What misery to be guided to an eternal clime
When I yearn for sixty minutes of actual time.
I turned on the Radio voices strong and clear
described the high fidelity of a set without a peer.

Then I heard great musicians playing the Mahogany Hall
Up to the last high chorus. My neighbor beat on the wall.
I looked up at the Calendar it had a picture there
Showing two pairs of lovers and all had golden hair.

I looked into the mirror to check my worst fears.
My face is dark but handsome It has not loved for years.
I lay down with the paper to see what Time had wrought:
Peace was beyond vision, war too much for thought.

Only the suffering shadow of Dream Driven Boy, 16
Looked in my eyes from the Centerfold after murdering High School                                                       Queen.
I stripped, my head on the pillow eyes on the cracked blue wall.
The same cockroach or another continued its upward crawl.

From what faint words, what whispers did I lie alone apart?
What wanted consummation? What sweetening of the heart?
I wished that I were married to a sensual thoughtful girl.
I would have made a wedded workmanlike tender churl.

I wished that I were working for $10,000 a year.
I looked all right in business suits but my heart was weak with fear.
I wished I owned an apartment uptown on the East Side,
So that my gentle breeding nurtured, had not died.

I wished I had an Aesthetic worth its weight in gold.
The myth is still unwritten. I am getting old.
I closed my eyes and drifted back in helpless shame
To jobs & loves wasted Disillusion itself was lame.

I closed my eyes and drifted the shortening years ahead,
Walk home from the movies lone long nights in bed,
Books, plays, music, spring afternoons in bars,
The smell of old Countries, the smoke of dark cigars.

February 1952

[According to biographer Bill Morgan, the actual address where this poem was written was 346 West 15th Street.—The Allen Ginsberg Trust, May 2006]

A Crazy Spiritual

A faithful youth
with artificial legs
drove his jalopy
through the towns of Texas.

He got sent out
of the Free Hospital
of Galveston, madtown
on the Gulf of Mexico

after he recovered.
They gave him a car
and a black mongrel;
name was Weakness.

He was a thin kid
with golden hair
and a frail body
on wire thighs,

who never traveled
and drove northward
timid on the highway
going about twenty.

I hitched a hike
and showed him the road.
I got off at Small Town
and stole his dog.

He tried to drive away,
but lost control,
rode on the pavement
near a garage,

and smashed his doors
and fenders on trees
and parked cars,
and came to a halt.

The Marshal came,
stopping everything
pulled him out
of the wreck cursing.

I watched it all
from the lunch cart,
holding the dog
with a frayed rope.

“I’m on my own
from the crazyhouse.
Has anybody
seen my Weakness?”

What are they saying?
“Call up the FBI.
Crazy, ha? What
is he a fairy?

He must do funny
things with women,
we bet he * * *
them in the * * *.”

Poor child meanwhile
collapsed on the ground
with innocent expression
is trying to get up.

Along came a Justice
of the Supreme Court,
barreling through town
in a blue limousine.

He stopped by the crowd
to find out the story,
got out on his pegleg
with an angry smile.

“Don’t you see
he has no legs?
That’s you fools
what crazy means.”

He picked the boy
up off the ground.
The dog ran to them
from the lunch cart.

He put them both in
the back seat of his car
and stood in the square
hymning at the crowd:

“Rock rock rock
for the tension
of the people
of this country

rock rock rock
for the craziness
of the people
of America

tension is a rock
and god will
rock our rock

craziness is a rock
and god will
rock our rock

Lord we shall all
be sweet again.”

He showed his wooden leg
to the boy, saying:
“I promise to drive you
home through America.”

Paterson, April 1952

Wild Orphan

     Blandly mother
takes him strolling
     by railroad and by river
—he’s the son of the absconded
     hot rod angel—
and he imagines cars
     and rides them in his dreams,

so lonely growing up among
     the imaginary automobiles
and dead souls of Tarrytown

     to create
out of his own imagination
     the beauty of his wild
forebears—a mythology
     he cannot inherit.

Will he later hallucinate
     his gods? Waking
among mysteries with
     an insane gleam
of recollection?

     The recognition—
something so rare
     in his soul,
met only in dreams
     —nostalgias
of another life.

A question of the soul.
     And the injured
losing their injury
     in their innocence
—a cock, a cross,
     an excellence of love.

And the father grieves
     in flophouse
complexities of memory
     a thousand miles
away, unknowing
     of the unexpected
youthful stranger
     bumming toward his door.

New York, April 13, 1952

II
THE GREEN
AUTOMOBILE
(1953–1954)

The Green Automobile

If I had a Green Automobile
          I’d go find my old companion
          in his house on the Western ocean.
                    Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

I’d honk my horn at his manly gate,
          inside his wife and three
          children sprawl naked
                    on the living room floor.

He’d come running out
          to my car full of heroic beer
          and jump screaming at the wheel
                    for he is the greater driver.

We’d pilgrimage to the highest mount
          of our earlier Rocky Mountain visions
          laughing in each other’s arms,
                    delight surpassing the highest Rockies,

and after old agony, drunk with new years,
          bounding toward the snowy horizon
          blasting the dashboard with original bop
                    hot rod on the mountain

we’d batter up the cloudy highway
          where angels of anxiety
          careen through the trees
                    and scream out of the engine.

We’d burn all night on the jackpine peak
          seen from Denver in the summer dark,
          forestlike unnatural radiance
                    illuminating the mountaintop:

childhood youthtime age & eternity
          would open like sweet trees
          in the nights of another spring
                    and dumbfound us with love,

for we can see together
          the beauty of souls
          hidden like diamonds
                    in the clock of the world,

like Chinese magicians can
          confound the immortals
          with our intellectuality
                    hidden in the mist,

in the Green Automobile
          which I have invented
          imagined and visioned
                    on the roads of the world

more real than the engine
          on a track in the desert
          purer than Greyhound and
                    swifter than physical jetplane.

Denver! Denver! we’ll return
          roaring across the City & County Building lawn
          which catches the pure emerald flame
                    streaming in the wake of our auto.

This time we’ll buy up the city!
          I cashed a great check in my skull bank
          to found a miraculous college of the body
                    up on the bus terminal roof.

But first we’ll drive the stations of downtown,
          poolhall flophouse jazzjoint jail
          whorehouse down Folsom
                    to the darkest alleys of Larimer

paying respects to Denver’s father
          lost on the railroad tracks,
          stupor of wine and silence
                    hallowing the slum of his decades,

salute him and his saintly suitcase
          of dark muscatel, drink
          and smash the sweet bottles
                    on Diesels in allegiance.

Then we go driving drunk on boulevards
          where armies march and still parade
          staggering under the invisible
                    banner of Reality—

hurtling through the street
          in the auto of our fate
          we share an archangelic cigarette
                    and tell each other’s fortunes:

fames of supernatural illumination,
          bleak rainy gaps of time,
          great art learned in desolation
                    and we beat apart after six decades …

and on an asphalt crossroad,
          deal with each other in princely
          gentleness once more, recalling
                    famous dead talks of other cities.

The windshield’s full of tears,
          rain wets our naked breasts,
          we kneel together in the shade
                    amid the traffic of night in paradise

and now renew the solitary vow
          we made each other take
          in Texas, once:
                    I can’t inscribe here… .

• • • • • •
• • • • • •

How many Saturday nights will be
          made drunken by this legend?
          How will young Denver come to mourn
                    her forgotten sexual angel?

How many boys will strike the black piano
          in imitation of the excess of a native saint?
          Or girls fall wanton under his spectre in the high
                    schools of melancholy night?

While all the time in Eternity
          in the wan light of this poem’s radio
          we’ll sit behind forgotten shades
                    hearkening the lost jazz of all Saturdays.

Neal, we’ll be real heroes now
          in a war between our cocks and time:
          let’s be the angels of the world’s desire
                    and take the world to bed with us before we die.

Sleeping alone, or with companion,
          girl or fairy sheep or dream,
          I’ll fail of lacklove, you, satiety:
                    all men fall, our fathers fell before,

but resurrecting that lost flesh
          is but a moment’s work of mind:
          an ageless monument to love
                    in the imagination:

memorial built out of our own bodies
          consumed by the invisible poem—
          We’ll shudder in Denver and endure
                    though blood and wrinkles blind our eyes.

So this Green Automobile:
          I give you in flight
          a present, a present
                    from my imagination.

We will go riding
          over the Rockies,
          we’ll go on riding
                    all night long until dawn,

then back to your railroad, the SP
          your house and your children
          and broken leg destiny
                    you’ll ride down the plains

in the morning: and back
          to my visions, my office
          and eastern apartment
                    I’ll return to New York.

New York, May 22–25, 1953

An Asphodel

O dear sweet rosy
          unattainable desire
… how sad, no way
          to change the mad
cultivated asphodel, the
          visible reality …

and skin’s appalling
          petals—how inspired
to be so lying in the living
          room drunk naked
and dreaming, in the absence
          of electricity …
over and over eating the low root
          of the asphodel,
gray fate …

          rolling in generation
on the flowery couch
          as on a bank in Arden—
my only rose tonite’s the treat
          of my own nudity.

Fall 1953

My Alba

Now that I’ve wasted
five years in Manhattan
life decaying
talent a blank

talking disconnected
patient and mental
sliderule and number
machine on a desk

autographed triplicate
synopsis and taxes
obedient prompt
poorly paid

stayed on the market
youth of my twenties
fainted in offices
wept on typewriters

deceived multitudes
in vast conspiracies
deodorant battleships
serious business industry

every six weeks whoever
drank my blood bank
innocent evil now
part of my system

five years unhappy labor
22 to 27 working
not a dime in the bank
to show for it anyway

dawn breaks it’s only the sun
the East smokes O my bedroom
I am damned to Hell what
alarmclock is ringing

New York, 1953

Sakyamuni Coming Out from the Mountain

Liang Kai, Southern Sung

He drags his bare feet
          out of a cave
                    under a tree,
eyebrows
          grown long with weeping
                    and hooknosed woe,
in ragged soft robes
          wearing a fine beard,
                    unhappy hands
clasped to his naked breast—
          humility is beatness
                    humility is beatness—
faltering
          into the bushes by a stream,
                    all things inanimate
but his intelligence—
          stands upright there
                    tho trembling:
Arhat
          who sought Heaven
                    under a mountain of stone,
sat thinking
          till he realized
                    the land of blessedness exists
in the imagination—
          the flash come:
                    empty mirror—
how painful to be born again
          wearing a fine beard,
                    reentering the world
a bitter wreck of a sage:
          earth before him his only path.
                    We can see his soul,
he knows nothing
          like a god:
                    shaken
meek wretch—
          humility is beatness
                    before the absolute World.

New York Public Library, 1953

Havana 1953

I
The night café—4 A.M.
     Cuba Libre 20c:
          white tiled squares,
triangular neon lights,
     long wooden bar on one side,
          a great delicatessen booth
on the other facing the street.
     In the center
          among the great city midnight drinkers,
by Aldama Palace
     on Gómez corner,
          white men and women
with standing drums,
     mariachis, voices, guitars—
          drumming on tables,
knives on bottles,
     banging on the floor
          and on each other,
with wooden clacks,
     whistling, howling,
          fat women in strapless silk.

Cop talking to the fat-nosed girl
     in a flashy black dress.
          In walks a weird Cézanne
vision of the nowhere hip Cuban:
     tall, thin, check gray suit,
          gray felt shoes,
blaring gambler’s hat,
     Cab Calloway pimp’s mustachio
          —it comes down to a point in the center—
rushing up generations late talking Cuban,
     pointing a gold-ringed finger
          up toward the yellowed ceiling,
other cigarette hand pointing
     stiff-armed down at his side,
          effeminate:—he sees the cop—
they rush together—they’re embracing
     like long lost brothers—
          fatnose forgotten.

Delicate chords
     from the negro guitarino
          —singers at El Rancho Grande,
drunken burlesque
     screams of agony,
          VIVA JALISCO!
I eat a catfish sandwich
     with onions and red sauce
          20¢.

II
A truly romantic spot,
     more guitars, Columbus Square
          across from Columbus Cathedral
—I’m in the Paris Restaurant
     adjacent, best in town,
          Cuba Libres 30¢—
weatherbeaten tropical antiquity,
     as if rock decayed,
          unlike the pure
Chinese drummers of black stone
     whose polished harmony can still be heard
          (Procession of Musicians) at the Freer,
this with its blunt cornucopias and horns
     of conquest made of stone—
          a great dumb rotting church.

Night, lights from windows,
     high stone balconies
          on the antique square,
green rooms
     paled by fluorescent houselighting,
          a modern convenience.

I feel rotten.
     I would sit down with my servants and be dumb.
          I spent too much money.
White electricity
     in the gaslamp fixtures of the alley.
          Bullet holes and nails in the stone wall.
The worried headwaiter
     standing amid the potted palms in cans
          in the fifteen-foot wooden door looking at me.
Mariachi harmonica artists inside
     getting around to Banjo on My Knee yet.
          They dress in wornout sharpie clothes.

Ancient streetlights down the narrow Calle I face,
     the arch, the square,
          palms, drunkenness, solitude;
voices across the street,
     baby wail, girl’s squeak,
          waiters nudging each other,
grumble and cackle of young boys’ laughter
     in streetcorner waits,
          perro barking off-stage,
baby strangling again,
     banjo and harmonica,
          auto rattle and a cool breeze—

Sudden paranoid notion the waiters are watching me:
     Well they might,
          four gathered in the doorway
and I alone at a table
     on the patio in the dark
          observing the square, drunk.
25¢ for them
     and I asked for “Jalisco”—
          at the end of the song
oxcart rolls by
     obtruding its wheels
          o’er the music o’ the night.

Christmas 1953

Green Valentine Blues

Green Valentine Blues

I went in the forest to look for a sign
Fortune to tell and thought to refine;
My green valentine, my green valentine,
What do I know of my green valentine?

I found a strange wild leaf on a vine
Shaped like a heart and as green as was mine,
My green valentine, my green valentine,
How did I use my green valentine?

Bodies I’ve known and visions I’ve seen,
Leaves that I gathered as I gather this green
Valentine, valentine, valentine, valentine;
Thus did I use my green valentine.

Madhouse and jailhouses where I shined
Empty apartment beds where I pined,
O desolate rooms! My green valentine,
Where is the heart in which you were outlined?

Souls and nights and dollars and wine,
Old love and remembrance—I resign
All cities, all jazz, all echoes of Time,
But what shall I do with my green valentine?

Much have I seen, and much am I blind,
But none other than I has a leaf of this kind.
Where shall I send you, to what knowing mind,
My green valentine, my green valentine?

Yesterday’s love, tomorrow’s more fine?
All tonight’s sadness in your design.
What does this mean, my green valentine?
Regret, O regret, my green valentine.

Chiapas, 1954

Siesta in Xbalba
AND
Return to the States

For Karena Shields

I
Late sun opening the book,
          blank page like light,
invisible words unscrawled,
          impossible syntax
of apocalypse—
          Uxmal: Noble Ruins
No construction—

          let the mind fall down.

—One could pass valuable months
and years perhaps a lifetime
doing nothing but lying in a hammock
reading prose with the white doves
          copulating underneath
and monkeys barking in the interior
          of the mountain
and I have succumbed to this
          temptation—

‘They go mad in the Selva—’
          the madman read
and laughed in his hammock

          eyes watching me:
unease not of the jungle
          the poor dear,
can tire one—
          all that mud
and all those bugs …
          ugh… .

Dreaming back I saw
an eternal kodachrome
souvenir of a gathering
of souls at a party,
crowded in an oval flash:
cigarettes, suggestions,
laughter in drunkenness,
broken sweet conversation,
acquaintance in the halls,
faces posed together,
stylized gestures,
odd familiar visages
and singular recognitions
that registered indifferent
greeting across time:
Anson reading Horace
with a rolling head,
white-handed Hohnsbean
camping gravely
with an absent glance,
bald Kingsland drinking
out of a huge glass,
Dusty in a party dress,
Durgin in white shoes
gesturing from a chair,
Keck in a corner waiting
for subterranean music,
Helen Parker lifting
her hands in surprise:
all posturing in one frame,
superficially gay
or tragic as may be,
illumined with the fatal
character and intelligent
actions of their lives.

And I in a concrete room
          above the abandoned
labyrinth of Palenque
          measuring my fate,
wandering solitary in the wild
          —blinking singleminded
at a bleak idea—
          until exhausted with
its action and contemplation
          my soul might shatter
at one primal moment’s
          sensation of the vast
movement of divinity.

As I leaned against a tree
          inside the forest
expiring of self-begotten love,
I looked up at the stars absently,
          as if looking for
something else in the blue night
          through the boughs,
and for a moment saw myself
          leaning against a tree …

… back there the noise of a great party
          in the apartments of New York,
half-created paintings on the walls, fame,
          cocksucking and tears,
money and arguments of great affairs,
          the culture of my generation …

          my own crude night imaginings,
my own crude soul notes taken down
          in moments of isolation, dreams,
piercings, sequences of nocturnal thought
          and primitive illuminations

—uncanny feeling the white cat
          sleeping on the table
will open its eyes in a moment
          and be looking at me—

One might sit in this Chiapas
recording the apparitions in the field
          visible from a hammock
looking out across the shadow of the pasture
in all the semblance of Eternity

          … a dwarfed thatch roof
down in the grass in a hollow slope
under the tall crowd of vegetation
          waiting at the wild edge:
the long shade of the mountain beyond
          in the near distance,
its individual hairline of trees
traced fine and dark along the ridge
          against the transparent sky light,
rifts and holes in the blue air
          and amber brightenings of clouds
disappearing down the other side
          into the South …

          palms with lethargic feelers
rattling in presage of rain,
          shifting their fronds
in the direction of the balmy wind,
          monstrous animals
sprayed up out of the ground
          settling and unsettling
as in water …
          and later in the night
a moment of premonition
when the plenilunar cloudfilled sky
          is still and small.

So spent a night
          with drug and hammock
at Chichén Itzá on the Castle:—

          I can see the moon
moving over the edge of the night forest
          and follow its destination
through the clear dimensions of the sky
          from end to end of the dark
circular horizon.

          High dim stone portals,
entablatures of illegible scripture,
bas-reliefs of unknown perceptions:
          and now the flicker of my lamp
and smell of kerosene on dust-
          strewn floor where ant wends
its nightly ritual way toward great faces
          worn down by rain.
In front of me a deathshead
          half a thousand years old
—and have seen cocks a thousand
old grown over with moss and batshit
          stuck out of the wall
in a dripping vaulted house of rock—
          but deathshead’s here
on portal still and thinks its way
          through centuries the thought
of the same night in which I sit
          in skully meditation
—sat in many times before by
          artisan other than me
until his image of ghostly change
          appeared unalterable—
but now his fine thought’s vaguer
          than my dream of him:
and only the crude skull figurement’s
          gaunt insensible glare is left
with broken plumes of sensation,
headdresses of indecipherable intellect
          scattered in the madness of oblivion
to holes and notes of elemental stone,
blind face of animal transcendency
          over the sacred ruin of the world
dissolving into the sunless wall of a blackened room
          on a time-rude pyramid rebuilt
          in the bleak flat night of Yucatán
where I come with my own mad mind to study
          alien hieroglyphs of Eternity.

A creak in the rooms scared me.

Some sort of bird, vampire or swallow,
          flees with little paper wingflap
around the summit in its own air unconcerned
          with the great stone tree I perch on.

          Continual metallic
whirr of chicharras,
          then lesser chirps
of cricket: 5 blasts
          of the leg whistle.
The creak of an opening
          door in the forest,
some sort of weird birdsong
          or reptile croak.

My hat woven of henequen
          on the stone floor
as a leaf on the waters,
          as perishable;
my candle wavers continuously
          and will go out.

Pale Uxmal,
          unhistoric, like a dream,
Tulum shimmering on the coast in ruins;
Chichén Itzá naked
          constructed on a plain;
Palenque, broken chapels in the green
          basement of a mount;
lone Kabah by the highway;
          Piedras Negras buried again
by dark archaeologists;
          Yaxchilan
resurrected in the wild,
and all the limbo of Xbalba still unknown—

          floors under roofcomb of branch,
foundation to ornament
          tumbled to the flowers,
pyramids and stairways
          raced with vine,
limestone corbels
          down in the river of trees,
pillars and corridors
          sunken under the flood of years:

Time’s slow wall overtopping
          all that firmament of mind,
as if a shining waterfall of leaves and rain
were built down solid from the endless sky
          through which no thought can pass.
A great red fat rooster
mounted on a tree stump
in the green afternoon,
the ego of the very fields,
screams in the holy sunlight!

          —was looking back
with eyes shut to
          where they crawled
like ants on brown old temples
          building their minute ruins
and disappearing into the wild
          leaving many mysteries
of deathly volition
          to be divined.

I alone know the great crystal door
          to the House of Night,
a legend of centuries
          —I and a few Indians.

And had I mules and money I could find
          the Cave of Amber
and the Cave of Gold
          rumored of the cliffs of Tumbala.

I found the face of one
          of the Nine Guardians of the Night
hidden in a mahogany hut
          in the Area of Lost Souls
—first relic of kind for that place.
And I found as well a green leaf
          shaped like a human heart;
but to whom shall I send this
          anachronistic valentine?

Yet these ruins so much
          woke me to nostalgia
for the classic stations
          of the earth,
the ancient continent
          I have not seen
and the few years
          of memory left
before the ultimate night
          of war—

As if these ruins were not enough,
          as if man could go
no further before heaven
          till he exhausted
the physical round
          of his own mortality
in the obscure cities
          hidden in the aging world

… the few actual
          ecstatic conscious souls
certain to be found,
          familiars …
returning after years
          to my own scene
transfigured:
          to hurry change
to hurry the years
          bring me to my fate.

So I dream nightly of an embarkation,
          captains, captains,
iron passageways, cabin lights,
          Brooklyn across the waters,
the great dull boat, visitors, farewells,
          the blurred vast sea—
one trip a lifetime’s loss or gain:

as Europe is my own imagination
          —many shall see her,
          many shall not—
though it’s only the old familiar world
and not some abstract mystical dream.

And in a moment of previsioning sleep
          I see that continent in rain,
black streets, old night, a
          fading monument…
And a long journey unaccomplished
          yet, on antique seas
rolling in gray barren dunes under
          the world’s waste of light
toward ports of childish geography
          the rusty ship will
harbor in …

What nights might I not see
          penniless among the Arab
mysteries of dirty towns around
          the casbahs of the docks?
Clay paths, mud walls,
          the smell of green cigarettes,
creosote and rank salt water—
          dark structures overhead,
shapes of machinery and facade
          of hull: and a bar lamp
burning in the wooden shack
          across from the dim
mountain of sulphur on the pier.

          Toward what city
will I travel? What wild houses
          do I go to occupy?
What vagrant rooms and streets
          and lights in the long night
urge my expectation? What genius
          of sensation in ancient
halls? what jazz beyond jazz
          in future blue saloons?
what love in the cafés of God?

I thought, five years ago
          sitting in my apartment,
my eyes were opened for an hour
          seeing in dreadful ecstasy
the motionless buildings
          of New York rotting
under the tides of Heaven.

There is a god
dying in America
already created
in the imagination of men
made palpable
for adoration:
there is an inner
anterior image
of divinity
beckoning me out
to pilgrimage.

O future, unimaginable God.

Finca Tacalapan de San
Leandro, Palenque,
Chiapas, Mexico 1954–San Francisco 1955

II

Jump in time
          to the immediate future,
another poem:

          return to the old land
penniless and with
          a disconnected manuscript,
the recollection of a few
          sensations, beginning:

logboat down Río Michol
          under plantain
and drifting trees
          to the railroad,

          darkness on the sea
looking toward the stations
          of the classic world—

another image descending
          in white mist
down the lunar highway
          at dawn, above
Lake Catemaco on the bus
          —it woke me up—
the far away likeness
          of a heavenly file
of female saints
          stepping upward
on miniature arches
          of a gold stairway
into the starry sky,
          the thousands of little
saintesses in blue hoods
          looking out at me
and beckoning:
          SALVATION!
          It’s true,
simple as in the image.

          Then the mummies
in their Pantheon
          at Guanajuato—
a city of Cortesian
          mines in the first
crevasse of the Sierras,
          where I rested—

for I longed to see their
          faces before I left:
these weren’t mythical rock
          images, tho stone
—limestone effigies out
          of the grave, remains
of the fatal character—

newly resurrected,
          grasping their bodies
with stiff arms, in soiled
          funeral clothes;
twisted, knock-kneed,
          like burning
screaming lawyers—
what hallucinations
          of the nerves?—

indecipherable-sexed;
          one death-man had
raised up his arms
          to cover his eyes,
significant timeless
          reflex in sepulchre:

apparitions of immortality
          consumed inward,
waiting openmouthed
          in the fireless darkness.
Nearby, stacked symmetrically,
          a skullbone wall ending
the whitewashed corridor
          under the graveyard
—foetid smell reminiscent
          of sperm and drunkenness—
the skulls empty and fragile,
          numerous as shells,
—so much life passed through
          this town …

The problem is isolation
          —there in the grave
or here in oblivion of light.

          Of eternity we have
a numbered score of years
          and fewer tender moments
—one moment of tenderness
          and a year of intelligence
and nerves: one moment of pure
          bodily tenderness—
I could dismiss Allen with grim
          pleasure.

Reminder: I knelt in my room
          on the patio at San Miguel
at the keyhole: 2 A.M.
          The old woman lit a candle.
Two young men and their girls
          waited before the portal,
news from the street. She
          changed the linen, smiling.

What joy! The nakedness!
          They dance! They talk
and simper before the door,
          they lean on a leg,
hand on a hip, and posture,
          nudity in their hearts,
they clap a hand to head
          and whirl and enter,
pushing each other,
          happily, happily,
to a moment of love… .

What solitude I’ve
          finally inherited.

          Afterward fifteen hours
on rubbled single lane,
          broken bus rocking along
the maws and continental crags
          of mountain afternoon,
the distant valleys fading,
          regnant peaks beyond
to days on the Pacific
          where I bathed—

then riding, fitful,
          gazing, sleeping
through the desert
          beside a wetback
sad-faced old-man-
          youth, exhausted
to Mexicali

          to stand
near one night’s dark shack
          on the garbage cliffs
of bordertown overhanging
          the tin house poor
man’s village below,
          a last night’s
timewracked brooding
          and farewell,
the end of a trip.

—Returning
          armed with New Testament,
critic of horse and mule,
          tanned and bearded
satisfying Whitman, concerned
          with a few Traditions,
metrical, mystical, manly
… and certain characteristic flaws

          —enough!

The nation over the border
grinds its arms and dreams
          of war: I see
the fiery blue clash
          of metal wheels
clanking in the industries
          of night, and
detonation of infernal bombs

          … and the silent downtown
of the States
          in watery dusk submersion.

Guanajuato-Los Angeles, 1954

Song

The weight of the world
     is love.
Under the burden
     of solitude,
under the burden
     of dissatisfaction

     the weight,
the weight we carry
     is love.

Who can deny?
     In dreams
it touches
     the body,
in thought
     constructs
a miracle,
     in imagination
anguishes
     till born
in human—

looks out of the heart
     burning with purity—
for the burden of life
     is love,

but we carry the weight
     wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
     at last,
must rest in the arms
     of love.

No rest
     without love,
no sleep
     without dreams

of love—
     be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
     or machines,
the final wish
     is love
—cannot be bitter,
     cannot deny,
cannot withhold
     if denied:

the weight is too heavy

     —must give
for no return
     as thought
is given
     in solitude
in all the excellence
     of its excess.

The warm bodies
     shine together
in the darkness,
     the hand moves
to the center
     of the flesh,
the skin trembles
     in happiness
and the soul comes
     joyful to the eye—

yes, yes,
     that’s what
I wanted,
     I always wanted,
I always wanted,
     to return
to the body
     where I was born.

San Jose, 1954

In back of the real

railroad yard in San Jose
     I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
     and sat on a bench
near the switchman’s shack.

A flower lay on the hay on
     the asphalt highway
—the dread hay flower
     I thought—It had a
brittle black stem and
     corolla of yellowish dirty
spikes like Jesus’ inchlong
     crown, and a soiled
dry center cotton tuft
     like a used shaving brush
that’s been lying under
     the garage for a year.

Yellow, yellow flower, and
     flower of industry,
tough spiky ugly flower,
     flower nonetheless,
with the form of the great yellow
     Rose in your brain!
This is the flower of the World

San Jose, 1954

On Burroughs’ Work

The method must be purest meat
     and no symbolic dressing,
actual visions & actual prisons
     as seen then and now.

Prisons and visions presented
     with rare descriptions
corresponding exactly to those
     of Alcatraz and Rose.

A naked lunch is natural to us,
     we eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
     Don’t hide the madness.

San Jose, 1954

Love Poem on Theme by Whitman

I’ll go into the bedroom silently and lie down between the bridegroom and the bride,

those bodies fallen from heaven stretched out waiting naked and restless,

arms resting over their eyes in the darkness,

bury my face in their shoulders and breasts, breathing their skin,

and stroke and kiss neck and mouth and make back be open and known,

legs raised up crook’d to receive, cock in the darkness driven tormented and attacking

roused up from hole to itching head,

bodies locked shuddering naked, hot hips and buttocks screwed into each other

and eyes, eyes glinting and charming, widening into looks and abandon,

and moans of movement, voices, hands in air, hands between thighs,

hands in moisture on softened hips, throbbing contraction of bellies

till the white come flow in the swirling sheets,

and the bride cry for forgiveness, and the groom be covered with tears of passion and compassion,

and I rise up from the bed replenished with last intimate gestures and kisses of farewell—

all before the mind wakes, behind shades and closed doors in a darkened house

where the inhabitants roam unsatisfied in the night,

nude ghosts seeking each other out in the silence.

San Jose, 1954

Drawing by Robert LaVigne, San Francisco, 1954

Over Kansas

Starting with eyeball kicks
on storefronts from bus window
on way to Oakland airport:
I am no ego
          these are themselves
stained gray wood and gilded
nigger glass and barberpole
          thass all.
But then, Kiss Me Again
in the dim brick lounge,
muted modern music.
Where shall I fly
not to be sad, my dear?
The other businessmen
bend heavily over armchairs
introducing women to cocktails
in fluorescent shadow—
gaiety of tables,
          gaiety of fat necks,
gaiety of departures,
gaiety of national business,
hands waving away jokes.
          I’m getting maudlin
on the soft rug watching,
mixed rye before me
on the little black table
whereon lieth my briefcase
containing market research
notes and blank paper—
that airplane ride to come
—or a barefaced pilgrimage
acrost imaginary plains
I never made afoot
into Kansas hallucination
and supernatural deliverance.

Later: Hawthorne mystic
waiting on the bench
composing his sermon also
with white bony fingers
bitten, with hometown gold
ring, in a blue serge suit
and barely visible blond
mustache on mental face,
blank-eyed: pitiful thin body
—what body may he love?—
My god! the soft beauty in
comparison—that football boy
in sunny yellow lovesuit
puzzling out his Xmas trip
death insurance by machine.
A virginal feeling again,
I’d be willing to die aloft now.

Can’t see outside in the dark,
real dreary strangers about,
and I’m unhappy flying away.
All this facility of travel
too superficial for the heart
I have for solitude.
          Nakedness
must come again—not sex,
but some naked isolation.

And down there’s Hollywood,
the starry world below
—expressing nakedness—
that craving, that glory
that applause—leisure, mind,
appetite for dreams, bodies,
travels: appetite for the real,
created by the mind
and kissed in coitus—
that craving, that melting!
Not even the human
imagination satisfies
the endless emptiness of the soul.

The West Coast behind me
for five days while I return
to ancient New York—
ah drunkenness!
I’ll see your eyes again.
Hopeless comedown!
Traveling thru the dark void
over Kansas yet moving nowhere
in the dark void of the soul.

Angel woke me to see
—past my own reflection,
bald businessman with hornrims
sleepy in round window view—
spectral skeleton of electricity
illuminated nervous system
floating on the void out
of central brainplant powerhouse
running into heaven’s starlight
overhead. ’Twas over Hutchinson.
Engine passed over lights,
          view gone.

Gorgeous George on my plane.

And Chicago, the first time,
smoking winter city
—shivering in my tweed jacket
walking by the airport
around the block on Cicero
under the fogged flat
supersky of heaven—
another project for the heart,
six months for here someday
to make Chicago natural,
pick up a few strange images.

Far-off red signs
on the orphan highway
glimmer at the trucks of home.
Who rides that lone road now?
What heart? Who smokes and loves
in Kansas auto now?
Who’s talking magic
under the night? Who walks
downtown and drinks black beer
in his eternity? Whose eyes
collect the streets and mountain tops
for storage in his memory?
What sage in the darkness?

Someone who should collect
my insurance!
          Better I make
a thornful pilgrimage on theory
feet to suffer the total
isolation of the bum,
than this hipster
business family journey
—crossing U.S. at night—
in a sudden glimpse
me being no one in the air
nothing but clouds in the moonlight
with humans fucking
underneath… .

San Francisco-New York, December 1954

III
HOWL, BEFORE & AFTER: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
(1955–1956)

Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo

I’m happy, Kerouac, your madman Allen’s
finally made it: discovered a new young cat,
and my imagination of an eternal boy
walks on the streets of San Francisco,
handsome, and meets me in cafeterias
and loves me. Ah don’t think I’m sickening.
You’re angry at me. For all of my lovers?
It’s hard to eat shit, without having visions;
when they have eyes for me it’s like Heaven.

San Francisco, 1955

Dream Record: June 8, 1955

A drunken night in my house with a
boy, San Francisco: I lay asleep:
darkness:
          I went back to Mexico City
and saw Joan Burroughs leaning
forward in a garden chair, arms
on her knees. She studied me with
clear eyes and downcast smile, her
face restored to a fine beauty
tequila and salt had made strange
before the bullet in her brow.

We talked of the life since then.
Well, what’s Burroughs doing now?
Bill on earth, he’s in North Africa.
Oh, and Kerouac? Jack still jumps
with the same beat genius as before,
notebooks filled with Buddha.
I hope he makes it, she laughed.
Is Huncke still in the can? No,
last time I saw him on Times Square.
And how is Kenney? Married, drunk
and golden in the East. You? New
loves in the West—
          Then I knew
she was a dream: and questioned her
—Joan, what kind of knowledge have
the dead? can you still love
your mortal acquaintances?
What do you remember of us?
          She
faded in front of me— The next instant
I saw her rain-stained tombstone
rear an illegible epitaph
under the gnarled branch of a small
tree in the wild grass
of an unvisited garden in Mexico.

Blessed be the Muses

for their descent,
dancing round my desk,
crowning my balding head
with Laurel.

1955

Howl

For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of

cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon,

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,

who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium,

who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion &the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,

and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,

Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,

and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio

with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jail-house and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible mad houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

III

Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland where you’re madder than I am

I’m with you in Rockland where you must feel very strange

I’m with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my mother

I’m with you in Rockland where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries

I’m with you in Rockland where you laugh at this invisible humor

I’m with you in Rockland where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

I’m with you in Rockland where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio

I’m with you in Rockland where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses

I’m with you in Rockland where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica

I’m with you in Rockland where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx

I’m with you in Rockland where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss

I’m with you in Rockland where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse

I’m with you in Rockland where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void

I’m with you in Rockland where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha

I’m with you in Rockland where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb

I’m with you in Rockland where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale

I’m with you in Rockland where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep

I’m with you in Rockland where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we’re free

I’m with you in Rockland in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

San Francisco, 1955–1956

Footnote to Howl

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!

Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!

The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!

The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!

Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels!

Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!

Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes & drums!

Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!

Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middleclass! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!

Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria & Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow Holy Istanbul!

Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!

Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!

Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!

Berkeley, 1955

A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley

All afternoon cutting bramble blackberries off a tottering brown fence

under a low branch with its rotten old apricots miscellaneous under the leaves,

fixing the drip in the intricate gut machinery of a new toilet;

found a good coffeepot in the vines by the porch, rolled a big tire out of the scarlet bushes, hid my marijuana;

wet the flowers, playing the sunlit water each to each, returning for godly extra drops for the stringbeans and daisies;

three times walked round the grass and sighed absently:

my reward, when the garden fed me its plums from the form of a small tree in the corner,

an angel thoughtful of my stomach, and my dry and lovelorn tongue.

1955

Block print by Robert LaVigne

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! —and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

   I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?

I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.

We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

   Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?

(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)

Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Berkeley, 1955

Four Haiku

Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.

Lying on my side
in the void:
the breath in my nose.

I didn’t know the names
of the flowers—now
my garden is gone.

On the porch
in my shorts—
auto lights in the rain.

Berkeley, Fall 1955

Sunflower Sutra

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry.

Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.

The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums on the river-bank, tired and wily.

Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust—

—I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake—my visions—Harlem

and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past—

and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye—

corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,

leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,

Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!

The grime was no man’s grime but death and human locomotives,

all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis’ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt—industrial—modern—all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown—

and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos—all these

entangled in your mummied roots—and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form!

A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!

How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?

You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!

And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!

So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,

and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen,

—We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we’re all golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.

Berkeley, 1955

Transcription of Organ Music

The flower in the glass peanut bottle formerly in the kitchen crooked to take a place in the light,

the closet door opened, because I used it before, it kindly stayed open waiting for me, its owner.

I began to feel my misery in pallet on floor, listening to music, my misery, that’s why I want to sing.

The room closed down on me, I expected the presence of the Creator, I saw my gray painted walls and ceiling, they contained my room, they contained me

as the sky contained my garden,

I opened my door

   The rambler vine climbed up the cottage post, the leaves in the night still where the day had placed them, the animal heads of the flowers where they had arisen

to think at the sun

   Can I bring back the words? Will thought of transcription haze my mental open eye?

   The kindly search for growth, the gracious desire to exist of the flowers, my near ecstasy at existing among them

The privilege to witness my existence—you too must seek the sun …

   My books piled up before me for my use

waiting in space where I placed them, they haven’t disappeared, time’s left its remnants and qualities for me to use—my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves.

I had a moment of clarity, saw the feeling in the heart of things, walked out to the garden crying.

Saw the red blossoms in the night light, sun’s gone, they had all grown, in a moment, and were waiting stopped in time for the day sun to come and give them …

Flowers which as in a dream at sunset I watered faithfully not knowing how much I loved them.

I am so lonely in my glory—except they too out there—I looked up —those red bush blossoms beckoning and peering in the window waiting in blind love, their leaves too have hope and are upturned top flat to the sky to receive—all creation open to receive—the flat earth itself.

   The music descends, as does the tall bending stalk of the heavy blossom, because it has to, to stay alive, to continue to the last drop of joy.

The world knows the love that’s in its breast as in the flower, the suffering lonely world.

The Father is merciful.

   The light socket is crudely attached to the ceiling, after the house was built, to receive a plug which sticks in it allright, and serves my phonograph now…

   The closet door is open for me, where I left it, since I left it open, it has graciously stayed open.

The kitchen has no door, the hole there will admit me should I wish to enter the kitchen.

I remember when I first got laid, H.P. graciously took my cherry, I sat on the docks of Provincetown, age 23, joyful, elevated in hope with the Father, the door to the womb was open to admit me if I wished to enter.

   There are unused electricity plugs all over my house if I ever need them.

The kitchen window is open, to admit air …

The telephone—sad to relate—sits on the floor—I haven’t the money to get it connected—

   I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the Creator.

And the Creator gave me a shot of his presence to gratify my wish, so as not to cheat me of my yearning for him.

Berkeley, September 8, 1955

Sather Gate Illumination

Why do I deny manna to another?

Because I deny it to myself.

Why have I denied myself?

What other has rejected me?

Now I believe you are lovely, my soul, soul of Allen, Allen—
and you so beloved, so sweetened, so recalled to your true loveliness,
your original nude breathing Allen
will you ever deny another again?

Dear Walter, thanks for the message
I forbid you not to touch me, man to man, True American.

The bombers jet through the sky in unison of twelve,
the pilots are sweating and nervous at the controls in the hot cabins.
Over what souls will they loose their loveless bombs?

The Campanile pokes its white granite (?) innocent head into the clouds for me to look at.

A cripple lady explains French grammar with a loud sweet voice: Regarder is to look—

the whole French language looks on the trees on the campus.

   The girls’ haunted voices make quiet dates for 2 o’clock—yet one of them waves farewell and smiles at last—her red skirt swinging shows how she loves herself.

   Another encased in flashy Scotch clothes clomps up the concrete in a hurry—into the door—poor dear!—who will receive you in love’s offices?

How many beautiful boys have I seen on this spot?

The trees seem on the verge of moving—ah! they do move in the breeze.

Roar again of airplanes in the sky—everyone looks up.

And do you know that all these rubbings of the eyes & painful gestures to the brow

of suited scholars entering Dwinelle (Hall) are Holy Signs?—anxiety and fear?

How many years have I got to float on this sweetened scene of trees & humans clomping above ground—

O I must be mad to sit here lonely in the void & glee & build up thoughts of love!

But what do I have to doubt but my own shiny eyes, what to lose but life which is a vision today this afternoon.

   My stomach is light, I relax, new sentences spring forth out of the scene to describe spontaneous forms of Time—trees, sleeping dogs, airplanes wandering thru the air, negroes with their lunch books of anxiety, apples and sandwiches, lunchtime, icecream, Timeless—

And even the ugliest will seek beauty—‘What are you doing Friday night?’ asks the sailor in white school training cap & gilt buttons & blue coat,

and the little ape in a green jacket and baggy pants and overloaded school-book satchel says ‘Quartets.’

Every Friday nite, beautiful quartets to celebrate and please my soul with all its hair—Music!

and then strides off, snapping pieces chocolate off a bar wrapped in Hershey brown paper and tinfoil,

eating chocolate rose.

& how can those other boys be them happy selves in their brown army study uniforms?

Now cripple girl swings down walk with loping fuck gestures of her hips askew—

let her roll her eyes in abandon & camp angelic through the campus bouncing her body about in joy—

someone will dig that pelvic energy for sure.

Those white stripes down your chocolate cupcake, Lady (held in front of your nose finishing sentence preparatory to chomp),

they were painted there to delight you by some spanish industrial artistic hand in bakery factory faraway,

expert hand in simple-minded messages of white stripes on millions of message cupcakes.

I have a message for you all—I will denote one particularity of each!

   And there goes Professor Hart striding enlightened by the years through the doorway and arcade he built (in his mind) and knows—he too saw the ruins of Yucatán once—

followed by a lonely janitor in dovegray italian fruitpeddler Chico Marx hat pushing his rolypoly belly thru the trees.

N sees all girls
as visions of
their inner cunts,
yes, it’s true!
and all men walking
along thinking
of their spirit cocks.

So look at that poor dread boy
with two-day black hair
all over his dirty face,
how he must hate his cock
     —Chinamen stop shuddering

   and now to bring this to an end with a rise and an ellipse—

   The boys are now all talking to the girls ‘If I was a girl I’d love all boys’ & girls giggling the opposite, all pretty everywhichway

and even I have my secret beds and lovers under another moonlight, be you sure

& any minute I expect to see a baby carriage pushed on to the scene

and everyone turn in attention like the airplanes and laughter, like a Greek Campus

and the big brown shaggy silent dog lazing openeyed in the shade

lift up his head & sniff & lower his head on his golden paws & let his belly rumble away unconcerned.

   … the lion’s ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold.

Now the silence is broken, students pour onto the square, the doors are crowded, the dog gets up and walks away,

the cripple swings out of Dwinelle, a nun even, I wonder about her, an old lady distinguished by a cane,

we all look up, silence moves, huge changes upon the ground, and in the air thoughts fly all over, filling space.

My grief at Peter’s not loving me was grief at not loving myself.

Huge Karmas of broken minds in beautiful bodies unable to receive love because not knowing the self as lovely—

Fathers and Teachers!

   Seeing in people the visible evidence of inner self thought by their treatment of me: who loves himself loves me who love myself.

Berkeley, September 1955

America

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.

America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.

I can’t stand my own mind.

America when will we end the human war?

Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.

I don’t feel good don’t bother me.

I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.

America when will you be angelic?

When will you take off your clothes?

When will you look at yourself through the grave?

When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?

America why are your libraries full of tears?

America when will you send your eggs to India?

I’m sick of your insane demands.

When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?

America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.

Your machinery is too much for me.

You made me want to be a saint.

There must be some other way to settle this argument.

Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.

Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?

I’m trying to come to the point.

I refuse to give up my obsession.

America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.

America the plum blossoms are falling.

I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.

America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.

America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.

I smoke marijuana every chance I get.

I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.

When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.

My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.

You should have seen me reading Marx.

My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.

I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.

I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.

America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.

I’m addressing you.

Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?

I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.

I read it every week.

Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.

I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.

It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious.

Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.

It occurs to me that I am America.

I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.

I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.

I’d better consider my national resources.

My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.

I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.

I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.

My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes.

America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe

America free Tom Mooney

America save the Spanish Loyalists

America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die

America I am the Scottsboro boys.

America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.

America you don’t really want to go to war.

America it’s them bad Russians.

Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.

The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.

Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.

That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.

America this is quite serious.

America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.

America is this correct?

I’d better get right down to the job.

It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Berkeley, January 17, 1956

Fragment 1956

Now to the come of the poem, let me be worthy
& sing holily the natural pathos of the human soul,
naked original skin beneath our dreams
& robes of thought, the perfect self identity
radiant with lusts and intellectual faces
Who carries the lines, the painful browed
contortions of the upper eyes, the whole body
breathing and sentient among flowers and buildings
open-eyed, self knowing, trembling with love—
Soul that I have, that Jack has, Huncke has
Bill has, Joan had, and has in me memory yet,
bum has in rags, madman underneath black clothes.
Soul identical each to each, as standing on
the streetcorner ten years ago I looked at Jack
and told him we were the same person—look
in my eyes and speak to yourself, that makes me
everybody’s lover, Hal mine against his will,
I had his soul in my own body already, while
he frowned—by the streetlamp 8th Avenue & 27th
Street 1947—I had just come back from Africa
with a gleam of the illumination actually
to come to me in time as come to all—Jack
the worst murderer, Allen the most cowardly
with a streak of yellow love running through
my poems, a fag in the city, Joe Army screaming
in anguish in Dannemora 1945 jailhouse,
breaking his own white knuckle against the bars
his dumb sad cellmate beaten by the guards
an iron floor below, Gregory weeping in Tombs,
Joan eyes narrow-lidded under benzedrine
harkening to the paranoia in the wall,
Huncke from Chicago dreaming in Arcades
of hellish Pokerino blue skinned Times Square light,
Bill King yelling pale faced in the subway window
final minute gape-death struggling to return,
Morphy himself, archsuicide, expiring in blood
on the Passaic, tragic & bewildered in
last tears, attaining death that moment
human, intellectual, bearded, who else
was he then but himself?

Berkeley, 1956

Afternoon Seattle

Busride along waterfront down Yessler under street bridge to the old red Wobbly Hall—

One Big Union, posters of the Great Mandala of Labor, bleareyed dusty cardplayers dreaming behind the counter … ‘but these young fellers can’t see ahead and we nothing to offer’—

After Snyder his little red beard and bristling Buddha mind I weeping crossed Skid Road to 10¢ beer.

Labyrinth wood stairways and Greek movies under Farmers Market secondhand city, Indian smoked salmon old overcoats and dry red shoes,

Green Parrot Theater, Maytime, and down to the harborside the ships, walked on Alaska silent together—ferryboat coming faraway in mist from Bremerton Island dreamlike small on the waters of Holland to me

—and entered my head the seagull, a shriek, sentinels standing over rusty harbor iron dockwork, rocks dripping under rotten wharves slime on the walls—

the seagull’s small cry—inhuman not of the city, lone sentinels of God, animal birds among us indifferent, their bleak lone cries representing our souls.

A rowboat docked and chained floating in the tide by a wharf. Basho’s frog. Someone left it there, it drifts.

Sailor’s curio shop hung with shells and skulls a whalebone mask, Indian seas. The cities rot from oldest parts. Little red mummy from Idaho

Frank H. Little your big hat high cheekbones crosseyes and song.

The cities rot from the center, the suburbs fall apart a slow apocalypse of rot the spectral trolleys fade

the cities rot the fire escapes hang and rust the brick turns black dust falls uncollected garbage heaps the wall

the birds invade with their cries the skid row alley creeps downtown the ancient jailhouse groans bums snore under the pavement a dark Turkish bath the cornice gapes at midnight

Seattle!—department stores full of fur coats and camping equipment, mad noontime businessmen in gabardine coats talking on streetcorners to keep up the structure, I float past, birds cry,

Salvation Army offers soup on rotting block, six thousand beggars groan at a meal of hopeful beans.

February 2, 1956

Tears

I’m crying all the time now.

I cried all over the street when I left the Seattle Wobbly Hall.

I cried listening to Bach.

I cried looking at the happy flowers in my backyard, I cried at the sadness of the middle-aged trees.

Happiness exists I feel it.

I cried for my soul, I cried for the world’s soul.

The world has a beautiful soul.

God appearing to be seen and cried over. Overflowing heart of Paterson.

Seattle, February 2, 1956

Scribble

Rexroth’s face reflecting human
     tired bliss
White haired, wing browed
     gas mustache,
          flowers jet out of
               his sad head,
listening to Edith Piaf street song
     as she walks the universe
               with all life gone
               and cities disappeared
                    only the God of Love
                         left smiling.

Berkeley, March 1956

In the Baggage Room at Greyhound

I

In the depths of the Greyhound Terminal

sitting dumbly on a baggage truck looking at the sky waiting for the Los Angeles Express to depart

worrying about eternity over the Post Office roof in the night-time red downtown heaven,

staring through my eyeglasses I realized shuddering these thoughts were not eternity, nor the poverty of our lives, irritable baggage clerks,

nor the millions of weeping relatives surrounding the buses waving goodbye,

nor other millions of the poor rushing around from city to city to see their loved ones,

nor an indian dead with fright talking to a huge cop by the Coke machine,

nor this trembling old lady with a cane taking the last trip of her life,

nor the red-capped cynical porter collecting his quarters and smiling over the smashed baggage,

nor me looking around at the horrible dream,

nor mustached negro Operating Clerk named Spade, dealing out with his marvelous long hand the fate of thousands of express packages,

nor fairy Sam in the basement limping from leaden trunk to trunk,

nor Joe at the counter with his nervous breakdown smiling cowardly at the customers,

nor the grayish-green whale’s stomach interior loft where we keep the baggage in hideous racks,

hundreds of suitcases full of tragedy rocking back and forth waiting to be opened,

nor the baggage that’s lost, nor damaged handles, nameplates vanished, busted wires & broken ropes, whole trunks exploding on the concrete floor,

nor seabags emptied into the night in the final warehouse.

II

Yet Spade reminded me of Angel, unloading a bus,
dressed in blue overalls black face official Angel’s workman cap,
pushing with his belly a huge tin horse piled high with black baggage,
looking up as he passed the yellow light bulb of the loft
and holding high on his arm an iron shepherd’s crook.

III

It was the racks, I realized, sitting myself on top of them now as is my wont at lunchtime to rest my tired foot,

it was the racks, great wooden shelves and stanchions posts and beams assembled floor to roof jumbled with baggage,

—the Japanese white metal postwar trunk gaudily flowered & headed for Fort Bragg,

one Mexican green paper package in purple rope adorned with names for Nogales,

hundreds of radiators all at once for Eureka,

crates of Hawaiian underwear,

rolls of posters scattered over the Peninsula, nuts to Sacramento,

one human eye for Napa,

an aluminum box of human blood for Stockton

and a little red package of teeth for Calistoga—

it was the racks and these on the racks I saw naked in electric light the night before I quit,

the racks were created to hang our possessions, to keep us together, a temporary shift in space,

God’s only way of building the rickety structure of Time, to hold the bags to send on the roads, to carry our luggage from place to place looking for a bus to ride us back home to Eternity where the heart was left and farewell tears began.

IV

A swarm of baggage sitting by the counter as the transcontinental bus pulls in.

The clock registering 12:15 A.M., May 9, 1956, the second hand moving forward, red.

Getting ready to load my last bus.—Farewell, Walnut Creek Richmond Vallejo Portland Pacific Highway

Fleet-footed Quicksilver, god of transience.

One last package sits lone at midnight sticking up out of the Coast rack high as the dusty fluorescent light.

The wage they pay us is too low to live on. Tragedy reduced to numbers.

This for the poor shepherds. I am a communist.

Farewell ye Greyhound where I suffered so much, hurt my knee and scraped my hand and built my pectoral muscles big as vagina.

May 9, 1956

Psalm III

To God: to illuminate all men. Beginning with Skid Road.

Let Occidental and Washington be transformed into a higher place, the plaza of eternity.

Illuminate the welders in shipyards with the brilliance of their torches.

Let the crane operator lift up his arm for joy.

Let elevators creak and speak, ascending and descending in awe.

Let the mercy of the flower’s direction beckon in the eye.

Let the straight flower bespeak its purpose in straightness—to seek the light.

Let the crooked flower bespeak its purpose in crookedness—to seek the light.

Let the crookedness and straightness bespeak the light.

Let Puget Sound be a blast of light.

I feed on your Name like a cockroach on a crumb—this cockroach is holy.

Seattle, June, 1956

Many Loves

“Resolved to sing no songs henceforth but those of manly attachment”

—Walt Whitman

Neal Cassady was my animal: he brought me to my knees

and taught me the love of his cock and the secrets of his mind

And we met and conversed, went walking in the evening by the park

Up to Harlem, recollecting Denver, and Dan Budd, a hero

And we made shift to sack out in Harlem, after a long evening,

Jack and host in a large double bed, I volunteered for the cot, and Neal

Volunteered for the cot with me, we stripped and lay down.

I wore my underwear, my shorts, and he his briefs—

lights out on the narrow bed I turned to my side, with my back to his Irish boy’s torso,

and huddled and balanced on the edge, and kept distance—

and hung my head over and kept my arm over the side, withdrawn

And he seeing my fear stretched out his arm, and put it around my breast

Saying “Draw near me” and gathered me in upon him:

I lay there trembling, and felt his great arm like a king’s

And his breasts, his heart slow thudding against my back,

and his middle torso, narrow and made of iron, soft at my back,

his fiery firm belly warming me while I trembled—

His belly of fists and starvation, his belly a thousand girls kissed in Colorado

his belly of rocks thrown over Denver roofs, prowess of jumping and fists, his stomach of solitudes,

His belly of burning iron and jails affectionate to my side:

I began to tremble, he pulled me in closer with his arm, and hugged me long and close

my soul melted, secrecy departed, I became

Thenceforth open to his nature as a flower in the shining sun.

And below his belly, in white underwear, tight between my buttocks,

His own loins against me soft, nestling in comradeship, put forth & pressed into me, open to my awareness,

slowly began to grow, signal me further and deeper affection, sexual tenderness.

So gentle the man, so sweet the moment, so kind the thighs that nuzzled against me smooth-skinned powerful, warm by my legs

That my body shudders and trembles with happiness, remembering—

His hand opened up on my belly, his palms and fingers flat against my skin

I fell to him, and turned, shifting, put my face on his arm resting,

my chest against his, he helped me to turn, and held me closer

his arm at my back beneath my head, and arm at my buttocks tender holding me in,

our bellies together nestling, loins touched together, pressing and knowledgeable each other’s hardness, and mine stuck out of my underwear.

Then I pressed in closer and drew my leg up between his, and he lay half on me with his thighs and bedded me down close, caressing

and moved together pressing his cock to my thigh and mine to his

slowly, and slowly began a love match that continues in my imagination to this day a full decade.

Thus I met Neal & thus we felt each other’s flesh and owned each other bodies and souls.

So then as I lay on his breast with my arms clasped around his neck and his cheek against mine,

I put my hand down to feel his great back for the first time, jaws and pectorals of steel at my fingers,

closer and stiller, down the silken iron back to his waist, the whole of his torso now open

my hand at his waist trembling, waited delaying and under the elastic of his briefs,

I first touched the smooth mount of his rock buttocks, silken in power, rounded in animal fucking and bodily nights over nurses and schoolgirls,

O ass of long solitudes in stolen cars, and solitudes on curbs, musing fist in cheek,

Ass of a thousand farewells, ass of youth, youth’s lovers,

Ass of a thousand lonely craps in gas stations ass of great painful secrecies of the years

O ass of mystery and night! ass of gymnasiums and muscular pants

ass of high schools and masturbation ass of lone delight, ass of mankind, so beautiful and hollow, dowry of Mind and Angels,

Ass of hero, Neal Cassady, I had at my hand: my fingers traced the curve to the bottom of his thighs.

I raised my thighs and stripped down my shorts to my knees, and bent to push them off

and he raised me up from his chest, and pulled down his pants the same,

humble and meek and obedient to his mood our silence,

and naked at long last with angel & greek & athlete & hero and brother and boy of my dreams

I lay with my hair intermixed with his, he asking me “What shall we do now?”

—And confessed, years later, he thinking I was not a queer at first to please me & serve me, to blow me and make me come, maybe or if I were queer, that’s what I’d likely want of a dumb bastard like him.

But I made my first mistake, and made him then and there my master, and bowed my head, and holding his buttock

Took up his hard-on and held it, feeling it throb and pressing my own at his knee & breathing showed him I needed him, cock, for my dreams of insatiety & lone love.

—And I lie here naked in the dark, dreaming

Arctic, August 10, 1956

Ready to Roll

To Mexico! To Mexico! Down the dovegray highway, past Atomic City police, past the fiery border to dream cantinas!

Standing on the sunny metropolitan plateau, stranger prince on the street, dollars in my pocket, alone, free—genitals and thighs and buttocks under skin and leather.

Music! Taxis! Marijuana in the slums! Ancient sexy parks! Continental boulevards in America! Modern downtown for a dollar! Dungarees in Les Ambassadeurs! And here’s a hard brown cock for a quarter!

Drunkenness! and the long night walks down brown streets, eyes, windows, buses, interior charnels behind the Cathedral, lost squares and hungry tacos, a calf’s head cooked and picked apart for meat,

and the blackened inner roofs and tents of the Thieves’ Market, street crisscrossed on street, a naked hipster labyrinth, stealing, pausing, loitering, noticing drums, purchasing nothing

but a broken aluminum coffeepot with a doll’s arm sticking up out of the mouth.

Haha! what do I want? Change of solitude, spectre of drunkenness in paranoiac taxicabs, fear and gaiety of unknown lovers

coming around the empty streetcorner dark-eyed and watching me make it there alone under the new hip moon.

San Francisco, October 1956

IV
REALITY SANDWICHES: EUROPE! EUROPE!
(1957–1959)

POEM Rocket

Old moon my eyes are new moon with human footprint

no longer Romeo Sadface in drunken river Loony Pierre eyebrow, goof moon

O possible moon in Heaven we get to first of ageless constellations of names as God is possible as All is possible so we’ll reach another life.

Moon politicians earth weeping and warring in eternity

tho not one star disturbed by screaming madmen from Hollywood

oil tycoons from Romania making secret deals with flabby green Plutonians—

slave camps on Saturn Cuban revolutions on Mars?

Old life and new side by side, will Catholic Church find Christ on Jupiter

Mohammed rave in Uranus will Buddha be acceptable on the stolid planets

or will we find Zoroastrian temples flowering on Neptune?

What monstrous new ecclesiastical design on the entire universe unfolds in the dying Pope’s brain?

Scientist alone is true poet he gives us the moon

he promises the stars he’ll make us a new universe if it comes to that

O Einstein I should have sent you my flaming mss.

O Einstein I should have pilgrimaged to your white hair!

O fellow travelers I write you a poem in Amsterdam in the Cosmos

where Spinoza ground his magic lenses long ago

I write you a poem long ago

already my feet are washed in death

Here I am naked without identity

with no more body than the fine black tracery of pen mark on soft paper as star talks to star multiple beams of sunlight all the same myriad thought

in one fold of the universe where Whitman was

and Blake and Shelley saw Milton dwelling as in a starry temple

brooding in his blindness seeing all—

Now at last I can speak to you beloved brothers of an unknown moon

real Yous squatting in whatever form amidst Platonic Vapors of Eternity

I am another Star.

Will you eat my poems or read them

or gaze with aluminum blind plates on sunless pages?

do you dream or translate & accept data with indifferent droopings of antennae?

do I make sense to your flowery green receptor eyesockets? do you have visions of God?

Which way will the sunflower turn surrounded by millions of suns?

This is my rocket my personal rocket I send up my message Beyond

Someone to hear me there

My immortality

without steel or cobalt basalt or diamond gold or mercurial fire

without passports filing cabinets bits of paper warheads

without myself finally

pure thought

message all and everywhere the same

I send up my rocket to land on whatever planet awaits it

preferably religious sweet planets no money

fourth dimensional planets where Death shows movies

plants speak (courteously) of ancient physics and poetry itself is manufactured by the trees

the final Planet where the Great Brain of the Universe sits waiting for a poem to land in His golden pocket

joining the other notes mash-notes love-sighs complaints-musical shrieks of despair and the million unutterable thoughts of frogs

I send you my rocket of amazing chemical

more than my hair my sperm or the cells of my body

the speeding thought that flies upward with my desire as instantaneous as the universe and faster than light

and leave all other questions unfinished for the moment to turn back to sleep

in my dark bed on earth.

Amsterdam, October 4, 1957

Squeal

He rises he stretches he liquefies he is hammered again
He’s divided in shares he litters the floor of the Bourse
He’s cut by adamantine snips and sent by railway car
Accumulated on the margin by bony Goldfinger has various
Visions of being an automobile consolidates
The fortune of spectral lawyers heirs weep over him
He melts he undergoes remarkable metamorphoses peculiar
Hallucinations he coughs up debentures beaten
By immense hammers in a vast loft pours in fire spurts
Upward in molten forges he levels he dreams and he cools
And the present adjusted steel squints.

A hunchback tuberculosis salesman drives him cackling to St. Louis
In the rain Hack no will of his own Creep next resale Crank
San Pedro tomorrow St. Joe Squeak will it never end Hohokus—

Crashes into a dirty locomotive the bastard never
Mind stock averages decline slightly here’s the mechanic
Blam the junkyard Help the smelter later a merger pressure accumulates
He’s had it now Eek he’s an airplane Whine he wants to go home
Suddenly he dives on the market like a bomb.

Paris, December 1957

Wrote This Last Night

Listen to the tale of the sensitive car
who was coughed up out of earth in Pittsburgh.

She screamed like a Swedish Prime Minister
on her first flight down the red neon highway,

she couldn’t stand the sirens and blind lights
of the male cars Fords Oldsmobiles Studebakers

—her assembly line foreman had prophesied wild wreck
on Sunset Boulevard headlights & eyeballs broken fenders & bones.

She rode all over Mexico avoiding Los Angeles
praying to be an old junkie in a bordertown graveyard

with rattly doors and yellow broken windowpanes
bent license plate weak brakes & unsalable motor

worn out by the slow buttocks of teen-age nightmare
panting under the impoverished jissum of the August moon,

Anything but that final joyride with the mad producer
and his bombshell intellectual star on the last night up from Mexicali.

Paris, December 1957

Death to Van Gogh’s Ear!

POET is Priest

Money has reckoned the soul of America

Congress broken thru to the precipice of Eternity

the President built a War machine which will vomit and rear up Russia out of Kansas

The American Century betrayed by a mad Senate which no longer sleeps with its wife

Franco has murdered Lorca the fairy son of Whitman

just as Mayakovsky committed suicide to avoid Russia

Hart Crane distinguished Platonist committed suicide to cave in the wrong America

just as millions of tons of human wheat were burned in secret caverns under the White House

while India starved and screamed and ate mad dogs full of rain

and mountains of eggs were reduced to white powder in the halls of Congress

on godfearing man will walk there again because of the stink of the rotten eggs of America

and the Indians of Chiapas continue to gnaw their vitaminless tortillas

aborigines of Australia perhaps gibber in the eggless wilderness

and I rarely have an egg for breakfast tho my work requires infinite eggs to come to birth in Eternity

eggs should be eaten or given to their mothers

and the grief of the countless chickens of America is expressed in the screaming of her comedians over the radio

Detroit has built a million automobiles of rubber trees and phantoms

but I walk, I walk, and the Orient walks with me, and all Africa walks

and sooner or later North America will walk

for as we have driven the Chinese Angel from our door he will drive us from the Golden Door of the future

we have not cherished pity on Tanganyika

Einstein alive was mocked for his heavenly politics

Bertrand Russell driven from New York for getting laid

immortal Chaplin driven from our shores with the rose in his teeth

a secret conspiracy by Catholic Church in the lavatories of Congress has denied contraceptives to the unceasing masses of India.

Nobody publishes a word that is not the cowardly robot ravings of a depraved mentality

The day of the publication of the true literature of the American body will be day of Revolution

the revolution of the sexy lamb

the only bloodless revolution that gives away corn

poor Genet will illuminate the harvesters of Ohio

Marijuana is a benevolent narcotic but J. Edgar Hoover prefers his deathly scotch

And the heroin of Lao-Tze & the Sixth Patriarch is punished by the electric chair

but the poor sick junkies have nowhere to lay their heads

fiends in our government have invented a cold-turkey cure for addiction as obsolete as the Defense Early Warning Radar System.

I am the defense early warning radar system

I see nothing but bombs

I am not interested in preventing Asia from being Asia

and the governments of Russia and Asia will rise and fall but Asia and Russia will not fall

the government of America also will fall but how can America fall

I doubt if anyone will ever fall anymore except governments

fortunately all the governments will fall

the only ones which won’t fall are the good ones

and the good ones don’t yet exist

But they have to begin existing they exist in my poems

they exist in the death of the Russian and American governments

they exist in the death of Hart Crane & Mayakovsky

Now is the time for prophecy without death as a consequence

the universe will ultimately disappear

Hollywood will rot on the windmills of Eternity

Hollywood whose movies stick in the throat of God

Yes Hollywood will get what it deserves

Time

Seepage of nerve-gas over the radio

History will make this poem prophetic and its awful silliness a hideous spiritual music

I have the moan of doves and the feather of ecstasy

Man cannot long endure the hunger of the cannibal abstract

War is abstract

the world will be destroyed

but I will die only for poetry, that will save the world

Monument to Sacco & Vanzetti not yet financed to ennoble Boston

natives of Kenya tormented by idiot con-men from England

South Africa in the grip of the white fool

Vachel Lindsay Secretary of the Interior

Poe Secretary of Imagination

Pound Secty. Economics

and Kra belongs to Kra, and Pukti to Pukti

crossfertilization of Blok and Artaud

Van Gogh’s Ear on the currency

no more propaganda for monsters

and poets should stay out of politics or become monsters

I have become monsterous with politics

the Russian poet undoubtedly monsterous in his secret notebook

Tibet should be left alone

These are obvious prophecies

America will be destroyed

Russian poets will struggle with Russia

Whitman warned against this “fabled Damned of nations”

Where was Theodore Roosevelt when he sent out ultimatums from his castle in Camden

Where was the House of Representatives when Crane read aloud from his prophetic books

What was Wall Street scheming when Lindsay announced the doom of Money

Were they listening to my ravings in the locker rooms of Bickfords Employment Offices?

Did they bend their ears to the moans of my soul when I struggled with market research statistics in the Forum at Rome?

No they were fighting in fiery offices, on carpets of heartfailure, screaming and bargaining with Destiny

fighting the Skeleton with sabers, muskets, buck teeth, indigestion, bombs of larceny, whoredom, rockets, pederasty,

back to the wall to build up their wives and apartments, lawns, suburbs, fairydoms,

Puerto Ricans crowded for massacre on 114th St. for the sake of an imitation Chinese-Moderne refrigerator

Elephants of mercy murdered for the sake of an Elizabethan birdcage

millions of agitated fanatics in the bughouse for the sake of the screaming soprano of industry

Money-chant of soapers—toothpaste apes in television sets—deodorizers on hypnotic chairs—

petroleum mongers in Texas—jet plane streaks among the clouds—

sky writers liars in the face of Divinity—fanged butchers of hats and shoes, all Owners! Owners! Owners! with obsession on property and vanishing Selfhood!

and their long editorials on the fence of the screaming negro attacked by ants crawled out of the front page!

Machinery of a mass electrical dream! A war-creating Whore of Babylon bellowing over Capitols and Academies!

Money! Money! Money! shrieking mad celestial money of illusion! Money made of nothing, starvation, suicide! Money of failure! Money of death!

Money against Eternity! and eternity’s strong mills grind out vast paper of Illusion!

Paris, December 1957

Europe! Europe!

World world world
I sit in my room
imagine the future
sunlight falls on Paris
I am alone there is no
one whose love is perfect
man has been mad man’s
love is not perfect I
have not wept enough
my breast will be heavy
till death the cities
are specters of cranks
of war the cities are
work & brick & iron &
smoke of the furnace of
selfhood makes tearless
eyes red in London but
no eye meets the sun

Flashed out of sky it
hits Lord Beaverbrook’s
white modern solid
paper building leaned
in London’s street to
bear last yellow beams
old ladies absently gaze
thru fog toward heaven
poor pots on windowsills
snake flowers to street
Trafalgar’s fountains splash
on noon-warmed pigeons
Myself beaming in ecstatic
wilderness on St. Paul’s dome
seeing the light on London
or here on a bed in Paris
sunglow through the high
window on plaster walls

Meek crowd underground
saints perish creeps
streetwomen meet lacklove
under gaslamp and neon
no woman in house loves
husband in flower unity
nor boy loves boy soft
fire in breast politics
electricity scares downtown
radio screams for money
police light on TV screens
laughs at dim lamps in
empty rooms tanks crash
thru bombshell no dream
of man’s joy is made movie
think factory pushes junk
autos tin dreams of Eros
mind eats its flesh in
geekish starvation and no
man’s fuck is holy for
man’s work is most war

Bony China hungers brain
wash over power dam and
America hides mad meat
in refrigerator Britain
cooks Jerusalem too long
France eats oil and dead
salad arms & legs in Africa
loudmouth devours Arabia
negro and white warring
against the golden nuptial
Russia manufacture feeds
millions but no drunk can
dream Mayakovsky’s suicide
rainbow over machinery
and backtalk to the sun

I lie in bed in Europe
alone in old red under
wear symbolic of desire
for union with immortality
but man’s love’s not perfect
in February it rains
as once for Baudelaire
one hundred years ago
planes roar in the air
cars race thru streets
I know where they go
to death but that is OK
it is that death comes
before life that no man
has loved perfectly no one
gets bliss in time new
mankind is not born that
I weep for this antiquity
and herald the Millennium
for I saw the Atlantic sun
rayed down from a vast cloud
at Dover on the sea cliffs
tanker size of ant heaved
up on ocean under shining
cloud and seagull flying
thru sun light’s endless
ladders streaming in Eternity
to ants in the myriad fields
of England to sun flowers
bent up to eat infinity’s
minute gold dolphins leaping
thru Mediterranean rainbow
White smoke and steam in Andes
Asia’s rivers glittering
blind poets deep in lone
Apollonic radiance on hillsides
littered with empty tombs

Paris, February 29, 1958

The Lion for Real

“Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative …”

I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Paterson and stayed two days.

Called up my old Reichian analyst
who’d kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
‘It’s happened’ I panted ‘There’s a Lion in my room’
‘I’m afraid any discussion would have no value’ he hung up.

I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend
I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye
We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow & he kicked me out
I ended masturbating in his jeep parked in the street moaning ‘Lion.’

Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him ‘Lion!’
He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries
I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn Ants
But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom’s bathroom.

But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat
‘I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions
But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father hath no Lion
You said your mother was mad don’t expect me to produce the Monster for your Bridegroom.’

Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink in Harlem
Opened the door the room was filled with the bomb blast of his anger
He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear him outside thru the window
My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in deafening stillness

We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur
Waxed rheumy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang greeting.
I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove
boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tub under the sink board.

He didn’t eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.
Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out
enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws
by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.

Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten face stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had nightmares

Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion’s flophouse circus,

I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor—‘Terrible Presence!’ I cried ‘Eat me or die!’

It got up that afternoon—walked to the door with its paw on the wall to steady its trembling body

Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth

thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in Mexico

Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice “Not this time Baby—but I will be back again.”

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger

Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the Universe how am I chosen

In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served

Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your Mercy.

Paris, March 1958

The Names

Time comes spirit weakens and goes blank apartments shuffled through and forgotten

The dead in their cenotaphs locomotive high schools & African cities small town motorcycle graves

O America what saints given vision are shrouded in junk their elegy a nameless hoodlum elegance leaning against death’s military garage

Huncke who first saw the sun revolve in Chicago survived into middle-age Times Square

Thief stole hearts of wildcat tractor boys arrived to morphine brilliance Bickford table midnight neon to take a fall

arrested 41 times late 40s his acned skin & black Spanish hair grown coy and old and lip bitten in Rikers Island Jail

as bestial newsprint photograph we shared once busted, me scared of black eye cops Manhattan

you blissful nothing to lose digging the live detectives perhaps even offering God a cigarette

I’ll answer for you Huncke I never could before—admiring your natural tact and charm and irony—now sad Sing Sing

whatever inept Queens burglary you goofed again let God judge his sacred case

rather than mustached Time Judge steal a dirty photograph of your soul—I knew you when—

& you loved me better than my lawyer who wanted a frightened rat for official thousand buck mousetrap, no doubt, no doubt—

Shine in Cell free behind bars Immortal soul why not

Hell the machine can’t sentence anyone except itself, have I to do that?

It gives jail I give you poem, bars last twenty years rust in a hundred

my handwork remains when prisons fall because the hand is compassion

Brilliant bitter Morphy stalking Los Angeles after his ghost boy

haunting basements in Denver with his Montmartre black beard

Charming ladies’ man for gigolo purpose I heard, great cat for Shakespearean sex

first poet suicide I knew we sat on park benches I watched him despair his forehead star

my elder asked serious advice, gentle man! international queer pride humbled to pre-death cigarette gun fright

His love a young blond demon of broken army, his nemesis his own mad cock for the kids sardonic ass

his dream mouthful of white prick trembling in his head—woke a bullet in his side days later in Passaic

last moments gasping stricken blood under stars coughing intestines & lighted highway cars flowing past his eyes into the dark.

Joe Army’s beauty forgotten that night, pain cops nightmare, drunken AWOL through Detroit

phonecalls angels backrooms & courtsmartial lawyers trains a kaleidoscope of instant change,

shrinkage of soul, bearded dead dreams, all Balzac read in jail,

late disappearance from the city hides metamorphosis to humancy loathing that deathscene.

Phil Black hung in Tombs, horsefaced junky, dreamy strange murderer, forgotten pistol three buck holdup, stoolpigeon suicide I save him from the grave

Iroquois his indian head red cock intelligence buried in miserous solitaire politics

his narcissistic blond haired hooknosed pride, I made him once he groaned and came

Later stranger chill made me tremble, I loved him hopeless years,

he’s hid in Seattle consumed by lesbian hypochondrias’ stealthy communion, green bullfighters envy age,

unless I save him from the grave, but he won’t talk no more

much less fall in my arms or any mental bed forgiveness before we climb Olympics death

Leroi returning to bughouse monkishness & drear stinky soupdish his fatness fright & suffering mind insult a repetitious void

“I have done my best to make saintliness as uninteresting as possible”

and has succeeded, when did I last write or receive ambiguous message joky hangdog prophetic spade

Joan in dreams bent forward smiling asks news of the living

as in life the same sad tolerance, no skullbone judge of drunks

asking whereabouts sending regards from Mexican paradise garden where life & death are one

as if a postcard from eternity sent with human hand, wish I could see you now, it’s happening as should

whatever we really need, we ought get, don’t blame yourself—a photograph on reverse the rare tomb smile where trees grow crooked energy above grass—

yet died early-old teeth gone, tequila bottle in hand, an infantile paralysis limp, lacklove, the worst—

I dreamed such vision of her secret in my frisco bed, heart can live the rest by my, or her, best desire—love

Bill King black haired sorry drunken wop lawyer, woke up trembling in Connecticut DT’s among cows

Him there to recover I guess, but made his way back to New York shuddering to fuck stiff Time girls,

Death charm in person, sexual childlike radiant pain

See his face in old photographs & bandaged naked wrist leaning melancholy contemplating the camera

awkward face now calm, kind to me in cafeteria one sober morn looking for jobs at breakfast,

but mostly smiled at roof edge midnight, all 1920s elegance reincarnate in black vomit bestriven suit

& screechy records Mahagonny airplane crash, lushed young man of 1940s hated his fairy woe, came on Lizzie’s belly or Ansen’s sock in desperate orgies of music canopener

God but I loved his murdered face when he talked with a mouthful of rain in 14th St subway—

where he fell skull broken underground last, head crushed by the radiant wheel on iron track at Astor Place

Farewell dear Bill that’s done, you’re gone, we all go into the ancient void drunkard mouth

you made it too soon, here was more to say, & more to drink, but now too late to sit and talk

all night toward the eternity you sought so well so fearlessly in so much alcoholic pain with so much fire behind eyes with such

sweet manner in your heart that never won a happy fate thru what bleak years you saw your red skull burning deathshead in the U.S. sun

Mix living dead, Neal Cassady, old hero of travel love alyosha idiot seek-train poems, what crown you wear at last

what fameless reward for patience & pain, what golden whore come secret from the clouds, what has god bidden for your coffin and heart someday,

what will give back your famous arm, your happy catholic boy eye, orphan torso shining in poolhall & library, intimate spermworks with old girls downtown rockabelly energy,

what Paradise built high enough to hold your desire, deep enough to encompass your cock kindnesses, soft for your children to pray, 10 foot iron wheels you fell under?

what American heaven receive you? Christ allow sufferings then will he allow you His opening tinbarrel Iowa light as Jerusalem?

O Neal that life end we together on knees know harvest of prayers together,

Paradise autos ascend to the moon no illusion, short time earth life Bibles bear our eyes, make it dear baby

Stay with me Angel now in Shroud of railroad lost bet racetrack broke leg

oblivion

till I get the shining Word or you the cockless cock to lay in my ass hope mental radiance—

It’s all lost we fall without glory to empty tomb comedown to nothing but evil thinkless worm, but we know better

merely by old heart hope, or merely Desire, or merely the love whisper breathed in your ear on lawns of long gone by Denver,

merely by the night you leaned on my body & held me for All & called me to Adore what I wondered at as child age ten I

wandered by hopeless green hedges, when you sat under alley balcony garbagestair, ache in our breasts Futurity

meeting Love for Love, so wept as child now man I weep for true end,

Save from the grave! O Neal I love you I bring this Lamb into the middle of the world happily—O tenderness—to see you again—O tenderness—to recognize you in the middle of Time.

Paris, Spring 1958

At Apollinaire’s Grave

“… voici le temps
Où l’on connaîtra l’avenir
Sans mourir de connaissance”

I

I visited Père Lachaise to look for the remains of Apollinaire

the day the U.S. President appeared in France for the grand conference of heads of state

so let it be the airport at blue Orly a springtime clarity in the air over Paris

Eisenhower winging in from his American graveyard

and over the froggy graves at Père Lachaise an illusory mist as thick as marijuana smoke

Peter Orlovsky and I walked softly thru Père Lachaise we both knew we would die

and so held temporary hands tenderly in a citylike miniature eternity

roads and streetsigns rocks and hills and names on everybody’s house

looking for the lost address of a notable Frenchman of the Void

to pay our tender crime of homage to his helpless menhir

and lay my temporary American Howl on top of his silent Calligramme

for him to read between the lines with Xray eyes of Poet

as he by miracle had read his own death lyric in the Seine

I hope some wild kidmonk lays his pamphlet on my grave for God to read me on cold winter nights in heaven

already our hands have vanished from that place my hand writes now in a room in Paris Git-le-Coeur

Ah William what grit in the brain you had what’s death

I walked all over the cemetery and still couldn’t find your grave

what did you mean by that fantastic cranial bandage in your poems

O solemn stinking deathshead what’ve you got to say nothing and that’s barely an answer

You can’t drive autos into a sixfoot grave tho the universe is mausoleum big enough for anything

the universe is a graveyard and I walk around alone in here

knowing that Apollinaire was on the same street 50 years ago

his madness is only around the corner and Genet is with us stealing books

the West is at war again and whose lucid suicide will set it all right

Guillaume Guillaume how I envy your fame your accomplishment for American letters

your Zone with its long crazy line of bullshit about death

come out of the grave and talk thru the door of my mind

issue new series of images oceanic haikus blue taxicabs in Moscow negro statues of Buddha

pray for me on the phonograph record of your former existence

with a long sad voice and strophes of deep sweet music sad and scratchy as World War I

I’ve eaten the blue carrots you sent out of the grave and Van Gogh’s ear and maniac peyote of Artaud

and will walk down the streets of New York in the black cloak of French poetry

improvising our conversation in Paris at Père Lachaise

and the future poem that takes its inspiration from the light bleeding into your grave

II

Here in Paris I am your guest O friendly shade

the absent hand of Max Jacob

Picasso in youth bearing me a tube of Mediterranean

myself attending Rousseau’s old red banquet I ate his violin

great party at the Bateau Lavoir not mentioned in the textbooks of Algeria

Tzara in the Bois de Boulogne explaining the alchemy of the machineguns of the cuckoos

he weeps translating me into Swedish

well dressed in a violet tie and black pants

a sweet purple beard which emerged from his face like the moss hanging from the walls of Anarchism

he spoke endlessly of his quarrels with André Breton

whom he had helped one day trim his golden mustache

old Blaise Cendrars received me into his study and spoke wearily of the enormous length of Siberia

Jacques Vaché invited me to inspect his terrible collection of pistols

poor Cocteau saddened by the once marvelous Radiguet at his last thought I fainted

Rigaut with a letter of introduction to Death

and Gide praised the telephone and other remarkable inventions

we agreed in principle though he gossiped of lavender underwear

but for all that he drank deeply of the grass of Whitman and was intrigued by all lovers named Colorado

princes of America arriving with their armfuls of shrapnel and baseball

Oh Guillaume the world so easy to fight seemed so easy

did you know the great political classicists would invade Montparnasse

with not one sprig of prophetic laurel to green their foreheads

not one pulse of green in their pillows no leaf left from their wars—Maya-kovsky arrived and revolted

III

Came back sat on a tomb and stared at your rough menhir

a piece of thin granite like an unfinished phallus

a cross fading into the rock 2 poems on the stone one Coeur Renversée

other Habituez-vous comme moi A ces prodiges que j’annonce Guillaume Apollinaire de Kostrowitsky

someone placed a jam bottle filled with daisies and a 5&10¢ surrealist typist ceramic rose

happy little tomb with flowers and overturned heart

under a fine mossy tree beneath which I sat snaky trunk

summer boughs and leaves umbrella over the menhir and nobody there

Et quelle voix sinistre ulule Guillaume qu’es-tu devenu

his nextdoor neighbor is a tree

there underneath the crossed bones heaped and yellow cranium perhaps

and the printed poems Alcools in my pocket his voice in the museum

Now middleage footsteps walk the gravel

a man stares at the name and moves toward the crematory building

same sky rolls over thru clouds as Mediterranean days on the Riviera during war

drinking Apollo in love eating occasional opium he’d taken the light

One must have felt the shock in St. Germain when he went out Jacob & Picasso coughing in the dark

a bandage unrolled and the skull left still on a bed outstretched pudgy fingers the mystery and ego gone

a bell tolls in the steeple down the street birds warble in the chestnut trees

Famille Bremont sleeps nearby Christ hangs big chested and sexy in their tomb

my cigarette smokes in my lap and fills the page with smoke and flames

an ant runs over my corduroy sleeve the tree I lean on grows slowly

bushes and branches upstarting through the tombs one silky spiderweb gleaming on granite

I am buried here and sit by my grave beneath a tree

Paris, Winter-Spring 1958

Message

        Since we had changed
        rogered spun worked
        wept and pissed together
        I wake up in the morning
        with a dream in my eyes
        but you are gone in NY
        remembering me Good
        I love you I love you
        & your brothers are crazy
        I accept their drunk cases
It’s too long that I have been alone
it’s too long that I’ve sat up in bed
without anyone to touch on the knee, man
or woman I don’t care what anymore, I
want love I was born for I want you with me now
Ocean liners boiling over the Atlantic
Delicate steelwork of unfinished skyscrapers
Back end of the dirigible roaring over Lakehurst
Six women dancing together on a red stage naked
The leaves are green on all the trees in Paris now
I will be home in two months and look you in the eyes

Paris, May 1958

To Lindsay

Vachel, the stars are out
dusk has fallen on the Colorado road
a car crawls slowly across the plain
in the dim light the radio blares its jazz
the heartbroken salesman lights another cigarette
In another city 27 years ago
I see your shadow on the wall
you’re sitting in your suspenders on the bed
the shadow hand lifts up a Lysol bottle to your head
your shade falls over on the floor

Paris, May 1958

To Aunt Rose

Aunt Rose—now—might I see you
with your thin face and buck tooth smile and pain
     of rheumatism—and a long black heavy shoe
          for your bony left leg
limping down the long hall in Newark on the running carpet
     past the black grand piano
          in the day room
               where the parties were
     and I sang Spanish loyalist songs
       in a high squeaky voice
          (hysterical) the committee listening
       while you limped around the room
          collected the money—
Aunt Honey, Uncle Sam, a stranger with a cloth arm
     in his pocket
          and huge young bald head
          of Abraham Lincoln Brigade

—your long sad face
     your tears of sexual frustration
          (what smothered sobs and bony hips
               under the pillows of Osborne Terrace)
—the time I stood on the toilet seat naked
     and you powdered my thighs with calamine
          against the poison ivy—my tender
               and shamed first black curled hairs
what were you thinking in secret heart then
     knowing me a man already—
and I an ignorant girl of family silence on the thin pedestal
     of my legs in the bathroom—Museum of Newark.

          Aunt Rose
Hitler is dead, Hitler is in Eternity; Hitler is with
     Tamburlane and Emily Brontë

Though I see you walking still, a ghost on Osborne Terrace
     down the long dark hall to the front door
    limping a little with a pinched smile
     in what must have been a silken
          flower dress

welcoming my father, the Poet, on his visit to Newark
     —see you arriving in the living room
          dancing on your crippled leg
     and clapping hands his book
          had been accepted by Liveright

Hitler is dead and Liveright’s gone out of business
The Attic of the Past and Everlasting Minute are out of print
          Uncle Harry sold his last silk stocking
     Claire quit interpretive dancing school
          Buba sits a wrinkled monument in Old
               Ladies Home blinking at new babies

last time I saw you was the hospital
     pale skull protruding under ashen skin
          blue veined unconscious girl
               in an oxygen tent
     the war in Spain has ended long ago
               Aunt Rose

Paris, June 1958

American Change

The first I looked on, after a long time far from home in mid Atlantic on a summer day

Dolphins breaking the glassy water under the blue sky,

a gleam of silver in my cabin, fished up out of my jangling new pocket of coins and green dollars

—held in my palm, the head of the feathered indian, old Buck-Rogers eagle eyed face, a gash of hunger in the cheek

gritted jaw of the vanished man begone like a Hebrew with hairlock combed down the side—O Rabbi Indian

what visionary gleam 100 years ago on Buffalo prairie under the molten cloud-shot sky, ’the same clear light 10000 miles in all directions

but now with all the violin music of Vienna, gone into the great slot machine of Kansas City, Reno—

The coin seemed so small after vast European coppers thick francs leaden pesetas, lire endless and heavy,

a miniature primeval memorialized in 5¢ nickel candy-store nostalgia of the redskin, dead on silver coin,

with shaggy buffalo on reverse, hump-backed little tail incurved, head butting against the rondure of Eternity,

cock forelock below, bearded shoulder muscle folded below muscle, head of prophet, bowed,

vanishing beast of Time, hoar body rubbed clean of wrinkles and shining like polished stone, bright metal in my forefinger, ridiculous buffalo —Go to New York.

   Dime next I found, Minerva, sexless cold & chill, ascending goddess of money—and was it the wife of Wallace Stevens, truly?

and now from the locks flowing the miniature wings of speedy thought,

executive dyke, Minerva, goddess of Madison Avenue, forgotten useless dime that can’t buy hot dog, dead dime—

Then we’ve George Washington, less primitive, the snub-nosed quarter, smug eyes and mouth, some idiot’s design of the sexless Father,

naked down to his neck, a ribbon in his wig, high forehead, Roman line down the nose, fat cheeked, still showing his falsetooth ideas—O Eisenhower & Washington—O Fathers—No movie star dark beauty—O thou Bignoses—

Quarter, remembered quarter, 40¢ in all—What’ll you buy me when I land—one icecream soda?—

poor pile of coins, original reminders of the sadness, forgotten money of America—

nostalgia of the first touch of those coins, American change,

the memory in my aging hand, the same old silver reflective there,

the thin dime hidden between my thumb and forefinger

All the struggles for those coins, the sadness of their reappearance

my reappearance on those fabled shores

and the failure of that Dream, that Vision of Money reduced to this haunting recollection

of the gas lot in Paterson where I found half a dollar gleaming in the grass—

   I have a $5 bill in my pocket—it’s Lincoln’s sour black head moled wrinkled, forelocked too, big eared, flags of announcement flying over the bill, stamps in green and spiderweb black,

long numbers in racetrack green, immense promise, a girl, a hotel, a busride to Albany, a night of brilliant drunk in some faraway corner of Manhattan

a stick of several teas, or paper or cap of Heroin, or a $5 strange present to the blind.

Money money, reminder, I might as well write poems to you—dear American money—O statue of Liberty I ride enfolded in money in my mind to you—and last

   Ahhh! Washington again, on the Dollar, same poetic black print, dark words, The United States of America, innumerable numbers

R956422481 One Dollar This Certificate is Legal Tender (tender!) for all debts public and private

My God My God why have you forsaken me

Ivy Baker Priest Series 1953 F

and over, the Eagle, wild wings outspread, halo of the Stars encircled by puffs of smoke & flame—

a circle the Masonic Pyramid, the sacred Swedenborgian Dollar

America, bricked up to the top, & floating surreal above

the triangle of holy outstaring Eye sectioned out of the aire, shining

light emitted from the eyebrowless triangle—and a desert of cactus, scattered all around, clouds afar,

this being the Great Seal of our Passion, Annuit Coeptis, Novus Ordo Seclorum,

the whole surrounded by green spiderwebs designed by T-Men to prevent foul counterfeit—

ONE

S.S. United States, July 1958

‘Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square’

Let some sad trumpeter stand
          on the empty streets at dawn
and blow a silver chorus to the
          buildings of Times Square,
memorial of ten years, at 5 A.M., with
          the thin white moon just
                    visible
     above the green & grooking McGraw
          Hill offices
a cop walks by, but he’s invisible
          with his music

The Globe Hotel, Garver lay in
     gray beds there and hunched his
     back and cleaned his needles—
where I lay many nights on the nod
     from his leftover bloody cottons
     and dreamed of Blake’s voice talking—
          I was lonely,
        Garver’s dead in Mexico two years,
       hotel’s vanished into a parking lot
And I’m back here—sitting on the streets
again—
     The movies took our language, the
          great red signs
     A DOUBLE BILL OF GASSERS
          Teen Age Nightmare
       Hooligans of the Moon

But we were never nightmare
     hooligans but seekers of
          the blond nose for Truth

Some old men are still alive, but
          the old Junkies are gone—

We are a legend, invisible but
          legendary, as prophesied

New York, July 1958

Laughing Gas

     To Gary Snyder
The red tin begging cup you gave me,
I lost it but its contents are undisturbed.

I

High on Laughing Gas
I’ve been here before
the odd vibration of
the same old universe

the nasal whine of the dentist’s drill
     singing against the nostalgic
          piano Muzak in the wall
insistent, familiar, penetrating
     the teeth, where’ve I heard that
          asshole jazz before?

The universe is a void
     in which there is a dreamhole
     The dream disappears
          the hole closes

It’s the instant of going
into or coming out of
existence that is
important—to catch on
to the secret of the magic
          box

Stepping outside the universe
     by means of Nitrous Oxide
anesthetizing mind-consciousness

     the chiliasm was an impersonal dream—
one of many, being mere dreams.

     the sadness of birth
     and death, the sadness of
changing from dream to dream,
  the constant farewell
     of forms …
          saying ungoodbye to what
didn’t exist

The many worlds that don’t exist
all which seem real
all joke
all lost cartoon

At that moment the whole goofy-spooky of the Universe WHAT?! Joke Being slips into Nothing like the tail of a lizard disappearing into a crack in the Wall with the final receding eyehole ending Loony Tunes accompanied by Woody Woodpecker’s hindoo maniac laughter in the skull. Nobody gets hurt. They all disappear. They were never there. Beginningless perfection.

That’s why Satori’s accompanied by laughter
and the Zenmaster rips up the Sutras in fury.

And the pain of this contrariety
The cycles of scream and laughter
faces and asses Christs and Buddhas
each with his own universe dragged
over the snowy mental poles
like a sack mad Santa Clauses
Worst pain in the dentist’s chair comes true
novocaine also arrives in the cycle
every hap will have its chance
even God will come Once or Twice
Satan will be my personal enemy

Relax and die—
The process will repeat itself
Be Born! Be Born!
Back to the same old smiling
               dentist—

The Bloomfield police car
     with its idiot red light
     revolving on its head
     balefully at Eternity
          gone in an instant
          —simultaneous
     appearance of Bankrobbers
  at the Twentieth Century Bank
The fire engines screaming
   toward an old lady’s
   burned-in-her-bedroom
   today apocalypse
     tomorrow
   Mickey Mouse cartoons—

I’m disgusted! it’s Unbelievable!
     What a funny horrible
          dirty joke!
     The whole universe a shaggy dog story!
          with a weird ending that begins again
            till you get the point
‘It was a dark and gloomy night…’
     ‘in every direction in and
          out’
            ‘You take the high road
   and I’ll take the low’
                    —everybody lost
in Scotlands of mind-consciousness—

          Adonoi Echad!
It is not One, but Two,
     not two but Infinite—
the universe be born and die
     in endless series in the mind!

Gary Snyder, Jack, Zen thinkers,
     split open existence
     and laugh & Cry—
what’s shock? what’s measure?
     when the Mind’s an irrational
        traffic light in
               Gobi—
follow the blinking lights of contrariety!

What’s the use avoiding rats
and horror, hiding from Cops
     and dentists’ drills?
Somebody will invent
     a Buchenwald next door
—an ant’s dream’s
     funnier than
          ours
—he has more of them
     faster and seems
     to give less of
          a shit—

O waves of probable
     and improbable
Universes—
     Everybody’s right

I’ll finish this poem
     in my next life.

II

…….with eye opening
slowly to perceive
that I be coming out
     of a trance—
one look at the lipstick
     it’s a nurse
in a dentist’s office

     that first frog
thought leaping out of
     the void

     … a glimpse
out of which the whole
process unfolds this
universe & logically
and symmetrically next
unbuilds it in exact
reverse till you arrive
back at the Nothing
in which one chance
note was originally
struck…

     , the Czardas
of Creation, the first banal chord
establishing Music forever in
   its mechanical jukebox
     … and the whole
   structure unfolds
itself inevitably and
   folds back into
Nothing again …

—the same man
crossing the street looking
both ways watch out for
the cars—

and each time, returning
with a jerk of the face
(p’raps a dental touch)
dictated by the sinking
sensation, Oof! I’ve
been hoodwinked—

          again like
     someone in the Circus
defying death, got thrown
     into the orchestra—
          Note the music blaring
with an indifferent flourish of Triumph
          a nightmare Razz
     —as the acrobat leaps
out into the void—

Me! I made that Last Chance
     jump off the wire
way high up in the Big Top
     long ago …
          it’s happening again!

I wake up dazed …

     it being the dream
of someone in a dentist’s
chair in a Universe he
imagines—coming out
of gas—
     it’s only happening
in the closed universe of
     illusion

III

A nice day in the Universe on Broad Street—sun shines today as it never shone before and never will again—stillness in the blue sky—the church’s gold dome across the park sending and receiving flashes of light—I feel heartsick to destroy this all—

What hope have the children in their prams passing the white silent doors of the houses—only the Public Library knows.

   Premonition in the dentist’s chair—mechanical voices over the radio singing Destination Moon—mysterious sorrow for the moon of this forgotten universe—humans, singing, singing—of the moon—for money?—except it’s the imbecilic canned voice of eternity rocking & rolling in Space making invisible announcements—

The Doc’s agreed to the experiment—novocaine, my mouth’s begun to disappear first—like the Cheshire Cat.

BACK: Endless cycles of conflict happening in nothingness
make it impossible to grasp for the perfection
which does not exist
but is not necessary
so everything is final and occurs over & over again
till we will finally blank out as expected.

          The First Note of Creation:
the only one there could be if there
weren’t nothing but
an idea that there might
not be nothing—

Sherman Adams will resign
I’m holding my breath
the shiver run thru my belly
the nurse will be singing I love you
between breaths the Buddhists are right
a tear
siffle in the cheek
the possibility escape
the eye glare thru glasses
Nothing grasped at & ungrasped as its trance thought passes

I take my pen in hand
The same old way sings Sinatra
I’m writing to You give me understanding
I pray sings Sinatra
Can I never glimpse the round we have made?
Write me as soon as able sings Sinatra
O Lord burn me out of existence.

You’ve got a long body sings Sinatra
I refuse to breathe and return to form
I’ve seen every moment in advance before
I’ve turned my neck a million times
          & written this note
     & been greeted with fire and cheers
I refuse to stop
          —thinking—
     What Perfection has escaped me?

An endless cycle of possibilities clashing in Nothing
with each mistake in the writing inevitable from the beginning of time
The doctor’s phone number is Pilgrim 1–0000
Are you calling me, Nothing?

The universe be smashed
to smithereens by the oncoming
atomic explosions with
Eisenhower as once President
of a place called U.S.
Gregory wrote the Bomb!
Russians dream of Mars &
when the cosmos goes and
all consciousness after the
final explosion of imagination
in the void it won’t have
made any difference that it
all both did and did not
happen, whatever it was once
thought to be so real—
it will be—gone.
O that I might die on the spot
I’ll have to go back
any prophecy might have been right
it’s all a great Exception

My bus will arrive as foretold
it’s the end of another September
war is on the radio ahead
we are all going to the inevitable beauty of doom
a firebox stands sentient before the library
it’s hot sun now I’m crazy scribbling
—It began abstract and mindless nowhere
planets of thought have passed
it’ll end where it began

I want to return to normal
—but there is no changelessness
but in Nirvana
          Or is there
Ever Rest, Lord?—and what sages
know and sit.
          I’m a spy
in Bloomfield on a park bench
     —frightened by buses—

What’s that bee doing hanging round my shoe? my borrowed and inevitable shoe?

A vast red truck moving with boxes of dead television sets in the back

American flag waving over the library

On the bus I sit by a negress

This is an explosion

IV

Back in the same old black hole
     where Possibility closes the
          last door
     and the Great Void remains
          … a glass
in the dust reflecting the sun,
          fragment of a bottle
     that never knew it existed

          … under a tree
that sleeps all winter
     till it grows its eyes
          in May heat
and flowers upward with a thousand
          green sensations
dies, and forgets itself in Snow

     … Phantom in Phantom

If we didn’t exist, God
would have to create this
     to leave no room for complaint
          by any of the birds & bees
who might have missed their
          chance (to be)

     Fate tells big lies.

     … And the big kind Dreamer
is on the nod again
          God sleeps!
He’s in for a big surprise
one of his dreams is going to come true
     He’ll get the answer too
     He’ll get the answer too

Just a flash in the cosmic pan
—just an instant when there
          might have been a light
     had there been any pan
               to reflect it—

—we can lie on the bed and imagine
     ourselves away—

I’m afraid to stop breathing—
     first the pain in the
          body
suffocation, then
          the Death.

V

The pain of gas flowing into the eye
the crooked tooth-drills hanging like gallows
          on a miniature Jupiter
Thru the open window, spring frozen
          in the young tree
the repeated bong of the doorbell
          opening elsewhere
I’ve come back to the same medicine
     cabinet in the universe—Bong,
I know I’m more real than the dentist!
a serious embarrassment, having grasped to one Self
though admittedly I’d seen it disappear
          over and over

TRACKLESS TRANSIT CORPORATION

runs a bus thru Bloomfield
     … blossoming
in the bottom of an unborn daisy
it will vanish into the Whist-not

History will keep repeating
itself forever like the woman
in the image on the Dutch Cleanser box

A way out of the mirror
     was found by the image
that realized its existence
     was only …
a stranger completely like myself

A way out for ever! has not been found
to enter the ground whence the images
     rise, and repeat themselves
The sadness is, that every leaf
          has fallen before—

At my feet an ant crawling
          in the broken asphalt—
and this exact white lollipop stick
          & twig of branch
lain next to that soggy match
     near those few grassblades …
and I’ve sat here and took this note
     before and tried to remember—
and now I do—remember what
I’m writing as I write it down
I know when I’m going to stop
I know when I’m forgetting and
know when I
          take a jump and change—
               Impossible
to do anything but right now in all
     the universe at once—
          which Art does, and
the Insight of Laughing Gas?

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
and the monk laughs
at the moon—
and everybody 10 miles round
in all directions wonders
why—he’s just reminding
them—of what—of
the moon, the old dumb moon
of a million lives.

New York, Fall 1958

Funny Death

The music of the spheres—that ends in Silence
The Void is a grand piano
                    a million melodies
               one after another
          silence in between
                    rather an interruption
                         of the silence

                    Tho the music’s beautiful
Bong Bong Bon———
                    gnob
                         gnob
                              gno———

THE circle of forms
Shrinks
     and disappears
back into the piano.

New York, September 25, 1958

My Sad Self

To Frank O’Hara

Sometimes when my eyes are red
I go up on top of the RCA Building
     and gaze at my world, Manhattan—
          my buildings, streets I’ve done feats in,
               lofts, beds, coldwater flats
—on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind,
     its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men
          walking the size of specks of wool—
Panorama of the bridges, sunrise over Brooklyn machine,
     sun go down over New Jersey where I was born
          & Paterson where I played with ants—
my later loves on 15th Street,
     my greater loves of Lower East Side,
          my once fabulous amours in the Bronx
               faraway—
paths crossing in these hidden streets,
     my history summed up, my absences
          and ecstasies in Harlem—
—sun shining down on all I own
     in one eyeblink to the horizon
          in my last eternity—
               matter is water.

Sad,
     I take the elevator and go
          down, pondering,
and walk on the pavements staring into all man’s
                    plateglass, faces,
          questioning after who loves,
     and stop, bemused
          in front of an automobile shopwindow
     standing lost in calm thought,
          traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue blocks behind me
               waiting for a moment when …

Time to go home & cook supper & listen to
          the romantic war news on the radio
               … all movement stops
& I walk in the timeless sadness of existence,
     tenderness flowing thru the buildings,
     my fingertips touching reality’s face,
my own face streaked with tears in the mirror
          of some window—at dusk—
                    where I have no desire—
for bonbons—or to own the dresses or Japanese
               lampshades of intellection—

Confused by the spectacle around me,
     Man struggling up the street
          with packages, newspapers,
                    ties, beautiful suits
          toward his desire
     Man, woman, streaming over the pavements
          red lights clocking hurried watches &
               movements at the curb—

And all these streets leading
     so crosswise, honking, lengthily,
               by avenues
     stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums
               thru such halting traffic
                    screaming cars and engines
so painfully to this
     countryside, this graveyard
          this stillness
                    on deathbed or mountain
     once seen
               never regained or desired
                    in the mind to come
where all Manhattan that I’ve seen must disappear.

New York, October 1958

Ignu

On top of that if you know me I pronounce you an ignu

Ignu knows nothing of the world

a great ignoramus in factories though he may own or inspire them or even be production manager

Ignu has knowledge of the angel indeed ignu is angel in comical form

W. C. Fields Harpo Marx ignus Whitman an ignu

Rimbaud a natural ignu in his boy pants

The ignu may be queer though like not kind ignu blows archangels for the strange thrill

a gnostic women love him Christ overflowed with trembling semen for many a dead aunt

He’s a great cocksman most beautiful girls are worshipped by ignu

Hollywood dolls or lone Marys of Idaho long-legged publicity women and secret housewives

have known ignu in another lifetime and remember their lover

Husbands also are secretly tender to ignu their buddy

oldtime friendship can do anything cuckold bugger drunk trembling and happy

Ignu lives only once and eternally and knows it

he sleeps in everybody’s bed everyone’s lonesome for ignu ignu knew solitude early

So ignu’s a primitive of cock and mind

equally the ignu has written liverish tomes personal metaphysics abstract

images that scratch the moon ‘lightningflash-flintspark’ naked lunch fried shoes adios king

The shadow of the angel is waving in the opposite direction

dawn of intelligence turns the telephones into strange animals

he attacks the rose garden with his mystical shears snip snip snip

Ignu has painted Park Avenue with his own long melancholy

and ignu giggles in a hard chair over tea in Paris bald in his decaying room a black hotel

Ignu with his wild mop walks by Colosseum weeping

he plucks a clover from Keats’ grave & Shelley’s a blade of grass

knew Coleridge they had slow hung-up talks at midnight over mahogany tables in London

sidestreet rooms in wintertime rain outside fog the cabman blows his hand

Charles Dickens is born ignu hears the wail of the babe

Ignu goofs nights under bridges and laughs at battleships

ignu is a battleship without guns in the North Sea lost O the flowerness of the moment

he knows geography he was there before he’ll get out and die already

reborn a bearded humming Jew of Arabian mournful jokes

man with a star on his forehead and halo over his cranium

listening to music musing happy at the fall of a leaf the moonlight of immortality in his hair

table-hopping most elegant comrade of all most delicate mannered in the Sufi court

he wasn’t even there at all

wearing zodiacal blue sleeves and the long peaked conehat of a magician

harkening to the silence of a well at midnight under a red star

in the lobby of Rockefeller Center attentive courteous bare-eyed enthusiastic with or without pants

he listens to jazz as if he were a negro afflicted with jewish melancholy and white divinity

Ignu’s a natural you can see it when he pays the cabfare abstracted

pulling off the money from an impossible saintly roll

or counting his disappearing pennies to give to the strange busdriver whom he admires

Ignu has sought you out he’s the seeker of God

and God breaks down the world for him every ten years

he sees lightning flash in empty daylight when the sky is blue

he hears Blake’s disembodied Voice recite the Sunflower in a room in Harlem

No woe on him surrounded by 700 thousand mad scholars moths fly out of his sleeve

He wants to die give up go mad break through into Eternity

live on and teach an aged saint or break down to an eyebrow clown

All ignus know each other in a moment’s talk and measure each other up at once

as lifetime friends romantic winks and giggles across continents

sad moment paying the cab goodbye and speeding away uptown

One or two grim ignus in the pack

one laughing monk in dungarees

one delighted by cracking his eggs in an egg cup

one chews gum to music all night long rock and roll

one anthropologist cuckoo in the Petén rainforest

one sits in jail all year and bets karmaic racetrack

one chases girls down East Broadway into the horror movie

one pulls out withered grapes and rotten onions from his pants

one has a nannygoat under his bed to amuse visitors plasters the wall with his crap

collects scorpions whiskies skies etc. would steal the moon if he could find it

That would set fire to America but none of these make ignu

it’s the soul that makes the style the tender firecracker of his thought

the amity of letters from strange cities to old friends

and the new radiance of morning on a foreign bed

A comedy of personal being his grubby divinity

Eliot probably an ignu one of the few who’s funny when he eats

Williams of Paterson a dying American ignu

Burroughs a purest ignu his haircut is a cream his left finger

pinkie chopped off for early ignu reasons metaphysical spells love spells with psychoanalysts

his very junkhood an accomplishment beyond a million dollars

Céline himself an old ignu over prose

I saw him in Paris dirty old gentleman of ratty talk

with longhaired cough three wormy sweaters round his neck

brown mould under historic fingernails

pure genius his giving morphine all night to 1400 passengers on a sinking ship

‘because they were all getting emotional’

Who’s amazing you is ignu communicate with me

by mail post telegraph phone street accusation or scratching at my window

and send me a true sign I’ll reply special delivery

DEATH IS A LETTER THAT WAS NEVER SENT

Knowledge born of stamps words coins pricks jails seasons sweet ambition laughing gas

history with a gold halo photographs of the sea painting a celestial din in the

bright window

one eye in a black cloud

and the lone vulture on a sand plain seen from the window of a Turkish bus

It must be a trick. Two diamonds in the hand one Poetry one Charity

proves we have dreamed and the long sword of intelligence

over which I constantly stumble like my pants at the age six—embarrassed.

New York, November 1958

Battleship Newsreel

I was high on tea in my fo’c’sle near the forepeak hatch listening to the stars envisioning the kamikazes flapping and turning in the soiled clouds ackack burst into fire a vast hole ripped out of the bow like a burning lily we dumped our oilcans of nitroglycerine among the waving octopi dull thud and boom of thunder undersea the cough of the tubercular machinegunner

flames in the hold among the cans of ether the roar of battleships far away

rolling in the sea like whales surrounded by dying ants the screams the captain mad

Suddenly a golden light came over the ocean and grew large the radiance entered the sky

a deathly chill and heaviness entered my body I could scarce lift my eye

and the ship grew sheathed in light like an overexposed photograph fading in the brain.

New York, 1959

V
KADDISH AND
RELATED POEMS
(1959–1960)

Kaddish

For Naomi Ginsberg, 1894–1956

I

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.

downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I’ve been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph

the rhythm the rhythm—and your memory in my head three years after—And read Adonais’ last triumphant stanzas aloud—wept, realizing how we suffer—

And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember, prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of Answers—and my own imagination of a withered leaf—at dawn—

Dreaming back thru life, Your time—and mine accelerating toward Apocalypse,

the final moment—the flower burning in the Day—and what comes after,

looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city

a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed—

like a poem in the dark—escaped back to Oblivion—

No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream, trapped in its disappearance,

sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worshipping each other,

worshipping the God included in it all—longing or inevitability?—while it lasts, a Vision—anything more?

It leaps about me, as I go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder,

Seventh Avenue, the battlements of window office buildings shouldering each other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky an instant—and the sky above—an old blue place.

or down the Avenue to the south, to—as I walk toward the Lower East Side —where you walked 50 years ago, little girl—from Russia, eating the first poisonous tomatoes of America—frightened on the dock—

then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what?—toward Newark—

toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards—

Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school, and learning to be mad, in a dream—what is this life?

Toward the Key in the window—and the great Key lays its head of light on top of Manhattan, and over the floor, and lays down on the sidewalk—in a single vast beam, moving, as I walk down First toward the Yiddish Theater—and the place of poverty

you knew, and I know, but without caring now—Strange to have moved thru Paterson, and the West, and Europe and here again,

with the cries of Spaniards now in the doorstoops doors and dark boys on the street, fire escapes old as you

—Tho you’re not old now, that’s left here with me—

Myself, anyhow, maybe as old as the universe—and I guess that dies with us—enough to cancel all that comes—What came is gone forever every time—

That’s good! That leaves it open for no regret—no fear radiators, lacklove, torture even toothache in the end—

Though while it comes it is a lion that eats the soul—and the lamb, the soul, in us, alas, offering itself in sacrifice to change’s fierce hunger—hair and teeth—and the roar of bonepain, skull bare, break rib, rot-skin, braintricked Implacability.

Ai! ai! we do worse! We are in a fix! And you’re out, Death let you out, Death had the Mercy, you’re done with your century, done with God, done with the path thru it—Done with yourself at last—Pure —Back to the Babe dark before your Father, before us all—before the world—

There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know where you’ve gone, it’s good.

No more flowers in the summer fields of New York, no joy now, no more fear of Louis,

and no more of his sweetness and glasses, his high school decades, debts, loves, frightened telephone calls, conception beds, relatives, hands—

No more of sister Elanor,—she gone before you—we kept it secret—you

killed her—or she killed herself to bear with you—an arthritic heart

—But Death’s killed you both—No matter—

Nor your memory of your mother, 1915 tears in silent movies weeks and

weeks—forgetting, agrieve watching Marie Dressler address humanity, Chaplin dance in youth,

or Boris Godunov, Chaliapin’s at the Met, halling his voice of a weeping Czar —by standing room with Elanor & Max—watching also the Capitalists take seats in Orchestra, white furs, diamonds,

with the YPSL’s hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania, in black baggy gym skirts pants, photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the waste, and laughing eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920

all girls grown old, or dead, now, and that long hair in the grave—lucky to have husbands later—

You made it—I came too—Eugene my brother before (still grieving now and will gream on to his last stiff hand, as he goes thru his cancer—or kill —later perhaps—soon he will think—)

And it’s the last moment I remember, which I see them all, thru myself, now —tho not you

I didn’t foresee what you felt—what more hideous gape of bad mouth came first—to you—and were you prepared?

To go where? In that Dark—that—in that God? a radiance? A Lord in the Void? Like an eye in the black cloud in a dream? Adonoi at last, with you?

Beyond my remembrance! Incapable to guess! Not merely the yellow skull in the grave, or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon—Deaths-head with Halo? can you believe it?

Is it only the sun that shines once for the mind, only the flash of existence, than none ever was?

Nothing beyond what we have—what you had—that so pitiful—yet Triumph,

to have been here, and changed, like a tree, broken, or flower—fed to the ground—but mad, with its petals, colored, thinking Great Universe, shaken, cut in the head, leaf stript, hid in an egg crate hospital, cloth wrapped, sore—freaked in the moon brain, Naughtless.

No flower like that flower, which knew itself in the garden, and fought the knife—lost

Cut down by an idiot Snowman’s icy—even in the Spring—strange ghost thought—some Death—Sharp icicle in his hand—crowned with old

roses—a dog for his eyes—cock of a sweatshop—heart of electric irons.

All the accumulations of life, that wear us out—clocks, bodies, consciousness, shoes, breasts—begotten sons—your Communism—‘Paranoia’ into hospitals.

You once kicked Elanor in the leg, she died of heart failure later. You of stroke. Asleep? within a year, the two of you, sisters in death. Is Elanor happy?

Max grieves alive in an office on Lower Broadway, lone large mustache over midnight Accountings, not sure. His life passes—as he sees—and what does he doubt now? Still dream of making money, or that might have made money, hired nurse, had children, found even your Immortality, Naomi?

I’ll see him soon. Now I’ve got to cut through—to talk to you—as I didn’t when you had a mouth.

Forever. And we’re bound for that, Forever—like Emily Dickinson’s horses —headed to the End.

They know the way—These Steeds—run faster than we think—it’s our own life they cross—and take with them.

Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, married dreamed, mortal changed—Ass and face done with murder.

In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under pine, almed in Earth, balmed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.

Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless, Father in death. Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I’m hymnless, I’m Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore

Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not light or darkness, Dayless Eternity—

Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some of my Time, now given to Nothing—to praise Thee—But Death

This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Wonderer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping —page beyond Psalm—Last change of mine and Naomi—to God’s perfect Darkness—Death, stay thy phantoms!

II

Over and over—refrain—of the Hospitals—still haven’t written your history—leave it abstract—a few images

run thru the mind—like the saxophone chorus of houses and years—remembrance of electrical shocks.

By long nites as a child in Paterson apartment, watching over your nervousness—you were fat—your next move—

By that afternoon I stayed home from school to take care of you—once and for all—when I vowed forever that once man disagreed with my opinion of the cosmos, I was lost—

By my later burden—vow to illuminate mankind—this is release of particulars—(mad as you)—(sanity a trick of agreement)—

But you stared out the window on the Broadway Church corner, and spied a mystical assassin from Newark,

So phoned the Doctor—‘OK go way for a rest’—so I put on my coat and walked you downstreet—On the way a grammarschool boy screamed, unaccountably—‘Where you goin Lady to Death’? I shuddered—

and you covered your nose with motheaten fur collar, gas mask against poison sneaked into downtown atmosphere, sprayed by Grandma—

And was the driver of the cheesebox Public Service bus a member of the gang? You shuddered at his face, I could hardly get you on—to New York, very Times Square, to grab another Greyhound—

where we hung around 2 hours fighting invisible bugs and jewish sickness—breeze poisoned by Roosevelt—

out to get you—and me tagging along, hoping it would end in a quiet room in a Victorian house by a lake.

Ride 3 hours thru tunnels past all American industry, Bayonne preparing for World War II, tanks, gas fields, soda factories, diners, locomotive roundhouse fortress—into piney woods New Jersey Indians—calm towns—long roads thru sandy tree fields—

Bridges by deerless creeks, old wampum loading the streambed—down there a tomahawk or Pocahontas bone—and a million old ladies voting for Roosevelt in brown small houses, roads off the Madness highway—

perhaps a hawk in a tree, or a hermit looking for an owl-filled branch—

All the time arguing—afraid of strangers in the forward double seat, snoring regardless—what busride they snore on now?

’Allen, you don’t understand—it’s—ever since those 3 big sticks up

my back—they did something to me in Hospital, they poisoned me, they

want to see me dead—3 big sticks, 3 big sticks—

’The Bitch! Old Grandma! Last week I saw her, dressed in pants like an old man, with a sack on her back, climbing up the brick side of the apartment

’On the fire escape, with poison germs, to throw on me—at night—maybe Louis is helping her—he’s under her power—

‘I’m your mother, take me to Lakewood’ (near where Graf Zeppelin had crashed before, all Hitler in Explosion) ’where I can hide.

We got there—Dr. Whatzis rest home—she hid behind a closet—demanded a blood transfusion.

We were kicked out—tramping with Valise to unknown shady lawn houses—dusk, pine trees after dark—long dead street filled with crickets and poison ivy—

I shut her up by now—big house REST HOME ROOMS—gave the landlady her money for the week—carried up the iron valise—sat on bed waiting to escape—

Neat room in attic with friendly bedcover—lace curtains—spinning wheel rug—Stained wallpaper old as Naomi. We were home.

I left on the next bus to New York—laid my head back in the last seat, depressed—the worst yet to come?—abandoning her, rode in torpor—I was only 12.

Would she hide in her room and come out cheerful for breakfast? Or lock her door and stare thru the window for sidestreet spies? Listen at keyholes for Hitlerian invisible gas? Dream in a chair—or mock me, by—in front of a mirror, alone?

12 riding the bus at nite thru New Jersey, have left Naomi to Parcae in Lakewood’s haunted house—left to my own fate bus—sunk in a seat—all violins broken—my heart sore in my ribs—mind was empty—Would she were safe in her coffin—

Or back at Normal School in Newark, studying up on America in a black skirt—winter on the street without lunch—a penny a pickle—home at night to take care of Elanor in the bedroom—

First nervous breakdown was 1919—she stayed home from school and lay in a dark room for three weeks—something bad—never said what —every noise hurt—dreams of the creaks of Wall Street—

Before the gray Depression—went upstate New York—recovered—Lou took photo of her sitting crossleg on the grass—her long hair wound with flowers—smiling—playing lullabies on mandolin—poison ivy smoke in left-wing summer camps and me in infancy saw trees—

or back teaching school, laughing with idiots, the backward classes—her Russian specialty—morons with dreamy lips, great eyes, thin feet & sicky fingers, swaybacked, rachitic—

great heads pendulous over Alice in Wonderland, a blackboard full of C A T.

Naomi reading patiently, story out of a Communist fairy book—Tale of the Sudden Sweetness of the Dictator—Forgiveness of Warlocks—Armies Kissing—

Deathsheads Around the Green Table—The King & the Workers—Paterson Press printed them up in the ’30s till she went mad, or they folded, both.

O Paterson! I got home late that nite. Louis was worried. How could I be so—didn’t I think? I shouldn’t have left her. Mad in Lakewood. Call the Doctor. Phone the home in the pines. Too late.

Went to bed exhausted, wanting to leave the world (probably that year newly in love with R——my high school mind hero, jewish boy who came a doctor later—then silent neat kid—

I later laying down life for him, moved to Manhattan—followed him to college—Prayed on ferry to help mankind if admitted—vowed, the day I journeyed to Entrance Exam—

by being honest revolutionary labor lawyer—would train for that—inspired by Sacco Vanzetti, Norman Thomas, Debs, Altgeld, Sandburg, Poe

—Little Blue Books. I wanted to be President, or Senator.

ignorant woe—later dreams of kneeling by R’s shocked knees declaring my love of 1941—What sweetness he’d have shown me, tho, that I’d wished him & despaired—first love—a crush—

Later a mortal avalanche, whole mountains of homosexuality, Matter-horns of cock, Grand Canyons of asshole—weight on my melancholy head—

meanwhile I walked on Broadway imagining Infinity like a rubber

ball without space beyond—what’s outside?—coming home to Graham Avenue still melancholy passing the lone green hedges across the street, dreaming after the movies—)

The telephone rang at 2 A.M.—Emergency—she’d gone mad—Naomi hiding under the bed screaming bugs of Mussolini—Help! Louis! Buba! Fascists! Death!—the landlady frightened—old fag attendant screaming back at her—

Terror, that woke the neighbors—old ladies on the second floor recovering from menopause—all those rags between thighs, clean sheets, sorry over lost babies—husbands ashen—children sneering at Yale, or putting oil in hair at CCNY—or trembling in Montclair State Teachers College like Eugene—

Her big leg crouched to her breast, hand outstretched Keep Away, wool dress on her thighs, fur coat dragged under the bed—she barricaded herself under bedspring with suitcases.

Louis in pajamas listening to phone, frightened—do now?—Who could know?—my fault, delivering her to solitude?—sitting in the dark room on the sofa, trembling, to figure out—

He took the morning train to Lakewood, Naomi still under bed—thought he brought poison Cops—Naomi screaming—Louis what happened to your heart then? Have you been killed by Naomi’s ecstasy?

Dragged her out, around the corner, a cab, forced her in with valise, but the driver left them off at drugstore. Bus stop, two hours’ wait.

I lay in bed nervous in the 4-room apartment, the big bed in living room, next to Louis’ desk—shaking—he came home that nite, late, told me what happened.

Naomi at the prescription counter defending herself from the enemy —racks of children’s books, douche bags, aspirins, pots, blood—‘Don’t come near me—murderers! Keep away! Promise not to kill me!’

Louis in horror at the soda fountain—with Lakewood girlscouts—Coke addicts—nurses—busmen hung on schedule—Police from country precinct, dumbed—and a priest dreaming of pigs on an ancient cliff?

Smelling the air—Louis pointing to emptiness?—Customers vomiting their Cokes—or staring—Louis humiliated—Naomi triumphant—The Announcement of the Plot. Bus arrives, the drivers won’t have them on trip to New York.

Phonecalls to Dr. Whatzis, ‘She needs a rest,’ The mental hospital—State Greystone Doctors—‘Bring her here, Mr. Ginsberg.’

Naomi, Naomi—sweating, bulge-eyed, fat, the dress unbuttoned at one side—hair over brow, her stocking hanging evilly on her legs—screaming for a blood transfusion—one righteous hand upraised—a shoe in it—barefoot in the Pharmacy—

The enemies approach—what poisons? Tape recorders? FBI? Zhdanov hiding behind the counter? Trotsky mixing rat bacteria in the back of the store? Uncle Sam in Newark, plotting deathly perfumes in the Negro district? Uncle Ephraim, drunk with murder in the politician’s bar, scheming of Hague? Aunt Rose passing water thru the needles of the Spanish Civil War?

till the hired $35 ambulance came from Red Bank——Grabbed her arms—strapped her on the stretcher—moaning, poisoned by imaginaries, vomiting chemicals thru Jersey, begging mercy from Essex County to Morristown—

And back to Greystone where she lay three years—that was the last breakthrough, delivered her to Madhouse again—

On what wards—I walked there later, oft—old catatonic ladies, gray as cloud or ash or walls—sit crooning over floorspace—Chairs—and the wrinkled hags acreep, accusing—begging my 13-year-old mercy—

‘Take me home’—I went alone sometimes looking for the lost Naomi, taking Shock—and I’d say, ‘No, you’re crazy Mama,—Trust the Drs.’—

   And Eugene, my brother, her elder son, away studying Law in a furnished room in Newark—

came Paterson-ward next day—and he sat on the broken-down couch in the living room—‘We had to send her back to Greystone’—

—his face perplexed, so young, then eyes with tears—then crept weeping all over his face—‘What for?’ wail vibrating in his cheekbones, eyes closed up, high voice—Eugene’s face of pain.

Him faraway, escaped to an Elevator in the Newark Library, his bottle daily milk on windowsill of $5 week furn room downtown at trolley tracks—

He worked 8 hrs. a day for $20/wk—thru Law School years—stayed by himself innocent near negro whorehouses.

Unlaid, poor virgin—writing poems about Ideals and politics letters to the editor Pat Eve News—(we both wrote, denouncing Senator Borah and Isolationists—and felt mysterious toward Paterson City Hall—

I sneaked inside it once—local Moloch tower with phallus spire & cap o’ ornament, strange gothic Poetry that stood on Market Street—replica Lyons’ Hotel de Ville—

wings, balcony & scrollwork portals, gateway to the giant city clock, secret map room full of Hawthorne—dark Debs in the Board of Tax—Rembrandt smoking in the gloom—

Silent polished desks in the great committee room—Aldermen? Bd of Finance? Mosca the hairdresser aplot—Crapp the gangster issuing orders from the john—The madmen struggling over Zone, Fire, Cops & Backroom Metaphysics—we’re all dead—outside by the bus stop Eugene stared thru childhood—

where the Evangelist preached madly for 3 decades, hard-haired, cracked & true to his mean Bible—chalked Prepare to Meet Thy God on civic pave—

or God is Love on the railroad overpass concrete—he raved like I would rave, the lone Evangelist—Death on City Hall—)

But Gene, young,—been Montclair Teachers College 4 years—taught half year & quit to go ahead in life—afraid of Discipline Problems—dark sex Italian students, raw girls getting laid, no English, sonnets disregarded—and he did not know much—just that he lost—

so broke his life in two and paid for Law—read huge blue books and rode the ancient elevator 13 miles away in Newark & studied up hard for the future

just found the Scream of Naomi on his failure doorstep, for the final time, Naomi gone, us lonely—home—him sitting there—

Then have some chicken soup, Eugene. The Man of Evangel wails in front of City Hall. And this year Lou has poetic loves of suburb middle age—in secret—music from his 1937 book—Sincere—he longs for beauty—

No love since Naomi screamed—since 1923?—now lost in Greystone ward—new shock for her—Electricity, following the 40 Insulin.

And Metrazol had made her fat.

   So that a few years later she came home again—we’d much advanced and planned—I waited for that day—my Mother again to cook &—play the piano—sing at mandolin—Lung Stew, & Stenka Razin, & the communist line on the war with Finland—and Louis in debt—suspected to be poisoned money—mysterious capitalisms

—& walked down the long front hall & looked at the furniture. She never remembered it all. Some amnesia. Examined the doilies—and the dining room set was sold—

the Mahogany table—20 years love—gone to the junk man—we still had the piano—and the book of Poe—and the Mandolin, tho needed some string, dusty—

She went to the backroom to lie down in bed and ruminate, or nap, hide—I went in with her, not leave her by herself—lay in bed next to her —shades pulled, dusky, late afternoon—Louis in front room at desk, waiting —perhaps boiling chicken for supper—

‘Don’t be afraid of me because I’m just coming back home from the mental hospital—I’m your mother—’

Poor love, lost—a fear—I lay there—Said, ‘I love you Naomi,’—stiff, next to her arm. I would have cried, was this the comfortless lone union?—Nervous, and she got up soon.

Was she ever satisfied? And—by herself sat on the new couch by the front windows, uneasy—cheek leaning on her hand—narrowing eye—at what fate that day—

Picking her tooth with her nail, lips formed an O, suspicion—thought’s old worn vagina—absent sideglance of eye—some evil debt written in the wall, unpaid—& the aged breasts of Newark come near—

May have heard radio gossip thru the wires in her head, controlled by 3 big sticks left in her back by gangsters in amnesia, thru the hospital—caused pain between her shoulders—

Into her head—Roosevelt should know her case, she told me—Afraid to kill her, now, that the government knew their names—traced back to Hitler—wanted to leave Louis’ house forever.

   One night, sudden attack—her noise in the bathroom—like croaking up her soul—convulsions and red vomit coming out of her mouth—diarrhea water exploding from her behind—on all fours in front of the toilet—urine running between her legs—left retching on the tile floor smeared with her black feces—unfainted—

At forty, varicosed, nude, fat, doomed, hiding outside the apartment door near the elevator calling Police, yelling for her girlfriend Rose to help—

Once locked herself in with razor or iodine—could hear her cough in tears at sink—Lou broke through glass green-painted door, we pulled her out to the bedroom.

Then quiet for months that winter—walks, alone, nearby on Broadway, read Daily Worker—Broke her arm, fell on icy street—

Began to scheme escape from cosmic financial murder plots—later she ran away to the Bronx to her sister Elanor. And there’s another saga of late Naomi in New York.

   Or thru Elanor or the Workmen’s Circle, where she worked, addressing envelopes, she made out—went shopping for Campbell’s tomato soup—saved money Louis mailed her—

Later she found a boyfriend, and he was a doctor—Dr. Isaac worked for National Maritime Union—now Italian bald and pudgy old doll—who was himself an orphan—but they kicked him out—Old cruelties—

Sloppier, sat around on bed or chair, in corset dreaming to herself—‘I’m hot—I’m getting fat—I used to have such a beautiful figure before I

went to the hospital—You should have seen me in Woodbine—’ This in a furnished room around the NMU hall, 1943.

Looking at naked baby pictures in the magazine—baby powder advertisements, strained lamb carrots—‘I will think nothing but beautiful thoughts.’

Revolving her head round and round on her neck at window light in summertime, in hypnotize, in doven-dream recall—

‘I touch his cheek, I touch his cheek, he touches my lips with his hand, I think beautiful thoughts, the baby has a beautiful hand.’—

Or a No-shake of her body, disgust—some thought of Buchenwald —some insulin passes thru her head—a grimace nerve shudder at Involuntary (as shudder when I piss)—bad chemical in her cortex—‘No don’t think of that. He’s a rat.’

Naomi: And when we die we become an onion, a cabbage, a carrot, or a squash, a vegetable.’ I come downtown from Columbia and agree. She reads the Bible, thinks beautiful thoughts all day.

’Yesterday I saw God. What did he look like? Well, in the afternoon I climbed up a ladder—he has a cheap cabin in the country, like Monroe, N.Y. the chicken farms in the wood. He was a lonely old man with a white beard.

’I cooked supper for him. I made him a nice supper—lentil soup, vegetables, bread & butter—miltz—he sat down at the table and ate, he was sad.

’I told him, Look at all those fightings and killings down there, What’s the matter? Why don’t you put a stop to it?

‘I try, he said—That’s all he could do, he looked tired. He’s a bachelor so long, and he likes lentil soup.’

Serving me meanwhile, a plate of cold fish—chopped raw cabbage dript with tapwater—smelly tomatoes—week-old health food—grated beets & carrots with leaky juice, warm—more and more disconsolate food—I can’t eat it for nausea sometimes—the Charity of her hands stinking with Manhattan, madness, desire to please me, cold undercooked fish—pale red near the bones. Her smells—and oft naked in the room, so that I stare ahead, or turn a book ignoring her.

One time I thought she was trying to make me come lay her—flirting to herself at sink—lay back on huge bed that filled most of the room, dress up round her hips, big slash of hair, scars of operations, pancreas, belly wounds, abortions, appendix, stitching of incisions pulling down in the fat like hideous thick zippers—ragged long lips between her legs—What, even, smell of asshole? I was cold—later revolted a little, not much—seemed perhaps a good idea to try—know the Monster of the Beginning Womb—Perhaps—that way. Would she care? She needs a lover.

Yisborach, v’yistabach, v’yispoar, v’yisroman, v’yisnaseh, v’yishador, v’yishalleh, v’yishallol, sh’meh d’kudsho, b’rich hu.

And Louis reestablishing himself in Paterson grimy apartment in negro district—living in dark rooms—but found himself a girl he later married, falling in love again—tho sere & shy—hurt with 20 years Naomi’s mad idealism.

Once I came home, after longtime in N.Y., he’s lonely—sitting in the bedroom, he at desk chair turned round to face me—weeps, tears in red eyes under his glasses—

That we’d left him—Gene gone strangely into army—she out on her own in N.Y., almost childish in her furnished room. So Louis walked downtown to postoffice to get mail, taught in highschool—stayed at poetry desk, forlorn—ate grief at Bickford’s all these years—are gone.

Eugene got out of the Army, came home changed and lone—cut off his nose in jewish operation—for years stopped girls on Broadway for cups of coffee to get laid—Went to NYU, serious there, to finish Law.—

And Gene lived with her, ate naked fishcakes, cheap, while she got crazier—He got thin, or felt helpless, Naomi striking 1920 poses at the moon, half-naked in the next bed.

bit his nails and studied—was the weird nurse-son—Next year he moved to a room near Columbia—though she wanted to live with her children—

‘Listen to your mother’s plea, I beg you’—Louis still sending her checks—I was in bughouse that year 8 months—my own visions unmentioned in this here Lament—

But then went half mad—Hitler in her room, she saw his mustache in the sink—afraid of Dr. Isaac now, suspecting that he was in on the Newark plot—went up to Bronx to live near Elanor’s Rheumatic Heart—

And Uncle Max never got up before noon, tho Naomi at 6 A.M. was listening to the radio for spies—or searching the windowsill,

for in the empty lot downstairs, an old man creeps with his bag stuffing packages of garbage in his hanging black overcoat.

Max’s sister Edie works—17 years bookkeeper at Gimbels—lived downstairs in apartment house, divorced—so Edie took in Naomi on Rochambeau Ave—

Woodlawn Cemetery across the street, vast dale of graves where Poe once—Last stop on Bronx subway—lots of communists in that area.

Who enrolled for painting classes at night in Bronx Adult High School—walked alone under Van Cortlandt Elevated line to class—paints Naomiisms—

Humans sitting on the grass in some Camp No-Worry summers yore —saints with droopy faces and long-ill-fitting pants, from hospital—

Brides in front of Lower East Side with short grooms—lost El trains running over the Babylonian apartment rooftops in the Bronx—

Sad paintings—but she expressed herself. Her mandolin gone, all strings broke in her head, she tried. Toward Beauty? or some old life Message?

But started kicking Elanor, and Elanor had heart trouble—came upstairs and asked her about Spydom for hours,—Elanor frazzled. Max away at office, accounting for cigar stores till at night.

‘I am a great woman—am truly a beautiful soul—and because of that they (Hitler, Grandma, Hearst, the Capitalists, Franco, Daily News, the ’20s, Mussolini, the living dead) want to shut me up—Buba’s the head of a spider network—’

Kicking the girls, Edie & Elanor—Woke Edie at midnite to tell her she was a spy and Elanor a rat. Edie worked all day and couldn’t take it—She was organizing the union.—And Elanor began dying, upstairs in bed.

The relatives call me up, she’s getting worse—I was the only one left —Went on the subway with Eugene to see her, ate stale fish—

‘My sister whispers in the radio—Louis must be in the apartment—his mother tells him what to say—LIARS!—I cooked for my two children —I played the mandolin—’

Last night the nightingale woke me / Last night when all was still / it sang in the golden moonlight / from on the wintry hill. She did.

I pushed her against the door and shouted ‘DON’T KICK ELANOR!’—she stared at me—Contempt—die—disbelief her sons are so naive, so dumb—‘Elanor is the worst spy! She’s taking orders!’

‘—No wires in the room!’—I’m yelling at her—last ditch, Eugene listening on the bed—what can he do to escape that fatal Mama—‘You’ve been away from Louis years already—Grandma’s too old to walk—’

We’re all alive at once then—even me & Gene & Naomi in one mythological Cousinesque room—screaming at each other in the Forever—I in Columbia jacket, she half undressed.

I banging against her head which saw Radios, Sticks, Hitlers—the gamut of Hallucinations—for real—her own universe—no road that goes elsewhere—to my own—No America, not even a world—

That you go as all men, as Van Gogh, as mad Hannah, all the same —to the last doom—Thunder, Spirits, Lightning!

I’ve seen your grave! O strange Naomi! My own—cracked grave! Shema Y’Israel—I am Svul Avrum—you—in death?

   Your last night in the darkness of the Bronx—I phonecalled—thru hospital to secret police

that came, when you and I were alone, shrieking at Elanor in my ear —who breathed hard in her own bed, got thin—

Nor will forget, the doorknock, at your fright of spies,—Law advancing, on my honor—Eternity entering the room—you running to the bathroom undressed, hiding in protest from the last heroic fate—

staring at my eyes, betrayed—the final cops of madness rescuing me —from your foot against the broken heart of Elanor,

your voice at Edie weary of Gimbels coming home to broken radio —and Louis needing a poor divorce, he wants to get married soon—Eugene dreaming, hiding at 125 St., suing negroes for money on crud furniture, defending black girls—

Protests from the bathroom—Said you were sane—dressing in a cotton robe, your shoes, then new, your purse and newspaper clippings—no—your honesty—

as you vainly made your lips more real with lipstick, looking in the mirror to see if the Insanity was Me or a carful of police.

or Grandma spying at 78—Your vision—Her climbing over the walls of the cemetery with political kidnapper’s bag—or what you saw on the walls of the Bronx, in pink nightgown at midnight, staring out the window on the empty lot—

Ah Rochambeau Ave.—Playground of Phantoms—last apartment in the Bronx for spies—last home for Elanor or Naomi, here these communist sisters lost their revolution—

All right—put on your coat Mrs.—let’s go—We have the wagon downstairs—you want to come with her to the station?’

The ride then—held Naomi’s hand, and held her head to my breast, I’m taller—kissed her and said I did it for the best—Elanor sick—and Max with heart condition—Needs—

To me—‘Why did you do this?’—‘Yes Mrs., your son will have to leave you in an hour’—The Ambulance

came in a few hours—drove off at 4 A.M. to some Bellevue in the night downtown—gone to the hospital forever. I saw her led away—she waved, tears in her eyes.

   Two years, after a trip to Mexico—bleak in the flat plain near Brentwood, scrub brush and grass around the unused RR train track to the crazyhouse—

new brick 20 story central building—lost on the vast lawns of mad-town on Long Island—huge cities of the moon.

Asylum spreads out giant wings above the path to a minute black hole —the door—entrance thru crotch—

I went in—smelt funny—the halls again—up elevator—to a glass door on a Women’s Ward—to Naomi—Two nurses buxom white—They led her out, Naomi stared—and I gaspt—She’d had a stroke—

Too thin, shrunk on her bones—age come to Naomi—now broken into white hair—loose dress on her skeleton—face sunk, old! withered—cheek of crone—

One hand stiff—heaviness of forties & menopause reduced by one heart stroke, lame now—wrinkles—a scar on her head, the lobotomy—ruin, the hand dipping downwards to death—

   O Russian faced, woman on the grass, your long black hair is crowned with flowers, the mandolin is on your knees—

Communist beauty, sit here married in the summer among daisies, promised happiness at hand—

holy mother, now you smile on your love, your world is born anew, children run naked in the field spotted with dandelions,

they eat in the plum tree grove at the end of the meadow and find a cabin where a white-haired negro teaches the mystery of his rainbarrel—

blessed daughter come to America, I long to hear your voice again, remembering your mother’s music, in the Song of the Natural Front—

O glorious muse that bore me from the womb, gave suck first mystic life & taught me talk and music, from whose pained head I first took Vision—

Tortured and beaten in the skull—What mad hallucinations of the damned that drive me out of my own skull to seek Eternity till I find Peace for Thee, O Poetry—and for all humankind call on the Origin

Death which is the mother of the universe!—Now wear your nakedness forever, white flowers in your hair, your marriage sealed behind the sky—no revolution might destroy that maidenhood—

O beautiful Garbo of my Karma—all photographs from 1920 in Camp Nicht-Gedeiget here unchanged—with all the teachers from Newark —Nor Elanor be gone, nor Max await his specter—nor Louis retire from this High School—

   Back! You! Naomi! Skull on you! Gaunt immortality and revolution come—small broken woman—the ashen indoor eyes of hospitals, ward grayness on skin—

Are you a spy?’ I sat at the sour table, eyes filling with tears—‘Who are you? Did Louis send you?—The wires—’

in her hair, as she beat on her head—‘I’m not a bad girl—don’t murder me!—I hear the ceiling—I raised two children—’

Two years since I’d been there—I started to cry—She stared—nurse broke up the meeting a moment—I went into the bathroom to hide, against the toilet white walls

‘The Horror’ I weeping—to see her again—‘The Horror’—as if she were dead thru funeral rot in—‘The Horror!’

I came back she yelled more—they led her away—‘You’re not Allen—’ I watched her face—but she passed by me, not looking—

Opened the door to the ward,—she went thru without a glance back, quiet suddenly—I stared out—she looked old—the verge of the grave—‘All the Horror!’

Another year, I left N.Y.—on West Coast in Berkeley cottage dreamed of her soul—that, thru life, in what form it stood in that body, ashen or manic, gone beyond joy—

near its death—with eyes—was my own love in its form, the Naomi, my mother on earth still—sent her long letter—& wrote hymns to the mad —Work of the merciful Lord of Poetry.

that causes the broken grass to be green, or the rock to break in grass —or the Sun to be constant to earth—Sun of all sunflowers and days on bright iron bridges—what shines on old hospitals—as on my yard—

Returning from San Francisco one night, Orlovsky in my room—Whalen in his peaceful chair—a telegram from Gene, Naomi dead—

Outside I bent my head to the ground under the bushes near the garage—knew she was better—

at last—not left to look on Earth alone—2 years of solitude—no one, at age nearing 60—old woman of skulls—once long-tressed Naomi of Bible—

or Ruth who wept in America—Rebecca aged in Newark—David remembering his Harp, now lawyer at Yale

or Svul Avrum—Israel Abraham—myself—to sing in the wilderness toward God—O Elohim!—so to the end—2 days after her death I got her letter—

Strange Prophecies anew! She wrote—‘The key is in the window, the key is in the sunlight at the window—I have the key—Get married Allen don’t take drugs—the key is in the bars, in the sunlight in the window.

Love,
your mother’

which is Naomi—

Hymmnn

In the world which He has created according to his will Blessed Praised

Magnified Lauded Exalted the Name of the Holy One Blessed is He!

In the house in Newark Blessed is He! In the madhouse Blessed is He! In the house of Death Blessed is He!

Blessed be He in homosexuality! Blessed be He in Paranoia! Blessed be He in the city! Blessed be He in the Book!

Blessed be He who dwells in the shadow! Blessed be He! Blessed be He!

Blessed be you Naomi in tears! Blessed be you Naomi in fears! Blessed Blessed Blessed in sickness!

Blessed be you Naomi in Hospitals! Blessed be you Naomi in solitude! Blest be your triumph! Blest be your bars! Blest be your last years’ loneliness!

Blest be your failure! Blest be your stroke! Blest be the close of your eye! Blest be the gaunt of your cheek! Blest be your withered thighs!

Blessed be Thee Naomi in Death! Blessed be Death! Blessed be Death!

Blessed be He Who leads all sorrow to Heaven! Blessed be He in the end!

Blessed be He who builds Heaven in Darkness! Blessed Blessed Blessed be He! Blessed be He! Blessed be Death on us All!

III

Only to have not forgotten the beginning in which she drank cheap sodas in the morgues of Newark,

only to have seen her weeping on gray tables in long wards of her universe

only to have known the weird ideas of Hitler at the door, the wires in her head, the three big sticks

rammed down her back, the voices in the ceiling shrieking out her ugly early lays for 30 years,

only to have seen the time-jumps, memory lapse, the crash of wars, the roar and silence of a vast electric shock,

only to have seen her painting crude pictures of Elevateds running over the rooftops of the Bronx

her brothers dead in Riverside or Russia, her lone in Long Island writing a last letter—and her image in the sunlight at the window

‘The key is in the sunlight at the window in the bars the key is in the sunlight,’

only to have come to that dark night on iron bed by stroke when the sun gone down on Long Island

and the vast Atlantic roars outside the great call of Being to its own to come back out of the Nightmare—divided creation—with her head lain on a pillow of the hospital to die

—in one last glimpse—all Earth one everlasting Light in the familiar blackout—no tears for this vision—

But that the key should be left behind—at the window—the key in the sunlight—to the living—that can take

that slice of light in hand—and turn the door—and look back see

Creation glistening backwards to the same grave, size of universe,

size of the tick of the hospital’s clock on the archway over the white door—

IV

O mother

what have I left out

O mother

what have I forgotten

O mother

farewell

with a long black shoe

farewell

with Communist Party and a broken stocking

farewell

with six dark hairs on the wen of your breast

farewell

with your old dress and a long black beard around the vagina

farewell

with your sagging belly

with your fear of Hitler

with your mouth of bad short stories

with your fingers of rotten mandolins

with your arms of fat Paterson porches

with your belly of strikes and smokestacks

with your chin of Trotsky and the Spanish War

with your voice singing for the decaying overbroken workers

with your nose of bad lay with your nose of the smell of the pickles of Newark

with your eyes

with your eyes of Russia

with your eyes of no money

with your eyes of false China

with your eyes of Aunt Elanor

with your eyes of starving India

with your eyes pissing in the park

with your eyes of America taking a fall

with your eyes of your failure at the piano

with your eyes of your relatives in California

with your eyes of Ma Rainey dying in an aumbulance

with your eyes of Czechoslovakia attacked by robots

with your eyes going to painting class at night in the Bronx

with your eyes of the killer Grandma you see on the horizon from the Fire-Escape

with your eyes running naked out of the apartment screaming into the hall

with your eyes being led away by policemen to an ambulance

with your eyes strapped down on the operating table

with your eyes with the pancreas removed

with your eyes of appendix operation

with your eyes of abortion

with your eyes of ovaries removed

with your eyes of shock

with your eyes of lobotomy

with your eyes of divorce

with your eyes of stroke

with your eyes alone

with your eyes

with your eyes

with your Death full of Flowers

V

Caw caw caw crows shriek in the white sun over grave stones in Long Island

Lord Lord Lord Naomi underneath this grass my halflife and my own as hers

caw caw my eye be buried in the same Ground where I stand in Angel

Lord Lord great Eye that stares on All and moves in a black cloud

caw caw strange cry of Beings flung up into sky over the waving trees

Lord Lord O Grinder of giant Beyonds my voice in a boundless field in Sheol

Caw caw the call of Time rent out of foot and wing an instant in the universe

Lord Lord an echo in the sky the wind through ragged leaves the roar of memory

caw caw all years my birth a dream caw caw New York the bus the broken shoe the vast highschool caw caw all Visions of the Lord

Lord Lord Lord caw caw caw Lord Lord Lord caw caw caw Lord

Paris, December 1957-New York, 1959

Mescaline

Rotting Ginsberg, I stared in the mirror naked today

I noticed the old skull, I’m getting balder

my pate gleams in the kitchen light under thin hair

like the skull of some monk in old catacombs lighted by

a guard with flashlight

followed by a mob of tourists

so there is death

my kitten mews, and looks into the closet

Boito sings on the phonograph tonight his ancient song of angels

Antinoüs bust in brown photograph still gazing down from my wall

a light burst from God’s delicate hand sends down a wooden dove to the calm virgin

Beato Angelico’s universe

the cat’s gone mad and scraowls around the floor

What happens when the death gong hits rotting ginsberg on the head

what universe do I enter

death death death death death the cat’s at rest

are we ever free of—rotting ginsberg

Then let it decay, thank God I know

thank who

thank who

Thank you, O lord, beyond my eye

the path must lead somewhere

the path

the path

thru the rotting shit dump, thru the Angelico orgies

Beep, emit a burst of babe and begone

perhaps that’s the answer, wouldn’t know till you had a kid

I dunno, never had a kid never will at the rate I’m going

Yes, I should be good, I should get married

find out what it’s all about

but I can’t stand these women all over me

smell of Naomi

erk, I’m stuck with this familiar rotting ginsberg

can’t stand boys even anymore

can’t stand

can’t stand

and who wants to get fucked up the ass, really?

Immense seas passing over

the flow of time

and who wants to be famous and sign autographs like a movie star

I want to know

I want I want ridiculous to know to know WHAT rotting ginsberg

I want to know what happens after I rot

because I’m already rotting

my hair’s falling out I’ve got a belly I’m sick of sex

my ass drags in the universe I know too much

and not enough

I want to know what happens after I die

well I’ll find out soon enough

do I really need to know now?

is that any use at all use use use

death death death death death

god god god god god god god the Lone Ranger

the rhythm of the typewriter

What can I do to Heaven by pounding on Typewriter

I’m stuck change the record Gregory ah excellent he’s doing just that

and I am too conscious of a million ears

at present creepy ears, making commerce

too many pictures in the newspapers

faded yellowed press clippings

I’m going away from the poem to be a drak contemplative

trash of the mind

trash of the world

man is half trash

all trash in the grave

What can Williams be thinking in Paterson, death so much on him

so soon so soon

Williams, what is death?

Do you face the great question now each moment

or do you forget at breakfast looking at your old ugly love in the face

are you prepared to be reborn

to give release to this world to enter a heaven

or give release, give release

and all be done—and see a lifetime—all eternity—gone over

into naught, a trick question proposed by the moon to the answerless earth

No Glory for man! No Glory for man! No glory for me! No me!

No point writing when the spirit doth not lead

New York, 1959

Lysergic Acid

It is a multiple million eyed monster

it is hidden in all its elephants and selves

it hummeth in the electric typewriter

it is electricity connected to itself, if it hath wires

it is a vast Spiderweb

and I am on the last millionth infinite tentacle of the spiderweb, a worrier

lost, separated, a worm, a thought, a self

one of the millions of skeletons of China

one of the particular mistakes

I allen Ginsberg a separate consciousness

I who want to be God

I who want to hear the infinite minutest vibration of eternal harmony

I who wait trembling my destruction by that aethereal music in the fire

I who hate God and give him a name

I who make mistakes on the eternal typewriter

I who am Doomed

But at the far end of the universe the million eyed Spyder that hath no name

spinneth of itself endlessly

the monster that is no monster approaches with apples, perfume, railroads, television, skulls

a universe that eats and drinks itself

blood from my skull

Tibetan creature with hairy breast and Zodiac on my stomach

this sacrificial victim unable to have a good time

My face in the mirror, thin hair, blood congested in streaks down beneath my eyes, cocksucker, a decay, a talking lust

a snaeap, a snarl, a tic of consciousness in infinity

a creep in the eyes of all Universes

trying to escape my Being, unable to pass on to the Eye

I vomit, I am in a trance, my body is seized in convulsion, my stomach crawls, water from my mouth, I am here in Inferno

dry bones of myriad lifeless mummies naked on the web, the Ghosts, I am a Ghost

I cry out where I am in the music, to the room, to whomever near, you, Are you God?

No, do you want me to be God?

Is there no Answer?

Must there always be an Answer? you reply,

and were it up to me to say Yes or No—

Thank God I am not God! Thank God I am not God!

But that I long for a Yes of Harmony to penetrate

to every corner of the universe, under every condition whatsoever

a Yes there Is … a Yes I Am … a Yes You Are … a We

A We

and that must be an It, and a They, and a Thing with No Answer

It creepeth, it waiteth, it is still, it is begun, it is the Horns of Battle it is Multiple Sclerosis

it is not my hope

it is not my death at Eternity

it is not my word, not poetry

beware my Word

It is a Ghost Trap, woven by priest in Sikkim or Tibet

a crossframe on which a thousand threads of differing color

are strung, a spiritual tennis racket

in which when I look I see aethereal lightwaves radiate

bright energy passing round on the threads as for billions of years

the thread-bands magically changing hues one transformed to another as if the

Ghost Trap

were an image of the Universe in miniature

conscious sentient part of the interrelated machine

making waves outward in Time to the Beholder

displaying its own image in miniature once for all

repeated minutely downward with endless variations throughout all of itself

it being all the same in every part

This image or energy which reproduces itself at the depths of space from the very Beginning

in what might be an O or an Aum

and trailing variations made of the same Word circles round itself in the same pattern as its original Appearance

creating a larger Image of itself throughout depths of Time

outward circling thru bands of faroff Nebulae & vast Astrologies

contained, to be true to itself, in a Mandala painted on an Elephant’s hide,

or in a photograph of a painting on the side of an imaginary Elephant which smiles, tho how the Elephant looks is an irrelevant joke—

it might be a Sign held by a Flaming Demon, or Ogre of Transience,

or in a photograph of my own belly in the void

or in my eye

or in the eye of the monk who made the Sign

or in its own Eye that stares on Itself at last and dies

and tho an eye can die

and tho my eye can die

the billion-eyed monster, the Nameless, the Answerless, the Hidden-from-me, the endless Being

one creature that gives birth to itself

thrills in its minutest particular, sees out of all eyes differently at once

One and not One moves on its own ways

I cannot follow

And I have made an image of the monster here

and I will make another

it feels like Cryptozoids

it creeps and undulates beneath the sea

it is coming to take over the city

it invades beneath every Consciousness

it is delicate as the Universe

it makes me vomit

because I am afraid I will miss its appearance

it appears anyway

it appears anyway in the mirror

it washes out of the mirror like the sea

it is myriad undulations

it washes out of the mirror and drowns the beholder

it drowns the world when it drowns the world

it drowns in itself

it floats outward like a corpse filled with music

the noise of war in its head

a babe laugh in its belly

a scream of agony in the dark sea

a smile on the lips of a blind statue

it was there

it was not mine

I wanted to use it for myself

to be heroic

but it is not for sale to this consciousness

it goes its own way forever

it will complete all creatures

it will be the radio of the future

it will hear itself in time

it wants a rest

it is tired of hearing and seeing itself

it wants another form another victim

it wants me

it gives me good reason

it gives me reason to exist

it gives me endless answers

a consciousness to be separate and a consciousness to see

I am beckoned to be One or the other, to say I am both and be neither

it can take care of itself without me

it is Both Answerless (it answers not to that name)

it hummeth on the electric typewriter

it types a fragmentary word which is

a fragmentary word,

MANDALA

Gods dance on their own bodies

New flowers open forgetting Death

Celestial eyes beyond the heartbreak of illusion

I see the gay Creator

Bands rise up in anthem to the worlds

Flags and banners waving in transcendence

One image in the end remains myriad-eyed in Eternity

This is the Work! This is the Knowledge! This is the End of man!

Palo Alto, June 2, 1959

I Beg You Come Back & Be Cheerful

Tonite I got hi in the window of my apartment
          chair at 3 A.M.
gazing at Blue incandescent torches
          bright-lit street below
clotted shadows looming on a new laid pave
—as last week Medieval rabbiz
          plodded thru the brown raw
          dirt turned over—sticks
               & cans
     and tired ladies sitting on spanish
          garbage pails—in the deadly heat
               —one month ago
          the fire hydrants were awash—
     the sun at 3 P.M. today in a haze—
now all dark outside, a cat crosses
          the street silently—I meow
and she looks up, and passes a
          pile of rubble on the way
     to a golden shining garbage pail
          (phosphor in the night
               & alley stink)
          (or door-can mash)
     —Thinking America is a chaos
Police clog the streets with their anxiety,
     Prowl cars creak & halt:

Today a woman, 20, slapped her brother
          playing with his infant bricks—
     toying with a huge rock—
          ‘Don’t do that now! the cops! the cops!’
     And there was no cop there—
          I looked around shoulder—
     a pile of crap in the opposite direction.

          Tear gas! Dynamite! Mustaches!
I’ll grow a beard and carry lovely
     bombs,
I will destroy the world, slip in between
          the cracks of death
     And change the Universe—Ha!
I have the secret, I carry
          Subversive salami in
               my ragged briefcase
“Garlic, Poverty, a will to Heaven,”
     a strange dream in my meat:

Radiant clouds, I have heard God’s voice in
          my sleep, or Blake’s awake, or my own or
the dream of a delicatessen of snorting cows
          and bellowing pigs—
               The chop of a knife
          a finger severed in my brain—
               a few deaths I know—

          O brothers of the Laurel
Is the world real?
               Is the Laurel
a joke or a crown of thorns?—

Fast, pass
up the ass
Down I go
Cometh Woe

—the street outside,
     me spying on New York.
The dark truck passes snarling &
     vibrating deep—

Leaving us flying like birds into Time
          —eyes and car headlights—
          The shrinkage of emptiness
in the Nebulae

These Galaxies cross like pinwheels & they pass
          like gas—
What forests are born.

September 15, 1959

Psalm IV

Now I’ll record my secret vision, impossible sight of the face of God:

It was no dream, I lay broad waking on a fabulous couch in Harlem

having masturbated for no love, and read half naked an open book of Blake on my lap

Lo & behold! I was thoughtless and turned a page and gazed on the living Sun-flower

and heard a voice, it was Blake’s, reciting in earthen measure:

the voice rose out of the page to my secret ear never heard before—

I lifted my eyes to the window, red walls of buildings flashed outside, endless sky sad in Eternity

sunlight gazing on the world, apartments of Harlem standing in the universe—

each brick and cornice stained with intelligence like a vast living face—

the great brain unfolding and brooding in wilderness!—Now speaking aloud with Blake’s voice—

Love! thou patient presence & bone of the body! Father! thy careful watching and waiting over my soul!

My son! My son! the endless ages have remembered me! My son! My son! Time howled in anguish in my ear!

My son! My son! my father wept and held me in his dead arms.

1960

To an Old Poet in Peru

Because we met at dusk
Under the shadow of the railroad station
               clock
While my shade was visiting Lima
And your ghost was dying in Lima
     old face needing a shave
And my young beard sprouted
     magnificent as the dead hair
          in the sands of Chancay
Because I mistakenly thought you were
               melancholy
Saluting your 60 year old feet
     which smell of the death
          of spiders on the pavement
And you saluted my eyes
          with your anisetto voice
Mistakenly thinking I was genial
               for a youth
(my rock and roll is the motion of an
          angel flying in a modern city)
(your obscure shuffle is the motion
          of a seraphim that has lost
               its wings)
I kiss you on your fat cheek (once more tomorrow
Under the stupendous Desamparados clock)
Before I go to my death in an airplane crash
               in North America (long ago)
And you go to your heart-attack on an indifferent
               street in South America
(Both surrounded by screaming
     communists with flowers
          in their ass)
—you much sooner than I—
     or a long night alone in a room
     in the old hotel of the world
          watching a black door
     … surrounded by scraps of paper

DIE GREATLY IN THY SOLITUDE

Old Man,
     I prophesy Reward

Vaster than the sands of Pachacamac
Brighter than a mask of hammered gold
Sweeter than the joy of armies naked
               fucking on the battlefield
Swifter than a time passed between
          old Nasca night and new Lima
                    in the dusk
Stranger than our meeting by the Presidential
     Palace in an old café
ghosts of an old illusion, ghosts
               of indifferent love—

     THE DAZZLING INTELLIGENCE

          Migrates from Death
To make a sign of Life again to you
Fierce and beautiful as a car crash
     in the Plaza de Armas

I swear that I have seen that Light
I will not fail to kiss your hideous cheek
     when your coffin’s closed

And the human mourners go back
          to their old tired
               Dream.

And you wake in the Eye of the
     Dictator of the Universe.

Another stupid miracle! I’m
               mistaken again!
Your indifference! my enthusiasm!
          I insist! You cough!
Lost in the wave of Gold that
     flows thru the Cosmos.

Agh I’m tired of insisting! Goodbye,
     I’m going to Pucallpa
to have Visions.
          Your clean sonnets?
I want to read your dirtiest
     secret scribblings,
          your Hope,
in His most Obscene Magnificence. My God!

May 19, 960

Aether

11:15 P.M., May 27

4 Sniffs & I’m High,
Underwear in bed,
          white cotton in left hand,
     archetype degenerate,
          bloody taste in my mouth
               of Dentist Chair
     music, Loud Farts of Eternity—
an owl with eyeglasses scribbling in the
     cold darkness—
All the time the sound in my eardrums
               of trolleycars below
     taxi fender cough—creak of streets—
     Laughter & pistol shots echoing
                    at all walls—
          tic leaks of neon—the voice of Myriad
               rushers of the Brainpan
     all the chirps the crickets have created
     ringing against my eares in the
                         instant before unconsciousness
                              before,—
          the teardrop in the eye to come,—
          the Fear of the Unknown—

One does not yet know whether Christ was
          God or the Devil—
     Buddha is more reassuring.

Yet the experiments must continue!
Every possible combination of Being—all
     the old ones! all the old Hindu
          Sabahadabadie-pluralic universes
               ringing in Grandiloquent
                    Bearded Juxtaposition,
          with all their minarets and moonlit
               towers enlaced with iron
                    or porcelain embroidery,
                         all have existed—
                    and the Sages with
white hair who sat crosslegged on
               a female couch—
     hearkening to whatever music came
          from out the Wood or Street,
     whatever bird that whistled in the
                    Marketplace,
          whatever note the clock struck to say
                    Time—
     whatever drug, or aire, they breathed
          to make them think so deep
               or simply hear what passed,
like a car passing in the 1960 street
     beside the Governmental Palace
               in Peru, this Lima
          year I write.
                    Kerouac! I salute yr
wordy beard. Sad Prophet!
     Salutations and low bows from
baggy pants and turbaned mind and hornèd foot
     arched eyebrows & Jewish Smile—
One single specimen of Eternity—each
               of us poets.

Breake the Rhythm! (too much pentameter)
     … My god what solitude are you in Kerouac now?
          —heard the whoosh of carwheels in the 1950 rain—

And every bell went off on time,
And everything that was created
Rang especially in view of the Creation
For
This is the end of the creation
This is the redemption Spoken of
This is the view of the Created
by all the Drs, nurses, etc. of
                                        creation;
i.e.,—

The unspeakable passed over my head for
     the second time.
          and still can’t say it!

i.e. we are the sweepings of the moon
we’re what’s left over from perfection—
The universe is an OLD mistake
I’ve understood a million times before
and always come back to the same
          scissor brainwave—
The
Sooner or later all Consciousness will
          be eliminated
               because Consciousness is
     a by-product of—
                    (Cotton & N₂O)

          Drawing saliva back from the tongue—

Christ! you struggle to understand
          One consciousness
     & be confronted with Myriads—
after a billion years
     with the same ringing in the ears
          and pterodactyl-smile of Oops
                    Creation,
     known it all before.
     A Buddha as of old, with sirens of
whatever machinery making cranging noises in
                    the street
     and pavement light reflected in the facade
          RR Station window in a
               dinky port in Backwash
     of the murky old forgotten
               fabulous whatever
                    Civilization of
                         Eternity,—
     with the RR Sta Clock ring midnight,
     as of now,
          & waiting for the 6th
               you write your
                    Word,
     and end on the last chime—and remember
          This one twelve was struck
                    before,
               and never again; both.

……………… I stood on the balcony
               waiting for an explosion
          of Total Consciousness of the All—
                    being Ginsberg sniffing ether in Lima.
               The same struggle of Mind, to reach the
                         Thing
               that ends its process with an X
                    comprehending its befores and afters,
               unexplainable to each, except in a prophetic
                    secret recollective hidden
                              half-hand unrecorded way.
As the old sages of Asia, or the white beards of Persia
               scribbled on the margins of their scrolls
                    in delicate ink
     remembering with tears the ancient clockbells of their cities
               and the cities that had been—
               Nasca, Paracas, Chancay & Secrecy of the Priests
                         buried, Cat Gods
               of all colors, a funeral shroud
                              for a museum—
     None remember but all return to the same thought
               before they die—what sad old
          knowledge, we repeat again.
                              Only to be lost
     in the sands of Paracas, or wrapped in a mystic shroud
               of Poesy
          and found by some kid in a thousand years
               inspire what dreadful thoughts of his own?

It’s a horrible, lonely experience. And
     Gregory’s letter, and Peter’s …

7:30 P.M., May 28

… In the foul dregs of Circumstance
     ‘Male and Female He created them’
          with mustaches.
     There ARE certain REPEATED
     (pistol shot) reliable points
of reference which the insane
(pistol shot repeated outside
the window)—madman suddenly
writes—THE PISTOL SHOT
outside—the REPEATED situations
the experience of return to the
same place in Universal Creation
Time—and every time we return
we recognize again that we
HAVE been here & that is the
Key to Creation—the same pistol shot
—DOWN, bending over his book of Un
intelligible marvels with his mustache.

(my) Madness is intelligible reactions to
     Unintelligible phenomena.
               Boy—what a marvelous bottle,
          a clear glass sphere of transparent
                         liquid ether—
               (Chloraethyl Merz)

9 P.M.

   I know I am a poet—in this universe—but what good does that do —when in another, without these mechanical aids, I might be doomed to be a poor Disneyan Shoe Store Clerk—This consciousness an accident of one of the Ether-possible worlds, not the Final World

   Wherein we all look Crosseyed
& triumph in our Virginity
without wearing Rabbit’s-foot
     ears or eyes looking sideways
     strangely but in Gold

Humbled & more knowledgeable, acknowledge
the Vast mystery of our creation—
without giving any sign that
     we have heard from the

GREAT CREATOR

WHOSE NAME I NOW

PRONOUNCE:

GREAT CREATOR OF THE UNIVERS, IF

THY WISDOM ACCORD IT

AND IF THIS NOT BE TOO

MUCH TO ASK

MAY I PUBLISH YOUR NAME?

I ASK IN THE LIMA

NIGHT

FEARFULLY WAITING

ANSWER,

hearing the buses out on
the street hissing,
Knowing the Terror
     of the World Afar—

I have been playing with Jokes
and His is too mighty to hold
     in the hand like a Pen
and His is the Pistol Shot Answer
     that brings blood to the brain
And—

What can be possible
     in a minor universe
     in which you can see
     God by sniffing the
     gas in a cotton?
The answer to be taken in
     reverse & Doubled Math
     ematically both ways.
Am I a sinner?
There are hard & easy universes. This
          is neither.

(If I close my eyes will I regain consciousness?)
     That’s the Final Question—with
all the old churchbells ringing and
bus pickup snuffles & crack of iron
whips inside cylinders & squeal of brakes
and old crescendos of responsive
demiurgic ecstasy whispering in streets of ear
     —and when was it Not
     ever answered in the Affirmative? Saith the Lord?

A MAGIC UNIVERSE

Flies & crickets & the sound of buses & my
     stupid beard.
But what’s Magic?
Is there Sorrow in Magic?
Is Magic one of my boyscout creations?
Am I responsible? I with my flop?
Could Threat happen to Magic?
Yes! this the one universe in which
     there is threat to magic, by
     writing while high.

A Universe in which I am condemned to write statements.

‘Ignorant Judgments Create Mistaken Worlds—’
     and this one is joined in
          Indic union to
     Affirm with laughing
                    eyes—
The world is as we see it,
     Male & Female, passing thru the years,
     as has before & will, perhaps
with all its countless pearls & Bloody noses
     and I poor stupid All in G
     am stuck with that old Choice—
Ya, Crap, what Hymn to seek, & in
          what tongue, if this’s the most
          I can requite from Consciousness?—
That I can skim? & put in words?
               Could skim it faster with more juice—
          could skim a crop with Death, perchance
               —yet never know in this old world.
Will know in Death?
               And before?
                              Will in
Another know.
               And in another know.
                              And
in another know.
               And
                         Stop conceiving worlds!
               says Philip Whalen
(My Savior!)                    (oh what snobbery!)
          (as if he cd save Anyone)—
     At least, he won’t understand.
I lift my finger in the air to create
a universe he won’t understand, full
          of sadness.

—finally staring straight ahead in surprise
     & recollection into the mirror of
               the Hotel Comercio room.
          Time repeats itself. Including
     this consciousness, which has seen
     itself before—thus the locust-whistle
     of antiquity’s nightwatch in my eardrum …

I propounded a final question, and
     heard a series of final answers.
What is God? for instance, asks the answer?
     And whatever else can the replier reply but reply?
Whatever the nature of mind, that
          the nature of both question and answer.

                    & yet one wants to live
               in a single universe
                         Does one?

Must it be one?
     Why, as with the Jews
     must the God be One?
          O what does
     the concept ONE mean?
                    IT’S MAD!

GOD IS ONE!

IS X

IS MEANINGLESS—

ADONOI—

IS A JOKE—

THE HEBREWS ARE

WRONG—(CRIST & BUDDA

ATTEST, also wrongly!)

     What is One but Formation
               of mind?
          arbitrary madness! 6000 years
Spreading out in all directions simultaneously—

          I forgive both good & ill
& I seek nothing, like a painted savage with
spear crossed by orange black & white bands!
     ‘I found the Jivaros & was
     entrapped in their universe’
                         I’m scribbling nothings.
     Page upon page of profoundest nothing,
     as scribed the Ancient Hebe, when
          he wrote Adonoi Echad or One—
     all to amuse, make money, or deceive—
Let Wickedness be Me
     and this the worst of all
          the universes!
                         Not the worst! Not Flame!
     I can’t stand that—(Yes that’s
          for Somebody Else!
                         Yet I accept
O Catfaced God, whatever comes! It’s me!
I am the Flame, etc.
                    O Gawd!
                         Pistol shot! Crack!
                              Circusmaster’s whip—
          IMPERFECT!
                    and a soul is damned to
          HELL!
                    And the churchbell rings!
and there is melancholy, once again, throughout the realm.
               and I’m that soul, small as it is.)

                    HAVE FELT SAME BEFORE

The death of consciousness is terrible
     and yet! when all is ended
          what regret?
’S none left to remember or forget.
               And’s gone into the odd.
          The only thing I fear is the Last
Chance. I’ll see that last chance too
before I’m done, Old Mind. All them
old Last Chances that you knew before.
                         —someday thru the dream wall
     to nextdoor consciousness
          like thru this blue hotel wall
               —millions of hotel rooms fogging
                    the focus of my eyes—

with whatever attitude I hold the cotton
to my nose, it’s still a secret joke
     with pinkie akimbo, or with effete queer
          eye in mirror at myself,
          or serious-brow mien
                         & darkened beard,
     I’m still the kid of obscene chance awaiting—
breathing in a chinese Universe
thru the nose like some old Brahmanic God.

O BELL TIME RING THY MIDNIGHT FOR THE BILLIONTH SOUNDY TIME, I HEAR AGAIN!

     I’ll go to walk the street,
                         Who’ll find
me in the night, in Lima, in my
33’d year,

On Street (Cont.)

     The souls of Peter &
I answer each other.
But—and what’s a soul?
To be a poet’s a
serious occupation,
condemned to that
in universe—
to walk the city
ascribbling in
a book—just accosted
by a drunk—
in Plaza de Armas
sidestreet under
a foggy sky, and
sometimes with no
moon.
     The heavy balcony
hangs over the white
marble of the Bishop’s
Palace next the Cathedral—
The fountain plays
in light as e’er—
The buses & the
motorcyclists pass
thru midnight, the
carlights shine
the beggar turns
a corner with his
Who’ll find
cigarette stub &
cane, the Noisers
leave the tavern
and delay, conversing
in high voice,
Awake,
     Hasta Mañana
they all say—
     and somewhere
at the other end of
the line, a telephone
is ringing, once again
with unknown news—
     The night
looms over Lima,
sky black fog—
and I sit helpless
smoking with a
pencil hand—
     The long crack
in the pavement
     or yesterday’s
volcano in Chile,
or the day before
the Earthquake
that begat the
World.

   The Plaza pavement
shines in the electric
light. I wait.
     The lonely beard
workman staggers
home to bed from
Death.
     Yes but I’m
a little tired of
being alone …
Keats’ Nightingale—the
instant of realization
a single consciousness
that hears the chimes
of Time, repeated
endlessly—

All night, w/ Ether, wave
after wave of magic
understanding. A disturbance
of the field
of consciousness.
Magic night, magic stars,
magic men, magic moon
magic tomorrow, magic death,
magic Magic.
     What crude Magic
we live in (seeing trolley
like a rude monster
in downtown street
w/ electric diamond
wire antennae to sky
pass night café under
white arc-light by
Gran Hotel Bolívar.)

The mad potter of
Mochica made a
pot w/ 6 Eyes & 2
Mouths & half a Nose
& 5 Cheeks & no Chin
for us to figure out,
serious side-track,
blind alley Kosmos.

Back in Room (Cont.)

How strange to remember anything, even a button
                    much less a universe.
‘What creature gives birth to itself?’
The universe is mad, slightly mad.
          —and the two sides wriggle away
          in opposite directions to die
                    lopped off
     the blind metallic length curled up
     feebly & wiggling its feet
                    in the grass
     the millipede’s black head moving inches away
               on the staircase at Macchu Picchu
               the Creature feels itself
                         destroyed,
               head & tail of the universe
                    cut in two.
Men with slick mustaches of mystery have
          pimp horrible climaxes & Karmas—
—the mad magician that created Chaos
          in the peaceful void & suave.
     with my fucking suave manners & knowitall
               eyes, and mind full of fantasy—
     the Me! that horror that keeps me conscious
               in this Hell of Birth & Death.

   34 coming up—I suddenly felt old—sitting with Walter & Raquel in Chinese Restaurant—they kissed—I alone—age of Burroughs when we first met.

Hotel Comercio, Lima, Peru, May 28, 1960

Magic Psalm

Because this world is on the wing and what cometh no man can know

O Phantom that my mind pursues from year to year descend from heaven to this shaking flesh

catch up my fleeting eye in the vast Ray that knows no bounds—Inseparable —Master—

Giant outside Time with all its falling leaves—Genius of the Universe—Magician in Nothingness where appear red clouds—

Unspeakable King of the roads that are gone—Unintelligible Horse riding out of the graveyard—Sunset spread over Cordillera and insect—

Gnarl Moth—

Griever—Laugh with no mouth, Heart that never had flesh to die—Promise that was not made—Reliever, whose blood burns in a million animals wounded—

O Mercy, Destroyer of the World, O Mercy, Creator of Breasted Illusions, O Mercy, cacophonous warmouthed doveling, Come,

invade my body with the sex of God, choke up my nostrils with corruption’s infinite caress,

transfigure me to slimy worms of pure sensate transcendency I’m still alive,

croak my voice with uglier than reality, a psychic tomato speaking Thy million mouths,

Myriad-tongued my Soul, Monster or Angel, Lover that comes to fuck me forever—white gown on the Eyeless Squid—

Asshole of the Universe into which I disappear—Elastic Hand that spoke to Crane—Music that passes into the phonograph of years from another Millennium—Ear of the buildings of NY—

That which I believe—have seen—seek endlessly in leaf dog eye—fault always, lack—which makes me think—

Desire that created me, Desire I hide in my body, Desire all Man know Death, Desire surpassing the Babylonian possible world

that makes my flesh shake orgasm of Thy Name which I don’t know never will never speak—

Speak to Mankind to say the great bell tolls a golden tone on iron balconies in every million universe,

I am Thy prophet come home this world to scream an unbearable Name thru my 5 senses hideous sixth

that knows Thy Hand on its invisible phallus, covered with electric bulbs of death—

Peace, Resolver where I mess up illusion, Softmouth Vagina that enters my brain from above, Ark-Dove with a bough of Death.

Drive me crazy, God I’m ready for disintegration of my mind, disgrace me in the eye of the earth,

attack my hairy heart with terror eat my cock Invisible croak of deathfrog leap on me pack of heavy dogs salivating light,

devour my brain One flow of endless consciousness, I’m scared of your promise must make scream my prayer in fear—

Descend O Light Creator & Eater of Mankind, disrupt the world in its madness of bombs and murder,

Volcanos of flesh over London, on Paris a rain of eyes—truckloads of angel-hearts besmearing Kremlin walls—the skullcup of light to New York—

myriad jeweled feet on the terraces of Pekin—veils of electrical gas descending over India—cities of Bacteria invading the brain—the Soul escaping into the rubber waving mouths of Paradise—

This is the Great Call, this is the Tocsin of the Eternal War, this is the cry of Mind slain in Nebulae,

this is the Golden Bell of the Church that has never existed, this is the Boom in the heart of the sunbeam, this is the trumpet of the Worm at Death,

Appeal of the handless castrate grab Alm golden seed of Futurity thru the quake & volcan of the world—

Shovel my feet under the Andes, splatter my brains on the Sphinx, drape my beard and hair over Empire State Building,

cover my belly with hands of moss, fill up my ears with your lightning, blind me with prophetic rainbows

That I taste the shit of Being at last, that I touch Thy genitals in the palmtree,

that the vast Ray of Futurity enter my mouth to sound Thy Creation Forever Unborn, O Beauty invisible to my Century!

that my prayer surpass my understanding, that I lay my vanity at Thy foot, that I no longer fear Judgment over Allen of this world

born in Newark come into Eternity in New York crying again in Peru for human Tongue to psalm the Unspeakable,

that I surpass desire for transcendency and enter the calm water of the universe

that I ride out this wave, not drown forever in the flood of my imagination

that I not be slain thru my own insane magic, this crime be punished in merciful jails of Death,

men understand my speech out of their own Turkish heart, the prophets aid me with Proclamation,

the Seraphim acclaim Thy Name, Thyself at once in one huge Mouth of Universe make meat reply.

June 1960

The Reply

God answers with my doom! I am annulled
               this poetry blanked from the fiery ledger
          my lies be answered by the worm at my ear
     my visions by the hand falling over my eyes to cover them
                    from sight of my skeleton
     my longing to be God by the trembling bearded jaw flesh
               that covers my skull like monster-skin
     Stomach vomiting out the soul-vine, cadaver on
     the floor of a bamboo hut, body-meat crawling toward
          its fate nightmare rising in my brain
The noise of the drone of creation adoring its Slayer, the yowp
          of birds to the Infinite, dogbarks like the sound
     of vomit in the air, frogs croaking Death at trees
I am a Seraph and I know not whither I go into the Void
I am a man and I know not whither I go into Death—
                         Christ Christ poor hopeless
               lifted on the Cross between Dimension—
                    to see the Ever-Unknowable!
a dead gong shivers thru all flesh and a vast Being enters my
          brain from afar that lives forever
     None but the Presence too mighty to record! the Presence
          in Death, before whom I am helpless
                    makes me change from Allen to a skull
Old One-Eye of dreams in which I do not wake but die—
          hands pulled into the darkness by a frightful Hand
               —the worm’s blind wriggle, cut—the plough
                         is God himself
What ball of monster darkness from before the universe come
     back to visit me with blind command!
          and I can blank out this consciousness, escape back
                    to New York love, and will
               Poor pitiable Christ afraid of the foretold Cross,
                    Never to die—
     Escape, but not forever—the Presence will come, the hour
          will come, a strange truth enter the universe, death
               show its Being as before
and I’ll despair that I forgot! forgot! my fate return,
                    tho die of it—
What’s sacred when the Thing is all the universe?
     creeps to every soul like a vampire-organ singing behind
          moonlit clouds—poor being come squat
     under bearded stars in a dark field in Peru
               to drop my load—I’ll die in horror that I die!
Not dams or pyramids but death, and we to prepare for that
          nakedness, poor bones sucked dry by His long mouth
               of ants and wind, & our souls murdered to prepare His Perfection!
The moment’s come, He’s made His will revealed forever
     and no flight into old Being further than the stars will not
          find terminal in the same dark swaying port of unbearable music
No refuge in Myself, which is on fire
          or in the World which is His also to bomb & Devour!
               Recognize His might! Loose hold
          of my hands—my frightened skull
                    —for I had chose self-love—
     my eyes, my nose, my face, my cock, my soul—and now
                    the faceless Destroyer!
               A billion doors to the same new Being!
          The universe turns inside out to devour me!
and the mighty burst of music comes from out the inhuman door—

June 1960

The End

I am I, old Father Fisheye that begat the ocean, the worm at my own ear, the serpent turning around a tree,

I sit in the mind of the oak and hide in the rose, I know if any wake up, none but my death,

come to me bodies, come to me prophecies, come all foreboding, come spirits and visions,

I receive all, I’ll die of cancer, I enter the coffin forever, I close my eye, I disappear,

I fall on myself in winter snow, I roll in a great wheel through rain, I watch fuckers in convulsion,

car screech, furies groaning their basso music, memory fading in the brain, men imitating dogs,

I delight in a woman’s belly, youth stretching his breasts and thighs to sex, the cock sprung inward

gassing its seed on the lips of Yin, the beasts dance in Siam, they sing opera in Moscow,

my boys yearn at dusk on stoops, I enter New York, I play my jazz on a Chicago Harpsichord,

Love that bore me I bear back to my Origin with no loss, I float over the vomiter

thrilled with my deathlessness, thrilled with this endlessness I dice and bury,

come Poet shut up eat my word, and taste my mouth in your ear.

New York, 1960

Man’s glory

Shines on top of Mountains where Grey Stone monastery sits & blinks at the sky

There in Tangier in Soco Chico there God’s Grammar Arabic jabbers shoe-shine Poverty beneath the ultra silent mosque

There in Venice glittering in Canal Grande in Front of San Giorgio Maggiore Gondola’d to cream the fabulous tourist—

There in Mexico in th’ Archaeologic Museum where Coatlique Aztec Golgotha-head Goddess clasps her snakes & skulls & grins—

There over Asia where the desolate white Stupas blast into the Buddhic Dome and the Mandala of the stars shines down—

All over Europe where the masses weep & faint in Wooden Trains—

By Florence, by the Windmills, all the churches singing together

“We in the mountains and downtown Pray that America return to the

Lamb”—

And the Great Boom of the Cathedral at Seville, Granada groaning,

Barcelona chanting out the Crannies of Sagrada Familia

Long horns of Montpellier, Milan screaming and San Marco rocking in Venice like a great golden calliope

“America, America, under the elms in parks of Illinois, the Anger, the

Anger, Beware!”

August 1960

Fragment: The Names II

Bill Burroughs in Tangiers slowly transfiguring into Sanctity season after season no God save impersonal solitude

Mad Sheila shaking her head on a couch in Frisco, soft tear face half a year, 60 sleeping pills & blue asphyxiation—

Connie much too drunk, slapped in my apartment by plainclothesmen & strangled in an alley by a lonesome hood

Natalie redhaired in bathrobe on the roof listing sinners’ names for Government, police scared her to fire escape, her body on the pavement in the newspapers—

Elise trembling by the phonograph with Bible in her hand, The Book of the Dead in her family wall reading her thoughts aloud, and her poor unmarried body broken on that ground Manhattan Heights

Bremser running state to state, trapped Hoboken, Vera Cruz rat tat tat Poetry defense, frameup reformatory he thinks the cops are real

One Harry Honig carried a laughing gas mask & bomb ten years back in NY the Kosmos exploded for

John Hoffman too ecstasy of the black sun, Mexican peyote or infantile paralysis

Iris suicide, delicate ships of paint fading into brown ocean universe—her longheaded junk-delicate girl’s penmanship of Orient small cats on folded knees

New York & West coast grim as the A bomb deathwatch is set

Nobody knows the way out of Time trap maybe Burroughs maybe Jack in

Florida drinking with Joe McCarthy’s ghost, grieving death of mother who isn’t dead, scribing notebooks won’t be read till cold war’s lost by all

1960/1961?

VI
PLANET NEWS: TO EUROPE AND ASIA
(1961–1963)

Who Will Take Over the Universe?

A bitter cold winter night
conspirators at café tables
          discussing mystic jails
The Revolution in America
     already begun not bombs but sit
          down strikes on top submarines
     on sidewalks nearby City Hall—
How many families control the States?
Ignore the Government,
send your protest to Clint Murchison.
The Indians won their case with Judge McFate
               Peyote safe in Arizona—
     In my room the sick junky
               shivers on the 7th day
               Tearful, reborn to the Winter.
Che Guevara has a big cock
                    Castro’s balls are pink—
The Ghost of John F. Dulles hangs
               over America like dirty linen
     draped over the wintry red sunset,
     Fumes of Unconscious Gas
               emanate from his corpse
          & hypnotize the Egyptian intellectuals—
He grinds his teeth in horror & crosses his
               thigh bones over his skull
     Dust flows out of his asshole
          his hands are full of bacteria
               The worm is at his eye—
     He’s declaring counterrevolutions in the Worm-world,
          my cat threw him up last
                         Thursday.
& Forrestal flew out his window like an Eagle—
America’s spending money to overthrow the Man.
               Who are the rulers of the earth?

New York, January 6, 1961

“Southern Cult Composite: The Staten Island Massacre” by Harry Smith, 1984.

Journal Night Thoughts

Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber

It is here, the long Awaited bleap-blast light that Speaks one red tongue like Politician, but happy its own govt.,

either we blow ourselves up now and die, like the old tribe of man, arguing among neutrons, spit on India, fuck Tibet, stick up America, clobber Moscow, die Baltic, have your tuberculosis in Arabia, wink not in Enkidu’s reverie—

it’s a long Train of Associations stopped for gas in the desert & looking for drink of old-time H₂O—

made up of molecules, it ends being innocent as Lafcadio afraid to get up & cook his bacon—

I prophesy: the Pigs won’t mind! I prophesy: Death will be old folks home!

I prophesy: Chango will prophesy on national Broadcasting System,

I prophesy, we will all prophesy to each other & I give thee happy tidings Robert Lowell and Jeanette MacDonald—

Dusty moonlight, Starbeam riding its own flute, soul revealed in the scribble, an ounce of looks, an Invisible Seeing, Hope, The Vanisher betokening Eternity

one finger raised warning above his gold eyeglasses—and Mozart playing giddy-note an hour on the Marxist gramophone—

All Be—let the Kabbalah star be formed of perfect circles in a room of 1950 unhappiness where Myrna Loy gets lost—

The Bardo Thodol extends in the millions of black jello for every dying Mechanic—We will make Colossal movies—

We will be a great Tantric Mogul & starify a new Hollywood with our unimaginable Flop—Great Paranoia!

The Family presents, your Corpse Hour—attended by myriad flies—hyperactive Commentators freed at their most bestial—sneering literary— perhaps a captive & loan Square

caught hiding behind a dummy-univac in the obscurest Morgues of Hearst —wherever—no more possible—

Only remains, a photo of a riverswollen hand in black and white, arm covered by aged burlap to the wrist—

skin peeling from the empty fingers—; yet discovered by a mad Negro high on tea & solitary enough himself to notice a Fate—

therefore, with camera remembered and passed along by hand mail roaring Jet toward Chicago, Big Table empty this morning,

nothing but an old frog-looking editor worried about his Aesthetics,

That’s life Kulchur ’61—retired to New York to invent Morse Code & found a great yellow Telegraph—

Merry Xmas Paul carroll and irving Rose in Thrall—give up thy song & flower to any passing Millennium!

I am the One, you are the One, we are the One, A. Hitler’s One as well as fast as his Many heavenly Jews are reborn,

many a being with a nose—and many with none but an ear somewhere next to a Yelling Star—

I myself saw the sunflower-monkeys of the Moon—spending their dear play-money electricity in a homemade tape-record minute of cartoony high Sound—

goodbye Farewell repeated by Wagner Immortal in many a gladdened expanding mid-europe Hour

that I’ll be hearing forever if the world I go to’s Music, Yes good to be stuck thru Eternity on that aching Liebestod Note

which has been playing out there always for me, whoever can hear enough to write it down for a day to let men fiddle in space, blow a temporary brass tuba or wave a stick at a physical orchestra

and remember the Wagner-music in his own titty-head Consciousness—ah yes that’s the message—

That’s what I came here to compose, what I knocked off my life to Inscribe on my gray metal typewriter,

borrowed from somebody’s lover’s mother got it from Welfare, all interconnected and gracious a bunch of Murderers

as possible in this Kalpa of Hungry blood-drunkard Ghosts—We all have to eat—us Beings

gnaw bones, suck marrow, drink living white milk from heavenly Breasts or from bucktoothed negress or wolf-cow.

The sperm bodies wriggle in pools of vagina, in Yin, that reality we must have spasmed our Beings upon—

The brothers and sisters die if we live, the Myriads Invisible squeak reptile complaint

on Memory’s tail which us pterodactyl-buzzard-dove-descended two foot mammal-born Geek-souls almost Forget—

Grab—a cock—any eye—bright hair—All Memory & All Eternity now, reborn as One—

no loss to those—the Peacock spreads its cosmic-eye Magnificat-feathered tail over its forgotten Ass—

The being roars its own name in the Radio, the Bomb goes off its twenty years ago,

I hear thy music O my mystery, my Father in myself, my mother in my eye, brother in my hand, sister-in-honey on my own Poetry’s Tongue, my Hallelujah Way beyond all mortal inherited Heavens, O my own blind ancient Love-in-mind!

Who? but us all, a Me, a One, a Dying Being, The presence, now, this desk, hand running over the steps of imagination

over the letter-ladders on machine, vibrating humm-herald Extend-hope own unto Thee, returning infinite-myriad at the Heart, that is only red blood,

that is where murder is still innocence, that life ate, the white plasmic monsters forage in their fleet Macrocosm—bit apple or black huge bacteria gods loomed out of nowhere, potent

maybe once victorious on Saturn in dinosaur-inspired messy old hallucinated war—

same battle raging in tsraved cats and gahgard dogs for American ghostly bone—man and man, fairy against red, black on white on white, with teeth going to the dentist to escape in gas—

The President laughs in his Chair, and swivels his head on his neck controlling fangs of Number—

bacteria come numberless, atoms count themselves greatness in their pointy Empire—

Russian Neutrons spy on all Conspiracy—& Chinese yellow energy waves have ocean and Empyrean ready against attack & future starvation—Korean principalities of Photon are doubles in all but name—differing Wizards of Art of Electron divide as many as tribes of Congo—Africa’s a vast jail of Shadows—I am not I,

my molecules are numbered, mirrored in all Me Robot Seraphy parts, cock-creator navel-marked, Eye Seer with delicate breasts, teeth & gullet to ingest the living dove-life

foreimage of the Self-Maw Death Is Now;—but there is the Saintly Meat of the Heart—feeling to thee o Peter and all my Lords—Decades American loves car-rides and vow-sworn faces lain on my breast,—my head on many more naked than my own sad hoping flesh—

our feelings! come back to the heart—to the old blind hoping Creator home in Mercy, beating everywhere behind machine hand clothes-man Senator iron powerd or fishqueen fugitive-com’d lapel—

Here I am—Old Betty Boop whoopsing behind the skull-microphone wondering what Idiot soap opera horror show we broadcast by Mistake —full of communists and frankenstein cops and

mature capitalists running the State Department and the Daily News Editorial hypnotizing millions of legional-eyed detectives to commit mass murder on the Invisible

which is only a bunch of women weeping hidden behind newspapers in the Andes, conspired against by Standard Oil,

which is a big fat fairy monopolizing all Being that has form’d it self to Oil,

and nothing gets in its way so it grabs different oils in all poor mystic aboriginal Principalities too weak to

Screech out over the radio that Standard Oil is a bunch of spying Businessmen intent on building one Standard Oil in the whole universe like an egotistical cancer

and yell on Television to England to watch out for United Fruits they got Central America by the balls

nobody but them can talk San Salvador, they run big Guatemala puppet armies, gas Dictators, they’re the Crown of Thorns

upon the Consciousness of poor Christ-indian Central America, and the Pharisees are US Congress & Publicans is the American People

who have driven righteous bearded faithful pink new Castro 1961 is he mad? who knows—Hope for him, he stay true

& his wormy 45-year dying peasants teach Death’s beauty sugar beyond politics, build iron children schools

for alphabet molecule stars, that mystic history & giggling revolution henceforth no toothless martyrs be memorized by some pubescent Juan who’ll smoke my marihuana—

Turn the Teacher on!—Yes not conspire dollars under navy-town boardwalk, not spy vast Services of gunny Secrecy under drear eyeglass Dulles to ASSASSINATE!

INVADE! STARVE OUT! SUPPLY INVISIBLE ARMS! GIVE MONEY TO ORGANIZE DEATH FOR CUBAN REVOLUTION! BLOCKADE WHAT FRAIL MACHINERY!

MAKE EVIL PROPAGANDA OVER THE WORLD! ISOLATE THE FAITHFUL’S SOUL! TAKE ALL RICHES BACK! BE WORLDLY PRINCE AND POWER OVER THE UNBELIEVABLE! MY GOD!

AMERICA WILL BE REFUSED ETERNITY BY HER OWN MAD SON THE BOMB! MEN WORKING IN ELECTRICITY BE U.S. SADISTS THEIR MAGIC PHANOPOEIAC THRU MASS MEDIA THE NASTIEST IN THIS FIRST HISTORY!

EVIL SPELLS THRU THE DAILY NEWS! HORRIBLE MASOCHISMS THUNK UP BY THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION! DEATH TO JUNKIES THRU THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT! TAXES ON YOUR HATE FOR THIS HERE WAR!

LEGIONS OF DECENCY BLACKMAIL THY CINEMAL FATE! CONSPIRACIES CONTROL ALL WHITE MAGICIANS! I CAN’T TELL YOU MY SECRET STORY ON TV!

Chambers of Commerce misquote Bob Hope who is a grim sex revolutionist talking in hysterical code flat awful jokes

Jimmy Durante’s kept from screaming to death in the movies by a huge fat Cardinal, the Spell Man, Black Magician he won’t let mad white Chaplin talk thru the State Megaphone! He takes evil pix with Swiss financial cunt!

It’s the American Medical Association poisoning the poets with their double-syndicate of heroin cut with money-dust,

Military psychiatrists make deathly uniforms it’s Tanganyikan nerve-skin in the submarinic navy they’re prepared for eternal solitude, once they go down they turn to Reptiles

Human dragons trained to fly the air with bomb-claws clutched to breast & wires entering their brains thru muffled ears—connected to what control tower—jacked to what secret Lab where the macrocosm-machine

picks up vibrations of my thought in this poem—the attendant is afraid—Is the President listening? is

Evil Eye, the invisible police-cop-secrecy masters Controlling Central Intelligence—do they know I took Methedrine, heroin, magic mushrooms, & lambchops & guess toward a Prophecy tonight?

No the big dopes all they do is control each other—Doom! in the vast car America—they’re screeching on two mind-wheels on a National Curve —the Car that’s made to die by Mr. Inhuman

Moneyhand, by advertising nastyhead Inc. Dream Cancer Prexy Owner Distributor Publisher & TV Doctor of Emotional Breakdown—he told that Mayor to get in that car without his pubic hair and drive to Kill get to Las Vegas so the oldfashioned jewish communists

wouldn’t get their idealistic radio program on the air in time to make everybody cry in the desert for the Indian Serpent to come

back from the Oklahoma mound where he hid with his 15,000,000 visionary original Redskin patriot-wives and warriors—they made up one big mystic serpent with its tail-a-mouth like a lost Tibet

MURDERED AND DRIVEN FROM THE EARTH BY US JEWISH GOYIM who spend fifty billion things a year—things things!—to make the things-machinery that’s turned the worlds of human consciousness into a thing of War

wherever and whoever is plugged in by real filaments or wireless or whatever magic wordy-synapse to the money-center of the mind

whose Eye is hidden somewhere behind All mass media—what makes reporters fear their secret dreamy news—behind the Presidential mike & all its starry bunting, front for some mad BILLIONAIRES

who own United Fruits & Standard Oil and Hearst The Press and Texas NBC and someone owns the Radios owns vast Spheres of Air—Subliminal Billionaire got

State Legislatures filled with Capital Punishment Fiends because nobody’s been in love on US soil long enough to realize We who pay the Public Hangman make State Murder thru Alien Gas who cause any form of hate-doom hanging

do that in public everybody agreed by the neck suffering utmost pangs Each citizen himself unloved suicides him, because there’s no beloved, now in America for All in the gas chamber the whole California Legislature

screaming because it’s Death here—we’re so hopeless—The Soul of America died with ugly Chessman—strange saintly average madman driven to think for his own killers, in his pants and shirt with human haircut, said NO to—like a Cosmic NO—from the One Mouth of America speaking life or death—looked in the eye by America—

Ah what a cold monster OneEye he must’ve saw thru the Star Spangled Banner & Hollywood with ugly smile forbidden movie & old heartless Ike in the White House officially allowing Chatterley attacked by Fed Lawyers—

vast Customs agencies searching books—who Advises what book where—who invented what’s dirty? The Pope? Baruch?—tender Genet burned by middleaged vice Officers

sent out by The Automatic Sourface mongers whatever bad news he can high up from imaginary Empires name Scripps-Howard—just more drear opinions—Damn that World Telegram was Glad Henry Miller’s depression Cancerbook not read to sad eyeglass Joe messenger to Grocer

in Manhattan, or candystore emperor Hersh Silverman in Bayonne, dreaming of telling the Truth, but his Karma is selling jellybeans & being kind,

The Customs police denyd him his Burroughs they defecated on de Sade, they jack’d off, and tortured his copy of Sodom with Nitric Acid in a backroom furnace house at Treasury Bureau, pouring Fire on the soul of Rochester,

Warlocks, Black magicians burning and cursing the Love-Books, Jack be damned, casting spells from the shores of America on the inland cities, lacklove-curses on our Eyes which read genital poetry—

O deserts of deprivation for some high school’d gang, lone Cleveland that delayed its books of Awe, Chicago struggling to read its magazines, police and papers yapping over grimy gossip skyscraped from some sulphurous yellow cloud drift in from archtank hot factories make nebulous explosives near Detroit—smudge got on Corso’s Rosy Page—

US Postmaster, first class sexfiend his disguise told everyone to open letters stop the photographic fucks & verbal suckeries & lickings of the asshole by tongues meant but for poison glue on envelopes Report this privileged communication to Yours Truly We The National Police—We serve you once a day—you humanical meat creep-hood—

and yearly the national furnace burned much book, 2,000,000 pieces mail, one decade unread propaganda from Vietnam & Chinese mag harangues, Engelian

dialectics handmade in Gobi for proud export to top hat & tails Old Bones in his penthouse on a skyscraper in Manhattan, laconic on two phones that rang thru the nets of money over earth, as he barked his orders to Formosa for more spies, abhorred all Cuba sugar from concourse with Stately stomachs—

That’s when I began vomiting my paranoia when Old National Skullface the invisible sixheaded billionaire began brainwashing my stomach with strange feelers in the Journal American—the penis of billionaires depositing professional semen in my ear, Fulton Lewis coming with strychnine jizzum in his voice making an evil suggestion that entered my mouth

while I was sitting there gaping in wild dubiety & astound on my peaceful couch, he said to all the taxidrivers and schoolteachers in brokendown old Blakean America

that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg smelled bad & shd die, he sent to kill them with personal electricity, his power station is the spirit of generation leaving him thru his asshole by Error, that very electric entered Ethel’s eye

and his tongue is the prick of a devil he don’t even know, a magic capitalist ghosting it on the lam after the Everett Massacre—fucks a Newscaster in the mouth every time he gets on the Microphone—

and those ghost jizzums started my stomach trouble with capital punishment, Ike chose to make an Artificial Death for them poor spies—if they were spying on me? who cares?—Ike disturbed the balance of the cosmos by his stroke-head deathshake, “NO”

It was a big electrocution in every paper and mass medium, Television was a baby crawling toward that deathchamber

Later quiz shows prepared the way for egghead omelet, I was rotten, I was the egghead that spoiled the last supper, they made me vomit more —whole programs of halfeaten comedians sliming out my Newark Labor Leaders’ assholes

They used to wash them in the ’30s with Young Politics Ideas, I was too young to smell anything but my own secret mind, I didn’t even know assholes basic to Modern Democracy—What can we teach our negroes now?

That they are Negroes, that I am thy Jew & thou my white Goy & him Chinese?—They think they’re Arab Macrocosms now!

My uncle thinks his Truthcloud’s Jewish—thinks his Name is Nose-smell-Newark 5 decades—& that’s all except there’s Gentile Images of mirrory vast Universe—

and Chinese Microcosms too, a race of spade microcosms apart, like jewish truth clouds & Goyishe Nameless Vasts

But I am the Intolerant One Gasbag from the Morgue & Void, Garbler of all Conceptions that myope my eye & is Uncle Sam asleep in the Funeral Home—?

Bad magic, scram, hide in J. E. Hoover’s bathingsuit. Make his pants fall in the ocean, near Miami—

Gangster CRASH! America will be forgotten, the identity files of the FBI slipt into the void-crack, the fingerprints unwhorled—no track where He came from—

Man left no address, not even hair, just disappeared & Forgot his big wall-street on Earth—Uncle I hate the FBI it’s all a big dreamy skyscraper somewhere over the Mutual Network—I don’t even know who they are—like the Nameless—

Hallooo I am coming end of my Presidency—Everybody’s fired—I am a hopeless whitehaired congressman—I lost my last election—landslide for Reader’s Digest—not even humans—

Nobody home in town—just offices with many jangling telephones & automatic switchboards keep the message—typewriters return yr calls oft, Yakkata yak & tinbellring—THE POLICE ARE AT THE DOOR—

What are you doing eccentric in this solitary office? a mad vagrant Creep Truthcloud sans identity card—It’s Paterson allright—anyway the people disappeared—downtown Fabian Bldg. branch office for The Chamber of Commerce runs the streetlights

all thru dark winter rain by univac piped from Washington Lobby—they’ve abolished the streets from the universe—just keep control of

the lights—in case of ectoplasm trafficking thru dead Market—where the Chinese restaurant usta play Muzak in the early century—soft green rugs & pastel walls—perfumèd tea—

Goodbye, said the metal Announcer in doors of The Chamber of Commerce —we’re merging with NAM forever—and the NAM has no door but’s sealed copper 10 foot vault under the Federal Reserve Bldg—

Six billionaires that control America are playing Scrabble with antique Tarot —they’ve just unearthed another Pyramid—in the bombproof Cellar at Fort Knox

Not even the FBI knows who—They give orders to J. E. Hoover thru the metal phonegirl at the Robot Transmitter on top of RCA—you

can see new Fortune officers look like spies from 20 floors below with their eyeglasses & gold skulls—silver teeth flashing up the shit-mouthed grin—weeping in their martinis! There is no secret to the success of the

Six Billionaires that own all Time since the Gnostic Revolt in Aegypto—they built the Sphinx to confuse my sex life, Who Fuckd the Void?

Why are they starting that war all over again in Laos over Neutral Mind? Is the United States CIA army Legions overthrowing somebody like Angelica Balabanoff?

Six thousand movietheaters, 100,000,000 television sets, a billion radios, wires and wireless crisscrossing hemispheres, semaphore lights and morse, all telephones ringing at once connect every mind by its ears to one vast consciousness This Time Apocalypse—everybody waiting for one mind to break thru—

Man-prophet with two eyes Dare all creation with his dying tongue & say I AM—Messiah swallow back his death into his stomach, gaze thru great pupils of his Bodies’ eyes

and look in each Eye man, the eyeglassed fearful byriad-look that might be Godeyes see thru Death—that now are clark & ego reading manlaw —write newsbroadcasts to cover with Fears their

own Messiah that must come when all of us conscious—Breakthru to all other Consciousness to say the Word I Am as spoken by a certain God—Millennia knew and waited till this one Century—

Now all sentience broods and listens—contemplative & hair full of rain for 15 years inside New York—what millions know and hark to hear, & death will tell, but—

many strange magicians in buildings listening inside their own heads—or clouds over Manhattan Bridge—or strained thru music messages to —I Am from the central One! Come

blow the Cosmic Horn to waken every Tiglon & Clown sentience throughout the vasting circus—in the Name of God pick up the telephone call Networks announcing Suchness That—

I Am mutter a million old Gods in their beards, that had been sleeping at evening radios—cackling in their Larynx—Talking to myself again

said the Messiah turning a dial to remember his last broadcast—I scare myself, I eat my hand, I swallow my own head, I stink in the inevitable bathroom of death this Being requires—O Widen the Area of Consciousness! O

set my Throne in Space, I rise to sit in the midst of the Starry Visible!—Calling All Beings! in dirt from the ant to the most frightened Prophet that ever clomb tower to vision planets

crowded in one vast space ship toward Andromeda—That all lone soul in Iowa or Hark-land join the Lone, set forth, walk naked like a Hebrew king, enter the human cities and speak free,

at last the Man-God come that hears all Phantasy behind the matter-babble in his ear, and walks out of his Cosmic Dream into the cosmic street

open mouth to the First Consciousness—God’s woke up now, you Seraphim, call men with trumpet microphone & telegraph, hail every sleepwalker with Holy Name,

Life is waving, the cosmos is sending a message to itself, its image is reproduced endlessly over TV

over the radio the babble of Hitler’s and Claudette Colbert’s voices got mixed up in the bathroom radiator

Hello hello are you the Telephone the Operator’s singing we are the daughters of the universe

get everybody on the line at once plug in all being ears by laudspeaker, newspeak, secret message,

handwritten electronic impulse traveling along rays electric spiderweb

magnetisms shuddering on one note We We We, mustached disc jockeys trembling in mantric excitement, flowery patterns bursting over the broken couch,

drapes falling to the floor in St. John Perse’s penthouse, Portugal’s water is running in all the faucets on the SS Santa Maria,

chopping machines descend on the pre-dawn tabloid, the wire services are hysterical and send too much message,

they’re waiting to bam out the Armageddon, millions of rats reported in China, smoke billows out New York’s hospital furnace smokestack,

I am writing millions of letters a year, I correspond with hopeful messengers in Detroit, I am taking drugs

and leap at my postman for more correspondence, Man is leaving the earth in a rocket ship,

there is a mutation of the race, we are no longer human beings, we are one being, we are being connected to itself,

it makes me crosseyed to think how, the mass media assemble themselves like congolese Ants for a purpose

in the massive clay mound an undiscovered huge Queen is born, Africa wakes to redeem the old Cosmos,

I am masturbating in my bed, I dreamed a new Stranger touched my heart with his eye,

he hides in a sidestreet loft in Hoboken, the heavens have covered East Second Street with Snow,

all day I walk in the wilderness over white carpets of City, we are redeeming ourself, I am born,

the Messiah woke in the Universe, I announce the New Nation, in every mind, take power over the dead creation,

I am naked in New York, a star breaks thru the blue skull of the sky out the window,

I seize the tablets of the Law, the spectral Buddha and the spectral Christ turn to a stick of shit in the void, a fearful Idea,

I take the crown of the Idea and place it on my head, and sit a King beside the reptile Devas of my Karma—

Eye in every forehead sleeping waxy & the light gone inward—to dream of fearful Jaweh or the Atom Bomb—

All these eternal spirits to be wakened, all these bodies touched and healed, all these lacklove

suffering the Hate, dumbed under rainbows of Creation, O Man the means of Heaven are at hand, thy rocks & my rocks are nothing,

the identity of the Moon is the identity of the flower-thief, I and the Police are one in revolutionary Numbness!

Yawk, Mercy The Octopus, it’s IT cometh over the Void & makes whistle its lonemouthed Flute You-me forever—

Stop Arguing, Cosmos, I give up so I be, I receive a happy letter from Ray Bremser exiled from home in New Jersey jail—

Clocks are abuilding for a thousand years, ticking behind metalloidesque

electronico-clankered industries smokeless in silent mind city—

Dawn of the Ages! Man thy Alarm rings thru sweet myriad mornings in every desperate-carred street! Saints wait in each metropolis

for Message to Assassinate the old idea, that 20,000 yr old eye-god Man thought was Being Secret mystery,

unbearable Judge above, God alien handless tongueless to poor man, who’ll scream for mercy on his deathbed—Oh I saw that black

Octopus Death, with supernatural antennae spikes raying Awful waves at my consciousness, huge blind Ball invisible behind the rooms in the universe—a not-a-man—a no-one—Nobodaddy—

Omnipotent Telepath more visionary than my own Prophetics & Memories —Reptile-sentient shimmer-feel-hole Here,

Dense Soullessness wiser than Time, the Eater-Darkness hungry for All—but must wait till I leave my body to enter that

One Mind nebula to my recollection—Implacable, my soul dared not die,

Shrank back from the leprous door-mind in its breast, touch Him and the hand’s destroyed,

Death God in the End, before the Timeworld of creation—I mean some kind of monster from another dimension is eating Beings of our own Cosmos—

I saw him try to make me leave my corpse-illusion Allen, myth movie world come to celluloid-end,

I screamed seeing myself in reels of death my consciousness a cinematic toy played once in faded attick by man-already-forgotten

His orphan starhood inked from Space, the movie industry itself blot up its History & all wracked myriad Epics, Space wiped itself out,

lost in a wall-crack dream itself had once disappearing—maybe trailing endless comet-long trackless thru what unwonted dimensions it keeps dreaming existence can die inside of—vanish this Cosmos of Stars I am turning to bones in—

That much illusion, and what’s visions but visions, and these words filled Methedrine—I have a backache & 2 telegrams come midnight from messengers that cry to plug in the Electrode Ear to

my skull downstreet, & hear what they got to say, big lives like trees of Cancer in Bronx & Long Island—Telephones connect the voids island blissy darkness scattered in many manmind—

New York, February 1961

This Form of Life Needs Sex

I will have to accept women
          if I want to continue the race,
     kiss breasts, accept
     strange hairy lips behind
                    buttocks,
Look in questioning womanly eyes
          answer soft cheeks,
bury my loins in the hang of pearplum
          fat tissue
               I had abhorred
before I give godspasm Babe leap
     forward thru death—
Between me and oblivion an unknown
               woman stands;
Not the Muse but living meat-phantom,
a mystery scary as my fanged god
     sinking its foot in its gullet &
vomiting its own image out of its ass
—This woman Futurity I am pledge to
          born not to die,
but issue my own cockbrain replica Me-Hood
     again—For fear of the Blot?
Face of Death, my Female, as I’m sainted
          to my very bone,
I’m fated to find me a maiden for
               ignorant Fuckery—
flapping my belly & smeared with Saliva
     shamed face flesh & wet,
—have long droopy conversations
     in Cosmical Duty boudoirs,
               maybe bored?
Or excited New Prospect, discuss
     her, Futurity, my Wife
          My Mother, Death, My only
               hope, my very Resurrection
Woman
          herself, why have I feared
               to be joined true
     embraced beneath the Panties of Forever
in with the one hole that repelled me 1937 on?
—Pulled down my pants on the porch showing
     my behind to cars passing in rain—
& She be interested, this contact with Silly new Male
     that’s sucked my loveman’s cock
in Adoration & sheer beggary romance-awe
     gulp-choke Hope of Life come
and buggered myself innumerably boy-yangs
          gloamed inward so my solar plexus
     feel godhead in me like an open door—

Now that’s changed my decades body old
tho’ admiring male thighs at my brow,
     hard love pulsing thru my ears,
          stern buttocks upraised
               for my masterful Rape
     that were meant for a private shit
          if the Army were All—
But no more answer to life
               than the muscular statue
          I felt up its marbles
     envying Beauty’s immortality in the
                    museum of Yore—
     You can fuck a statue but you can’t
               have children
     You can joy man to man but the Sperm
               comes back in a trickle at dawn
     in a toilet on the 45th Floor—
     & Can’t make continuous mystery out of that
          finished performance
                    & ghastly thrill
          that ends as began,
                    stupid reptile squeak
          denied life by Fairy Creator
               become Imaginary
          because he decided not to incarnate
               opposite—Old Spook
     who didn’t want to be a baby & die,
          didn’t want to shit and scream
               exposed to bombardment on a
                    Chinese RR track
and grow up to pass his spasm on
               the other half of the Universe—
Like a homosexual capitalist afraid of the masses—
and that’s my situation, Folks—

New York, April 12, 1961

Sunset S.S. Azemour

As orange dusk-light falls on an old idea

I gaze thru my hand on the page

sensing outward the intercoiled weird being I am in

and seek a head of that—Seraphim

advance in lightning flash through aether storm

Messengers arrive horned bearded from Magnetic spheres

disappearing radios receive aged galaxies

Immensity wheels mirrored in every direction

Announcement swifting from Invisible to Invisible

Eternity-dragon’s tail lost to the eye

Strange death, forgotten births, voices calling in the past

“I was” that greets “I am” that writes now “I will be”

Armies marching over and over the old battlefield—

What powers sit in their domed tents and decree Eternal Victory?

I sit at my desk and scribe the endless message from myself to my own hand

Marseilles-Tanger, 1961

Seabattle of Salamis Took Place off Perama

If it weren’t for you Mr Jukebox with yr aluminum belly roaring & thirty teeth eating dirty drx.

yr eyes starred round the world, purple diamonds & white brain revolving black disks

in every bar from Yokamama to Pyraeus winking & beaming Saturday Nite

what silence harbor Sabbath dark instead of boys screaming and dancing wherever I go—

Hail Jukebox of Perama with attendant minstrel juvenile whores

on illuminated porches where kids leap to noise bouncing over black oceantide,

leaning into azure neon with sexy steps, delicious idiot smile and young teeth, flowers in ears,

Negro voices scream back 1000 years striped pants pink shirts patent leather shoes on their lean dog feet

exaggerated sneakers green pullovers, long hair, hips & eyes!

They’re jumping & joying this minute over the bones of Persian sailors—

Echoes of Harlem in Athens! Hail to your weeping eyes New York!

Hail to the noise wherever the jukebox is on TOO LOUD,

The Muses are loose in the world again with their big black voice bazooky blues,

Muses with bongo guitars electric flutes on microphones Cha Cha Cha

Feeling happy in Havana Mambo moving delicate London new Lyre in Liverpool

Tin Clarinet prophesying in Delphos, Crete jumping again!

Panyotis dancing alone stepped drunk from a krater, Yorgis slapping his heels & kicking Cerberus’ heads off!

Doobie Doobie reigns forever on the shores! One drachma for Black Jack, one drachma brings Aharisti again, Na-ti-the-Ma-Fez,

Open the Door Richard, I’m Casting a Spell on You, Apocalypse Rock, End of History Rag!

Piraeus, September 1, 1961

Galilee Shore

With the blue-dark dome old-starred at night, green boat-lights purring over water,

a faraway necklace of cliff-top Syrian electrics,

bells ashore, music from a juke-box trumpeted,

shadow of death against my left breast prest

—cigarette, match-flare, skull wetting its lips—

Fisherman-nets over wood walls, light wind in dead willow branch

on a grassy bank—the saxophone relaxed and brutal, silver horns echo—

Was there a man named Solomon? Peter walked here? Christ on this sweet water?

Blessings on thee Peacemaker!

                    English spoken

on the street bearded Jews’ sandals & Arab white head cloth—

the silence between Hebrew and Arabic—

the thrill of the first Hashish in a holy land—

Over hill down the valley in a blue bus, past Cana no weddings—

I have no name I wander in a nameless countryside—

young boys all at the movies seeing a great Western—

art gallery closed, pipe razor & tobacco on the floor.

To touch the beard of Martin Buber

to watch a skull faced Gershom Scholem lace his shoes

to pronounce Capernaum’s name & see stone doors of a tomb

to be meek, alone, beside a big dark lake at night—

to pass thru Nazareth dusty afternoon, and smell the urine down near Mary’s well

to watch the orange moon peep over Syria, weird promise—

to wait beside Galilee—night with Orion, lightning, negro voices, Burger’s

Disease, a glass of lemon tea—feel my left hand on my shaved chin—

all you have to do is suffer the metaphysical pain of dying.

Art is just a shadow, like cows or tea—

keep the future open, make no dates it’s all here

with moonrise and soft music on phonograph memory—

Just think how amazing! someone getting up and walking on the water.

Tiberias, October 1961

Stotras to Kali Destroyer of Illusions

O Statue of Liberty Spouse of Europa Destroyer of Past Present Future

They who recite this Anthem issuing from empty skulls the stars & stripes

certainly makes a noise on the radio beauteous with the twilight

should one skinny Peruvian only spell your name right O thou who

hast formidable eyebrows of spiritual money & beareth United Nations in your hair

such Peruvian becomes higher Jaweh charming countless moviestars with disappearing eyes

O republic female mouth from which two politics trickle they who recite

the name thy 28th star OMAHA subjugate hungry ghost-hoards ascreech under Gold Reserve

O fortress America Guardian Blueprint who in thy nether right hand hangs a bathroom

in thy nether left the corpse of Edgar Poe in front right hand hanging the skull

of Roosevelt with gray eyeballs & left hand George Washington his tongue hanging out like a fish

Your huge goddess eye looming over his severed head your bottomless throat open

with great machinery roars inside teeth made of white radios & mountainous red tongue

licking vast bubbles of atomic gum left eye rolled to gray heavens above Dewline

right eye staring into magic engine wheels hissing with railroad steam

arm after arm snaking into place in aether battleships dangling from one hand to another

the black corpse Thelonious Monk the flayed skin of Gertrude Stein held down

fluttering over the gaping Yoni, hands reaching out to honk all the horns of Broadway

William Randolph Hearst’s bones circled in mystic ring on third toe & breast hung

with newspapers shining with Earl Browder’s cancer the 1964 Elections flapping in her left

nostril if you sneeze you’ll destroy the western hemisphere right Vajra hand

playing mah-jongg with her astrolabes it keeps her mind occupied especially with rhythmic

breathing exercises & interpretive dancing one foot goddesslike on the corpse of Uncle Sam

Top hand bearing the Telephone nobody’s on the other end she’s talking to herself

because when the ear gets disconnected from the brain you still hear noise

but who remembers what it means somebody else will pay the bill as fast as it takes

for vultures to clean up a corpse at Tower of Silence That will be five minutes and

extra charges if you go on talking the eleventh hand presenting an electric chair

twelfth hand in the mudra of Foreign Aid and thirteenth palm closed in sign of Disarmament

O Freedom with gaping mouth full of Cops whose throat is adorned with skulls of Rosenbergs

whose breasts spurt Jazz into the robot faces of thy worshippers grant that recitation

of this Hymn will bring them abiding protection money & dance in White House

for even a dope sees Eternity who meditates on thee raimented with Space crosseyed

creatrix of Modernity whose waist is beauteous with a belt of numberless Indian scalps

mixed with negro teeth Who on the breast of James Dean in the vast bedroom of Forest Lawn

Cemetery enjoyest the great Passion of Jesus Christ or seated on the bone-yard ground

strewn with the flesh of Lumumba haunted by the female shoes of Khrushchev & Stevenson’s long red tongue

enjoyest the worship of spies & endless devotions intoned by mustached radio announcers

If by night thy devotee naked with long weird hair sit in the park & recite this Hymn

while his full breasted girl fills his lap with provincial kisses and meditates on Thee

Such such a one dwells in the land the supreme politician & knows Thy mystery

O Wife of China should thy patriot recite thy anthem & China’s cut-up & mixed together

with that of Russia Thy elephant-headed infant mighty in all future worlds

& meditate one year with knowledge of thy mystic copulation with China this next age

Then such knower will delight in secret weapon official Intelligence kodaked in his telegraphic brain

Home of the Brave thou gavest birth to the Steel Age before the Hydrogen Age the

Cobalt Age earning power over entire planets all futurity Male-female spouse of the solar system

Ah me why then shall I not prophesy glorious truths for Thee Ah me folks worship many other

countries beside you they are brainwashed but I of my own uncontrollable lust for you

lay my hands on your Independence enter your very Constitution my head absorbed in the lips of your

Bill of Rights O Liberty whose bliss is union with each individual citizen intercourse

Alaskan Oklahoman New Jerseyesque dreaming of embraces even Indonesian Vietnamese & those Congolese

O Liberty Imagewife of Mankind of thy Mercy show thy favor toward each me everywhere helpless

before thy manifest Destiny by grace may I never be reborn American I and all I’s

neither Russian Peruvian nor Chinese Jew never again reincarnate outside Thee Mother

Democracy O Formless One take me beyond Images & reproductions spouse beyond disunion

absorbed in my own non-Duality which art Thou.

He O mother American Democracy who in the cremation ground of nations with disheveled hair in sweat of intensity meditates on thee

And makes over his pubic hair to thee in poetry or electrical engineering he alone knows thy Cosmic You-Me.

O America whoever on Tuesday at midnite utters This My Country ’Tis of Thee in the basement men’s room

of the Empire State Building becomes a Poet Lord of Earth and goes mounted on Elephants

to conquer Maya the Cold War whoever recites this my country ’tis of thee with the least halfhearted

conviction he becomes himself Big Business & Giant Unions flowing with production and is after

death father of his country which is the Universe itself and will at night in union with Thee

O mother with eyes of delightful movies enter at last into amorous play united with all Presidents of US.

Bombay, 1962

To P.O.

The whitewashed room, roof
of a third-rate Mohammedan hotel,
two beds, blurred fan
whirling over yr brown guitar,
knapsack open on floor, towel
hanging from chair, Orange Crush,
brown paper manuscript packages,
Tibetan tankas, Gandhi pajamas,
Ramakrishna Gospel, bright umbrella
a mess on a rickety wooden stand,
the yellow wall-bulb lights up
this scene Calcutta for the thirtieth night—
Come in the green door, long Western gold
hair plastered down your shoulders
from shower: “Did we take our pills
this week for malaria?” Happy birthday
dear Peter, your 29th year.

Calcutta, July 8, 1962

Heat

Forty feet long sixty feet high hotel
Covered with old gray for buzzing flies
Eye like mango flowing orange pus
Ears Durga people vomiting in their sleep
Got huge legs a dozen buses move inside Calcutta
Swallowing mouthfuls of dead rats
Mangy dogs bark out of a thousand breasts
Garbage pouring from its ass behind alleys
Always pissing yellow Hooghly water
Bellybutton melted Chinatown brown puddles
Coughing lungs Sound going down the sewer
Nose smell a big gray Bidi
Heart bumping and crashing over tramcar tracks
Covered with a hat of cloudy iron
Suffering water buffalo head lowered
To pull the huge cart of year uphill

Calcutta, July 21, 1962

Describe: The Rain on Dasaswamedh Ghat

Kali Ma tottering up steps to shelter tin roof, feeling her way to curb, around bicycle & leper seated on her way—to piss on a broom

left by the Stone Cutters who last night were shaking the street with Boom! of Stone blocks unloaded from truck

Forcing the blindman in his gray rags to retreat from his spot in the middle of the road where he sleeps & shakes under his blanket

Jai Ram all night telling his beads or sex on a burlap carpet

Past which cows donkeys dogs camels elephants marriage processions drummers tourists lepers and bathing devotees

step to the whine of serpent-pipes & roar of car motors around his black ears—

Today on a balcony in shorts leaning on iron rail I watched the leper who sat hidden behind a bicycle

emerge dragging his buttocks on the gray rainy ground by the glove-bandaged stumps of hands,

one foot chopped off below knee, round stump-knob wrapped with black rubber

pushing a tin can shiny size of his head with left hand (from which only a thumb emerged from leprous swathings)

beside him, lifting it with both ragbound palms down the curb into the puddled road,

balancing his body down next to the can & crawling forward on his behind

trailing a heavy rag for seat, and leaving a path thru the street wavering

like the Snail’s slime track—imprint of his crawl on the muddy asphalt market entrance—stopping

to drag his can along stubbornly konking on the paved surface near the water pump—

Where a turban’d workman stared at him moving along—his back humped with rags—

and inquired why didn’t he put his can to wash in the pump altarplace—and why go that way when free rice

Came from the alley back there by the river—As the leper looked up & rested, conversing curiously, can by his side approaching a puddle.

Kali had pissed standing up & then felt her way back to the Shop Steps on thin brown legs

her hands in the air—feeling with feet for her rag pile on the stone steps’ wetness—

as a cow busied its mouth chewing her rags left wet on the ground for five minutes digesting

Till the comb-&-hair-oil-booth keeper woke & chased her away with a stick

Because a dog barked at a madman with dirty wild black hair who rag round his midriff & water pot in hand

Stopped in midstreet turned round & gazed up at the balconies, windows, shops and city stagery filled with glum activity

Shrugged & said Jai Shankar! to the imaginary audience of Me’s,

While a white robed Baul Singer carrying his one stringed dried pumpkin Guitar

Sat down near the cigarette stand and surveyed his new scene, just arrived in the Holy City of Benares.

Benares, February 1963

Death News

Visit to W.C. W. circa 1957, poets Kerouac Corso Orlovsky on sofa in living room inquired wise words, stricken Williams pointed thru window curtained on Main Street: “There’s a lot of bastards out there!”

Walking at night on asphalt campus
road by the German Instructor with Glasses
W. C. Williams is dead he said in accent
under the trees in Benares; I stopped and asked
Williams is Dead? Enthusiastic and wide-eyed
under the Big Dipper. Stood on the Porch
of the International House Annex bungalow
insects buzzing round the electric light
reading the Medical obituary in Time.
“out among the sparrows behind the shutters”
Williams is in the Big Dipper. He isn’t dead
as the many pages of words arranged thrill
with his intonations the mouths of meek kids
becoming subtle even in Bengal. Thus
there’s a life moving out of his pages; Blake
also “alive” thru his experienced machines.
Were his last words anything Black out there
in the carpeted bedroom of the gabled wood house
in Rutherford? Wonder what he said,
or was there anything left in realms of speech
after the stroke & brain-thrill doom entered
his thoughts? If I pray to his soul in Bardo Thodol
he may hear the unexpected vibration of foreign mercy.
Quietly unknown for three weeks; now I saw Passaic
and Ganges one, consenting his devotion,
because he walked on the steely bank & prayed
to a Goddess in the river, that he only invented,
another Ganga-Ma. Riding on the old
rusty Holland submarine on the ground floor
Paterson Museum instead of a celestial crocodile.
Mourn O Ye Angels of the Left Wing! that the poet
of the streets is a skeleton under the pavement now
and there’s no other old soul so kind and meek
and feminine jawed and him-eyed can see you
What you wanted to be among the bastards out there.

Benares, March 20, 1963

Vulture Peak: Gridhakuta Hill

I’ve got to get out of the sun
mouth dry and red towel wrapped
               round my head
walking up crying singing ah sunflower
Where the traveler’s journey
closed my eyes is done in the
               black hole there
               sweet rest far far away
up the stone climb past where
Bimbisara left his armies
got down off his elephant
and walked up to meet
Napoleon Buddha pacing
          back and forth on the platform
          of red brick on the jut rock crag
Staring out Lidded-eyed beneath
the burning white sunlight
down on Rajgir kingdom below
     ants wheels within wheels of empire
          houses carts streets messengers
               wells and water flowing
          into past-future simultaneous
     kingdoms here gone on Jupiter
distant X-ray twinkle of the eye
myriad brick cities on earth and under
New York Chicago Palenque Jerusalem
               Delphos Macchu Picchu Acco
                    Herculaneum Rajagriha
     here all windy with the tweetle
               of birds and blue rocks
                    leaning into the blue sky—
Vulture Peak desolate bricks
     flies on the knee hot shadows
          raven-screech and wind blast
               over the hills from desert plains
                    south toward Bodh Gaya—
All the noise I made with my mouth
singing on the path up, Gary
Thinking all the pale youths and
virgins shrouded with snow
chanting Om Shantih all over the world
     and who but Peter du Peru
walking the streets of San Francisco
     arrived in my mind on Vulture Peak
Then turned round and around on my heels
singing and plucking out my eyes
ears tongue nose and balls as I whirled
longer and longer the mountains stretched
     swiftly flying in circles
the hills undulating and roads speeding
          around me in the valley
          Till when I stopped the earth
               moved in my eyeballs
          green bulge slowly
                    and stopped

*

My thirst in my cheeks and tongue
     back throat drives me home.

Benares, April 18, 1963

Patna-Benares Express

Whatever it may be whoever it may be
The bloody man all singing all just
However he die
He rode on railroad cars
He woke at dawn, in the white light of a new universe
He couldn’t do any different
He the skeleton with eyes
raised himself up from a wooden bench
felt different looking at the fields and palm trees
no money in the bank of dust
no nation but inexpressible gray clouds before sunrise
lost his identity cards in his wallet
in the bald rickshaw by the Maidan in dry Patna
Later stared hopeless waking from drunken sleep
dry mouthed in the RR Station
among sleeping shoeshine men in loincloth on the dirty concrete
Too many bodies thronging these cities now

Benares, May 1963

Last Night in Calcutta

Still night. The old clock Ticks,
half past two. A ringing of crickets
awake in the ceiling. The gate is locked
on the street outside—sleepers, mustaches,
nakedness, but no desire. A few mosquitoes
waken the itch, the fan turns slowly—
a car thunders along the black asphalt,
a bull snorts, something is expected—
Time sits solid in the four yellow walls.
No one is here, emptiness filled with train
whistles & dog barks, answered a block away.
Pushkin sits on the bookshelf, Shakespeare’s
complete works as well as Blake’s unread—
O Spirit of Poetry, no use calling on you
babbling in this emptiness furnished with beds
under the bright oval mirror—perfect
night for sleepers to dissolve in tranquil
blackness, and rest there eight hours
—Waking to stained fingers, bitter mouth
and lung gripped by cigarette hunger,
what to do with this big toe, this arm
this eye in the starving skeleton-filled
sore horse tramcar-heated Calcutta in
Eternity—sweating and teeth rotted away—
Rilke at least could dream about lovers,
the old breast excitement and trembling belly,
is that it? And the vast starry space—
If the brain changes matter breathes
fearfully back on man—But now
the great crash of buildings and planets
breaks thru the walls of language and drowns
me under its Ganges heaviness forever.
No escape but thru Bangkok and New York death.
Skin is sufficient to be skin, that’s all
it ever could be, tho screams of pain in the kidney
make it sick of itself, a wavy dream
dying to finish its all too famous misery
—Leave immortality for another to suffer like a fool,
not get stuck in the corner of the universe
sticking morphine in the arm and eating meat.

May 22, 1963

Understand That This Is a Dream

Real as a dream

What shall I do with this great opportunity to fly?

What is the interpretation of this planet, this moon?

If I can dream that I dream / and dream anything dreamable / can I dream

I am awake / and why do that?

When I dream in a dream that I wake / up what

happens when I try to move?

I dream that I move

and the effort moves and moves

till I move / and my arm hurts

Then I wake up / dismayed / I was dreaming / I was waking

when I was dreaming still / just now.

and try to remember next time in dreams

that I am in dreaming.

And dream anything I want when I’m awaken.

When I’m in awakeness what do I desire?

I desire to fulfill my emotional belly.

My whole body my heart in my fingertips thrill with some old fulfillments.

Pages of celestial rhymes burning fire-words

unconsumable but disappear.

Arcane parchments my own and the universe the answer.

Belly to Belly and knee to knee.

The hot spurt of my body to thee to thee

old boy / dreamy Earl / you Prince of Paterson / now king of me / lost Haledon

first dream that made me take down my pants

urgently to show the cars / auto trucks / rolling down avenue hill.

That far back what do I remember / but the face of the leader of the gang

was blond / that loved me / one day on the steps of his house blocks away

all afternoon I told him about my magic Spell

I can do anything I want / palaces millions / chemistry sets / chicken coops / white horses

stables and torture basements / I inspect my naked victims

chained upside down / my fingertips thrill approval on their thighs

white hairless cheeks I may kiss all I want

at my mercy. on the racks.

I pass with my strong attendants / I am myself naked

bending down with my buttocks out

for their smacks of reproval / o the heat of desire

like shit in my asshole. The strange gang

across the street / thru the grocerystore / in the wood alley / out in the open on the corner /

Because I lied to the Dentist about that chickencoop roofing / slate stolen off his garage

by me and the boy I loved who would punish me if he knew

what I loved him.

That now I have had that boy back in another blond form

Peter Orlovsky a Chinese teenager in Bangkok ten years twenty years

Joe Army on the campus / white blond loins / my mouth hath kisses /

full of his cock / my ass burning / full of his cock

all that I do desire. In dream and awake

this handsome body mine / answered

all I desired / intimate loves / open eyed / revealed at last / clothes on the floor

Underwear the most revealing stripped off below the belly button in bed.

That’s that / yes yes / the flat cocks the red pricks the gentle pubic hair / alone with me

my magic spell. My power / what I desire alone / what after thirty years /

I got forever / after thirty years / satisfied enough with Peter / with all I wanted /

with many men I knew one generation / our sperm passing

into our mouths and bellies / beautiful when love / given.

Now the dream oldens / I olden / my hair a year long / my thirtyeight birthday approaching.

I dream I

am bald / am disappearing / the campus unrecognizable / Haledon Avenue

will be covered with neon / motels / Supermarkets / iron

the porches and woods changed when I go back / to see Earl again

He’ll be a bald / fleshy father / I could pursue him further in the garage

If there’s still a garage on the hill / on the planet / when I get back. From Asia.

If I could even remember his name or his face / or find him /

When I was ten / perhaps he exists in some form.

With a belly and a belt and an auto

Whatever his last name / I never knew / in the phonebook / the Akashic records.

I’ll write my Inspiration for all Mankind to remember,

My Idea, the secret cave / in the clothes closet / that house probably down /

Nothing to go back to / everything’s gone / only my idea

that’s disappearing / even in dreams / gray dust piles / instant annihilation

of World War II and all its stainless steel shining-mouthed cannons

much less me and my grammar school kisses / I never kissed in time /

and go on kissing in dream and out on the street / as if it were for ever.

No forever left! Even my oldest forever gone, in Bangkok, in Benares,

swept up with words and bodies / all into the brown Ganges /

passing the burning grounds and / into the police state.

My mind, my mind / you had six feet of Earth to hoe /

Why didn’t you remember and plant the seed of Law and gather the sprouts of What?

the golden blossoms of what idea? If I dream that I dream /what dream

should I dream next? Motorcycle rickshaws / parting lamp shine / little taxis / horses’ hoofs

on this Saigon midnight street. Angkor Wat ahead and the ruined city’s old Hindu faces

and there was a dream about Eternity. What should I dream when I wake?

What’s left to dream, more Chinese meat? More magic Spells? More youths to love before I change & disappear?

More dream words? This can’t go on forever. Now that I know it all /

goes whither? For now that I know I am dreaming /

What next for you Allen? Run down to the Presidents Palace full of Morphine /

the cocks crowing / in the street. / Dawn trucks / What is the question?

Do I need sleep, now that there’s light in the window?

I’ll go to sleep. Signing off until / the next idea / the moving van arrives empty

at the Doctor’s house full of Chinese furniture.

Saigon, May 31-June 1, 1963

Angkor Wat

     Angkor—on top of the terrace
in a stone nook in the rain
Avalokitesvara faces everywhere
   high in their stoniness
         in white rainmist

   Slithering hitherward paranoia
      Banyans trailing
      high muscled tree crawled
     over the roof its big
     long snaky toes spread
      down the lintel’s red
         cradle-root
         elephantine bigness

      Buddha I take my refuge
   bowing in the black bower
   before the openhanded lotus-man
         sat crosslegged
   and riding in the rain in the
         anxious motorcycle putting
         in the wetness my shirt
         covered with green plastic
            apron shivering
               and throat choking
                  with upsurge
                  of stroke fear
                     cancer Bubonic
                     heart failure
                  bitter stomach juices
         a wart growing on my rib
         Objection! This can’t be
                     Me!

What happens to me when I get high
The echo of Sitaram, Sitaram Hindu
fears—eat no meat or vomit
the body—warnings in dream bearded
Das Thakur—obsessed
         with meat, smoking, ganja
         sex, cannibal spies, Propagation
         of this Skin, thin
         vegetable soups, they was
all Chinese eating pigs, was seven
         slanteyes watching me drink tea
         till I saluted the Buddha-baby in
            the cloth flowered pram
            sucking its chubby plum
Music from Walt Disney hearts and roses
            sweet violins—
         yellow skins landing on the green
            vegetable planet—
seven children with identical haircuts
            very polite, saluting
                  clasped hand bow—
the Fear ordering peas in the French
         restaurant, with whole garlic
         bread cheese and coffee hot
and
a

b
a
n
a
n
a to finish the bill on the table

pink
p
o
n
k of the rain on the roof tin
below my shuttered window
   in the neon light a Hotel
      clean tiled room

U
n
d
e
r a fan and canopied mosquito net

All well in this solitude, plenty money
for a long ride thru the forest in a
         rainy afternoon with
            long hair wet beard
         glasses clouding—and that
         nausea—passing out
      of the Churning of the Ocean

         asuras with teeth fangs
            and fat eared Devas
            with military mustaches

         hanging on to the great Chain Snake
            muscle sandstone railing
            length of the moat-bridge to
the South Gate, Avalokitesvara’s huge
         many faces in opposite directions
               in high space
         thru which ran new black road
         at the knees of greater trees, one

needed a haircut, root-hair sprouting
   on branches—thru the forested
   Castle grounds to pathways fallen
      sandstone headless statues
   Damp black bas-relief Dancing Shiva
            or angel lady

The huge snake roots, the vaster
            serpent arms fallen
         octopus over the roof
      in a square courtyard—curved
      roofcombs looked Dragon-back-stone-scaled
As frail as stone is, this harder wooden
            life crushing them

   with the cricket-glare and parrot
         squads walking across the roof
—last nite full moon in misted heaven
and slow girl dance bent elbow and inspring
   fingers snaking it thru the middle—

      I am afraid where I am
   “I am inert” … “I’m just doing my
      Professional duty” … “I’m scheming
      murders” … “I’m chasing a story”
I’m not going to eat meat anymore
I’m taking refuge in the Buddha Dharma Sangha
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

who how satisfying in the ocean night
   as the exit of laughing gas,
   or the thrice-real moment of hashish
  or the “ordering men about, playing god,
            without drugs”

american husbands in sportshirts with clear,
      bright eyes and legs spread in
         the velocipedomotor bripping
         on holiday from US Army Saigon
            streets hotels I hitched
      get polite when you’se a hiker
         “I going to take both sides”

You have no right being a Hitler repeating that
      Abhaya mudra reassurance
         Palm out flat, patting the airhide
               of earth—

   Nothing but a false Buddha afraid of
         my own annihilation, Leroi Moi—
   afraid to fail you yet terror those Men
         their tiger pictures and uniforms
            dream to see that Kerouac tiger too—
      Helikopter to— Sh, spies with telescopes
            for seeing the bullets that shoot—

Leroi I been done you wrong
I’m just an old Uncle Tom in disguise all along
               afraid of physical tanks.
      and those buzzing headphones in my skull.
   and many a butterfly committed suicide
         its wings to the motheaten flame—
Agh! I vomited in fear of the forest of ganja meats—
Eternal Death silliness—Cowards die many times
Not even afraid to be a Coward—Ashamed only by
      metal voices declaring war on Darkness

I seen plenty corpses but not them living wound-flowers
         healing split open “mouths” as you see the
         War Correspondent who wanted to Bash China
Even I wound up with his Titoist anxieties

Whatever happened to Jeannie Frigididia
            Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy
               radio 20 years behind Cambodia
   Sounds like love is so sweet springtime
all in my head going down worried
            about changing 100 Reales of meat
Whatever you think happened to
            Jeannie Frigididia?
Whatyathink happen to the Frigididy girl?
You think she’ll be in the Ille Frigididy news?
Is the Frigididy Universe gonna be awakened?
            Is Leary my laughter?

Plus ça change tonight from 6 P.M.
      wet handed by meat sex
drank tea, drank carrot-potato thin soup
      bread cheese coffee peas pies coffee
      pineapple soda
walked on the rainy. run out of ink
            market
To write a letter to President Norodom Sihanouk
      to live in the flower-jazz palace at Phnom Penh
      Kingly neutrality enter China for U.P
            from Hong Kong
      write to Eisenhower, politely inquiring
         get China off the hook
         war of races not Marxism in

Viet Nam Pres. Diem’s Queer picture
         —a spy in the chinese soup
         on the restaurant bench—I being also a
            spy for the Left Consuling

      “Geez that’s a great job yr doing fellers
            keep it up”

I wish I could fly o’er the leaves of the jungle and not
         get killed see the bamboo stakes
         piercing the foot of the beefy Marine?
      or the bodies Viet Cong piled on the tank
      Vietnamese bosses at Ap Bac battle lost whodunit?
President’s messages back and forth in French and Charming
Ike give OK retreat from pregnant belly
               of S.E. Asia,
Antichinese riots Indonesia—out of the papers—
            not seen Newsweek a week or the Times

Monsoon riding thru the forest gate faces
Creepers silence on Ta-Phrom temple halls
      narrow stone walk under sleeping trees—
         rain on Ta-Keo pyramid—perfect faces
         smiling ladies’ fiery headdresses in Thommanom
      till passing the soda stand in forest arbor
         ganja cigarette rolled in Terrasse Supérieur
               rooftower by Ikon
         of Buddha touching Earth
         the burnt out incense sticks in the tipped can
               I straightened and shoes off bowed

As I rode thru the forest Hari Hindoo and Lord of Mercy
               struggled like Asur-Devas
            with my mind-snake drifting
         motorized under the trees—that
   long road with a dip and slow strange
      rise into the arch of the four-headed
         Smile—gate to the old park
         of Khmer palaces—ancient morphine
in a room—Garuda bebeaked and wing-sphinxed—

The many Sphinx-heads with ears on the towers
Looking around the country seventeen, cheek on eye,
Bewildered in a hurry in the rain to make
   this City conquered by Chams (upriver
   burning the wooden city) of
                  Stone to last in forest
   Even that permanence warped cleaned
         in the Alice in Wonderland giant garden
         of Ta-Phrom—followed

by the young guardian with a caterpillar
   like green frond in his hair
—he shrank back a second when I went to
      touch his crown

And I’m following them naked to the waist
      chinese smooth limbed workmen or darker
      Cambodian cyclist Prisoners cutting the grass
      by the Grand Hotel’s

cool waiting room with bar and USIS handout
      news-casts only Journals except
      for the State Paper reprinting the Prince
            King’s questionless speech to
         Journalists itching with neon—

So many grounds to cover the terrors of the day
All got to do with snakes and only one shy
   tail, I saw disappearing behind a
   rock, slow banded worm—the smiles
of Avalokitesvara with his big mouth like
      Cambodian Pork Chops—the boys
and why do I not even faintly desire those
      black silk girls in the alley of this
            clean new tourist city?—
Ah those Deva faces on the walls of Thommanom!
         Clean eyebrows and smiles of Lady Yore
Ever Naomi in my ear—a sad case of refusing to
         grow up give birth to die—

I am Coward in every direction—Coughing
      in the motorcycle trailer seat but
      the beautiful forest hath its rain to
            drown my noises—

      Home to the Needle, further violation
or is this vegetable smoke and vein warmth
      futile in the light of my friends Pronouncements
Maybe Gary’ll have the answer! Maybe Jack have
         the Answer? Will the Army answer me,

      or will a clang of bells herald the God Creeley
To whom I sent postcards of the cold stonebrows—
      in the green—on the spot

“Blind white mossed gray carved
blocks of stone noses smiling
thin lips
         green mossy fronds of giant
trees, the white drift smoke
sky
      The millions of familiar
raindrops dripping in
floor rock crevasses
         on the broken crown of the
gray lotus
         The stone benches on the roof
Snake balustrades
         Buddha’s faces on the
many towers, the forest snakes
waiting in the tall trunks of
         wooden trees
Oh the beautiful pour of the rain noises
waiting below the money cyclopede
Motor driver covered with blue plastic
            Angkor
where I dreamed of trembling to
write—here again after the
hot sun, sleeping and dreaming
2 days ago—back in the wished
for rain past
      rain on my elbows

Buddha save me, what am
      I doing here
again dreamed of this
      This awful stone monument
      being in the streams
      of change or the Clouds
            in the sky—
Kneeled to the statue on
         Porch
Saranam Gochamee Catchme quick
      forced with incense—have to
      go down to the
            velocycle
      thru the bat-tower
            again, or out
      in the rain!”

As might be read for poesy by Olson
At least moves from perception to obsession
      according to waves of Me-ness
   Still clinging to the Earthen straw
            My eye

      Confused with this blue sky cloud drift
            “illusion” over the treetops

      dwelling in my mind “frightened aging nagging flesh”
      To step out of—? Who, Me?

Just a lot of words and propaganda
      I been spreading getting scared
      of my own bullshit
Except when faced with my confusion
      words meat / death
            mind-soup
      eaten last night, greedily fried macaroni
         with rare beef—all the children
         scream at my long awkward hair,

On the bed as I ached and strained my
   sphincter opened hoped
   to get next time befucked by
            a Cambodian sweet policeman
      from the bicycle first day
who had Lord Buddha’s lips as on
the towers—all alike many boys—the Monks
      of Lolei, smoking and eating beef,
      touched my toes and my beard pulled
            by the shaven kid in yellow

      Nandi the bull waiting her owner in the Sun
            The house crumbling and Vishnu’s arms
               broken, heads off the seated
                     statues
            bat families hanging upside down in the
               door beams’ cracks—Chinese families

overrunning the earth like greeneyed children of
         Science-fiction—Shall I blow
         them up, Professor?—and

O Leaf of Buddha! when we get to
   the green planets will we fight
   the strange snaky races of—
         Cancer Overpopulation
It’s a pyramid of faces—Sphinx-Avalokitesvara
all mixed up, I hope Buddha’s been there,
Then we’ll know if his mind appeared
            in all the directions of Space—

The Pope died a saint to be dissolved in
            his Christ
Philip Lamantia prophesied truly, all but
      Mao Tze Tung loved Pope John

Except those newspaper Catholics in Saigon
   He didn’t change their plans yet—
A walk, past the Saigon Market, where
   There’s a few brass Buddhas for
         shop sale in the North Wing

Crost the big traffic circle between the Shell
         gas signs, where at nite the troop
         Cops got in buses to go to Hué
            Where telephones spoke blisters
            to the gas students—
         gathered in front of City Hall to redress
            their grievances—

Surabaya Johnnie not seen Bodrabadur Temple
   in Java next time round this part
      of the world

All the wire services eating sweet and
   sour pork and fresh cold lichee white-meat
         in sugarwater—
Discussing the manly truth Gee Fellers—
Even the fat whitehaired belly boy from
         Time and his Kewpiedoll wife
Could’ve been seen in the movies dancing
   the rainy night at the border
   Chinese cha-cha, Hysteria
That UP kid flown down from Vientiane
         Laos fugitive Hepatitis
   Scared of the Yellow Men, or the slow
            Alcohol red face of the Logistics
            Analyst—“I got the Eichmann syndrome”
   said he newsweekly—reporters who
   never committed suicide like
            Hemingway had to, faced
            with the fat newsman with
               Seven children from
                  Buddenbrooks
   They were living in Greece while Pound
   was taking a vow of silence
            “I knew too much”
      but it was all a mistake,
I fled the Mekong delta, fled the 12,000
   Military speaking hot dog guts on the
   downtown aircooled streets,
fled the Catinat Hotel, flushed my shit
   down the bathroom—

jumped in the cab suddenly, afraid
after left Xaloi temple like a
   Negro disintegrated in New Orleans,
afraid to publish that or they bomb
      my typesetter’s woodsy Balcony
            in Louisiana—

Everywhere it’s the fear I got in my own
      intestines—Kenyatta Prime Minister
      peacefully with his fly-whisk

         and maybe the Mo Mo’s underground
Mao-Mao—everywhere is my own Rhodesia
for Mysterious Choose Up Sides and Die
         like a “Man”

I never wanted to be a “human” being and
this is what I got—a himalayan
striped umbrella I don’t use
in the jungle rain—my eyes
      Lid-heavy—my mind skips
back to the overweight knapsack I carry
all these years’ scribbles bound in
Ganges towels—
               Down, to drink
      Iced coffee with sweet evaporated milk
      Chinese coffee in small glasses, but
   Manger les Tripes No No—not eat
      that mouthful of snake-apple

   “give up desire for children”
   give up—this Prophecy—
   Everything drifted away in the dream
         even the stone buildings of Low Library,
         even the great dome of Columbia,
   even the great cities of Khmer—weak
   dancers at the portals of Angkor—
            where I saw the praying young
            head shaved peasant kneel at
            the foot of the stairs on a purple
                  straw mat,
   The cries of the boy dancers to the
      deliberate slow walking drum’s
            triple beat—Faunlike
      conscious asian steps on the
            stonewalk—My cries of Sex
               in bed echoed in their
                     lap-head grass eyes—
      Motorcyclists crying together
      entering the inner gates to
   the huge temple left behind by other
      Hindu dreamers—Kingdom
      Come or Kingdom Yore—

               reassurance from Buddha’s
               two arms, palms out
                  stept up to 13th Century
                     Sukothai feminacy
                        step forward—

I’ve read the 1910 Guidebook about them
      giant trees strangling the heavy palace
one altar full of little black bugs I never saw
                        before,
Broken or stray Lingams left over from another
         Imperial History, Goon squads with Moats,
Kingly reservoirs dried up, must’ve
been a big city full of wooden poles right
         near here, bamboo thatchments
            Chinese babies screaming at the bearded
            Han traveler—Palms together
               Salute I don’t care I don’t know

Buddha footprint repetition

Make that a dozen eggs—split em easy.
Make that pig—tied up on the running board
     between iron spokes, with a sharp
   wood stick set between his legs to
   carry him squeaking hoarsely protesting
      being man-handled to
      get his throat cut for chinese
         hordes—yes they eat

So much pork they’ll make a butcher shop
   restaurant of the whole white folks universe
   which should be owned by Negroes but is
      really haircut like Jews or
         Indian Mounties in
            Northern Canada
They been “throwing up radioactive dolphins
      in their icy bays—”?
There was a great ice-floe up north I
      saw holes in the sea crust, weir
      cold green brine slurping up, or mist
      on my fingernail—

I sat in a hammock and waited—a
      big hole appeared in the English
                  Channel
   To let the human beings thru, hordes
     from Italy into White Anglia
   England achange—Stonehenge who
   went back that far to worship the
                     Sun?

Lady Mort’s wormy intestines,
always passed the basement in the Louvre
with that Knight-at-Arms on a stone
   black table carried by hooded monks
      big as huge children getting
         stoned, tired—

It can can’t go on forever. I’m in the
   Jet Set, according to my memory,
   dissociated in Space from
   Bangkok to Calcutta 2 hours
         from Bangkok to Saigon the
            old elegance of the hitch thumb
               in Texas past the valley
                  town and the green river—

   Coughing in the airplane and my ears hurt
      a headache on the local slow
         airboat—over the great
         water, carrying the 10 tiny
            Buddhas of the negligent
            Mahant of Bodh Gaya—

      Jumping in and out of space—soon
faster than light I’ll go back to the
Graham Avenue past, and stare out the
      window happily at Paul R——
      passing down the 1942 Broadway—
   the gothic church, the alleys and
      Synagogues of Mea Shearim,

Jerusalem’s hated Walls—
I couldn’t get over to the Holy Side and weep
            where I was supposed to by History
            Laws got confused stamped
         in my passport, lost in the refugee
            Station at Calcutta. It
winds in and out of space and time the
         physical traveler—
Returning home at last, years later as
         prophesied, “Is this the way that
            I’m supposed to feel?”

with my nightmare underwear downtown
   in the gray haunted midnight street
            foggy Vancouver was winter
               then now Summer I’ll see
Thru the clear air the great Northern Mountains
   and aspire that lonely visible
   Space-peak before entering the

Moils of New Frisco San York Orleans
   Castro Bomb Shade Protest Shelter
Better write a letter warning against
   the
      Aswan Nile not seen
      Peking’s Jewelry feet not Come true
Surely I’ll live to take tea in a back yard
      in Kyoto and be calm!

“Make me ready—but not yet”
No I am not “ready” to die when that Choke
comes I’m afraid I’ll scream and
         embarrass everybody—go out
like a coward yellow fear I done left no
         Louis babies behind me Rebuke in
         Those 70 year eyes and I speak of Murder
            blessing him?—Alas
to be kinder except I was kind to the
         Man on park bench after the Nite Club

            who “schemed murders” as an
               analyst for air forces.
They need conscience-stricken analysts, I’m
      a conscious-stricken panelist on this
      university show.
               Forward March, guessing
      which bullet which airplane which nausea
      be the dreadful doomy last
            begun while I’m still
conscious—I’ll go down and get a cold coffee at
                     Midnight

Siemréap, Cambodia, June 10, 1963

The Change: Kyoto–Tokyo Express

I

Black Magicians

Come home: the pink meat image
   black yellow image with
   ten fingers and two eyes
is gigantic already: the black
   curly pubic hair, the
   blind hollow stomach,
the silent soft open vagina
   rare womb of new birth
cock lone and happy to be home
                  again
touched by hands by mouths,
   by hairy lips—

Close the portals of the festival?

Open the portals to what Is,
The mattress covered with sheets,
   soft pillows of skin,
long soft hair and delicate
   palms along the buttocks
   timidly touching,
waiting for a sign, a throb
   softness of balls, rough
   nipples alone in the dark
   met by a weird finger;
Tears allright, and laughter
   allright
I am that I am—

               Closed off from this
The schemes begin, roulette,
   brainwaves, bony dice,
   Stroboscope motorcycles
   Stereoscopic Scaly
      Serpents winding thru
         cloud spaces of
            what is not—
“… convoluted, lunging upon
a pismire, a conflagration, a—”

II

Shit! Intestines boiling in sand fire
   creep yellow brain cold sweat
   earth unbalanced vomit thru
   tears, snot ganglia buzzing
   the Electric Snake rising hypnotic
   shuffling metal-eyed coils
   whirling rings within wheels
   from asshole up the spine
   Acid in the throat the chest
   a knot trembling Swallow back
the black furry ball of the great
   Fear

Oh!

The serpent in my bed pitiful
   crawling unwanted babes of
   snake covered with veins and pores
   breathing heavy frightened love
   metallic Bethlehem out the window
   the lost, the lost hungry
   ghosts here alive trapped
   in carpet rooms How can I
   be sent to Hell
   with my skin and blood

Oh I remember myself so

Gasping, staring at dawn over
   lower Manhattan the bridges
   covered with rust, the slime
   in my mouth & ass, sucking
   his cock like a baby crying Fuck
   me in my asshole Make love
   to this rotten slave Give me the
   power to whip & eat your heart
   I own your belly & your eyes
   I speak thru your screaming
   mouth Black Mantra Fuck you
   Fuck me Mother Brother Friend
   old white haired creep shuddering in
   the toilet slum bath floorboards—

Oh how wounded, how wounded, I
   murder the beautiful chinese women

It will come on the railroad, beneath
   the wheels, in drunken hate screaming
   thru the skinny machine gun, it will
   come out of the mouth of the pilot
   the dry lipped diplomat, the hairy
   teacher will come out of me
   again shitting the meat out of
   my ears on my cancer deathbed
   Oh crying man crying woman

crying guerrilla shopkeeper
   crying dysentery boneface on
   the urinal street of the Self
   Oh Negro beaten in the eye in my
   home, oh black magicians
   in white skin robes boiling the
   stomachs of your children that
   you do not die but shudder in
   Serpent & worm shape forever
   Powerful minds & superhuman
   Roar of volcano & rocket in
   Your bowels—

Hail to your fierce desire, your
   Godly pride, my Heaven’s gate
   will not be closed until
   we enter all—

All human shapes, all
   trembling donkeys & apes, all
   lovers turned to ghost
   all achers on trains &
taxicab bodies sped away
   from date with desire, old movies,
   all who were refused—

All which was rejected, the
   leper-sexed hungry of
   nazi conventions, hollow
   cheeked arab marxists of Acco
   Crusaders dying of starvation
   in the Holy Land—

Seeking the Great Spirit of the
   Universe in Terrible Godly
   form, O suffering Jews
   burned in the hopeless fire
   O thin Bengali sadhus adoring
   Kali mother hung with
   nightmare skulls O Myself
   under her pounding
   feet!

Yes I am that worm soul under
   the heel of the daemon horses
   I am that man trembling to die
   in vomit & trance in bamboo
   eternities belly ripped by
   red hands of courteous
   chinamen kids—Come sweetly
   now back to my Self as I was—

Allen Ginsberg says this: I am
   a mass of sores and worms
   & baldness & belly & smell
   I am false Name the prey
   of Yamantaka Devourer of
   Strange dreams, the prey of
   radiation & Police Hells of Law

I am that I am I am the
   man & the Adam of hair in
   my loins This is my spirit and
   physical shape I inhabit
this Universe Oh weeping
   against what is my
   own nature for now

Who would deny his own shape’s
   loveliness in his
   dream moment of bed
   Who sees his desire to be
   horrible instead of Him

Who is, who cringes, perishes,
   is reborn a red Screaming
   baby? Who cringes before
   that meaty shape in
         Fear?

In this dream I am the Dreamer
   and the Dreamed I am
   that I am Ah but I have
   always known

oooh for the hate I have spent
   in denying my image & cursing
   the breasts of illusion—
   Screaming at murderers, trembling
   between their legs in fear of the
   steel pistols of my mortality—

Come, sweet lonely Spirit, back
   to your bodies, come great God
   back to your only image, come
   to your many eyes & breasts,
   come thru thought and
   motion up all your
   arms the great gesture of
   Peace & acceptance Abhaya
   Mudra Mudra of fearlessness
   Mudra of Elephant Calmed &
   war-fear ended forever!

The war, the war on Man, the
   war on woman, the ghost
assembled armies vanish in
   their realms

Chinese American Bardo Thodols
   all the seventy hundred hells from
   Orleans to Algeria tremble
   with tender soldiers weeping

In Russia the young poets rise
   to kiss the soul of the revolution
   in Vietnam the body is burned
   to show the truth of only the
   body in Kremlin & White House
   the schemers draw back
   weeping from their schemes—

In my train seat I renounce
   my power, so that I do
   live I will die

Over for now the Vomit, cut
   up & pincers in the skull,
   fear of bones, grasp
   against man woman & babe.

Let the dragon of Death
   come forth from his
   picture in the whirling
   white clouds’ darkness

And suck dream brains &
   claim these lambs for his
   meat, and let him feed
   and be other than I

Till my turn comes and I
   enter that maw and change
   to a blind rock covered
   with misty ferns that
   I am not all now

but a universe of skin and breath
   & changing thought and
   burning hand & softened
   heart in the old bed of
   my skin From this single
   birth reborn that I am
   to be so—

My own Identity now nameless
   neither man nor dragon or
   God

but the dreaming Me full
   of physical rays’ tender
   red moons in my belly &
   Stars in my eyes circling

And the Sun the Sun the
   Sun my visible father
   making my body visible
   thru my eyes!

Tokyo, July 18, 1963

VII
KING OF MAY: AMERICA TO EUROPE
(1963–1965)

Nov. 23, 1963: Alone

Alone

in that same self where I always was

with Kennedy throat brain bloodied in Texas

the television continuous blinking two radar days

with Charlie muttering in his underwear strewn bedroom

with Neal running down the hall shouting about the racetrack

with Ann with her white boy’s ass silent under the Cupid thigh

with Lucille talking to herself, feeding the pregnant cat Alice

with Anne mourning her pockmarked womb & the hard muscled chest of her Lover

with David’s red wine fireplace casting shadows back to the Duchess farm-boy faggot of Wichita, on fire in mainstreet

with Lance with his crummy painting & leopard blue breast seeking to buy a motorcycle to crosscountry smiling & wan

with the manuscripts of nutritious Roselle the New York suicide on the round mahogany table near the kitchen

with Leroi Jones’ white-eyeballed war-cry unread, babbling in postmortem blue-sneer

with myself confused shock-fingertipt on the rented typewriter

with Alan with horses’ teeth metafysiks demurely insisting he was intensely so over coffee

with Glen o’ the lisp & Justin the olding bluejacketed man-love off in autos to Mexico cactus hope

with the fat lady with babe in the auto, feeding & grieving her adolescence’s backseat

with “Go to Hell” spoke on the streetcorner down hill in dark November night

with Judy’s blood in the furnace building up weeks before in campus-forest headlines, white-haired parents on Television

with Christopher running around in raincoats talking fast about his eyesockets seeing true streets of ’60s

with Jaime phoning collect from New York insulting his lonesome Cunt

with Nemmie insisting she was drunk & insulting on the couch & Marko with a bandaged tendon hanging in front of his gaptooth

with Hubert in beret & tweed beard absolutely sober on meth-freak newspaper splatter rorschach universe, drinking milk

with Jordan on the phone suave & retired jobbing invisible mandalas upstairs from the technicolor gutter

with Larry whitehaired chewing his teeth nodding in chairs weak & amiable lost the pointlessness

with the cat curled in white fur in the kitchen chair

with the transistor radio silent weeks on the typewriter desk

with the novels Happiness Bastard Sheeper from Tangier Wichita Mad Cub Yesterday Today & Tomorrow

with Now, with Fuck You, with Wild Dog Burning Bush Poetry Evergreen C Thieves Journal Soft Machine Genesis Renaissance Contact Kill Roy Etc.

with spaniards appearing at the doors to know what’s happening you wanna score or am I the sacred fear the meth-head fuzz the insect trust or delicious José

with Robert in his black jacket & tie deciding to make a point of his courtesy over the kitchen linoleum

with the Ghosts of Natalie & Peter & Krishna & Ram intoned on the shag rugs in the darkness of abandoned rooms

with Blue Grace in typescript stepping out of the taxi on the wall, and letters arriving from Málaga & Chicago

with me breaking off to rush in to the other room where Adam & Eve lie to get my hair spermy

Why Is God Love, Jack?

Because I lay my
      head on pillows,
Because I weep in the
      tombed studio
Because my heart
      sinks below my navel
because I have an
      old airy belly
   filled with soft
      sighing, and
   remembered breast
      sobs—or
   a hand’s touch makes
      tender—
Because I get scared—
Because I raise my
      voice singing to
            my beloved self—
Because I do love thee
      my darling, my
      other, my living
            bride
my friend, my old lord
      of soft tender eyes—
Because I am in the
      Power of life & can
      do no more than
      submit to the feeling
      that I am the One
            Lost
Seeking still seeking the
      thrill—delicious
      bliss in the
         heart abdomen loins
            & thighs
Not refusing this
      38 yr. 145 lb. head
      arms & feet of meat
Nor one single Whitmanic
      toenail contemn
nor hair prophetic banish
      to remorseless Hell,
Because wrapped with machinery
I confess my ashamed desire.

New York, 1963

Morning

Ugh! the planet screams
Doves in rusty cornice-castles peer
down on auto crossroads,
      a junkey in white jacket
wavers in yellow light on
      way to a negro in bed
Black smoke flowing on roofs, terrific
         city coughing—
garbage can lids music over
      truck whine on E. 5th St.
Ugh! I’m awake again—
      dreary day ahead
what to do?—Dull letters
      to be answered
an epistle to M. Duchamp
more me all day the same
clearly

      Q. “Do you want to live or die?”
      A. “I don’t know”
   said Julius after 12 years
               State Hospital

Ugh! cry negroes in Harlem
Ugh! cry License Inspectors, Building
            Inspectors, Police Congressmen
            Undersecretaries of Defense.
Ugh! Cries Texas Mississippi!
Ugh! Cries India
Ugh! Cries US
                  Well, who knows?

O flowing copious!
   total Freedom! To
Do what? to blap! to
   embarrass! to conjoin
Locomotive blossoms to Leafy
   purple vaginas.
To be dull! ashamed! shot!
   Finished! Flopped!
To say Ugh absolutely meaningless here
To be a big bore! even to
   myself! Fulla shit!

Paper words! Fblup! Fizzle! Droop!
Shut your big fat mouth!
Go take a flying crap in the
            rain!
Wipe your own ass! Bullshit!
You big creep! Fairy! Dopy
   Daffodil! Stinky Jew!
Mr. Professor! Dirty Rat! Fart!

Honey! Darling! Sweetie pie!
Baby! Lovey! Dovey! Dearest!
My own! Buttercup! O Beautiful!
Doll! Snookums! Go fuck
            yourself,
         everybody Ginsberg!
And when you’ve exhausted
         that, go forward?
Where? kiss my ass!

O Love, my mouth against
   a black policeman’s breast.

New York, 1963

Waking in New York

I

I place my hand before my beard with awe
and stare thru open-uncurtain window
               rooftop rose-blue sky thru
               which small dawn clouds ride
                    rattle against the pane,
          lying on a thick carpet matted floor
               at last in repose on pillows my knees
               bent beneath brown himalayan blanket, soft—
          fingers atremble to pen, cramp
               pressure diddling the page white
                    San Francisco notebook—
And here am on the sixth floor cold
               March 5th Street old building plaster
               apartments in ruin, super he drunk
                    with baritone radio AM nose-sex
Oh New York, oh Now our bird
               flying past glass window Chirp
               —our life together here
          smoke of tenement chimney pots dawn haze
               passing thru wind soar Sirs—

How shall we greet Thee this Springtime oh Lords—?

What gifts give ourselves, what police fear
               stop searched in late streets
Rockefeller Frisk No-Knock break down
               my iron white-painted door?
Where shall I seek Law? in the State
               in offices of telepath bureaucracy—?
in my dis-ease, my trembling, my cry
               —ecstatic song to myself
to my police my law my state my
               many selfs—
Aye, Self is Law and State Police
     Kennedy struck down knew him Self
Oswald, Ruby ourselves
               Till we know our desires Blest
               with babe issue,
                         Resolve, accept
               this self flesh we bear
          in underwear, Bathrobe, smoking cigarette
          up all night—brooding, solitary, set
                    alone, tremorous leg & arm—
               approaching the joy of Alones
               Racked by that, arm laid to rest,
                    head back wide-eyed

Morning, my song to Who listens, to
               myself as I am
To my fellows in this shape that building
               Brooklyn Bridge or Albany name—
               Salute to the self-gods on
                              Pennsylvania Avenue!
May they have mercy on us all,
May be just men not murderers
     Nor the State murder more,
     That all beggars be fed, all
               dying medicined, all loveless
               Tomorrow be loved
                              well come & be balm.

March 16, 1964

II

On the roof cloudy sky fading sun rays
                    electric torches atop—
               auto horns—The towers
          with time-hands giant pointing
                    late Dusk hour over
                         clanky roofs
Tenement streets’ brick sagging cornices
          baby white kite fluttering against giant
          insect face-gill Electric Mill
               smokestacked blue & fumes drift up
     Red messages, shining high floors,
          Empire State dotted with tiny windows
               lit, across the blocks
          of spire, steeple, golden topped utility
               building roofs—far like
               pyramids lit in jagged
                    desert rocks—
The giant the giant city awake
          in the first warm breath of springtime
Waking voices, babble of Spanish
          street families, radio music
          floating under roofs, longhaired
                    announcer sincerity squawking
                              cigar voice
               Light zips up phallos stories
               beneath red antennae needling
                    thru rooftop chimneys’ smog
                         black drift thru the blue air—
Bridges curtained by uplit apartment walls,
               one small tower with a light
          on its shoulder below the “moody, water-loving giants”

The giant stacks burn thick gray
          smoke, Chrysler is lit with green,
down Wall street islands of skyscraper
     black jagged in Sabbath quietness—
Oh fathers, how I am alone in this
          vast human wilderness
Houses uplifted like hives off
          the stone floor of the world—
the city too vast to know, too
          myriad windowed to govern
               from ancient halls—
“O edifice of gas!”—Sun shafts
     descend on the highest building’s
          striped blocktop a red light
               winks buses hiss & rush
               grinding, green lights
               of north bridges,
               hum roar & Tarzan
                    squeal, whistle
                    swoops, hurrahs!

Is someone dying in all this stone building?

Child poking its black head out of the womb
          like the pupil of an eye?

Am I not breathing here frightened
                    and amazed—?
Where is my comfort, where’s heart-ease,
          Where are tears of joy?
Where are the companions? in
          deep homes in Stuyvesant Town
          behind the yellow-window wall?
I fail, book fails—a lassitude,
          a fear—tho I’m alive
and gaze over the descending—No!
peer in the inky beauty of the roofs.

April 18, 1964

After Yeats

Now incense fills the air
and delight follows delight,
quiet supper in the carpet room,
music twangling from the Orient to my ear,
old friends at rest on bright mattresses,
old paintings on the walls, old poetry
thought anew, laughing at a mystic toy
statue painted gold, tea on the white table.

New York, April 26, 1964

I Am a Victim of Telephone

When I lie down to sleep dream the Wishing Well it rings

“Have you a new play for the brokendown theater?”

When I write in my notebook poem it rings

“Buster Keaton is under the brooklyn bridge on Frankfurt and Pearl…”

When I unsheath my skin extend my cock toward someone’s thighs fat or thin, boy or girl

Tingaling—“Please get him out of jail… the police are crashing down”

When I lift the soupspoon to my lips, the phone on the floor begins purring

“Hello it’s me—I’m in the park two broads from Iowa … nowhere to sleep last night… hit ’em in the mouth”

When I muse at smoke crawling over the roof outside my street window

purifying Eternity with my eye observation of gray vaporous columns in the sky

ring ring “Hello this is Esquire be a dear and finish your political commitment manifesto”

When I listen to radio presidents roaring on the convention floor

the phone also chimes in “Rush up to Harlem with us and see the riots”

Always the telephone linked to all the hearts of the world beating at once

crying my husband’s gone my boyfriend’s busted forever my poetry was rejected

won’t you come over for money and please won’t you write me a piece of bullshit

How are you dear can you come to Easthampton we’re all here bathing in the ocean we’re all so lonely

and I lie back on my pallet contemplating $50 phone bill, broke, drowsy, anxious, my heart fearful of the fingers dialing, the deaths, the singing of telephone bells

ringing at dawn ringing all afternoon ringing up midnight ringing now forever.

New York, June 20, 1964

Today

O I am happy! O Swami Shivananda—a smile!

O telephone sweet little black being, what many voices and tongues!

Tonight I’ll call up Jack tell him Buster Keaton is under the Brooklyn Bridge

by a vast red-brick wall still dead pan alive in red suspenders, portly abdomen.

Today I saw movies, publishers, bookstores, checks—wait, I’m still poor

Poor but happy! I saw politicians we wrote a Noise Law!

A Law to free poetry—Poor Plato! Whoops here comes Fascism! I rode in a taxi!

I rode a bus, ate hot Italian Sausages, Coca-Cola, a chili-burger, Kool-Aid I drank—

All day I did things! I took a nap—didn’t I dream about lampshade academies and ouch! I am dying?

I stuck a needle in my arm and flooded my head with drowsy bliss …

And a hairy bum asked Mr. Keaton for money drink! Oh Buster! No answer!

Today I was really amazed! Samuel Beckett had rats eyes and gold round glasses—

I didn’t say a word—I had my picture taken and read all thru the NY Times

and Daily News, I read everybody’s editorials, I protested in my mind I have the privilege of being

Mad. Today I did everything, I wore a pink shirt in the street, at home in underwear

I marveled Henry Miller’s iron sink, how could he remember so clearly?

Hypnagogic vision in Brooklyn 50 years ago—just now my eyeball

troops marched in square mufti battalion dragging prisoners to—

eyelids lifted I saw a blue devil with fifteen eyes on the wall—everything’s mine, antique Tibetan Tankas, a siamese cat asleep on its side relaxed—

I looked out of the window and saw Tonight, it was dark—someone said ooo! in Puerto Rican.

But it was light all day, sweating hot—iron eyes blinking at the human element—

Irreducible Me today, I bought cigarettes at a machine, I was really worried

about my gross belly independent of philosophy, drama, idealism imagery—

My fate and I became one today and today became today—just like a mystic prophecy—I’ll conquer my belly tomorrow

or not, I’ll toy with Mr. Choice also for real—today I said “Forever”

thrice—

and walked under the vast Ladder of Doom, insouciant, not merely innocent

but completely hopeless! In Despair when I woke this morning,

my mouth furry smoked a Lucky Strike first thing when I dialed telephone to check on the Building Department—

I considered the License Department as I brushed my teeth with an odd toothbrush

some visitor left I lost mine—where? rack my brains it’s there

somewhere in the past—with the snubnosed uncle cock from the freakshow

The old man familiar today, first time I thought of him in years, in the rain

in Massachusetts but I was a child that summer The pink thing bulged at his open thigh fly

he fingered it out to show me—I tarried till startled when the whiskied barker

questioned mine I ran out on the boardwalk drizzle confronting the Atlantic Ocean

—so trotted around the silent moody blocks home speechless

to mother father vaginal jelly rubber instruments discovered in the closet—

a stealthy memory makes hackles rise—“He inserts his penis into her vagina”—

What a weird explanation! I who collected matchbook covers like J. P. Morgan

gloating over sodden discoveries in the wet gutter—O happy grubby sewers of Revere—distasteful riches—

hopeless treasure I threw away in a week when I realized it was endless to complete—

next year gathered all the heat in my loins to spurt my white surprise drops into the wet brown wood under a

steamy shower, I used the toilet paper cardboard skeleton tube

to rub and thrill around my unconscious own shaft—playing with myself unbeknownst to the entire population of Far Rockaway—

remembered it all today—many years thinking of Kali-Ma and other matters—

a big surprise it was Me—Dear Reader, I seem strange to myself—

You recognize everything all over again where you are, it’s wonderful

to be introduced to strangers who know you already—

like being Famous—a reverberation of Eternal Consciousness—

Today heraldic of Today, archetypal mimeograph machines reprinting everybody’s poetry,

like finishing a book of surrealism which I haven’t read for years—

Benjamin Péret & René Crevel heroic for real—the old New Consciousness reminded

me today—how busy I was, how fatal like a man in the madhouse, distracted with presence of dishes of food to eat—Today’s “ stringbeans in the moonlight”

Like today I brought home blueberry pie for the first time in years—

Also today bit by a mosquito (to be precise, toward dawn)

(toward dusk ate marshmallows at the News Stand and drank huge cold grape soda eyeing:

this afternoon’s Journal headline FBI IN HARLEM, what kind of Nasty old Epic

Afternoons I imagine!) Another event, a $10 bill in my hands, debt repaid,

a café espresso smaller event—Feeling rich I bought a secondhand record of Gertrude Stein’s actual Voice—

My day was Harmonious—Though I heard no mechanic music—

I noticed some Nazi propaganda—I wrote down my dream about Earth dying—I wanted to telephone Long Island—I stood on a street corner and didn’t know where to go—

I telephoned the Civil Liberties Union—discussed the Junk Problem & Supreme Court—

I thought I was planting suggestions in everybody’s Me-ity—

thought a few minutes of Blake—his quatrains—I climbed four flights &

stood at Fainlight’s Chinatown door locked up—I’m being mysterious—

What does this mean? Don’t ask me today, I’m still thinking,

Trying to remember what happened while it’s still happening—

I wrote a “poem,” I scribbled quotation marks everywhere over Fate passing by

Sometimes I felt noble, sometimes I felt ugly, I spoke to man and woman

from Times & Time, summarized hugely—plots, cinematic glories, I boasted a little, subtly—

Was I seen thru? Too much happened to see thru All—

I was never alone except for two blocks by the park, nor was I unhappy—

I blessed my Guru, I felt like a shyster—told Ed how much I liked being made love to by delicate girl hands—

It’s true, more girls should do that to us, we chalked up another mark what’s wrong

and told everybody to register to vote this November—I stopped on the street and shook hands—

I took a crap once this day—How extraordinary it all goes! recollected, a lifetime!

Imagine writing autobiography what a wealth of Detail to enlist!

I see the contents of future magazines—just a peek Today being hurried—

Today is slowly ending—I will step back into it and disappear.

New York, July 21, 1964

Message II

     Long since the years
     letters songs Mantras
     eyes apartments bellies
     kissed and gray bridges
     walked across in mist
     Now your brother’s Welfare’s
     paid by State now Lafcadio’s
     home with Mama, now you’re
     in NY beds with big poetic
     girls & go picket on the street
I clang my finger-cymbals in Havana, I lie
with teenage boys afraid of the red police,
I jack off in Cuban modern bathrooms, I ascend
over blue oceans in a jet plane, the mist hides
the black synagogue, I will look for the Golem,
I hide under the clock near my hotel, it’s intermission
for Tales of Hoffmann, nostalgia for the 19th century
rides through my heart like the music of The Moldau,
I’m still alone with long black beard and shining eyes
walking down black smoky tramcar streets at night
past royal muscular statues on an old stone bridge,
Over the river again today in Breughel’s wintry city,
the snow is white on all the rooftops of Prague,
Salute beloved comrade I’ll send you my tears from Moscow.

March 1965

Big Beat

The Olympics have descended into
          red velvet basement
          theaters of Centrum
long long hair over skeleton boys
thin black ties, pale handsome
          cheeks—and screams and screams,
Orchestra mob ecstasy rising from
     this new generation of buttocks and eyes
               and tender nipples
Because the body moves again, the
        body dances again, the body
          sings again
     the body screams new-born after
War, infants cursed with secret cold
        jail deaths of the Fifties—Now
     girls with new breasts and striplings
     wearing soft golden puberty hair—
1000 voices scream five minutes long
clapping thousand handed in great ancient measure
saluting the Meat God of XX Century
that moves thru the theater like the
     secret rhythm of the belly in
               Orgasm
Kalki! Apocalypse Christ! Maitreya! grim
     Chronos weeps
            tired into the saxophone,
The Earth is Saved! Next number!
     SHE’S A WOMAN
               Electric guitar red bells!
and Ganymede emerges stomping
          his feet for Joy on the stage
     and bows to the ground, and weeping, GIVES.
Oh the power of the God on his throne
          constantly surrounded by white drums
     right hand Sceptered beating brass cymbals!

Prague, March 11, 1965

Café in Warsaw

These spectres resting on plastic stools

leather-gloved spectres flitting thru the coffeehouse one hour

spectre girls with scarred faces, black stockings thin eyebrows

spectre boys blond hair combed neat over the skull little chin beards

new spectres talking intensely crowded together over black shiny tables late afternoon

the sad soprano of history chanting thru a hi-fidelity loudspeaker

—perspective walls & windows 18th century down New World Avenue to Sigmund III column’d

sword upraised watching over Polish youth 3 centuries—

O Polish spectres what’ve you suffered since Chopin wept into his romantic piano

old buildings rubbled down, gaiety of all night parties under the air bombs,

first screams of the vanishing ghetto—Workmen step thru prewar pink-blue bedroom walls demolishing sunny ruins—

Now spectres gather to kiss hands, girls kiss lip to lip, red witch-hair from Paris

& fine gold watches—to sit by the yellow wall with a large brown briefcase—

to smoke three cigarettes with thin black ties and nod heads over a new movie—

Spectres Christ and your bodies be with you for this hour while you’re young

in postwar heaven stained with the sweat of Communism, your loves and your white smooth cheekskin soft in the glance of each other’s eye.

O spectres how beautiful your calm shaven faces, your pale lipstick scarves, your delicate heels,

how beautiful your absent gaze, legs crossed alone at table with long eyelashes,

how beautiful your patient love together sitting reading the art journals—

how beautiful your entrance thru the velvet-curtained door, laughing into the overcrowded room,

how you wait in your hats, measure the faces, and turn and depart for an hour,

or meditate at the bar, waiting for the slow waitress to prepare red hot tea, minute by minute

standing still as hours ring in churchbells, as years pass and you will remain in Novy Swiat,

how beautiful you press your lips together, sigh forth smoke from your mouth, rub your hands

or lean together laughing to notice this wild haired madman who sits weeping among you a stranger.

April 10, 1965

The Moments Return

a thousand sunsets behind tramcar wires in open skies of Warsaw Palace of Culture chinese peaks blacken against the orange-clouded horizon—

an iron trolley rolling insect antennae sparks blue overhead, hat man limping past rusty apartment walls—

Christ under white satin gleam in chapels—trembling fingers on the long rosary—awaiting resurrection

Old red fat Jack mortal in Florida—tears in black eyelash, Bach’s farewell to the Cross—

That was 24 years ago on a scratchy phonograph Sebastian Sampas bid adieu to earth—

I stopped on the pavement to remember the Warsaw Concerto, hollow sad pianos crashing like bombs, celestial tune

in a kitchen in Ozone Park—It all came true in the sunset on a deserted street—

And I have nothing to do this evening but walk in a fur coat on the cool gray avenue years later, a melancholy man alone—

the music fading to another universe—the moments return—reverberations of taxicabs arriving at a park bench—

My beard is misery, no language to these young eyes—that I remember myself naked in my earliest dream—

now sat by the car-crossing rueful of the bald front of my skull and the gray sign of time in my beard—

headache or dancing exhaustion or dysentery in Moscow or vomit in New York—

Oh—the Metropol Hotel is built—crowds waiting on traffic islands under streetlamp—the cry of tramcars on Jerusalemski—

Roof towers flash Red State—the vast stone avenue hung with yellow bulbs —stop lights blink, long trolleys grind to rest, motorcycles pass exploding—

The poem returns to the moment, my vow to record—my cold fingers—& must sit and wait for my own lone Presence—the first psalm—

I also return to myself, the moment and I are one man on a park bench on a crowded streetcorner in Warsaw—

I breathe and sigh—Give up desire for children the bony-faced white bearded Guru said in Benares—am I ready to die?

or a voice at my side on the bench, a gentle question—worn young man’s face under pearl gray hat—

Alas, all I can say is “No Panamay”—I can’t speak.

Easter Sunday, April 18, 1965

Kral Majales

And the Communists have nothing to offer but fat cheeks and eyeglasses and lying policemen

and the Capitalists proffer Napalm and money in green suitcases to the Naked,

and the Communists create heavy industry but the heart is also heavy

and the beautiful engineers are all dead, the secret technicians conspire for their own glamour

in the Future, in the Future, but now drink vodka and lament the Security Forces,

and the Capitalists drink gin and whiskey on airplanes but let Indian brown millions starve

and when Communist and Capitalist assholes tangle the Just man is arrested or robbed or had his head cut off,

but not like Kabir, and the cigarette cough of the Just man above the clouds

in the bright sunshine is a salute to the health of the blue sky.

For I was arrested thrice in Prague, once for singing drunk on Narodni street,

once knocked down on the midnight pavement by a mustached agent who screamed out BOUZERANT,

once for losing my notebooks of unusual sex politics dream opinions,

and I was sent from Havana by plane by detectives in green uniform,

and I was sent from Prague by plane by detectives in Czechoslovakian business suits,

Cardplayers out of Cézanne, the two strange dolls that entered Joseph K’s room at morn

also entered mine, and ate at my table, and examined my scribbles,

and followed me night and morn from the houses of lovers to the cafés of Centrum—

And I am the King of May, which is the power of sexual youth,

and I am the King of May, which is industry in eloquence and action in amour,

and I am the King of May, which is long hair of Adam and the Beard of my own body

and I am the King of May, which is Kral Majales in the Czechoslovakian tongue,

and I am the King of May, which is old Human poesy, and 100,000 people chose my name,

and I am the King of May, and in a few minutes I will land at London Airport,

and I am the King of May, naturally, for I am of Slavic parentage and a Buddhist Jew

who worships the Sacred Heart of Christ the blue body of Krishna the straight back of Ram

the beads of Chango the Nigerian singing Shiva Shiva in a manner which I have invented,

and the King of May is a middleeuropean honor, mine in the XX century

despite space ships and the Time Machine, because I heard the voice of Blake in a vision,

and repeat that voice. And I am King of May that sleeps with teenagers laughing.

And I am the King of May, that I may be expelled from my Kingdom with Honor, as of old,

To show the difference between Caesar’s Kingdom and the Kingdom of the May of Man—

and I am the King of May, tho’ paranoid, for the Kingdom of May is too beautiful to last for more than a month—

and I am the King of May because I touched my finger to my forehead saluting

a luminous heavy girl trembling hands who said “one moment Mr. Ginsberg”

before a fat young Plainclothesman stepped between our bodies—I was going to England—

and I am the King of May, returning to see Bunhill Fields and walk on Hampstead Heath,

and I am the King of May, in a giant jetplane touching Albion’s airfield trembling in fear

as the plane roars to a landing on the gray concrete, shakes & expels air,

and rolls slowly to a stop under the clouds with part of blue heaven still visible.

And tho I am the King of May, the Marxists have beat me upon the street, kept me up all night in Police Station, followed me thru Springtime Prague, detained me in secret and deported me from our kingdom by airplane.

Thus I have written this poem on a jet seat in mid Heaven.

May 7, 1965

Guru

It is the moon that disappears
It is the stars that hide not I
It’s the City that vanishes, I stay
with my forgotten shoes,
my invisible stocking
It is the call of a bell

Primrose Hill, May 1965

Drowse Murmurs

… touch of vocal flattery
exists where you wake us
at dawn with happy sphinx
lids eyeball heavy anchored
together in mysterious Signature,
this is the end of the world
whether Atom bomb hits
it or I fall down death
alone no body help help
It’s me myself caught in throes
of Ugh! They got me whom you lately loved
of soft cloth beds to stick his cock
in the wrong way lost animal, what wd Zoology
say on Park Bench watching the Spectacle
of this time Me it’s my body going to die,
it’s My ship sinking forever, O Captain
the fearful trip is done! I’m all alone,
This is human, and the cat that licks its ass
also hath short term to be furry specter
as I do woken by last thought leap
up from my pillow as the cat leaps up
on the desk chair to resolve its foot lick,
I lick my own mind observe the pipe
crawling up the brick wall, see picture
room-sides hung with nails emblem
abstract oil funny glyphs, girls
naked, letters & newspapers the World
Map colored over for emphasis somebody born—
my thoughts almost lost, I absorb the big
earth lamps hung from the ceiling for ready light,
hear the chirp of birds younger than I
and faster doomed, that jet plane whistle
hiss roar above roofs stronger winged
than any thin-jawed bird—the precise robot
for air flying’s stronger than me even,
tho’ metal fatigue may come before I’m 90—
I scratch my hairy skull and lean on elbow bone
as alarm clock Sat Morn rings next door
and wakes a sleeper body to face his day.
How amazing here, now this time newspaper
history, when earth planet they say revolves
around one sun that on outer Galaxy arm
revolves center so vast slow pinwheel
big this speckless invisible molecule I am
sits up solid motionless early dawn thinking
high in every direction photograph spiral nebula
photograph death BLANK photograph this wakened
brick minute bird-song pipe-flush elbow lean
in soft pillow to scribe the green sign Paradis.

June 1965

Who Be Kind To

Be kind to your self, it is only one
     and perishable
of many on the planet, thou art that
one that wishes a soft finger tracing the
     line of feeling from nipple to pubes—
one that wishes a tongue to kiss your armpit,
     a lip to kiss your cheek inside your
     whiteness thigh—
Be kind to yourself Harry, because unkindness
     comes when the body explodes
napalm cancer and the deathbed in Vietnam
is a strange place to dream of trees
     leaning over and angry American faces
grinning with sleepwalk terror over your
     last eye—
Be kind to yourself, because the bliss of your own
     kindness will flood the police tomorrow,
because the cow weeps in the field and the
     mouse weeps in the cat hole—
Be kind to this place, which is your present
     habitation, with derrick and radar tower
     and flower in the ancient brook—
Be kind to your neighbor who weeps
     solid tears on the television sofa,
he has no other home, and hears nothing
     but the hard voice of telephones
Click, buzz, switch channel and the inspired
     melodrama disappears
and he’s left alone for the night, he disappears
     in bed—
Be kind to your disappearing mother and
     father gazing out the terrace window
     as milk truck and hearse turn the corner
Be kind to the politician weeping in the galleries
     of Whitehall, Kremlin, White House
     Louvre and Phoenix City
aged, large nosed, angry, nervously dialing
     the bald voice box connected to
electrodes underground converging thru
     wires vaster than a kitten’s eye can see
on the mushroom shaped fear-lobe under
     the ear of Sleeping Dr. Einstein
crawling with worms, crawling with worms, crawling
     with worms the hour has come—
Sick, dissatisfied, unloved, the bulky
     foreheads of Captain Premier President
     Sir Comrade Fear!
Be kind to the fearful one at your side
     Who’s remembering the Lamentations
     of the bible
the prophecies of the Crucified Adam Son
     of all the porters and char men of
          Bell gravia—
Be kind to your self who weeps under
     the Moscow moon and hide your bliss hairs
     under raincoat and suede Levi’s—
For this is the joy to be born, the kindness
     received thru strange eyeglasses on
     a bus thru Kensington,
the finger touch of the Londoner on your thumb,
     that borrows light from your cigarette,
the morning smile at Newcastle Central
     station, when longhair Tom blond husband
     greets the bearded stranger of telephones—
the boom bom that bounces in the joyful
     bowels as the Liverpool Minstrels of
     Cavern Sink
raise up their joyful voices and guitars
     in electric Afric hurrah
     for Jerusalem—
The saints come marching in, Twist &
     Shout, and Gates of Eden are named
     in Albion again
Hope sings a black psalm from Nigeria,
     and a white psalm echoes in Detroit
     and reechoes amplified from Nottingham to Prague
and a Chinese psalm will be heard, if we all
     live out our lives for the next 6 decades—
Be kind to the Chinese psalm in the red transistor
     in your breast—
Be kind to the Monk in the 5 Spot who plays
     lone chord-bangs on his vast piano
lost in space on a bench and hearing himself
     in the nightclub universe—
Be kind to the heroes that have lost their
     names in the newspaper
and hear only their own supplication for
     the peaceful kiss of sex in the giant
     auditoriums of the planet,
nameless voices crying for kindness in the orchestra,
screaming in anguish that bliss come true
     and sparrows sing another hundred years
     to white haired babes
and poets be fools of their own desire—O Anacreon
     and angelic Shelley!
Guide these new-nippled generations on space
     ships to Mars’ next universe
The prayer is to man and girl, the only
     gods, the only lords of Kingdoms of
     Feeling, Christs of their own
     living ribs—
Bicycle chain and machine gun, fear sneer
     & smell cold logic of the Dream Bomb
have come to Saigon, Johannesburg,
     Dominica City, Phnom Penh, Pentagon
     Paris and Lhasa—
Be kind to the universe of Self that
     trembles and shudders and thrills
     in XX Century,
that opens its eyes and belly and breast
     chained with flesh to feel
     the myriad flowers of bliss
     that I Am to Thee—
A dream! a Dream! I don’t want to be alone!
     I want to know that I am loved!
I want the orgy of our flesh, orgy
     of all eyes happy, orgy of the soul
     kissing and blessing its mortal-grown
     body,
orgy of tenderness beneath the neck, orgy of
     kindness to thigh and vagina
Desire given with meat hand
     and cock, desire taken with
     mouth and ass, desire returned
     to the last sigh!
Tonite let’s all make love in London
     as if it were 2001 the years
     of thrilling god—
And be kind to the poor soul that cries in
     a crack of the pavement because he
     has no body—
Prayers to the ghosts and demons, the
     lackloves of Capitals & Congresses
     who make sadistic noises
     on the radio—
Statue destroyers & tank captains, unhappy
     murderers in Mekong & Stanleyville,
That a new kind of man has come to his bliss
     to end the cold war he has borne
     against his own kind flesh
     since the days of the snake.

June 8, 1965

Studying the Signs

After Reading Briggflatts

White light’s wet glaze on asphalt city floor,
the Guinness Time house clock hangs sky misty,
yellow Cathay food lamps blink, rain falls
on rose neon Swiss Watch under Regent archway,
Sun Alliance and London Insurance Group stands
granite—“Everybody gets torn down” … as a high
black taxi with orange doorlight passes around
iron railing blazoned with red sigma Underground—
Ah where the cars glide slowly around Eros
shooting down on one who stands in Empire’s Hub
under his shining silver breast, look at Man’s
sleepy face under half-spread metal wings—
Swan & Edgar’s battlement walls the moving Circus,
princely high windows barred (shadow bank
interior office stairway marble) behind castiron
green balconies emblemed with single swans afloat
like white teacups what—Boots’ blue sign lit up
over an enamel weight-machine’s mirror clockface
at door betwixt plateglass Revlon & slimming biscuit
plaques and that alchemical blood-crimson pharmacy
bottle perched on street display. A Severed Head
“relished uproariously” above the masq’d Criterion
marquee, with Thespis and Ceres plaster Graces lifting
white arms in the shelled niches above a fire gong
on the wooden-pillared facade whose mansard gables
lean in blue-black sky drizzle, thin flagpole.
Like the prow of a Queen Mary the curved building
sign Players package, blue capped center
Navvy encircled by his life-belt a sweet bearded
profile against 19th century sea waves—
last a giant red delicious Coca-Cola signature
covers half the building back to gold Cathay.
Cars stop three abreast for the light, race forward,
turtleneck youths jump the fence toward Boots,
the night-gang in Mod slacks and ties sip
coffee at the Snac-A-Matic corner opendoor,
a boy leaned under Cartoon Cinema lifts hand
puffs white smoke and waits agaze—a wakened
pigeon flutters down from streetlamp to the fountain,
primly walks and pecks the empty pave—now deep
blue planet-light dawns in Piccadilly’s low sky.

June 12, 1965

Portland Coliseum

A brown piano in diamond
     white spotlight
Leviathan auditorium
     iron rib wired
     hanging organs, vox
          black battery
A single whistling sound of
     ten thousand children’s
          larynxes asinging
          pierce the ears
     and flowing up the belly
     bliss the moment arrived

Apparition, four brown English
     jacket christhair boys
Goofed Ringo battling bright
          white drums
Silent George hair patient
          Soul horse
Short black-skulled Paul
          wit thin guitar
Lennon the Captain, his mouth
          a triangular smile,
all jump together to End
     some tearful memory song
          ancient two years,

     The million children
     the thousand worlds
bounce in their seats, bash
     each other’s sides, press
     legs together nervous
Scream again & claphand
     become one Animal
     in the New World Auditorium
     —hands waving myriad
        snakes of thought
     screech beyond hearing
while a line of police with
     folded arms stands
Sentry to contain the red
     sweatered ecstasy
that rises upward to the
          wired roof.

August 27, 1965

VIII
THE FALL OF AMERICA
(1965–1971)

Thru the Vortex West Coast to East (1965–1966)

Zigzag Back Thru These States (1966–1967)

Elegies for Neal Cassady (1968)

Ecologues of These States (1969–1971)

Bixby Canyon to Jessore Road (1971)

Thru the Vortex West Coast to East
(1965–1966)

Beginning of a Poem of These States

Memento for Gary Snyder

Under the bluffs of Oroville, blue cloud September skies, entering U.S. border, red red apples bend their tree boughs propt with sticks—

At Omak a fat girl in dungarees leads her big brown horse by asphalt highway.

Thru lodgepole pine hills Coleville near Moses Mountain—a white horse standing back of a 2 ton truck moving forward between trees.

At Nespelem, in the yellow sun, a marker for Chief Joseph’s grave under rilled brown hills—white cross over highway.

At Grand Coulee under leaden sky, giant red generators humm thru granite & concrete to materialize onions—

And gray water laps against the gray sides of Steamboat Mesa.

At Dry Falls 40 Niagaras stand silent & invisible, tiny horses graze

on the rusty canyon’s mesquite floor.

At Mesa, on the car radio passing a new corn silo, Walking Boogie teenager’s tender throats, “I wish they could all be California girls”—as black highway curls outward.

On plains toward Pasco, Oregon hills at horizon, Bob Dylan’s voice on airways, mass machine-made folksong of one soul—Please crawl out your window—first time heard.

Speeding thru space, Radio the soul of the nation. The Eve of Destruction and The Universal Soldier.

And tasted the Snake: water from Yellowstone under a green bridge; darshana with the Columbia, oilslick & small bird feathers on mud shore. Across the river, silver bubbles of refineries.

There Lewis and Clark floated down in a raft: the brown-mesa’d gorge of Lake Wallula smelling of rain in the sage, Greyhound buses speeding by.

Searching neither for Northwest Passage, nor Gold, nor the Prophet who will save the polluted Nation, nor for Guru walking the silver waters behind McNary Dam.

Roundup time in Pendleton, pinched women’s faces and hulking cowboy hats in the tavern, I’m a city slicker from Benares. Barman murmurs to himself, two hands full of beer, “Who wanted that?”

Heavy rain at twilight, trumpets massing & ascending repeat The Eve of Destruction, Georgia Pacific sawmill burners lift smoke thru the dusky valley.

Cold night in Blue Mountains, snow-powdered tops of droopy Tamarack and Fir at gray sunrise, coffee frozen in brown coffeepot, toes chilled in Czechoslovakian tennis sneakers.

Under Ponderosa pine, this place for sale—45th Parallel, half way between equator and North Pole—Tri-City Radio broadcasting clear skies & freezing nite temperatures; big yellow daisies, hay bales piled in square stacks house-high.

“Don Carpenter has a real geologist’s hammer, he can hit a rock & split it open & look inside & utter some mantra.”

Coyote jumping in front of the truck, & down bank, jumping thru river, running up field to wooded hillside, stopped on a bound & turned round to stare at us—Oh-Ow! shook himself and bounded away waving his bushy tail.

Rifles & cyanide bombs unavailing—he looked real surprised & pointed his thin nose in our direction. Hari Om Namo Shivaye!

Eat all sort of things & run solitary—3 nites ago hung bear dung on a tree and laughed

—Bear: “Are you eating my corpses? Say that again!”

Coyote: “I didn’t say nothing.”

Sparse juniper forests on dry lavender hills, down Ritter Butte to Pass Creek, a pot dream recounted: Crossing Canada border with a tin can in the glove compartment, hip young border guards laughing—In meadow the skeleton of an old car settled: Look To Jesus painted on door.

Fox in the valley, road markers dript with small icicles, all windows on the white church broken, brown wooden barns leaned together, thin snow on gas station roof.

Malheur, Malheur National Forest—signs glazed snowfrost, last night’s frozen dreams come back—staring out thru skull at cold planet—Mila-Repa accepted no gifts to cover his jeweled penis—Strawberry Mountain top white under bright clouds.

Postcards of Painted Hills, fossil beds near Dayville, Where have all the flowers gone? flowers gone? Ra and Coyote are hip to it all, nailed footpaw tracks on Day River bottom, cows kneeled at rest in meadow afternoon.

Ichor Motel, white tailfins in driveway, isolate belfried brown farmhouse circled with trees, chain saws ringing in the vale.

Rilled lava overgrown with green moss cracked in cold wind—Blue Heron and American white egret migrate to shrunken waters of Unhappy —mirage lakes wrongside of the road, dust streaming under Riddle Mountain, Steen Range powder white on horizon—

Slept, water froze in Sierra cup, a lake of bitter water from solar plexus to throat—Dreamt my knee was severed at hip and sutured back together—

Woke, icy dew on poncho and saffron sleep bag, moon like a Coleman lantern dimming icicle-point stars—vomited on knees in arroyo grass, nostrils choking with wet red acid in weak flashlight—

Dawn weakness, climbing worn lava walls following the muddy spring, waterfowl whistling sweetly & a tiny raccoon

pawed forward daintly in green mud, looking for frogs burrowed away from Arctic cold—disappeared into a silent rock shelf.

Climbed up toward Massacre Lake road—sagebrush valley-floor stretched South—Pronghorn abode, that eat the bitterroot and dry spice-bush, hunters gathering in trucks to chase antelope—

A broken corral at highway hill bottom, wreck of a dead cow in cold slanting sun set rays, eyes eaten out, neck twisted to ground, belly caved on kneebone, smell of sweet dread flesh and acrid new sage.

Slept in rusty tin feeding trough, Orion belt crystal in sky, numb metal-chill at my back, ravens settled on the cow when sun warmed my feet.

Up hills following trailer dust clouds, green shotgun shells & beer-bottles on road, mashed jackrabbits—through a crack in the Granite Range, an alkali sea—Chinese armies massed at the borders of India.

Mud plate of Black Rock Desert passing, Frank Sinatra lamenting distant years, old sad voic’d September’d recordings, and Beatles crying Help! their voices woodling for tenderness.

All memory at once present time returning, vast dry forests afire in California, U.S. paratroopers attacking guerrillas in Vietnam mountains, over porcelain-white road hump the tranquil azure of a vast lake.

Pyramid rocks knotted by pleistocene rivers, topheavy lava isles castled in Paiute water, cutthroat trout; tomato sandwiches and silence.

Reno’s Motel traffic signs low mountains walling the desert oasis, radio crooning city music afternoon news, Red Chinese Ultimatum 1 A.M. tomorrow.

Up Donner Pass over concrete bridge superhighways hung with gray clouds, Mongolian Idiot chow-yuk the laughable menu this party arrived.

Ponderosa hillsides cut back for railroad track, I have nothing to do, laughing over Sierra top, gliding adventurer on the great fishtail iron-finned road, Heaven is renounced, Dharma no Path, no Saddhana to fear,

my man world will blow up, humming insects under wheel sing my own death rasping migrations of mercy, I tickle the Bodhisattva and salute the new sunset, home riding home to old city on ocean

with new mantra to manifest Removal of Disaster from my self, autumn brushfire’s smoky mass in dusk light, sun’s bright red ball on horizon purple with earth-cloud, chanting to Shiva in the car-cabin.

Pacific Gas high voltage antennae trailing thin wires across flatlands, entering Coast Range 4 lane highway over last hump to giant orange Bay glimpse, Dylan ends his song “You’d see what a drag you are,” and the Pope

cometh to Babylon to address United Nations, 2000 years since Christ’s birth the prophecy of Armageddon

hangs the Hell Bomb over planet roads and cities, year-end come, Oakland Army Terminal lights burn green in evening darkness.

Treasure Island Naval Base lit yellow with night business, thousands of red tail lights move in procession over Bay Bridge,

San Francisco stands on modern hills, Broadway lights flash the center gay honky-tonk Elysium, Ferry building’s sweet green clock lamps black Embarcadero waters, negroes screaming over radio.

Bank of America burns red signs beneath the neon pyramids, here is the city, here is the face of war, home 8 o’clock

gliding down freeway ramp to City Lights, Peter’s face and television, money and new wanderings to come.

September 1965

Carmel Valley

Grass yellow hill,
          small mountain range blue sky
      bright reservoir below road tiny cars
The wing tree green wind sigh
                  rises, falls—
      Buddha, Christ, fissiparous
                        Tendencies—
White sun rays pierce my eyeglasses—
      gray bark animal arms,
                  skin peeling,
      sprig fingers pointing, twigs trembling
            green plate-thins bobbing,
                  knotted branch-sprouts—
No one will have to announce New Age
No special name, no Unique way,
      no crier by Method or
                  Herald of Snaky Unknown,
No Messiah necessary but the Country ourselves
                        fifty years old—
Allah this tree, Eternity this Space Age!
Teenagers walking on Times Sq. look up
      at blue planets thru neon metal
                              buildingtops,
Old men lie on grass afternoons
      old Walnut stands on green mountain hide,
            ants crawl the page, invisible
                  insects sing, birds
                              flap down,
Man will relax on a hill remembering tree friends.

Chez Baez, November 1965

First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels

Cool black night thru the redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

December 1965

Continuation of a Long Poem of These States

S.F. Southward

Stage-lit streets
     Downtown Frisco whizzing past, buildings
     ranked by Freeway balconies
          Bright Johnnie Walker neon
               sign Christmastrees
And Christmas and its eves
     in the midst of the same deep wood
          as every sad Christmas before, surrounded
                    by forests of stars—
Metal columns, smoke pouring cloudward,
          yellow-lamp horizon
               warplants move, tiny
          planes lie in Avionic fields—
Meanwhile Working Girls sort mail into the red slot
     Rivers of newsprint to soldiers’ Vietnam
     Infantry Journal, Kanackee
          Social Register, Wichita Star
And Postoffice Christmas the same brown place
          mailhandlers’ black fingers
          dusty mailbags filled
               1948 N.Y. Eighth Avenue was
     when Peter drove the mailtruck 1955
               from Rincon Annex—
Bright lights’ windshield flash,
     adrenalin shiver in shoulders
               Around the curve
     crawling a long truck
          3 bright green signals on forehead
     Jeweled Bayshore passing the Coast Range
          one architect’s house light on hill crest
……………… negro voices rejoice over radio
     Moonlit sticks of tea
Moss Landing Power Plant
     shooting its cannon smoke
          across the highway, Red taillight
          speeding the white line and a mile away
     Orion’s muzzle
               raised up
                         to the center of Heaven.

December 18, 1965

These States: into L.A.

Organs and War News
     Radio static from Saigon
               “And the Glory of the Lord”
                    Newscaster Voice thru Aether—
The Truce—
     12 hours, 30 hours?
          Thirty Days, said Mansfield.
   Cars roll right lane,
     bridge lights
          rising & falling on night-slope—
     headlights cross speeding reflectors
Handel rejoicing
     chorus whine Requiem, roar in yr Auto
                    window shoulders
Memories of Christmas—
     and the deep Christmas begins:
               U.S. 101 South
The President at home
     in his swinging chair on the porch
          listening to Christmas Carols
     Vice-President returning from Far East
“Check into yourself that you are wrong—
     You may be the Wrong” says Pope His
                    Christmas Message—
Overpopulation, overpopulation
               Give me 3 acres of land
               Give my brother how much?
                    Each man have fine estate?
                    settle giant Communes?
LSD Shakti-snake settles like gas into Consciousness
               —Brightest Venus I’ve ever seen
Canyon-floor road, near
               bursting tides
     & caves they’d slept in earlier years
                    covered with green water
                      height of a man.
     A stranger walked that ground.
          Five years ago we picnicked
                    in this place.
Auto track by a mud log, Bixby Creek
     wove channels
               thru the shifting sands.
I saw the ghost of Neal
          pass by, Ferlinghetti’s ghost
The ghost of Homer roaring at the surf
          barking & wagging his tail
My own footprint at the sea’s lips
          white foam to the rock where I sang Harekrishna
sand garden drying, kelp
          standing head upward in sunlight.
               Dinosaur hard, scabrous
     overgrown with seaweed tendrils,
                    Professors of rock …

Where’s Stravinsky? Theda Bara? Chaplin? Harpo Marx?
  Where’s Laurel and his Hardy?
               Laughing phantoms
               going to the grave—
Last time this town I saw them in movies
     Ending The Road to Utopia‘O Carib Isle!’
     Laurel aged & white-haired Hardy
          Hydrogen Comic smoke billowing
               up from their Kingdom—
Grauman’s Chinese Theater’s drab sidewalk front’s
          concrete footprints, stood there
               stupid, anal, exciting
                    upside down, Crosseyed moviestar’d
     I craned my neck at Myrna Loy & Shirley Temple shoe-marks—

Raccoon crouched at road-edge, praying—
                         Carlights pass—
Merry Christmas to Mr. & Mrs.
                         Chiang Kai Shek
Merry Christmas to President Johnson & pray for Health
Merry Christmas to MacNamara, State Secretary Rusk,
               Khrushchev hid in his apartment house,
                    to Kosygin’s name, to Ho Chi Minh grown old,
Merry Christmas to rosycheeked Mao Tze Tung
     Happy New Year Chou En Lai & Laurel and Hardy
Merry Christmas to the Pope
          & to the Dalai Lama Rebbe Lubovitcher
     to the highest Priests of Benin,
     to the Chiefs of the Faery Churches—
Merry Christmas to the Four Shankaracharyas,
     to all Naga Sadhus, Bauls & Chanting Dervishes from Egypt to
                              Malaya—

Black Sign Los Angeles 140 Miles
     stifling car-heat—
          Music on the tacky radio,
               senseless, senseless coughs of emotion—
The Ally Cease-Fire Will Not Be Extended
               “……. on a densely populated area”
“… —Peking will never join the United Nations as long
as it remains under what it termed American Domination.”

MOBILIZE THE NATIONAL GUARD, sd Senator Anderson
  IY Mental Rejectees will be reexamined
               for service in Vietnam.
Bradley high on acid
     drawing pictures on Army Forms?
     Peter classified Psycho telling his Sergeant
          “An Army is an Army against Love.”

Xmas day work stack of papers on the President’s desk
                         a foot high!
                    he has to finish them tonight!
     this determined NBC News entering Lompoc, famed of
                              W. C. Fields
               who proved that Everyman’s a
                              natural bullshit artist:
          “spends about 75% of his time on Foreign Matters and is,
               uh, very involved …”
                         “and all letters are answered.”
WHAT no Xmas message from the
                    Texas White House?
     The President must be very down—
  He’s maintaining his communications networks
                              circling the Planet.
               Mambo canned music mush
               Ventura radio Xmas sound
                         Commercial announcements,
     Few minutes of live speech, little joy or thanksgiving,
no voice from Himalayas
          Good Cheer Happy Kalpa
for Dominica Vietnam Congo China India America
               Tho England rang with the Beatles!
          “healing all that was oppressed with the Devil.”
     & at Santa Barbara exit
               the Preacher hollered in tongues
               YOUR NAME IS WRITTEN IN HEAVEN
                              passing 38th Parallel

Lodge spoke from Saigon “We are morally right,
     we are Morally Right,
     serving the cause of freedom forever giving these people
               an opportunity … almost like thinking”—
  He’s broadcasting serious-voice on Xmas Eve to America
Entering Los Angeles space age
     three stations simultaneous radio—
               Cut-Up Sounds that fill Aether,
                    voices back of the brain—
               The voice of Lodge, all well, Moral—
               voice of a poor poverty worker,
                    “Well they dont know anybody dont
                    know anything about the poor all
                    the money’s going to the politicians
                    in Syracuse, none of it’s going to the poor.”
               Evers’ voice the black Christmas March
                    “We want to be treated like Men, like human …”
          Mass Arrest of Campers Outside LBJ Ranch
Aquamarine lights revolving along the highway,
          night stars over L.A., exit trees,
     turquoise brilliance shining on sidestreets—

Xmas Eve 1965

A Methedrine Vision in Hollywood

Here at the atomic Crack-end of Time XX Century
History swifting past horse chariot earth wheel
So I in mid-age, finished with half desire
Tranquil in my hairy body, familiar beard face,
                    Same fingers to pen
                    as twenty years ago began
          scribbled Confession to fellow Beings
               Americans—
                         Heavenly creatures,

This universe a thing of dream
     substance naught & Keystone void
          vibrations of symmetry Yes No
          Foundation of Gold Element Atom
     all the way down to the first Wave
     making opposite Nothing a mirror
which begat a wave of Ladies marrying
waves of Gentlemen till I was born in 1926
     in Newark, New Jersey under the sign of
                         sweet Gemini—

Whole universes hived upon the first
     dumb Jerk
               that wasn’t there—The
Only One escape from the black Not Ever
was Itself,
          a extra click of Life woke
because Nothing had no hand to switch off
the Light.
                    The first dumb Jerk,
one wave, Forward! one way too many—
So forward got backward, & Sideways both
     got there simultaneous with up
          and down who got each other
Meanwhile the first Being got its non-Being
     Opposite which never had to be there before
This calamity, this accident, this Goof,
     this Imperceptible Sneak of Dimension,
          Some Move-Push tickle, Aleph or Aum
               swallowed before uttered,
               one-eyed sparkle, giant glint, any tiny fart
               or rose-whiff before roses were
                         Thought Impossible
filled every corner of Emptiness with Symmetries of
     Impossible Universe with no Idea
How Come, & Opposite Possible Kosmoses assembled Doubtless—
One makes two, symmetry’s infinite touch
makes Sound bounce, light sees
          waves reproduce oceans,
vibrations are red white & blue—

     All like a 3 dimensional TV dream
     like Science-fiction opera
          sung by inexistent Gas-brains
               in their N-dimensional bag,
     Some what a bubble, some what dewdrop
     Some what a blossom, some what lightning flash,
     Some what the old Jew in the Hospital—
          snap of dying fingers,
               “Where did it all go?”

Made of Ideas, waves, dots, hot projectors
mirror movie screens,
     Some what the Shadow cast at Radio City
               Music Hall Xmas 1939
gone, gone, utterly completely gone
to a world of Snow
     White and the Seven Dwarfs—
Made up of cartoon picture clouds, papier-mâché
               Japanese lantern stage sets strung
     with moon lights, neon arc-flames,
               electric switches, thunder
reverberating from phonograph record tape machine
               Tin sheets of Zeus on
the Microphone jacked to gigantic Amplifiers, gauge
     needle jumping, red lights warning Other
Dimensions off the overloaded public address Sound
     Systems feedback thru blue void
               echoing the Real of Endless Film.

Xmas 1965

Hiway Poesy: L.A.-Albuquerque-Texas-Wichita

up up and away!
          we’re off, Thru America—

Heading East to San Berdoo
          as West did, Nathanael,
California Radio Lady’s voice
          Talking about Viet Cong—
     Oh what a beautiful morning
     Sung for us by Nelson Eddy

Two trailer trucks, Sunkist oranges / bright colored
          piled over the sides
     rolling on the road
Gray hulk of Mt. Baldy under
     white misted skies
Red Square signs unfold, Texaco Shell
          Harvey House tilted over the superhighway—

Afternoon Light
          Children in back of a car
          with Bubblegum
a flight of birds out of a dry field like mosquitoes

“… several battalions of U.S. troops in a search and destroy operation in the Coastal plain near Bong Son, 300 mi. Northeast of Saigon. Thus far the fighting has been a series of small clashes. In a related action 25 miles to the South, Korean troops killed 35 Viet Cong near Coastal highway Number One.”

“For he’s oh so Good
and he’s oh so fine
and he’s oh so healthy
in his body and his mind”

The Kinks on car radio

In Riverside,
     a 1920s song—
          “It’s the only words I know / that you’ll
                         understand”
     For my uncle Max dead 5 years ago
          it’s settled—buried
under the blue mountain wall,
Veined with snow at the top
               clouds passing
                    icy remote heights
Palmtrees on valley floor
     stick up toothpick hairheads—
Toy automobiles piled crushed and mangled
               topped by a hanging crane,
     The planet hanging,
               the air hanging,
                    Trees hang their branches,
               A dirt truck hanging on the highway—
Spectacle of Afternoon,
     giant pipes glistening in the universe
   Magic that weighs tons and tons,
               Old bum with his rough
                    tattered pack hunched
          walking up the hill hanging
                    to Ukipah
          cloth cap pulled over his head
                         black fingernails.

          A wall, a wall, a Mesa Wall, There’s desert
          flat mountain shadows
               miles along the pale pink floor
                         —Indio in space.

The breath of spring, the breath of fear
          Mexican border …
                    The LSD cube—
                              silence.

There’s those Hellies again,
          over hiway, as over Mekong
                    belly lights blinking red
          prob’ly surveying the border—
          shotguns stickin’ out all over
               —Two birds swoop under car dashboard.
                    Purple Mist,
                      motor tire drone.
Sacrifice for Prosperity, says Johnson.
          Joshua Tree Monument
Blue dusk.
          Bomb China
     says Southern Senator Stennis—
Mobil’s neon Pegasus flying overhill.

Colorado River border,
     Two lemons an orange seized,
          Scaly Mites
     and the cube of acid smuggled into Arizona …

“It all comes from Crystal hill”—
        The whole countryside’s Quartzite hereabouts—
Huntley’s Perspective on the News
          Sukarno a Nut? A wildman?
               or potential friend?
     Brought to you by Mercury
               boasting “sweet
               success taste”—
They can go around saying things about people,
     and once their policy’s adopted it’ll rule a decade—
Somebody decided “he’s a nut!”
     official policy, re-echoed to 14 Million Readers of Time
as we drive along in the Bat-mobile thru Arizona—
Approaching Hope, dream maps unfolded
          Waves with larger & larger loops,
          Tree-posts flashing auto headlights
                                   hit my retina
                         I saw what it was
                              light saw light,
                                   a flash in the pan.
Eyes register, nerves send waves along to the brain
Finger touch is electric waves
                    carlights glare thru eyes—
Voice repeating itself,
     wavering over the microphones—
          Meditation passing Hope …

Horrific outskirts’ Eastern Traffic Sign,
          Turn backward…
                    Dull sleep on my eyes

*   *   *   *

Morning Phoenix Gazette, editorial January 27, ’66
          “No time for probe of CIA
          No Good Purpose would be served—
                    Why poke on the Nose?
          … Virtual epidemic of attacks,
Pacifists let Reds take over the world, rather than
                         Fighting Against Them—
     well meaning people … distasteful intelligence
     Sacrosanct… scuttle … demand an investigation …
Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
           Righto! The Navaho trail—
     Crescent moon setting on low hills West—
               Military forces over radio
                         push bombing N. Vietnam.
Lifelines, sponsored by Henry L. Hunt, Beans.
       Dead voiced announcer, denouncing
     “a communist conspiracy among the youth …
     speakers on campuses / trained to condition
                              idealistic brains …”
It’s Chase Manhattan Bank lends money to South African
        White government—Rockfeller boy!
     Unless Chase Bank quits I prophesy blood violence.
     Ford has a factory,
     Ford has a factory there—
          “they’re aw-fly proud
          of being South African.”
     “… A hotbed of anti Semitism too?”

PAINTED DESERT,
     petrified forest
          Leslie Howard’s scratchy ’30s image
          … eating jurassic steak
Petroglyphs over there the Man in the Moon,
     the guy with four fingers …
     over there, this is the sun, with two spikes out the North,
     two spikes South, two spikes ray East & West

     Milky way over here, the Moon,
     … and all the animal tentacles
     Nebula spiraled “… Roger 1943”
And I hit Julius for eating his avocado cheese sandwich too fast.

     Gas flares, oil refinery night smoke,
     high aluminum tubes winking red lights
                    over space ship runways
     petrochemical witches’ blood boiling underground—
     “Looks like they’re gettin ready to go to Mars.”
Approaching Thoreau—
               Fort Wingate Army Depot entrance—
               and there’s the Continental Divide.
Anti Vietnam War Demonstrator soldiers sentenced
               For Contempt of President:
                              Hard Labor—
Learn thyself in Shell Refinery’s Oil Storage Seaboard Rackets,

Lying back on the car seat,
     eyelids heavy,
          legs spread leaned against the table,
Oh that I were young again and the skin in my anus folds rose,
     “La illaba el (lill) Allah bu”
Finally bored,
     Over a hill, singing Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram
Albuquerque Sparkling blue brilliant
     more diamonds & pearls of electricity
     running out of power-plants than ever heard of
               Turkey or Israel—
intense endless iridescence on black
                  velvet desert—
                  Ah what a marvel
orange blue Neon Circling itself Solar System’d
Speed Wash Texaco 19¢ Famous Hamburgers
Lion House Italian Village Pizza ah!
radio warbles Electronic noise
     echo chamber vibrations—
        Albuquerque streets’ fantastic Neon Stars
               collapsing to bright red blinks
Satellite Globes plunging their
                    tiny lamps in and out—
                         the eyeball.

*   *   *   *

Space stretching North dotted with silver gastanks
     to Sandia Range
Hitchhiking student
     supported by National Defense Fund
          with his black horn rimmed glasses,
                    thin blond hair,
“If your country calls you, would you go?”
“If my country drafted me …
               then I would go.”
Selfish young american always interested in his own skin
—and blue car speeding along the highway
          sticker on back
                    “I’m proud I’m an American”
          right front seat, a 10 gallon hat
          driver a fat car salesman—
Sitting icy tipped
          distant earth peaks over Hilltops
& here’s an ugly little oasis, used car tractors
               fenced off by barbed wire
                    below roadside—
Evenings cool clear, sharp
               brilliant blue stars—
Just what we needed, State Penitentiary!
          Two miles off into the brown furze rolling
                    East of the highway
“This is Ford Country what are you driving?” Be a Ford dealer?
Great snow meadows roof Sangre De Cristo
clouds, North, dipping misty rivulet tails of pointy fog.

………………………………………………………

It’s a hard question …
     which would you rescue, your mother-in-law
               or the last text of Shakespeare?

*   *   *   *

Two hitchhikers, one Cajun dumb mouth
     who sang brown voiced
          blues his travelin’ baby.
T’other highschool smart
     wavy hair, unbeautiful, unbeautiful and gentle
          pinched pachuco face
     had ideas of his own philosophy—
          thumbing out of Albuquerque
                    To New Orleans Mardigras
$900 a week, working rolling drunks, or
     fixin signs with ladders and hammers
had spent 3 youth years in Siam,
               Champagne & Pussy 50¢
                    kindly eyes
     “I love to eat, and I love girls.”
     Sang them Prajnaparamita Sutra
                    entering Panhandle,
     left them back at Tukumkarie—
     talking in the truckstop booth,
            fat truck drivers
               headed south.

On Radio entering Texas
     Please For Jesus!
     Grunts & Screams & Shouts,
          Shouts for the Poison Redeemer,
     Shouts for the Venomous Jesus of Kansas.
Onward to Wichita!
     Onward to the Vortex!
          To the Birchite Hate Riddles,
       cock-detesting, pussy-smearing
          dry ladies and evil Police
               of Central Plains State
     Where boredom & fury
          magick bars and sirens around
                    the innocent citykid eye
     & Vampire stake of politics Patriotism’s driven
   into the white breast of Teenage
     joyful murmurers
     in carpet livingrooms
          on sidestreets—
Beautiful children’ve been driven from Wichita
McClure & Branaman gone
     J. Alan White departed left no address
Charlie Plymell come Now to San Francisco
     Ann Buchanan passing thru,
Bruce Conners took his joke to another coast—
     in time the White Dove Review
          fluttered up from Tulsa
Flatland entering Great Plains
               Evil gathers in Cities,
               Eye mouth newspapers
     Television concentrates its blue
               flicker of death in the frontal lobe—
     Police department sirens wail,
               The Building Department inspector Negates
               What the Fire Department has failed to burn down—
     Students departing for Iowa & Chicago,
        New York beckoning at the end of the stage—
While Soviets have made soft landing on the moon
Today, be it rock or dust?
     Now’s Solar System born anew?
Red lights, red lights at highway end,
     glass reflectors,
                    there’s no one On the Road.
“… Don’t know what will happen to the proud
               American soldiers in Vietnam”
          said Ex Ambassador Ex General Taylor—

In this great space, Murchison & Hunt,
     Texas millionaires
          sit in Isolate skyscrapers
                    on flatland dotted with lights
or, from cities, isolate from fairies
and screaming european dowagers & sopranos,
               plot conspiracies against Communists,
send messages to New York, Austin, Wichita
          Vancouver, Seattle, to Los Angeles—
Radio programs about the Federal Octopus—
          Seraphs of Money Power on Texas plains
               huge fat-bellied power-men
               shoving piles of Capital
                         by train
                    across grasslands—
Shoving messages into myriad innocent-cleaned ears
     Spiritual messages about spiritual war—
          Come to Jesus
                where the money is!
               Texas voice
               singing Vietnam Blues
                    Twanging
“I don’t like to die / a man I ain’t about t’ crawl”
          In Vital-heart,
Big truck slowly lumbers through town—
Hotels raise signs, neon winks.
Liberal’s the beginning of Kansas
     Martial music filling airwaves—
only the last few weeks
     waves of military music
        drum taps drum beats trumpets
             pulsing thru radiostations
                  not even sad,
     bald Sopranos
     Sacred Tenors from 1920s
     Singing antique music style
What Patriot wrote that shit?
Something to drive out the Indian
     Vibrato of Buffy Sainte-Marie?
     Doom call of McGuire?
The heavenly echo of Dylan’s despair
               before the silver microphone
     in his snake suit,
               a reptile boy
                    disappearing in Time—
     soft shoe dancing on the Moon?
It’ll be a relief when the Chinese take over Texas!
     Lifeline pumping its venom “Communist Conspiracy”
     Secret documents Infiltrate & smash Vatican—
          broadcast to these empty plains,
          Isolate farmhouses with radios
               hearing the Horror Syndicate
                  take over the Universe!

Radiostations whistling & crashing against each other on autoradio—
Full moonlight on blue snow
Loudspeaker blasting midnite static
               thru some European Swansong,
     Dit dat dits of outerspace communication
               blanking out Ear’s substance
Vatican whistles undertone
     bloops and eeeeeps, trillion-antennae’d
        grid of the Shabda
If it’s silent it isn’t there—

*   *   *   *

Entering Kansas
     little red towers blink distance,
          Lifeline, continued over 7 stations—
H. L. Hunt his books read,
          Cold reasoning voice over Kansas plains—
O that’s Liberal Spread before us!
Truck stopped by roadside Weighing Station

*

Heavy Jewish voice heard over Kansas Radio
     Varning the Jews, Take safety in Christ
          —Dr. Michaelson
          and the Hebrew-Christian Hour
               —P.O.B. 707 Los Angeles 53—

In 1866 & 1881 the Carbon Companies paid
$2,500,000 for the bones of Buffalos
     Representing 31,000,000 Buffalos.
Handful of Buffalo, lightbrown back shining in the sun
     Grazing at the edge of River Ginnesca—
Peter says Oooo! What
          visions they must have of human beings—
          silent tolerant, head bent,
                         cropping grass—
‘Right now they’re trying to take the Indian territories
                         away, near Hopiland.’
     Wanna build subdivisions,
                              Mineral rights—
               The last lands of the redskins—
Saw it in the paper t’other day
               on the Highway near Tucson—

Blue morning in Kansas,
     black lambs dotted in snow
     Ice gleaming in brown grass at roadside
          Corn stacks, small
          lined up around tree groves—
Kingman Salvage, rusty autos under rusty hill,
Jodrell Bank reporting Sensational pictures Rocks on the Moon,
            “it’s a hard surface—”
    information about Hog Scallops at Birth,
Meat prices, Grain prices
Steer Meat Dollar values,
    Appeal to end Property Tax

Green signs,
    Welcome to Wichita
    Population 280,000

January 28–29, 1966

Chances “R”

Nymph and shepherd raise electric tridents
    glowing red against the plaster wall,
The jukebox beating out magic syllables,
A line of painted boys snapping fingers
    & shaking thin Italian trouserlegs
        or rough dungarees on big asses
        bumping and dipping
ritually, with no religion but the
        old one of cocksuckers
naturally, in Kansas center of America
      the farmboys in Diabolic bar light
    alone stiff necked or lined up
    dancing row on row like Afric husbands
& the music’s sad here, whereas Sunset Trip or
Jukebox Corner it’s ecstatic pinball machines—
Religiously, with concentration and free
        prayer; fairy boys of the plains
        and their gay sisters of the city
step together to the center of the floor
    illumined by machine eyes, screaming drumbeats,
          passionate voices of Oklahoma City
               chanting No Satisfaction
Suspended from Heaven the Chances R
     Club floats rayed by stars
          along a Wichita tree avenue
     traversed with streetlights on the plain.

Wichita, February 1966

Wichita Vortex Sutra

   I
Turn Right Next Corner
     The Biggest Little Town in Kansas
                    Macpherson
Red sun setting flat plains west streaked
               with gauzy veils, chimney mist spread
          around christmas-tree-bulbed refineries—aluminum
               white tanks squat beneath
          winking signal towers’ bright plane-lights,
                    orange gas flares
          beneath pillows of smoke, flames in machinery—
                    transparent towers at dusk

In advance of the Cold Wave
     Snow is spreading eastward to
               the Great Lakes
     News Broadcast & old clarinets
       Watertower dome Lighted on the flat plain
            car radio speeding acrost railroad tracks—

Kansas! Kansas! Shuddering at last!
            PERSON appearing in Kansas!
     angry telephone calls to the University
     Police dumbfounded leaning on
               their radiocar hoods
     While Poets chant to Allah in the roadhouse Showboat!
Blue eyed children dance and hold thy Hand O aged Walt
     who came from Lawrence to Topeka to envision
          Iron interlaced upon the city plain—
    Telegraph wires strung from city to city O Melville!
          Television brightening thy rills of Kansas lone
I come,
     lone man from the void, riding a bus
     hypnotized by red tail lights on the straight
                         space road ahead—
   & the Methodist minister with cracked eyes
                       leaning over the table
          quoting Kierkegaard “death of God”
                    a million dollars
     in the bank owns all West Wichita
                    come to Nothing!
          Prajnaparamita Sutra over coffee—Vortex
     of telephone radio aircraft assembly frame ammunition
petroleum nightclub Newspaper streets illuminated by Bright
                         EMPTINESS—

Thy sins are forgiven, Wichita!
          Thy lonesomeness annulled, O Kansas dear!
               as the western Twang prophesied
     thru banjo, when lone cowboy walked the railroad track
               past an empty station toward the sun
          sinking giant-bulbed orange down the box canyon—
     Music strung over his back
      and empty handed singing on this planet earth
                    I’m a lonely Dog, O Mother!
Come, Nebraska, sing & dance with me—
     Come lovers of Lincoln and Omaha,
               hear my soft voice at last
   As Babes need the chemical touch of flesh in pink infancy
      lest they die Idiot returning to Inhuman—
                                   Nothing—
So, tender lipt adolescent girl, pale youth,
                         give me back my soft kiss
          Hold me in your innocent arms,
               accept my tears as yours to harvest
               equal in nature to the Wheat
          that made your bodies’ muscular bones
               broad shouldered, boy bicept—
               from leaning on cows & drinking Milk
                    in Midwest Solitude—
No more fear of tenderness, much delight in weeping, ecstasy
     in singing, laughter rises that confounds
          staring Idiot mayors
               and stony politicians eyeing
               Thy breast,
                    O Man of America, be born!
Truth breaks through!
     How big is the prick of the President?
          How big is Cardinal Vietnam?
How little the prince of the FBI, unmarried all these years!
     How big are all the Public Figures?
   What kind of flesh hangs, hidden behind their Images?

                         Approaching Salina,
Prehistoric excavation, Apache Uprising
                      in the drive-in theater
     Shelling Bombing Range mapped in the distance,
     Crime Prevention Show, sponsor Wrigley’s Spearmint
     Dinosaur Sinclair advertisement, glowing green—
South 9th Street lined with poplar & elm branch
          spread over evening’s tiny headlights—
    Salina Highschool’s brick darkens Gothic
                         over a night-lit door—
     What wreaths of naked bodies, thighs and faces,
                         small hairy bun’d vaginas,
                    silver cocks, armpits and breasts
          moistened by tears
                         for 20 years, for 40 years?
Peking Radio surveyed by Luden’s Coughdrops
          Attacks on the Russians & Japanese,
Big Dipper leaning above the Nebraska border,
                    handle down to the blackened plains,
     telephone-pole ghosts crossed
                    by roadside, dim headlights—
     dark night, & giant T-bone steaks,
          and in The Village Voice
       New Frontier Productions present
               Camp Comedy: Fairies I Have Met.
Blue highway lamps strung along the horizon east at Hebron
               Homestead National Monument near Beatrice—

Language, language
     black Earth-circle in the rear window,
                    no cars for miles along highway
          beacon lights on oceanic plain
       language, language
               over Big Blue River
          chanting La illaha el (lill) Allah hu
           revolving my head to my heart like my mother
           chin abreast at Allah
           Eyes closed, blackness
vaster than midnight prairies,
              Nebraskas of solitary Allah,
                  Joy, I am I
                  the lone One singing to myself
                         God come true—
                    Thrills of fear.
                  nearer than the vein in my neck—?
What if I opened my soul to sing to my absolute self
    Singing as the car crash chomped thru blood & muscle
                                   tendon skull?
    What if I sang, and loosed the chords of fear brow?
               What exquisite noise wd
                              shiver my car companions?
                    I am the Universe tonite
                         riding in all my Power riding
chauffeured thru my self by a long haired saint with eyeglasses
What if I sang till Students knew I was free
     of Vietnam, trousers, free of my own meat,
   free to die in my thoughtful shivering Throne?
          freer than Nebraska, freer than America—
                    May I disappear
               in magic Joy-smoke! Pouf! reddish Vapor,
Faustus vanishes weeping & laughing
     under stars on Highway 77 between Beatrice & Lincoln—
     “Better not to move but let things be” Reverend Preacher?
                    We’ve all already disappeared!

Space highway open, entering Lincoln’s ear
     ground to a stop Tracks Warning
                    Pioneer Boulevard—
     William Jennings Bryan sang
   Thou shalt not crucify mankind upon a cross of Gold!
                              O Baby Doe! Gold’s
     Department Store hulks o’er 10th Street now
   —an unregenerate old fop who didn’t want to be a monkey
   now’s the Highest Perfect Wisdom dust
     and Lindsay’s cry
     survives compassionate in the Highschool Anthology—
a giant dormitory brilliant on the evening plain
                         drifts with his memories—
There’s a nice white door over there
                    for me O dear! on Zero Street.

February 15, 1966

     II
Face the Nation
Thru Hickman’s rolling earth hills
          icy winter
               gray sky               bare trees lining the road
     South to Wichita
          you’re in the Pepsi Generation Signum enroute
Aiken Republican on the radio          60,000
     Northvietnamese troops now infiltrated but over 250,000
     South Vietnamese armed men
                    our Enemy—
                         Not Hanoi our enemy
                         Not China our enemy
                              The Viet Cong!
                    McNamara made a “bad guess”
“Bad Guess?” chorused the Reporters.
          Yes, no more than a Bad Guess, in 1962
                    “8000 American Troops handle the
                         Situation”
                              Bad Guess
   in 1954, 80% of the
     Vietnamese people would’ve voted for Ho Chi Minh
wrote Ike    years later     Mandate for Change
                    A bad guess in the Pentagon
And the Hawks were guessing all along
                    Bomb China’s 200,000,000
               cried Stennis from Mississippi
                    I guess it was 3 weeks ago
     Holmes Alexander in Albuquerque Journal
          Provincial newsman
               said I guess we better begin to do that Now,
          his typewriter clacking in his aged office
          on a side street under Sandia Mountain?
          Half the world away from China
Johnson got some bad advice Republican Aiken sang
to the Newsmen over the radio
     The General guessed they’d stop infiltrating the South
          if they bombed the North—
              So I guess they bombed!
Pale Indochinese boys came thronging thru the jungle
               in increased numbers
          to the scene of TERROR!
While the triangle-roofed Farmer’s Grain Elevator
     sat quietly by the side of the road
               along the railroad track
     American Eagle beating its wings over Asia
               million dollar helicopters
               a billion dollars worth of Marines
                    who loved Aunt Betty
               Drawn from the shores and farms shaking
               from the high schools to the landing barge
               blowing the air thru their cheeks with fear
                    in Life on Television
Put it this way on the radio
Put it this way in television language
                         Use the words
                              language, language:
                                   “A bad guess”
Put it this way in headlines
     Omaha World Herald—Rusk Says Toughness
                    Essential For Peace
Put it this way
     Lincoln Nebraska morning Star—
                    Vietnam War Brings Prosperity
Put it this way
          Declared McNamara speaking language
               Asserted Maxwell Taylor
               General, Consultant to White House
     Viet Cong losses leveling up three five zero zero per month
          Front page testimony February ’66
     Here in Nebraska same as Kansas same known in Saigon
               in Peking, in Moscow, same known
          by the youths of Liverpool three five zero zero
          the latest quotation in the human meat market—
                         Father I cannot tell a lie!

A black horse bends its head to the stubble
     beside the silver stream winding thru the woods
     by an antique red barn on the outskirts of Beatrice—
               Quietness, quietness
     over this countryside
          except for unmistakable signals on radio
               followed by the honkytonk tinkle
                         of a city piano
  to calm the nerves of taxpaying housewives of a Sunday morn.
               Has anyone looked in the eyes of the dead?
U.S. Army recruiting service sign Careers With A Future
     Is anyone living to look for future forgiveness?
Water hoses frozen on the street, the
     Crowd gathered to see a strange happening garage—
          Red flames on Sunday morning
                    in a quiet town!
Has anyone looked in the eyes of the wounded?
     Have we seen but paper faces, Life Magazine?
     Are screaming faces made of dots,
          electric dots on Television—
               fuzzy decibels registering
                    the mammal voiced howl
from the outskirts of Saigon to console model picture tubes
          in Beatrice, in Hutchinson, in El Dorado
               in historic Abilene
               O inconsolable!

          Stop, and eat more flesh.
“We will negotiate anywhere anytime”
          said the giant President

Kansas City Times 2/14/66: “Word reached U.S. authorities that Thailand’s leaders feared that in Honolulu Johnson might have tried to persuade South Vietnam’s rulers to ease their stand against negotiating with the Viet Cong.

American officials said these fears were groundless and Humphrey was telling the Thais so.”

AP dispatch
  The last week’s paper is Amnesia.

Three five zero zero is numerals
Headline language poetry, nine decades after Democratic Vistas
     and the Prophecy of the Good Gray Poet
          Our nation “of the fabled damned”
               or else …
     Language, language
Ezra Pound the Chinese Written Character for truth
        defined as man standing by his word
          Word picture: forked creature
                    Man
               standing by a box, birds flying out
                    representing mouth speech
     Ham Steak please waitress, in the warm café.
     Different from a bad guess.
                    The war is language,
                         language abused
                              for Advertisement,
                    language used
               like magic for power on the planet:
Black Magic language,
     formulas for reality—
          Communism is a 9 letter word
                    used by inferior magicians with
the wrong alchemical formula for transforming earth into gold
               —funky warlocks operating on guesswork,
                    handmedown mandrake terminology
                         that never worked in 1956
     for gray-domed Dulles,
                         brooding over at State,
               that never worked for Ike who knelt to take
                    the magic wafer in his mouth
                         from Dulles’ hand
                    inside the church in Washington:
Communion of bum magicians
          congress of failures from Kansas & Missouri
     working with the wrong equations
     Sorcerer’s Apprentices who lost control
          of the simplest broomstick in the world:
                         Language
O longhaired magician come home take care of your dumb helper
     before the radiation deluge floods your livingroom,
                         your magic errandboy’s
                         just made a bad guess again
                    that’s lasted a whole decade.

NBCBSUPAPINSLIFE
     Time Mutual presents
          World’s Largest Camp Comedy:
                    Magic In Vietnam—
     reality turned inside out
          changing its sex in the Mass Media
          for 30 days, TV den and bedroom farce
Flashing pictures Senate Foreign Relations Committee room
     Generals faces flashing on and off screen
                              mouthing language
      State Secretary speaking nothing but language
      McNamara declining to speak public language
          The President talking language,
               Senators reinterpreting language
          General Taylor Limited Objectives
                         Owls from Pennsylvania
               Clark’s Face Open Ended
                         Dove’s Apocalypse
                         Morse’s hairy ears
      Stennis orating in Mississippi
               half billion chinamen crowding into the
                              polling booth,
          Clean shaven Gen. Gavin’s image
                              imagining Enclaves
               Tactical Bombing the magic formula for
               a silver haired Symington:
      Ancient Chinese apothegm:
                         Old in vain.
          Hawks swooping thru the newspapers
               talons visible
          wings outspread in the giant updraft of hot air
                    loosing their dry screech in the skies
                              over the Capitol
Napalm and black clouds emerging in newsprint
      Flesh soft as a Kansas girl’s
                    ripped open by metal explosion—
      three five zero zero on the other side of the planet
          caught in barbed wire, fire ball
          bullet shock, bayonet electricity
      bomb blast terrific in skull & belly, shrapneled throbbing meat
While this American nation argues war:
          conflicting language, language
                    proliferating in airwaves
      filling the farmhouse ear, filling
          the City Manager’s head in his oaken office
          the professor’s head in his bed at midnight
          the pupil’s head at the movies
               blond haired, his heart throbbing with desire
               for the girlish image bodied on the screen:
                         or smoking cigarettes
                         and watching Captain Kangaroo
                         that fabled damned of nations
                         prophecy come true—
Though the highway’s straight,
      dipping downward through low hills,
      rising narrow on the far horizon
          black cows browse in caked fields
               ponds in the hollows lie frozen,
                         quietness.
Is this the land that started war on China?
      This be the soil that thought Cold War for decades?
      Are these nervous naked trees & farmhouses
                         the vortex
                    of oriental anxiety molecules
      that’ve imagined American Foreign Policy
          and magick’d up paranoia in Peking
                    and curtains of living blood
                         surrounding far Saigon?
Are these the towns where the language emerged
      from the mouths here
                    that makes a Hell of riots in Dominica
      sustains the aging tyranny of Chiang in silent Taipeh city
      Paid for the lost French war in Algeria
          overthrew the Guatemalan polis in ’54
      maintaining United Fruit’s banana greed
                         another thirteen years
          for the secret prestige of the Dulles family lawfirm?

Here’s Marysville—
      a black railroad engine in the children’s park,
                         at rest—
and the Track Crossing
      with Cotton Belt flatcars
                    carrying autos west from Dallas
      Delaware & Hudson gondolas filled with power stuff—
      a line of boxcars far east as the eye can see
                    carrying battle goods to cross the Rockies
          into the hands of rich longshoremen loading
                         ships on the Pacific—
      Oakland Army Terminal lights
                    blue illumined all night now—
Crash of couplings and the great American train
          moves on carrying its cushioned load of metal doom
      Union Pacific linked together with your Hoosier Line
               followed by passive Wabash
                         rolling behind
               all Erie carrying cargo in the rear,
          Central Georgia’s rust colored truck proclaiming
                         The Right Way, concluding
      the awesome poem writ by the train
               across northern Kansas,
      land which gave right of way
      to the massing of metal meant for explosion
                         in Indochina—
Passing thru Waterville,
      Electronic machinery in the bus humming prophecy—
          paper signs blowing in cold wind,
                    mid-Sunday afternoon’s silence in town
          under frost-gray sky
                              that covers the horizon—
That the rest of earth is unseen,
                         an outer universe invisible,
                    Unknown except thru
                                   language
                                        airprint
                                             magic images
      or prophecy of the secret
                    heart the same
                    in Waterville as Saigon one human form:
          When a woman’s heart bursts in Waterville
                    a woman screams equal in Hanoi—
On to Wichita to prophesy! O frightful Bard!
      into the heart of the Vortex
          where anxiety rings
                    the University with millionaire pressure,
          lonely crank telephone voices sighing in dread,
      and students waken trembling in their beds
          with dreams of a new truth warm as meat,
          little girls suspecting their elders of murder
                    committed by remote control machinery,
          boys with sexual bellies aroused
                    chilled in the heart by the mailman
      with a letter from an aging white haired General
          Director of selection for service in Deathwar
          all this black language
                         writ by machine!
               O hopeless Fathers and Teachers
               in Hué do you know
                              the same woe too?

I’m an old man now, and a lonesome man in Kansas
      but not afraid
          to speak my lonesomeness in a car,
          because not only my lonesomeness
               it’s Ours, all over America,
                         O tender fellows—
               & spoken lonesomeness is Prophecy
               in the moon 100 years ago or in
                    the middle of Kansas now.
It’s not the vast plains mute our mouths
               that fill at midnite with ecstatic language
          when our trembling bodies hold each other
               breast to breast on a mattress—
      Not the empty sky that hides
                         the feeling from our faces
      nor our skirts and trousers that conceal
          the bodylove emanating in a glow of beloved skin,
               white smooth abdomen down to the hair
                              between our legs,
      It’s not a God that bore us that forbid
          our Being, like a sunny rose
                         all red with naked joy
          between our eyes & bellies, yes
All we do is for this frightened thing
          we call Love, want and lack—
      fear that we aren’t the one whose body could be
          beloved of all the brides of Kansas City,
          kissed all over by every boy of Wichita—
      O but how many in their solitude weep aloud like me—
          On the bridge over Republican River
               almost in tears to know
                    how to speak the right language—
          on the frosty broad road
               uphill between highway embankments
          I search for the language
                    that is also yours—
          almost all our language has been taxed by war.
Radio antennae high tension
      wires ranging from Junction City across the plains—
      highway cloverleaf sunk in a vast meadow
               lanes curving past Abilene
                    to Denver filled with old
                              heroes of love—
               to Wichita where McClure’s mind
                    burst into animal beauty
                    drunk, getting laid in a car
                         in a neon misted street
                                   15 years ago—
      to Independence where the old man’s still alive
      who loosed the bomb that’s slaved all human consciousness
               and made the body universe a place of fear—
Now, speeding along the empty plain,
          no giant demon machine
               visible on the horizon
      but tiny human trees and wooden houses at the sky’s edge
          I claim my birthright!
               reborn forever as long as Man
                    in Kansas or other universe—Joy
          reborn after the vast sadness of War Gods!
A lone man talking to myself, no house in the brown vastness to hear,
      imaging the throng of Selves
          that make this nation one body of Prophecy
               languaged by Declaration as Pursuit of
                    Happiness!
I call all Powers of imagination
      to my side in this auto to make Prophecy,
                         all Lords
      of human kingdoms to come
Shambu Bharti Baba naked covered with ash
      Khaki Baba fat-bellied mad with the dogs
Dehorahava Baba who moans Oh how wounded, How wounded
      Sitaram Onkar Das Thakur who commands
                         give up your desire
Satyananda who raises two thumbs in tranquillity
      Kali Pada Guha Roy whose yoga drops before the void
          Shivananda who touches the breast and says OM
Srimata Krishnaji of Brindaban who says take for your guru
      William Blake the invisible father of English visions
      Sri Ramakrishna master of ecstasy eyes
          half closed who only cries for his mother
Chaitanya arms upraised singing & dancing his own praise
      merciful Chango judging our bodies
          Durga-Ma covered with blood
               destroyer of battlefield illusions
          million-faced Tathagata gone past suffering
      Preserver Harekrishna returning in the age of pain
Sacred Heart my Christ acceptable
          Allah the Compassionate One
                         Jaweh Righteous One
                    all Knowledge-Princes of Earth-man, all
      ancient Seraphim of heavenly Desire, Devas, yogis
                    & holymen I chant to—
                         Come to my lone presence
                              into this Vortex named Kansas,
I lift my voice aloud,
      make Mantra of American language now,
          I here declare the end of the War!
               Ancient days’ Illusion!—
          and pronounce words beginning my own millennium.
Let the States tremble,
      let the Nation weep,
          let Congress legislate its own delight
               let the President execute his own desire—
this Act done by my own voice,
               nameless Mystery—
published to my own senses,
               blissfully received by my own form
      approved with pleasure by my sensations
          manifestation of my very thought
          accomplished in my own imagination
               all realms within my consciousness fulfilled
      60 miles from Wichita
                    near El Dorado,
                         The Golden One,
in chill earthly mist
      houseless brown farmland plains rolling heavenward
                         in every direction
one midwinter afternoon Sunday called the day of the Lord—
      Pure Spring Water gathered in one tower
               where Florence is
                         set on a hill,
               stop for tea & gas

      Cars passing their messages along country crossroads
      to populaces cement-networked on flatness,
                    giant white mist on earth
      and a Wichita Eagle-Beacon headlines
      “Kennedy Urges Cong Get Chair in Negotiations”
The War is gone,
      Language emerging on the motel news stand,
                    the right magic
      Formula, the language known
      in the back of the mind before, now in black print
                    daily consciousness
Eagle News Services Saigon—
      Headline Surrounded Vietcong Charge Into Fire Fight
          the suffering not yet ended
                         for others
          The last spasms of the dragon of pain
                    shoot thru the muscles
               a crackling around the eyeballs
               of a sensitive yellow boy by a muddy wall
Continued from page one area
      after the Marines killed 256 Vietcong captured 31
      ten day operation Harvest Moon last December
                         Language language
      U.S. Military Spokesmen
                    Language language
                         Cong death toll
               has soared to 100 in First Air Cavalry
               Division’s Sector of
                         Language language
                    Operation White Wing near Bong Son
Some of the
      Language language
               Communist
                    Language language soldiers
charged so desperately
      they were struck with six or seven bullets before they fell
      Language Language M 60 Machine Guns
               Language language in La Drang Valley
      the terrain is rougher infested with leeches and scorpions
               The war was over several hours ago!
Oh at last again the radio opens
      blue Invitations!
          Angelic Dylan singing across the nation
                    “When all your children start to resent you
                    Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?”
      His youthful voice making glad
                    the brown endless meadows
      His tenderness penetrating aether,
          soft prayer on the airwaves,
               Language language, and sweet music too
               even unto thee,
                    hairy flatness!
               even unto thee
                         despairing Burns!

Future speeding on swift wheels
          straight to the heart of Wichita!
Now radio voices cry population hunger world
                    of unhappy people
          waiting for Man to be born
                    O man in America!
      you certainly smell good
                    the radio says
      passing mysterious families of winking towers
      grouped round a quonset-hut on a hillock—
          feed storage or military fear factory here?
Sensitive City, Ooh! Hamburger & Skelley’s Gas
                    lights feed man and machine,
      Kansas Electric Substation aluminum robot
          signals thru thin antennae towers
          above the empty football field
                                   at Sunday dusk
to a solitary derrick that pumps oil from the unconscious
                         working night & day
      & factory gas-flares edge a huge golf course
          where tired businessmen can come and play—
Cloverleaf, Merging Traffic East Wichita turnoff
                    McConnell Airforce Base
                              nourishing the city—
      Lights rising in the suburbs
      Supermarket Texaco brilliance starred
                    over streetlamp vertebrae on Kellogg,
          green jeweled traffic lights
                    confronting the windshield,
Centertown ganglion entered!
          Crowds of autos moving with their lightshine,
          signbulbs winking in the driver’s eyeball—
      The human nest collected, neon lit,
                    and sunburst signed
          for business as usual, except on the Lord’s Day—
      Redeemer Lutheran’s three crosses lit on the lawn
                    reminder of our sins
      and Titsworth offers insurance on Hydraulic
      by De Voors Guard’s Mortuary for outmoded bodies
                    of the human vehicle
          which no Titsworth of insurance will customize for resale—
So home, traveler, past the newspaper language factory
      under Union Station railroad bridge on Douglas
      to the center of the Vortex, calmly returned
          to Hotel Eaton—
Carry Nation began the war on Vietnam here
                    with an angry smashing ax
                         attacking Wine—
      Here fifty years ago, by her violence
began a vortex of hatred that defoliated the Mekong Delta—
      Proud Wichita! vain Wichita
          cast the first stone!—
                    That murdered my mother
          who died of the communist anticommunist psychosis
               in the madhouse one decade long ago
complaining about wires of masscommunication in her head
               and phantom political voices in the air
                    besmirching her girlish character.
      Many another has suffered death and madness
               in the Vortex from Hydraulic
                    to the end of 17th—enough!
The war is over now—
      Except for the souls
                    held prisoner in Niggertown
still pining for love of your tender white bodies O children of Wichita!

February 14, 1966

Auto Poesy: On the Lam from Bloomington

Setting out East on rain bright highways
               Indianapolis, police cars speeding past
               gas station—Stopped for matches
PLOWL of Silence,
      Street bulbs flash cosmic blue—darkness!
          POW, lights flash on again!
               pavement-gleam
                    Mobil station pumps lit in rain
ZAP, darkness, highway power failure
          rain hiss
                    traffic lights dead black—
Ho! Dimethyl Triptamine flashing circle vibrations
          center Spiked—
          Einsteinian Mandala,
      Spectrum translucent,
… Television eyeball dots in treehouse Ken Kesey’s
Power failure inside the head,
      neural apparatus crackling—
So drift months later past
                    Eli Lilly pharmaceuticals’ tower walls
      asleep in early morning dark outside Indianapolis
Street lamps lit humped along downtown Greenfield
News from Dallas, Dirksen declareth
      “Vietnam Protesters have forgotten the lessons of History”
Across Ohio River, noon
      old wire bridge, auto graveyards,
      Washington town covered with rust—hm—

February 1966

Kansas City to Saint Louis

Leaving K.C. Mo.     past Independence     past Liberty
Charlie Plymell’s memories of K.C. renewed
               The Jewel-box Review,
               white-wigged fat camps yakking abt
               Georgie Washington and Harry T.
      filthier than any poetry reading I ever gave
               applauded
      by the police negro wives Mafia subsidized

To East St. Louis on the broad road
          Highway 70 crammed with trucks
      Last night almost broke my heart dancing to
                    Cant Get No Satisfaction
      lotsa beer & slept naked in the guest room—
                                   Now
Sunlit wooded hills overhang the highway
rolling toward the Sex Factories of Indiana—
                    Automobile graveyard, red cars dumped
                    bleeding under empty skies—
      Burchfield’s paintings, Walker Evans’ photos,
                    a white Victorian house on a hill—
Trumble & Bung of chamber music
                    pianoesque on radio—midwest culture
                         before rock and roll

If I knew twenty years ago what I know now
I coulda led a symphony orchestra in Minneapolis
                    & worn a tuxedo

Heart to heart, the Kansas voice of Ella Mae
                    “are you afraid of growing old,
      afraid you’ll no longer be attractive to your husband?”
      “… I dont see any reason” says the radio

                                   “for those agitators— Why dont they move in with the negroes? We’ve been separated all along, why change things now? But I’ll hang up, some other Martian might want to call in, who has another thought.”

                              The Voice of Leavenworth
                    echoing thru space to the car dashboard

“… causes and agitations, then, then they’re doing the work of the communists as J. Edgar Hoover says, and many of these people are people with uh respectable, bility, of a cloak of respectability that shows uh uh teachers professors and students …”

               hollow voice, a minister
                    breathing thru the telephone
“God created all the races … and it is only men who tried to mix em up, and when they mix em up that’s when the trouble starts.”

No place like Booneville though, buddy—
                    End of the Great Plains,
                         late afternoon sun, rusty leaves on trees
One of these days those boots will walk all over you

We the People—shelling the Viet Cong

“Inflation has swept in upon us … Johnson administration rather than a prudent Budget… discipline the American people rather than discipline itself…”

I lay in bed naked in the guest room,
      my mouth found his cock,
          my hand under his behind
               Till the whole body stiffened
                    and sperm choked my throat.

Michele, John Lennon & Paul McCartney
      wooing the decade
          gaps from the 30s returned
      It’s the only words I know that
                    You ll understand…

Old earth rolling mile after mile patient
                    The ground
                         I roll on
                              the ground
                    the music soars above
The ground electric arguments
                    ray over
The ground dotted with signs for Dave’s Eat Eat
      scarred by highways, eaten by voices
                    Pete’s Café—
                         Golden land in setting sun
Missouri River icy brown, black cows,
      grass tufts standing up hairy on hills
                    mirrored to heaven—
                    Spring one month to come.
Sea shells on the ground strata’d by the turnpike—
               Old ocean evaporated away,
                    Mastodons stomped, dinosaurs groaned
                         when these brown hillocks were
                    leafy steam-green-swamp-think Marsh nations
      before the Birch Society was a gleam in the
                              Pterodactyl’s eye
—Aeroplane sinking groundward
      toward my white Volkswagen prehistoric
      white cockroach under high tension wires—
          my face, Rasputin in car mirror.

Funky barn, black hills approaching Fulton
          where Churchill rang down the Curtain
                    on Consciousness
          and set a chill which overspread the world
               one icy day in Missouri
                    not far from the Ozarks—
          Provincial ears heard the Spenglerian Iron
                         Terror Pronouncement
               Magnificent Language, they said,
                              for country ears—
St Louis calling St Louis calling
          Twenty years ago,
               Thirty years ago
                    the Burroughs School
Pink cheeked Kenney with fine blond hair,
          his almond eyes aristocrat
               gazed,
          Morphy teaching English & Rimbaud
               at midnight to the fauns
          W.S.B. leather cheeked, sardonic
               waiting for change of consciousness,
                    unnamed in those days—
               coffee, vodka, night for needles,
               young bodies
               beautiful unknown to themselves
               running around St Louis
      on a Friday evening
          getting drunk in awe & honor of the
                    terrific future these
red dry trees at sunset go thru two decades later
                    They could’ve seen
          the animal branches, wrinkled to the sky
               & known the gnarled prophecy to come,
if they’d opened their eyes outa the whiskey-haze
                    in Mississippi riverfront bars
      and gone into the country with a knapsack to
                              smell the ground.

                    Oh grandfather maple and elm!
Antique leafy old oak of Kingdom City in the purple light
               come down, year after year,
                    to the tune
                    of mellow pianos.
Salute, silent wise ones,
                    Cranking powers of the ground,
      awkward arms of knowledge
      reaching blind above the gas station
                    by the high TV antennae
      Stay silent, ugly Teachers,
let me & the Radio yell about Vietnam and mustard gas.

               “Torture … tear gas legitimate weapons …
Worries language beyond my comprehension” the radio
               commentator says himself.
Use the language today
          “… a great blunder”
               in Vietnam, heavy voices,
“A great blunder … once you’re in, uh,
      one of these things, uh …”
      “Stay in.” Withdraw,
          Language, language, uh, uh
          from the mouths of Senators, uh
               trying to think of Senators, uh
                    trying to think on their feet
                         Saying uhh, politely
Shift linguals, said Burroughs, Cut the Word Lines!
          He was right all along.
                         “… a procurer of these dogs

… take them from the United States … Major Caty … as long as it’s not a white dog … Sentry Dog Procurement Center, Texas … No dogs, once trained, are ever returned to the owner …”

                    French Truth,
                              Dutch Civility
                         Black asphalt, blue stars,
                    tail light procession speeding East,
The hero surviving his own murder,
      his own suicide, his own
                    addiction, surviving his own
      poetry, surviving his own
                    disappearance from the scene—
returned in new faces, shining
      through the tears of new eyes.
          New small adolescent hands
                    on tiny breasts,
      pale silken skin at the thighs,
          and the cherry-prick raises hard
                    innocent heat pointed up
                    from the muscular belly
of basketball highschool English class spiritual Victory,
      made clean at midnight in the bathtub of old City
                              hair combed for love—
millionaire body from Clayton or spade queen from E St Louis
                    laughing together in the TWA lounge
Blue-lit airfields into St Louis,
      past billboards ruddy neon,
          looking for old hero renewed,
               a new decade—
Hill-wink of houses,
      Monotone road gray bridging the streets
      thin bones of aluminum sentineled dark
      on the suburban hump bearing high wires
                    for thought to traverse
          river & wood, from hero to hero—

Crane all’s well, the wanderer returns
                    from the west with his Powers,
      the Shaman with his beard
                    in full strength,
      the longhaired Crank with subtle humorous voice
                         enters city after city
          to kiss the eyes of your high school sailors
          and make laughing Blessing
               for a new Age in America
      spaced with concrete but Souled by yourself
                              with Desire,
or like yourself of perfect Heart, adorable
          and adoring its own millioned population
                              one by one self-wakened
      under the radiant signs
          of Power stations stacked above the river
      highway spanning highway,
                              bridged from suburb to suburb.

March 1966

Bayonne Entering NYC

Smog trucks mile after mile high wire
      Pylons trestled toward New York
          black multilane highway showered w/blue arc-lamps,
                         city glare horizoning
                    Megalopolis with burning factories—
Bayonne refineries behind Newark Hell-light
      truck trains passing trans-continental gas-lines,
          blinking safety signs KEEP AWAKE
Giant giant giant transformers,
          electricity Stacks’ glowing smoke—
      More Chimney fires than all Kansas in a mile,
Sulphur chemical Humble gigantic viaducts
                              networked by road side
                    What smell burning rubber, oil
                                   “freshens your mouth”
          Railroad rust, deep marsh garbage-fume
                                   Nostril horns—
      city Announcer jabbering at City Motel,
          flat winking space ships descending overhead
                    GORNEY GORNEY MORTUARY
      Brilliant signs the
          10 P.M. clock churchspire lit in Suburb City,
          New Jersey’s colored streets asleep—
      High derrick spotlites lamped an inch above
                              roofcombs
          Shoprite lit for Nite people before the vast
      Hohokus marshes and Passaic’s flat gluey
                    Blackness ringed with lightbulbs.
Blue Newark airport,
                    Lights at the field edge,
                         Robot towers blazon’d Eastern Air TWA
                         above the lavender bulbed runway
                    across the barrage of car bridges—

I was born there in Newark
      Public Service sign of the twenties
          visible miles away through smoke
               gray night over electric fields
My aunts and uncles died in hospitals,
are buried in graves surrounded by Railroad Tracks,
      tombed near Winking 3 Ring Ballantine Ale’s home
          where Western Electric has a Cosmic plant,
      Pitt-Consoles breathes forth fumes
          acrid above Flying Service tanks
          Where superhighway rises over Monsanto
               metal structures moonlit
          Pulaski Skyway hanging airy black in heaven my childhood
          neighbored with gigantic harbor stacks,
                         steam everywhere
      Blue Star buses skimming skyroads
          beside th’antennae mazes
                         brilliant by Canalside—

Empire State’s orange shoulders lifted above the Hell,
New York City buildings glitter
                    visible over Palisades’ trees
               Guys From War put tiger in yr Tank—
          Radio crawling with Rockmusic youngsters,
                         STOP—PAY TOLL
          let the hitchhiker off in the acrid Mist—
      Blue uniformed attendants rocking on their heels in green booths
          Light parade everywhere
      Cliff rooms, balconies & giant nineteenth century schools,
          reptilian trucks on Jersey roads
Manhattan star-spread behind Ft. Lee cliffside
               Evening lights reflected across Hudson water—
          brilliant diamond-lantern’d Tunnel
               Whizz of bus-trucks shimmer in Ear
                                   over red brick
                    under Whitmanic Yawp Harbor here
                    roll into Man city, my city, Mannahatta
                                   Lower East Side ghosted &
      grimed with Heroin, shit-black from Edison towers
                                   on East River’s rib—

Green-hatted doormen awaken the eve
                                   in statuary-niched yellow lobbies—
      zephyrous canyons brightlit, gray stone Empire State
                                   too small to be God
          lords it over sweet Macy’s & Seafood City
               by junkie Grant Hotel—
Ho Ho turn right by the Blackman who crosses the street
                    lighting his cigarette, lone on asphalt
                         as the Lord in Nebraska—
      Down 5th Avenue, brr—the irregular spine
                              of streetlights—
                    traffic signals all turned red at once—
                    insect lamps blink in dim artery
          replicated down stone vales to Union Square—
                         In silence wait to see your home
      Cemented asphalt, wire roof-banked,
                    canyoned, hived & churched with mortar,
                         mortised with art gas—
                         passing Ginsberg Machine Co.
th’axhead antique Flatiron
      Building looms, old photographs
                         parked in the mind—
      Cannastra your 21st Street lofts dark no more raw
                                   meat law business
      Tonite Naomi your 18th Westside Stalinesque
                    madstreet’s blocked by a bus,
      Dusty your 16th (drunk in yr party dress) walls
                    emptiness Hudson River perspectiv’d
      Dali in London? Joe Army yr brokenbone Churches
                                   stand brown in time—
          How quiet Washington Monument!
      & fairy youth turns head downstreet
          crossing 5th Avenue under trafficlite,
      doorman playing poodledog
          on brilliant-lit sidewalk No. 1.
      an old reporter w/ brown leather briefcase
          leaves the shiny-pillared apartment—
Gee it’s a Miracle to be back on this street
          where strange guy mustache
               stares in the windowshield—
      Lovely the Steak Sign! bleeps on & off
               beneath Woman’s prison—
      Sixth Avenue bus back-window bright glass
               Lady in kerchief leans backward,
      corner Whalen’s Drugs, an old Beret familiar face
                         nods goodbye girl
Humm, Macdougal I lived here,
          Humm, perfect, there’s empty space
               Park by the bright-lit bookstore—
          Where I’ll find my mail
          & Harmonium, new from Calcutta
Waiting I come back to New York & begin to Sing.

March 1966

Growing Old Again

The delicate french girl jukebox husky lament
softens the air over checkered tablecloths
I haven’t been in Kettle of Fish a year
Between my Moscows and Wichitas a lonesome moment
Content to gaze at Bodenheim & Gould in garish oil,
Phantoms I’m not over the bar wall mirroring photos
of old habitués renowned characteristic seasons for lack
of immortality, a bunch of provincial drunks fucked up
D.T. unbearables or Mafia brothers-in-law.
Old charm of anonymity, phonograph memory playing
familiar bar tunes infrequent visited much
once real hotspot cops on telephone me drunk loved
some heart friend image money at same table same
prophecy felt immortal then—now come true sit
decade hence jukebox-dazed an Angel remembered to forget.

March 3, 1966

Uptown

Yellow-lit Budweiser signs over oaken bars,

“I’ve seen everything”—the bartender handing me change of $10,

I stared at him amiably eyes thru an obvious Adamic beard—

with Montana musicians homeless in Manhattan, teenage

curly hair themselves—we sat at the antique booth & gossiped,

Madame Grady’s literary salon a curious value in New York—

“If I had my way I’d cut off your hair and send you to Vietnam”—

“Bless you then” I replied to a hatted thin citizen hurrying to the barroom door

upon wet dark Amsterdam Avenue decades later—

“And if I couldn’t do that I’d cut your throat” he snarled farewell,

and “Bless you sir” I added as he went to his fate in the rain, dapper Irishman.

April 1966

The Old Village Before I Die

Entering Minetta’s soft yellow chrome, to the acrid bathroom

22 years ago a gold kid wrote “human-kindness” contrasting

“humankind-ness” on enamel urinal where Crane’s match skated—

Christmas subway, lesbian slacks, friend bit someone’s earlobe off

tore gold ring from queer ear, weeping, vomited—

My first drunk nite flashed here, Joe Gould’s beard gray

(“a professional bore” said Bill cruelly)—but as I was less than twenty,

New scene rayed eternal—caricatures of ancient comedians

framed over checkertabled booths, first love struck my heart heavy

prophecy of this moment I looked in the urinal mirror returning decades

late same heavy honey in heart—bearded hairy bald with age

Soft music Smoke gets in your eyes Michele Show Me the Way to Go to Jail

from stereophonic jukebox that once echoed You Always Hurt The One You Love as dear Jack

did know under portraits of Al Smith, Jimmy Walker, Jimmy Durante, Billy Rose.

May 11, 1966

Consulting I Ching Smoking Pot Listening to the Fugs Sing Blake

That which pushes upward
                    does not come back
He led me in his garden
                         tinkle of 20 year phonograph
               Death is icumen in
                    and mocks my loss of liberty
One must see the Great Man
               Fear not it brings blessing
                              No Harm
                    from the invisible world
Perseverance
               Realms beyond
                              Stoned
in the deserted city
                    which lies below consciousness

June 1966

Zigzag Back Thru These States
(1966–1967)
Wings Lifted over the Black Pit

City Flats, Coal yards and brown rivers
      Tower groups toyed by silver bridge
               Sudden the snake uncoils
      w/ thousands of little bodies riding granite scales
      looped in approach to Geo. Washington’s steel trestle
          roped to Jersey west
      Blue sunray on air heights, bubbled with thick steam
                         roofing the planet—
          The jet plane glides toward Chicago.

Blue ground lands, chill cabin, white wings
          Stretch over mist-ribboned horizon
      small windows let in half moon
          a silver jet hangs in the sky south
      Brown gas of the City wrapped over hills—
Chanting Mantras all the way
      Hare Krishna etc.
          Till dinner, great Lake below,
Heard a sweet drone in the plane-whine
      Hari Om Namo Shivaye—So
Made my own music
      American Mantra—
          “Peace in Chicago,
          Peace in Saigon—”
Raw orange sunset, & plunging in white cloud-shore
      Floated thru vast fog-waves
                    down to black Chicago bottom
O’Hare Field’s runway’s blue insect lights on Wingèd Machinery
      Ozark Airways zoom up toward the Moon
Square Networks bulb-lit
      Twinkling blocks massed toward horizon
               Kremlin’d with red towers,
      Aethereal cloverleafs’ pinpointed circlets,
      Metropolis by night,
By air, Man’s home filamented black panorama-skin
          brilliant below my chair & book—
      Impossible to be Mayor! know all details!?
      Alleyed with light,
          lampless yards
               blazing compounds factoried cube-like,
                         prisons shining brilliant!
Suburban moviehouses’ tiny glow
               by the Delicatessen corner,
      Vast hoards of men Negro’d in the gloom,
               gnashing their teeth for miles.
      Tears in attick’s blackness
      Swastikas worshipped in the White Urb,
          clean teeth bared in Reptilian smiles—

Newsphoto Vision: M. L. King Attacked by Rocks—
Dark Land,
      Sparse networks of Serpent electricity
               Dotted between towers
          Signaling to themselves beneath the moon—

*

Living like beasts,
      befouling our own nests,
          Smoke & Steam, broken glass & beer cans,
                         Auto exhaust—
Civilization shit littering the streets,
Fine black mist over apartments
          watercourses running with oil
               fish fellows dead—

June 1966

Cleveland, the Flats

To D. A. Levy

Into the Flats, thru Cleveland’s
               Steeple trees illuminated
      Lake Bridge Light college cars speed round white lines
               thru Green Lights, past downtown’s pale Hotels
Triple towers smokestacked steaming in blue nite
                    buildings in water, the shimmer of that
                              factory in the blackness
                    a little tinkle RR engine bell
See the orange bedroom shack
                    under the viaduct
crisscrossed with 1930s raindrops Tragedies
                    extrapolating railroads overhead—
      Asphalt road bumps—
               that blue flame burning? Industry!
      Bom! Bom! Mahadev! Microphone Icecream!
                              Battle Conditions! Come in Towers!
Buster Keaton died today, folksongs in the iron smell
                              of Republic Steel, hish—!
      American children crossing Jones Laughlin’s yellow
                                        bridge saying o how
                    Beautiful, and Work ye Tarriers Work
                    in the fiery hill on the Press,
                         under black smoke—
Oh yes look, the lake mill lights—
                    Like an organpipe that smokestack
                                   Hart Crane died under—
Black Tank Skeleton lifted over railroads’ orange lamps,
illustrious robots stretched with wires,
          smoking organpipes of God in the Cleveland Flats
      Open hearth furnaces light up sky,
      all night gas station
Polack Stokers running out of money
      “Bearded short Amish, square-faced & incestuous,
      big-eared buck-toothed women, like cross-eyed cats”
Steelton downhill, that smell What is it?
The guys wander up & down their gas refining Cracker
                              climbing ladders in white light—
Butane smells—Creosote—
“Looka that gas-cloud we just passed thru—”
                              Twin heavy smokestacks there—
Space age children wandering like lost orphans
      thru the landscape filled with iron—
      their grandfathers sweated over forges!
          now all they know is all them rockets they see silvery
                    Quivering on Television—
                    I don’t know any more.
Move ye wheels move
          for Independent Towel—
Dakota Hotel, old Red brick apartment,
up Carnegie to University Circle,
Om Om Om Sa Ra Wa Buddha Dakini Yea,
Benzo Wani Yea Benzo Bero
      Tsani Yea Hum Hum Hum
          Phat Phat Phat Svaha!

June 1966

To the Body

Enthroned in plastic, shrouded in wool, diamond crowned,

transported in aluminum, shoe’d in synthetic rubber, fed by asparagus,

adored by all animals,

ear-lull’d by electric mantra rock, chemical roses acrid in the nose,

observant of large-nostril’d air factories, every crack of the skin kissed by

beloved grandmothers,

so man woman child are tender meat become consciously genital with the

shudder & blush of substance

adorned with hair at crotch and brain—beard on lion and youth by fireside.

June 15, 1966

Iron Horse

I

This is the creature I am!
      Sittin in little roomette Santa Fe train
      naked abed, bright afternoon sun light
          leaking below closed window-blind
White hair at chest, ridge
          where curls old Jewish lock
      Belly bulged outward, breathing as a baby
                         old appendix scar
          creased where the belt went
detumescent cannon on two balls soft pillowed
Soft stirring shoots thru breast to belly—
What romance planned by the body unconscious?
                         What can I shove up my ass?
                                   Masturbation in America!
          little spasm delight, prick head
                                   getting bigger
          thumb and index finger slowly stroking
                    along cock sides, askew
                                   cupp’d in hand
          Serpent-reptile prick head
          moving in and out its meat-nest—
Turn and watch the landscape,
wave my baton
          at the passing truckdriver?
Lie back on bunk and lift the shade a bit
          enjoy sun on my flagpole?
Ah, rest, relax, no fear
          look at the sphincter-spasm itself
                                        in a mirror
                                        of sound—
Awk—if you jerk—oh it feels so good
Oh if only somebody’d come in &
                    shove som’in up that ass a mine—
      Oh those two soldiers talking about Cambodia!
      I wantem to come in and lay my head down
                         and shove it in and make me
          Come like I’m coming now,
               Come like I’m coming now,
                         Come like I’m coming now—
Ahh—white drops fall,
          millions of children—
      Santa Fe what can they do to prevent
               passengers from
               soiling their
                         small blankets with love?
Wipe up cream—what if
          The Conductor knocked?
      Go way, I’m—
      I have to compose a poem
      I have to write a financial report
      I have to meditate myself
                    I have to
                    put on my pants—

      just lie back look at the landscape
                    see a tree
                    & cross Ameriky—
                                   Compromised!
                    among green Spinach fields!
Felt good for a minute, flash came thru body
And the Sphincter-spasm spoke
      backward to the soldiers in the observation car
               I’d hated their Cambodia gossip!
               but longed for in moment truth
                    to punish my 40 years’ lies—
      Oh what a wretch I am! What
               monster naked in this metal box—
Hart Crane, under
      Laughing Gas in the Dentist’s Chair 1922 saw
                              Seventh Heaven
          said Nebraska scholar.
      On thy train O Crane I had small death too.

Green valley-fields of California telephone-wired—
      Lovers’ Desire’s State!
          Hollywood starry State!
      Rock poesy State!
                    end of the land!
      where I lay me naked in a pullman coach—
D——
      Thy secrecy arrogance befits thee not
                                   Sweet Prince—
      open yr ass to my mouth—
          a poem to thee!
                    —my voice an overdramatic madman’s
          murmuring to myself late afternoon drowze—
               going home,
                    past cement robots,
          gazing out on palmtrees with reptilian gaze,
      All’s negative O Edward Carpenter!
          As ’twere thy dainty Chinaman near Paris
                                   making crude remarks—
          I’ll jus liah hear like a nigger & moan my soul!
Sixty telephone wires strung across poles,
                         Hedges of spinach,
                              hair combed,
      quite a bit of excitement coursing along city-edge
                    plugged in to human ears
               Operators screaming at soldiers
                    returned from Vietnam,
               murder marriage or orgasmic babe born
                    bawling Daddy Come Home!
Train stop, yellow capp’d workmen
      roar at the engine with waterhoses,
I’ll take a nap dream, last night
      Homer dog swallowed a furry mollusk—
          barking and gulping—the black sucker parasite
               ate belly & crawled up throat,
          pink mucous flesh bubble
                    half-retched from dog chest
I smoke too much I’ll die lung cancer
          eyes closed sensory illusion dotted
               no-think moviescreens,
               worms’ll grow eyeballs silently,
               mosquitoes will row in valley bay night—
          Sausalito, certainly had your big prick there—
Yellow light laid over planet
      telegraph wires over consciousness
          every direction Knowing I am here,
      engine slowly throbbing uphill—

                    Night darkling over Mojave desert,
Yellow planet-light disappearing, mounds westward,
      Soldiers asleep, rocking away from the War.
      Autolite headed toward disappearing sun.
Pew! Pew! Pew! cry the children
                         pulling each other’s arms,
                    What an earth to live on!
      Lights of the City, south,
          brightening a piece of the night—
      and the diamond-green gleam an airfield light—
      Hey! ya bit me, ya bit me,
               hello Missus Fight!
Green Green Green blinks the Diner sign
      where truckmen roam
               in darkness toward Barstow.
      Stars as when I was a child.
               Mojave’s firmament same Passaic’s—
This space capsule softer than trees
                    in chemical landscape
                         with electronic clicks.
And is Heaven any different from where we are?
How could it be better or worse?
      Tho delicate chemical brain changes
          Aethereal sensations
               Muladhara sphincter up thru mind aura
                    Sahasrarapadma promise
                         another Universe—
Whitman, Carpenter, Gavin Arthur, saying
               We are leaves of the Tree,
                    saying
      We are drops of water running to the ocean
          thru the fish’s mouth—
      And we shall stand in Flesh in Paradise
          with the Virgin of the 19th Century—?

Borax, Borax, Borax,
      Crystal lights upon a hill, faery castles
      Might be in heaven, only Mojave—
               Borax, Borax, Borax
      Borax the Dinosaur slounges thru
          fronds under Pleiades—
          Delicate filament of highway lights
          the nerves between cities—
      Borax, Borax Borax Borax
          near Bel Mar desert Motel—

AUM

—my enemy machine chatterjabber mind
      making Borax Borax Borax Borax
          spinal column thought
      o’er turkeys, oil, wind, headlights—
A child peeps thru glass moving night
      where red tail lights keep time
                    to the Santa Fe train
      rolling over Crane’s gloom.

      Ho! a Crescent moon
          Mr. Cummings & Mr. Vinal both dead—

“Why you like beer as much as I do,”
               sd the old gal
               to a tableful of cans—
                    “Lady, it’s my life.”—
Where the soldiers sat talkabout gotten their head busted off
      and there’s a cherry in the gin & tonic
      an angel upside down playing with himself
          kneeling abed looks
          between legs into mirror
      to see the two spots where he sat so long studied Bible
                    reddened each buttock—
Cigarettes and alcohol,
                    the Hundred&81st Airborne
      Hmm—They’d be better off puffin’
               a peaceful O pipe
               or sipping kif Sebsi in a café
               green fig trees
                    blue Gibraltar Strait…

“The tricks are what makes business!
      you got a college education, it ain’t what you got
      it’s what you do with yr. college education Son.”
And they’re all actors.
      Waiting at Barstow the engine humming
—“I wanna be an entertainer,
      I wanna be a comedy writer,” he said—
      his hands once colored with Vietnamese blood.
The engine humming—
      All others silent, lost in thought.
And the soldier talked all about his troubles with his red hair.
And how he took his girl home after 3 drinks
      when she squinted her eyes at him and said
                    “I wanna go with yew,”
and how he drove her to her house
      and said “I’m giving you a last chance”
      and how she leaned her head on his
               shoulder and said
                    “Anywhere you’re goin take me”
      and how he
               took off her pants
          and she said that he shd take off his pants
               and he wouldn’t take off his pants
      and how they’d have some
          love play like everybody
      and then, he’d drive her home,
                         but when he’s out at a bar
      if anybody looks at his girl
he looks ’em in the eye and snaps his finger & says
                         whatter ya lookin like that fur—
      and out in a bar alone,
               anybody’s fair game for his love.
So I sat an I listened,
      and I brooded in my beard
          and saw he was ugly eyed
      though his voice beautiful Edward Carpenter.
Now I’m lying here
      Cabinette in complete darkness
          Airfields passing by,
               Stars, a few dim white fixed friendly
                    in blackness outside
               the modern railroad window
                    doubled to reflect
                                        passing gas—

“Matter-babble behind the ear” six years ago—
Old poetry grows stale,
      forlorn, as always forlorn
“Ah love is so sweet in the Springtime,”
      Jeanette MacDonald sang
          three decades ago—
      on marble balustrade in giant darkness
          downtown Paterson Fabian Theater balcony
          I wept, How soft flesh is—
Watching boyish Ronald Reagan
          emote
               his shadow
                    across the Thirties—
                         Same black vastness
                              pierced
                                   by emotion,
          melancholy toward the stars—
Political planets whirling round the Sun,
                    consciousness expansion,
          earth girdled by telegraph wires, Edward,
          they never dreamed of television then.

Railroad chugging thru yr thighs,
      clear your throat,
          lie there in the dark,
               cough with cancer
                    close your eyes …
I didn’t even dream, passing Tehachapi
      and woke, sleepy numb, reluctant
          to face my own language.
      But came back to it,
          tape machine
               passing Mojave,
                    evening ease,
                              Na-mu sa-man-da mo-to-nan o-ha-ra-chi ko-to-sha so-no-nan to-ji-to en gya-gya gya-ki gya-ki un-nun shi-fu-ra shi-fu-ra ha-ra-shi-fu-ra ha-ra-chi-fu-ra chi-shu-sa chi-chu-sa shu-shi-ri shu-shi-ri so-ha-ja so-ba-ja se-chi-gya shi-ri-ei so-mo-ko

The universe is empty.

Click of train
      eyes closed … the long green courthouse building
          “Like a monster with many eyes.”
               On valley balcony overlooking Bay Bridge,
                    a horse in leafy corral…
600 Cong Death Toll this week
          language language
                    escalating
“and the honor & the glory will go to him who speaks
with the voice of a man of feeling,” said Walter Lippmann
                                   face creased w/ wrinkles,
                                        Bakersfield Gazette.
               Wear beads, live
          in small polkadot tent, tasseled rooftop
                    in Bixby’s Canyon middle
               peaceful Ashram
          “It’s mine, it’s mine, I don’t want anybody else own
               my piece of land private special from Police”
               … I must be criminal, mind
                                        wanders
               nailing down roof boards—
               tell him I stopped at the bar.
No time No time Sam Lewis—
               Oh—No time Carolyn,
                              No time now, Neal.
Do you love me?
      No, I’m an awkward jerk that’s been around yr neck for
          so long you got used to it & kinda fond.
      The salesman’s eyes close,
          he stands his jacket off
               tie hanging down white shirt
                    You run ’em a merry chase, Son?

Open your eyes and stars
                    are back where they were.
      And Dr. Louria committed suicide,
                    accused of abortion,
                         that sensitive man.
      Well gimme yr piece of perspective
          for use in the slotmachine marketplace future—

          You hafta get permission down in
      Freehold New Jersey to see Tibetan Monks.
          You hafta get permission.
      The magic formula’s printed on the back of yr chair Lady,
                         yr going to be the most important illuminator
                                        since Dr. Johnson?
                              And Huncke suffers rejection,
                                        contrariety of others.
               “Reform U.S. Government stinks detail,”
               like, congratulations Whitey, you’ll go far
                                        in yr black Maria, right?
A public meeting in my head,
                              way back on River Street.

Morning, crossing New Mexico border
      massive cliff waves
               in mid-earth America—A blessing
these sandstone organpipes under the shimmering consciousness of LSD.
      Defiance, Wingate, Red Cliffs, Thoreau,
      Indian Gallup ahead,
      ran by here with Peter in the white bus once
level everywhere, fenced, flat
          to Texas horizon gray-fleeced with cloud haze,
          where Gemini men walked space that day—

And ninety-nine soldiers piled on the train at Amarillo—
      Hadn’t read the paper four weeks
                    training Air Force
                    Pneumohydraulics—
Ninety-nine soldiers entering the train
                    and all so friendly
               Only a month
                    hair clipped & insulted
      They weren’t too sad,
      glad going to some electronics field near Chicago
      —Been taking courses in Propaganda,
      How not to believe what they were told
                         by the enemy,
      Young fellas that some of them had long hair
               before they came to the heated camp
               friendly, over hamburgers
                         Volunteered
      assignments behind the line of Great Machines
                         that drop Napalm,
      milking
                         the Calf of Gold.
      Three months from now
                         Vietnam, they said.

Walking the length of the train,
      Lounge Car with Time Magazine
               Amarillo Globe, US News & World Report
          Reader’s Digest Coronet Universal Railroad Schedule,
               everyone on the same track,
                    bound leatherette read on sofas,
               America heartland passing flat
                    trees rising in night—
      Dining Car
                    negro waiters negro porters
          negro sandwichmen negro bartenders white jacketed
          kindly old big-assed Gents half bald,
      Going, sir, California to Chicago
                         feeding the Soldiers.
          Blue eyed children climbing chair backs
               staring at my beard, gay.

A consensus around card table beer—
      “It’s my country,
          better fight ’em over there than here,”
      afraid to say “No it’s crazy
          everybody’s insane—
               This country’s Wrong,
          the Universe, Illusion.”

      Soldiers gathered round
          saying—“my country
and they say I gotta fight,
      I have no choice,
          we’re in it too deep to pull out,
                              if we lose,
      there’s no stopping the Chinese communists,
      We’re fightin the communists, aren’t we?
          Isn’t that what it’s about?”
Flatland,
      emptiness,
          ninety nine soldiers graduated Basic Training
                              eating hamburgers—
          “you learn to eat fast
          you learn to be insulted without caring
          you gotta do what your country expects—”
      even the bright talkative orphan farm boy
      whose auto parts father wanted ’im to grow up military
      “almost et by a male hog up to his shoulders”
          4 hours punching at power steering tractor
               brakes front & hind foot
                         giant insect specialized—
The whole populace fed by News
few dissenting on this train, I the lone beard who don’t like
                                   Vietnam War—
      Ninety nine airforce boys
               lined up with their pants down forever.

      Five Persons Wounded Cleveland Riots
      Atlantic Next Stop for Jolly Space-men
      Bubonic Plague Suspected in Prairie Dogs
      U.S. Marine Offensive Operation Hastings
      Communist Dead Toll Rose Almost 1000
      Stratofortresses struck language language
Communist language language infiltration
               South of 17th Parallel
“Psychedelic drugs no substitute for plain study
               … Technicolored Delusion,
               Many report visits to Heaven
                    … jumping the gun a bit”
                    George E. Turner said
“Eat well, Animal” with a package of dog food
                    and as for Negroes
“Work not rioting is Magic Formula”
And Johnson reiterated too, “our desire to engage in
                         unconditional discussions”
                              to end the war
“other side … concession
                         … not the slightest
                                   indication”
More manpower would be required he said
                                   flatly.

John Steinbeck,
          flaxenhaired Yevtushenko wrote yr phantom
                                   End the War

“Unconditional negotiations” sd Johnson
      “Anywhere anytime” sd Johnson in the last poem
Yesterday Ky So. Vietnam sd
      “Dissolve Vietcong
          National Liberation Front—
                              and Peace”
      Kennedy sd
          “Give V.C. Negotiation Chair”
      —irreconcilable positions, every year
      United States proposes contradictions
          backed with bomb murder,
               backed with Propaganda—
Soldiers on this train think they’re fighting China
Soldiers on this train think Ho Chi Minh’s Chinese
Soldiers on this train don’t know where they’re going
John Steinbeck stop the war John Steinbeck stop
               the war John Steinbeck stop the war.

And the French Army surrounded Madrid,
and the Spanish Army’d marched simultaneously surrounded Paris.
               Then they found out
                         it was hopeless.
               Generals sent messages,
                              Call off the attack!
and the Armies rushed to a neutral place confronted
                                   & killed each other.
               They just wanted to fight,
               no question of Madrid or Paris, then.
—& Johnson backed
      Saigon’s latest conditions:
          N. Vietnam withdraw all aid,
          Dissolve Withdraw Viet Cong.
               These are conditions,
      contradicting Johnson’s Unconditionals.
      These languages are gibberish.
John Steinbeck thy language is gibberish,
      thou’st lost the language war,
                         cantankerous phantom!
      Newspaper language ectoplasm fades—
                         Everybody sneeze!

Lightning’s blue glare fills Oklahoma plains,
the train rolls east
      casting yellow shadow on grass
                              Twenty years ago
approaching Texas
          I saw
               sheet lightning
                    cover Heaven’s corners
      Feed Storage Elevators in gray rain mist,
          checkerboard light over sky-roof
same electric lightning South
      follows this train
          Apocalypse prophesied—
      the Fall of America
          signaled from Heaven—

Ninety nine soldiers in uniform paid by the Government to Believe—
ninety nine soldiers escaping the draft for an Army job, ninety nine soldiers shaved
                         with nowhere to go but where told,
ninety nine soldiers seeing lightning flash
                         a thousand years ago
Ten thousand Chinese marching on the plains
      all turned their heads to Heaven at once to see the Moon.
An old man catching fireflies on the porch at night
      watched the Herd Boy cross the Milky Way
                         to meet the Weaving Girl…
                         How can we war against that?
                         How can we war against that?

Morning song, waking from dreams
          brown grass, city edge nettle
          wild green stinkweed trees
      by railroad thru niggertown, carlot, scrapheap
                    auto slag bridge outskirts,
               muddy river’s brown debris
                         passing Eton Junction
                    fine rainmist over green fields—

Trees standing upside down
in lush earth approaching Mississippi
          green legs waving to clouds,
          seed pods exposed to birds & rain bursting,
          tree heads drinking in the ground.
      Unfold stones like rag dolls & the Astral
                    body stares with opal eyes,
      —all living things before my spectacles.

In the diner, the Lady
                    “These soldiers so nice, clean faces
                    and their hair combed so short—
                         Ugh its disgusting the others
                    —down to their shoulders & cowboy boots—”
                         aged husband spooning cantaloupe.

Too late, too late
      the Iron Horse hurrying to war,
          too late for laments
               too late for warning—
I’m a stranger alone in my country again.
Better to find a house in the veldt,
better a finca in Brazil—
          Green corn here healthy under sky
          & telephone wires carry news as before,
          radio bulletins & television images
                         build War—
               American Fighter Comic Books
                         on coach seat.
Better a house hidden in trees
                         Mississippi bank
                    high cliff protected from flood
Better an acre down Big Sur
          morning path, ocean shining
               first day’s blue world
Better a farm in backland Oregon,
               roads near Glacier Peak
Better withdraw from the Newspaper world
Better withdraw from the electric world
Better retire before war cuts my head off,
               not like Kabir—
      Better to buy a Garden of Love
      Better protect the lamb in some valley
      Better go way from taxicab radio cities
                         screaming President,
               Better to stop smoking
Better to stop jerking off in trains
Better to stop seducing white bellied boys
Better to stop publishing Prophecy—
      Better to meditate under a tree
      Better become a nun in the forest
      Better turn flapjacks in Omaha
          than be a prophet on the electric Networks—
There’s nothing left for this country but doom
There’s nothing left for this country but death
          Their faces are so plain
          their thoughts so simple,
               their machinery so strong—
          Their arms reach out 10,000 miles with lethal gas
               Their metaphor so mixed with machinery
               No one knows where flesh ends and
                    the robot Polaris begins—
“Waves of United States jetplanes struck at North Vietnam
          again today in the face of…”
               Associated Press July 21st—
                    A summer’s day in Illinois!

Green corn silver watertowers
      under the viaduct windowless industry
      at track crossing white flowers,
               American flowers,
          American dirt road, American rail,
               American Newspaper War—
in Galesburg, in Galesburg
          grocery stove pipes and orange spikeflowers
               in backyard lots—TV antennae
                    spiderweb every poor house
      Under a smokestack with a broken lip
      magnetic cranes drop iron scrap like waterdrops.

          Thirtytwo years ago today, the woman in the red
dress outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago
      didn’t wanna be sent back to Rumania.
      Ambushed Dillinger fell dead on the sidewalk
                              hit by 4 bullets
FBI man Purvis quit in ’35—
      Feb 29, 1960 he shot & killed himself in his home
          Army Colonel in World War II
               Breakfast Cereal Manufacturer.
Dillinger’s eyes and Melvin Purvis’—
               Dillinger grim, Purvis self-satisfied,
               Both died of bullets.

Football field, suburb streets, gray-sheeted clouds
      stretched out to the City ahead
          Myriad pylons, telegraph poles, a lavender boiler.
      Fulbright broadcast attacks war money
          Crushed stone mounds, earth eaten
          Henry Crown’s & General Dynamics’
               dust rising from rubble
      Sawdust burners
          topped by black cloud—
               sulphurous yellow
          gas rising from red smokestacks
      Power stations netted
               with aluminum ladders and ceramic balls
          rusty scrapheaps’ cranes
               stub chimneys puffing gray air
      Coalbarges’ old Holland dusk in a canal,
               railroad tracks banded to the city
          watertowers’ high legs walking the horizon
      The Chinese Foreign Minister makes his pronouncement,
Thicker thicker metal
               lone bird above phonepole
Thicker thicker smokestack wires
      Giant Aztec factories, red brick towers
               feeder-noses drooped to railyard
          “All human military activity” suspended
                              says radio—
      Campbell’s soups a fortress here,
          giant can raised high over Chicago
                    forest of bridge signs
               Church spires lifted gray
                    hazy towers downtown
      a belfried cross beneath
               dynamo’d smoke-cathedrals,
The train rolls slower
      past cement trucks’
               old cabs resting in produce flats
      over city streets, rumbling
      on a canal’s green mirror
               past the blue paint factory,
Thicker thicker the wires
      over cast iron buildings, black windows
local bus passing viaduct stanchions
a lone wino staggers down Industrial Thruway
This nation at war
               sun yellowing gray clouds,
               beast trucks down the
                         Garage’s bowels—
      Bright steam
          muscular puffing from an old slue
      Meadowgold Butter besmeared with coal dust,
          creosote wood bulwarks
Oiltank cars wait their old engine
      tracks curve into the city’s heart
          windowed hulks downtown
      where YMCA beckons the homeless unloved,
the groan of iron tons inching against
               whitened rail,
          giant train so slowly moved
               a man can touch the wheels.

II

Bus outbound from Chicago Greyhound basement
          green neon beneath streets Route 94
          Giant fire’s orange tongues & black smoke
                    pouring out that roof,
               little gay pie truck passing the wall—
               Brick & trees E. London, antique attics
                         mixed with smokestacks
      Apartments apartments square windows set like Moscow
      apartments red brick for multimillion population
               out where industries raise craned necks
      Gas station lights, old old old old traveler
               “put a tiger in yr tank—”
          Fulbright sang on the Senate floor
          Against the President’s Asian War
               Chicago’s acrid fumes in the bus
                         A-1 Outdoor Theatre
               ’gainst horned factory horizon,
               tender steeples ringing Metropolis
          Thicker thicker, factories
               crowd iron cancer on the city’s throat—
                    Aethereal roses
                              distant gas flares
                    twin flue burning at horizon
          Night falling on the bus
                              steady ear roar
                    between Chicago and New York
Wanderer, whither next?
      See Palenque dream again,
          long hair in America,
          cut it for Tehuantepec—
               Peter’s golden locks grown gray,
               quiet meditation in Oaxaca’s
                         old backyard,
          Tonalá or Angel Port warm nights
               no telephone, the War
                                   rages North
               Police break down the Cross
               Crowds screaming in the streets—

          on Pacific cliff-edge
Sheri Martinelli’s little house with combs and shells
      Since February fear, she saw LSD
          Zodiac in earth grass, stood
          palm to cheek, scraped her toe
               looking aside, & said
               “Too disturbed to see you
               old friend w/ so much Power”
               —ten years later.

      Yajalón valley, bougainvillea flares
               against the Mayor’s house—
Jack you remember the afternoon
          Xochimilco with Fairies?
      Green paradise boats
                    flower laden poled upriver
          Pulque in the poop
               stringed music in air—
                         drunkenness, & happiness
               anonymous
                    fellows without care from America—
                         Now war moves my mind—
          Villahermosa full of purple flowers
          Merida hath cathedral & cheap hotels
                    —boat to Isla Cosumel
               Julius can wander thru Fijijiapan
          forgetting his dog peso Nicotinic Acid—
Bus seat’s white light shines on Mexico map,
          quietness, quietness over countryside
          palmfrond insects, cactus ganja
      & Washington’s Police 5 thousand miles away?
      Ray Charles singing from hospital
                    “Let’s go get stoned.”

Durango-Mazatlán road’s built over
      Sierra Madre’s moon valleys now
Children with quartz jewels climbing highway cliff-edge
               Jack you bought crystals & beer—
      Old houses in Panama City
          La Barranca gray canyon under Guadalajara,
                    Tepic for more candy.

I wanna go out in a car
      not leave word where I’m going—
                    travel ahead.
Or Himalayas in Spring
      following the pilgrim’s path
               10,000 Hindus
                         to Shiva temples North
               Rishikesh & Laxman Jula
               Homage to Shivananda,
                              the Guru heart—
thru green canyons, Ganges gorge—
               carrying a waterpot
               to Kedernath & Badrinath
               & Gangotri in the ice
               —Manasarovar forbidden,
                    Kailash forbidden,
               the Chinese eat Tibet.

Howl for them that suffer broken bone
                    homeless on moody balconies
      Jack’s voice returning to me over & over
                              with prophecy
      “Howl for boys sleeping hungry on tables in cafés with their long hair
                    to the sea” in Hidalgo de Parral,
                              Hermosillo & Tetuán—

The masses prepare for war
      short haired mad executives
          young flops from college
      yellow & pink flesh gone mad
          listening to radio news.

& Johnson was angry with Fulbright
          for criticizing his war.
And Hart Crane’s myth and Whitman’s—
          What’ll happen to that?
                              The Karma
accumulated bombing Vietnam
          The Karma bodies napalm-burned
               Karma suspicion
      where machinery’s smelt the heat of bodies trembling
                         in the jungle
The Karma of bullets in the back of the head by thatched walls
          The Karma of babies in their mothers’ arms
                         bawling destroyed
The Karma of populations moved from center to center of
                                        Detention
      Karma of bribery, Karma blood-money
          Must come home to America,
          There must be a war
               America has builded herself a new body.

Peaceful young men in America get out of the Cities & go to
                         the countryside & the trees—
Bearded young men in America hide your hair & shave your
                         beards & disappear
          The destroyers are out to destroy—
          Destroyers of Peking & Washington stare face to face
                    & will hurl their Karma-bombs
                                        on the planet.
          Get thee to the land,
                    leave the cities to be destroyed.

Only a miracle appearing in Man’s eyes
          only boys’ flesh singing
          can show the warless way—
                    or miracle
          Radium destruction over Earth
               seed Planet with New Babe.

Brilliant green lights
          in factory transom windows.
                         Beautiful!
          as eyes close to sleep,
          beautiful as undersea sunshine
                    or valleybottom fern.
Why do I fear these lights?
      & smoking chimneys’ Industry?
      Why see them less godly
                         than forest treetrunks
                         & sunset orange moons?
      Why these cranes less Edenly than Palmfronds?
               these highway neons unequal in beauty
                    to violet starfish anemone & kelp
                         in Point Lobos’
                              tidepools’ transparency?

It’s these neon Standard Gastation
      cars of men whose faces are dough
      pockets full of 58 billion dollar
                         abstract budget money—
      these green lights illuminate
               goggled eyes fixing blowtorches on metal wings
                    flying off to war—

Because these electric structures rear tin machines
                         that will kill Bolivian marchers
          or flagellate Vietnam adolescents’ thighs—
Because my countrymen make this structure to make War
Because this smoke over Toledo’s advertised in the Toledo Blade
                    as energy burning to destroy China.

Baghavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
               in his photo has a fine white halo of hair,
               thin man with a small beard
                              silver short-cropped skull-fur
          His head tilted to one side,
               mild smile, intelligent eyes
               “The Jivan-Mukta is not a Person.”

Morning sunrise over Tussie Hills,
      earth covered with emerald-dark fur.
          Cliffs to climb, a little wilderness,
                    a little solitude,
          and a long valley you could call a home.
      Came thru here with Peter before & noticed
                    green forest,
      What a place to walk & look
                    thru cellular consciousness
      —Near Nealyton or Dry Run
          Waterfall or Meadow Gap, or Willow Hill.
Sunrays filtering thru clouds like a negative photograph,
          smoky bus window, passengers asleep
          over Susquehanna River’s morning mist.
      Ike at Gettysburg found himself a nice spot—
               all these places millions of trees’ work
                                        made green
      as millions of workmen’s labor raised the buildings of NY,
          Corn here in fields, dollars in the fields of New York.
Morning glow, hills east Harrisburg, bright
          highways, red factory smoke, fires burning
                              upriver in garbage lots—
Philadelphia Inquirer: “Perry County 113 acres
      of woodland, $11,300. Ideal locations for
      cabins, quarters, township road, springs &
      roads on track, best of hunting, call 1-717 …”
      —Dangerous to want possessions
                         and for so short a time.
      Shoulda had it in 1945, or ’53,
                         Times Square & Mexico—
In my twenties I would’ve enjoyed running around these
                                   green woods naked.
In my twenties I would’ve enjoyed making love naked
                                   by these brooks.

Who’s the enemy, year after year?
      War after war, who’s the enemy?
What’s the weapon, battle after battle?
What’s the news, defeat after defeat?
What’s the picture, decade after decade?
          Television shows blood,
          print broken arms burning skin photographs,
          wounded bodies revealed on the screen
Cut Sound out of television you won’t tell who’s Victim
Cut Language off the Visual you’ll never know
                         Who’s Aggressor—
                         cut commentary from Newscast
                         you’ll see a mass of madmen at murder.
Chicago train soldiers chatted over beer
      They, too, vowed to fight the Cottenpickin Communists
          and give their own bodies to the fray.
      Where’ve they learnt the lesson? Grammarschool
          taught ’em Newspaper Language?
      D’they buy it at Safeway with Reader’s Digest?

      “Reducing the Unreal to Unreality, and causing the one
real Self to shine, the Guru …”
      1966 trains were crowded with soldiers.
      “… the Divine Eye, the eye that is pure Consciousness
which has no visions. Nothing that is seen is real.”
          Passing tollgate,
                              regatta of yachts on river hazed
               bend at Reading, giant smokestacks, watertowers
                              feed elevators—

   “Seeing objects and conceiving God in them are mental processes, but that is not seeing God, because He is within.

“Who am I? … You’re in truth a pure spirit but you identify it with a body …”

          The war is Appearances, this poetry Appearances
                         … measured thru Newspapers
               All Phantoms of Sound
                    All landscapes have become Phantom—
               giant New York ahead’ll perish with my mind.
                    “understand that the Self is not a Void”
not this, not that,
          Not my anger, not War Vietnam
          Maha Yoga a phantom
               Blue car swerves close to the bus
                    —not the Self.
          Ramana Maharshi, whittle myself a walkingstick,
                    waterspray irrigating the fields
                         That’s not the Self—
      hard-on spring in loins
          rocking in highway chair,
               poignant flesh spasm not it Self,
                    body’s speaking there,
                    & feeling, that’s not Self
               Who says No, says Yes—not Self.
Phelps Dodge’s giant white building
                    highway side, not Self.
Who? Who? both asleep & awake
                         closes his eyes?
                         Who opens his eyes to Sweden?
You happy, Lady, writing yr
               checks on Howard Johnson’s counter?
          Mind wanders. Sleep, cough & sweat…
                                   Mannahatta’s
tunnel-door cobbled for traffic,
               trucks into that mouth
                              MAKE NO IMAGE
Mohammedans say
      Jews have no painting
          Buddha’s Nameless
               Alone is Alone,
      all screaming of soldiers
               crying on wars
          speech politics massing armies
               is false-feigning show—
Calm senses, seek self, forget
          thine own adjurations
                    Who are you?
               to mass world armies in planet war?
McGraw-Hill building green grown old, car fumes &
      Manhattan tattered, summer heat,
          sweltering noon’s odd patina
               on city walls,
          Greyhound exhaust terminal,
                              trip begun,
      taxi-honk toward East River where
               Peter waits working

July 22–23, 1966

City Midnight Junk Strains

for Frank O’Hara

Switch on lights yellow as the sun
                         in the bedroom …
The gaudy poet dead Frank O’Hara’s bones
                         under cemetery grass
An emptiness at 8 P.M. in the Cedar Bar
      Throngs of drunken
          guys talking about paint
      & lofts, and Pennsylvania youth.
          Kline attacked by his heart
& chattering Frank
          stopped forever—
      Faithful drunken adorers, mourn.
          The busfare’s a nickel more
      past his old apartment 9th Street by the park.
Delicate Peter loved his praise,
      I wait for the things he says
                         about me—
      Did he think me an Angel
      as angel I am still talking into earth’s microphone willy nilly
      —to come back as words ghostly hued
                         by early death
      but written so bodied
               mature in another decade.
Chatty prophet
               of yr own loves, personal
               memory feeling fellow
      Poet of building-glass
I see you walking you said with your tie
      flopped over your shoulder in the wind down 5th Ave
          under the handsome breasted workmen
                    on their scaffolds ascending Time
                         & washing the windows of Life
—off to a date with martinis & a blond
          beloved poet far from home
          —with thee and Thy sacred Metropolis
      in the enormous bliss of a long afternoon
      where death is the shadow
          cast by Rockefeller Center
               over your intimate street.
Who were you, black suited, hurrying to meet,
      Unsatisfied one?
               Unmistakable,
                    Darling date
for the charming solitary young poet with a big cock
          who could fuck you all night long
               till you never came,
      trying your torture on his obliging fond body
      eager to satisfy god’s whim that made you
          Innocent, as you are.
I tried your boys and found them ready
      sweet and amiable
          collected gentlemen
               with large sofa apartments
      lonesome to please for pure language;
and you mixed with money
          because you knew enough language to be rich
               if you wanted your walls to be empty—
Deep philosophical terms dear Edwin Denby serious as Herbert Read
          with silvery hair announcing your dead gift
to the grave crowd whose historic op art frisson was
the new sculpture your big blue wounded body made in the Universe
          when you went away to Fire Island for the weekend
      tipsy with a family of decade-olden friends

Peter stares out the window at robbers
      the Lower East Side distracted in Amphetamine
I stare into my head & look for your / broken roman nose
      your wet mouth-smell of martinis
          & a big artistic tipsy kiss.
      40’s only half a life to have filled
          with so many fine parties and evenings’
          interesting drinks together with one
                    faded friend or new
                    understanding social cat…
I want to be there in your garden party in the clouds
                    all of us naked
strumming our harps and reading each other new poetry
      in the boring celestial
          Friendship Committee Museum.
You’re in a bad mood?
          Take an Aspirin.
                    In the Dumps?
                         I’m falling asleep
                              safe in your thoughtful arms.
Someone uncontrolled by History would have to own Heaven,
                                   on earth as it is.
I hope you satisfied your childhood love
      Your puberty fantasy your sailor punishment on your knees
                                   your mouth-suck
Elegant insistency
          on the honking self-prophetic Personal
          as Curator of funny emotions to the mob,
Trembling One, whenever possible. I see New York thru your eyes
      and hear of one funeral a year nowadays—
               from Billie Holiday’s time
          appreciated more and more
a common ear
                         for our deep gossip.

July 29, 1966

A Vow

I will haunt these States
          with beard bald head
      eyes staring out plane window,
      hair hanging in Greyhound bus midnight
leaning over taxicab seat to admonish
          an angry cursing driver
               hand lifted to calm
                    his outraged vehicle
that I pass with the Green Light of common law.

Common Sense, Common law, common tenderness
               & common tranquillity
our means in America to control the money munching
               war machine, bright lit industry
everywhere digesting forests & excreting soft pyramids
      of newsprint, Redwood and Ponderosa patriarchs
      silent in Meditation murdered & regurgitated as smoke,
          sawdust, screaming ceilings of Soap Opera,
          thick dead Lifes, slick Advertisements
               for Gubernatorial big guns
          burping Napalm on palm rice tropic greenery.

Dynamite in forests,
      boughs fly slow motion
               thunder down ravine,
      Helicopters roar over National Park, Mekong Swamp,
          Dynamite fire blasts thru Model Villages,
Violence screams at Police, Mayors get mad over radio,
          Drop the Bomb on Niggers!
               drop Fire on the gook China
                    Frankenstein Dragon
          waving its tail over Bayonne’s domed Aluminum oil reservoir!

I’ll haunt these States all year
      gazing bleakly out train windows, blue airfield
          red TV network on evening plains,
      decoding radar Provincial editorial paper message,
          deciphering Iron Pipe laborers’ curses as
               clanging hammers they raise steamshovel claws
          over Puerto Rican agony lawyers’ screams in slums.

October 11, 1966

Autumn Gold: New England Fall

Auto Poetry to Hanover, New Hampshire

Coughing in the Morning
      Waking with a steam beast, city destroyed
      Pile drivers pounding down in rubble,
      Red smokestacks pouring chemical
               into Manhattan’s Nostrils …
                         “All Aboard”
      Rust colored cliffs bulking over superhighway
                         to New Haven,
      Rouged with Autumny leaves, october smoke,
          country liquor bells on the Radio—
Eat Meat and your a beast
      Smoke Nicotine & your meat’ll multiply
          with tiny monsters of cancer,
Make Money & yr mind be lost in a million green papers,
      —Smell burning rubber by the steamshovel—
Mammals with planetary vision & long noses,
               riding a green small Volkswagen up three lane
                                   concrete road
                                        past the graveyard
      dotted w/tiny american flags waved in breeze,
                              Washington Avenue:
Sampans battling in waters off Mekong Delta
      Cuban politicians in Moscow, analyzing China—
Yellow leaves in the wood,
          Millions of redness,
               gray skies over sandstone
                    outcroppings along the road—
cows by yellow corn,
          wheel-whine on granite,
               white houseroofs, Connecticut woods
                    hanging under clouds—
Autumn again, you wouldn’t know in the city
Gotta come out in a car see the birds
               flock by the yellow bush—
In Autumn, in autumn, this part of the planet’s
               famous for red leaves—
Difficult for Man on earth to ’scape the snares of delusion—
      All wrong, the thought process screamed at
                         from Infancy,
The Self built with myriad thoughts
      from football to I Am That I Am,
Difficult to stop breathing factory smoke,
Difficult to step out of clothes,
          hard to forget the green parka—
Trees scream & drop
               bright Leaves,
Yea Trees scream & drop bright leaves,
Difficult to get out of bed in the morning
                    in the slums—
Even sex happiness a long drawn-out scheme
                    To keep the mind moving—

Big gray truck rolling down highway
                    to unload wares—
Bony white branches of birch relieved of their burden
—overpass, overpass, overpass
      crossing the road, more traffic
          between the cities,
               More sex carried near and far—
          Blinking tail lights
      To the Veterans hospital where we can all collapse,
Forget Pleasure and Ambition,
      be tranquil and let leaves
          blush, turned on
by the lightningbolt doctrine that rings
                              telephones
      interrupting my pleasurable humiliating dream
                    in the locker room
                              last nite?—
Weeping Willow, what’s your catastrophe?
      Red Red oak, oh, what’s your worry?
Hairy Mammal whaddya want,
               What more than a little graveyard
                    near the lake by airport road,
Electric towers marching to Hartford,
      Buildingtops spiked in sky,
      asphalt factory cloverleafs spread over meadows
Smoke thru wires, Connecticut River concrete wall’d
      past city central gastanks, glass boat bldgs,
          downtown, ten blocks square,
North, North on the highway, soon outa town,
                         green fields.
The body’s a big beast,
      The mind gets confused:
          I thought I was my body the last 4 years,
and everytime I had a headache, God dealt me
               Ace of Spades—
I thought I was mind-consciousness 10 yrs before that,
      and everytime I went to the Dentist the Kosmos disappeared,
Now I don’t know who I am—
      I wake up in the morning surrounded
                    by meat and wires,
      pile drivers crashing thru the bedroom floor,
War images rayed thru Television apartments,
Machine chaos on Earth,
      Too many bodies, mouths bleeding on every Continent,
      my own wall plaster cracked,
      What kind of prophecy
                         for this Nation
Of Autumn leaves,
      for those children in High School, green
                         woolen jackets
      chasing football up & down field—
North of Long Meadow, Massachusetts
      Shafts of Sunlight
                         Thru yellow millions,
      blue light thru clouds,

President Johnson in a plane toward Hawaii,
      Fighter Escort above & below
               air roaring—
Radiostatic electric crackle from the
                         center of communications:
      I broadcast thru Time,
                    He, with all his wires & wireless,
                         only an Instant—

Up Main Street Northampton,
               houses gabled sunny afternoon,
                    Ivy library porch—
Big fat pants, workshirt filled w/leaves,
      painted pumpkinshead sitting Roof Corner,
—or hanging from frontyard tree country road—
Tape Machines, cigarettes, cinema, images,
      Two Billion Hamburgers, Cognitive Thought,
      Radiomusic, car itself,
          this thoughtful Poet—
Interruption of brightly colored Autumn Afternoon,
          clouds passed away—
Sky blue as a roadsign,
      but language intervenes.
          on route 9 going North—
“Then Die, my verse” Mayakovsky yelled
          Die like the rusty cars
               piled up in the meadow—

Entering Whately,
          Senses amazed on the hills,
          bright vegetable populations
               hueing rocks nameless yellow,
      veils of bright Maya over New England,
      Veil of Autumn leaves laid over the Land,
Transparent blue veil over senses,
               Language in the sky—
And in the city, brick veils,
      curtains of windows,
          Wall Street’s stage drops,
      Honkytonk scenery—
      or slum-building wall scrawled
          “Bourgeois Elements must go”—

All the cows gathered to the feed truck in the middle of the pasture,
      shaking their tails, hungry for the yellow Fitten Ration
          that fills the belly
               and makes the eyes shine
                    & mouth go Mooooo.
      Then they lie down in the hollow green meadow to die—
In old Deerfield, Indian Tribes & Quakers
      have come & tried
               To conquer Maya-Time—
Thanksgiving pumpkins
          remain by the highway,
               signaling yearly Magic
                         plump from the ground.
Big leaves hang and hide the porch,
               & babies scatter by the red lights
                         of the bridge at Greenfield.
The green Eagle on a granite pillar—
          sign pointing route 2A The Mohawk Trail,
Federal Street apothecary shop & graveyard thru which
                    highschool athletes
                         tramp this afternoon—
Gold gold red gold yellow gold older than painted cities,
      Gold over Connecticut River cliffs
      Gold by Iron railroad,
          gold running down riverbank,
      Gold in eye, gold on hills,
          golden trees surrounding the barn—
Silent tiny golden hills, Maya-Joy in Autumn
                    Speeding 70 MPH.

October 17, 1966

Done, Finished with the Biggest Cock

Done, finished, with the biggest cock you ever saw.
3 A.M., living room filled with quiet yellow electric,
curtains hanging on New York, one window lit
in unfinished skyscraper.

                                   Swami White Beard
Being-Consciousness-Delight’s photo’s tacked
to bookshelf filled with Cosmic Milarepa, Wm. Blake’s
Prophetic Writings, Buddhist Logic & Hymn to the Goddess,
and many another toy volume of orient lore, poetry crap;
Poe sober knew his white skull, tranquil Stein
repeated one simple idea Making Americans on Space Age’s
edge whiten thought to transparent Place. Peace!
Done, finished with body cock desire, anger
shouting at bus drivers, Presidents & Police.
Gone to other shore, empty house, no lovers
suffering under bedsheets, inconceived babies calm.
Surge, a little abdomen warmth, the bus grinds
cobbles past red light, garbage trucks uplift iron
buttocks, old meat gravy & tin cans sink to bottom
in the Airfield. City edge woods wave branches
in chill breeze darkness under Christmas moon.

December 14, 1966

Holy Ghost on the Nod over the Body of Bliss

Is this the God of Gods, the one I heard about
in memorized language Universities murmur?
Dollar bills can buy it! the great substance
exchanges itself freely through all the world’s
poetry money, past and future currencies
issued & redeemed by the identical bank,
electric monopoly after monopoly owl-eyed
on every one of 90 billion dollarbills vibrating
to the pyramid-top in the United States of Heaven—
Aye aye Sir Owl Oh say can you see in the dark you
observe Minerva nerveless in Nirvana because
Zeus rides reindeer thru Bethlehem’s blue sky.
It’s Buddha sits in Mary’s belly waving Kuan
Yin’s white hand at the Yang-tze that Mao sees,
tongue of Kali licking Krishna’s soft blue lips.
Chango holds Shiva’s prick, Ouroboros eats th’cobalt bomb,
Parvati on YOD’s perfumèd knee cries Aum
& Santa Barbara rejoices in the alleyways of Brindaban
La illaha el (lill) Allah hu—Allah Akbar!
Goliath struck down by kidneystone, Golgothas grow old,
All these wonders are crowded in the Mind’s Eye
Superman & Batman race forward, Zarathustra on Coyote’s ass,
Lao-tze disappearing at the gate, God mocks God,
Job sits bewildered that Ramakrishna is Satan
and Bodhidharma forgot to bring Nothing.

December 1966

Bayonne Turnpike to Tuscarora

Gray water tanks in gray mist,
                    gray robot
      towers carrying wires thru Bayonne’s
                    smog, silver
          domes, green chinaworks steaming,
          Christmas’s leftover lights hanging
                         from a smokestack—
      Monotone gray highway into the gray West—
Noon hour, the planet smoke-covered
      Truck wheels roar forward
          spinning past the garbagedump
      Gas smell wafting thru Rahway overpass
      oiltanks in frozen ponds, cranes’ feederladders &
          Electric generator trestles, Batteries open under heaven
Anger in the heart—
          hallucinations in the car cabin, rattling
          bone ghosts left and right
      by the car door—the broken camper icebox—
On to Pennsylvania turnpike
                                   Evergreens in Snow
          Laundry hanging from the blue bungalow
Mansfield and U Thant ask halt Bombing North Vietnam
          State Department says “Tit For Tat.”
                    Frank Sinatra with negro voice
                              enters a new phase—
          Flat on his face 50 years “I’ve been a beggar & a clown
                    a poet & a star, roll myself in July
                              up into a ball and die.”
                                        Radio pumping
          artificial rock & roll, Beach Boys
& Sinatra’s daughter overdubbed microphone
          antennae’d car dashboard vibrating
      False emotions broadcast thru the Land
      Natural voices made synthetic,
               phlegm obliterated
      Smart ones work with electronics—
               What are the popular songs on the Hiway?
“Home I’m Comin Home I am a Soldier—”
               “The girl I left behind…
I did the best job I could
                    Helping to keep our land free
I am a soldier”
                    Lulled into War
               thus commercial jabber Rock & Roll Announcers
False False False
               “Enjoy this meat—”
               Weak A&P SuperRight ground round
          Factories building, airwaves pushing …

Trees stretch up parallel into gray sky
Yellow trucks roll down lane—
          Hypnosis of airwaves
      In the house you can’t break it
          unless you turn off yr set
      In the car it can drive yr eyes inward
          from the snowy hill,
          withdraw yr mind from the birch forest
               make you forget the blue car in the ice,
      Drive yr mind down Supermarket aisles
               looking for cans of Save-Your-Money
                         Polishing-Glue
      made of human bones manufactured in N. Vietnam
               during a mustard gas hallucination:
          The Super-Hit sound of All American Radio.

Turnpike to Tuscarora
          Snowfields, red lights blinking in the broken car
      Quiet hills’ genital hair black in Sunset
      Beautiful dusk over human tininess
               Pennsylvanian intimacy,
                    approaching Tuscarora Tunnel
      Quiet moments off the road, Tussey Mountains’
                         snowfields untouched.
A missile lost Unprogrammed
               Twisting in flight to crash 100 miles
                    south of Cuba into the
                              Blue Carib!
      Diplomatic messages exchanged
      “Don’t Worry it’s only the Setting Sun—”
      (Western correspondents assembling in Hanoi)
          “perfect ball of orange in its cup of clouds”
Dirty Snowbanks pushed aside from Asphalt thruway-edge—
      Uphill’s the little forests where the boyhoods grow
                         their bare feet—

Night falling, “Jan 4 1967, The Vatican Announces Today
      No Jazz at the Altar!”
                         Maybe in Africa
          maybe in Asia they got funny music
               & strange dancing before the Lord
      But here in the West No More Jazz at the Altar,
               “It’s an alien custom—”
Missa Luba crashing thru airwaves with Demonic Drums
      behind Kyrie Eleison—
Millions of tiny silver Western crucifixes for sale
               in the Realms of King Baudouin—
Color TV in this year—weekly
      the Pope sits in repose & slumbers to classical music
          in his purple hat—
Gyalwa Karmapa sits in Rumtek Monastery, Sikkim
      & yearly shows his most remarkable woven Dakini-hair
                         black Magic Hat
          Whose very sight is Total Salvation—
      Ten miles from Gangtok—take a look!

*   *   *   *

Mary Garden dead in Aberdeen,
      Jack Ruby dead in Dallas—
          Sweet green incense in car cabin.
          (Dakini sleeping head bowed, hair braided
                         over her Rudraksha beads
                         driving through Pennsylvania.
          Julius, bearded, hasn’t eaten all day
               sitting forward, pursing his lips, calm.)
Sleep, sweet Ruby, sleep in America, Sleep
          in Texas, sleep Jack from Chicago,
          Friend of the Mafia, friend of the cops
               friend of the dancing girls—
          Under the viaduct near the book depot
               Under the hospital Attacked by Motorcades,
               Under Nightclubs under all the
                         groaning bodies of Dallas,
                    under their angry mouths
               Sleep Jack Ruby, rest at last,
                    bouquet’d with cancer.
      Ruby, Oswald, Kennedy gone
      New Years’ 1967 come,
               Reynolds Metals up a Half
          Mary Garden, 92, sleeping tonite in Aberdeen.

Three trucks adorned with yellow lights crawl uproad
      under winter network-shade, bare trees, night fallen.
Under Tuscarora Mountain, long tunnel,
                    WBZ Boston coming thru—
      “Nobody needs icecream nobody needs pot nobody
                         needs movies.”
… “Public Discussion.”
      Is sexual Intercourse any Good? Can the kids handle it?
                         out the Tunnel,
The Boston Voice returning: “controlled circumstances …”
               Into tunnel, static silence,
               Trucks roar by in carbon-mist,
                         Anger falling asleep at the heart.
White Rembrandt, the hills—
      Silver domed silo standing above house
          in the white reality place
                    farm up the road,
      Mist Quiet on Woods,
          Silent Reality everywhere.
Till the eye catches the billboards—
          Howard Johnson’s Silent Diamond Reality
          “makes the difference.”
Student cannon fodder prepared for next Congress session
Willow Hill, Willow hill, Cannon Fodder, Cannon fodder—
And the Children of the Warmakers’re exempt from fighting
                    their parents’ war—
Those with intellectual money capacities who go to college
                         till 1967—
Slowly the radio war news
               steals o’er the senses—
      Negro photographs in Rochester
                    ax murders in Cleveland,
      Anger at heart base
               all over the Nation—
Husbands ready to murder their wives
          at the drop of a hat-statistic
      I could take an ax and split Peter’s skull with pleasure—
Great trucks crawl up road
               insect-lit with yellow bulbs outside Pittsburgh,
          “The Devil with Blue Dress” exudes over radio,
          car headlights gleam on motel signs in blackness,
               Satanic Selfs covering nature
                         spiked with trees.
Crash of machineguns, ring of locusts, airplane roar,
                    calliope yell, bzzzs.

January 4, 1967

An Open Window on Chicago

Midwinter night,
      Clark & Halstead brushed with this week’s snow
      grill lights blinking at the corner
                    decades ago
      Smokestack poked above roofs & watertower
          standing still above the blue
                    lamped boulevards,
          sky blacker than th’ east
          for all the steel smoke
                    settled in heaven from South.
Downtown—like Batman’s Gotham City
               battleshipped with Lights,
          towers winking under clouds,
               police cars blinking on Avenues,
               space above city misted w/fine soot
cars crawling past redlites down Avenue,
                    exuding white wintersmoke—
Eat Eat said the sign, so I went in the Spanish Diner
The girl at the counter, whose yellow Bouffant roots
               grew black over her pinch’d face,
               spooned her coffee with knuckles
                    puncture-marked,
               whose midnight wrists had needletracks,
                    scars inside her arms:
               “Wanna go get a Hotel Room with me?”
                         The Heroin Whore
thirty years ago come haunting Chicago’s midnite streets,
      me come here so late with my beard!

Corner Grill-lights blink, police car turned
      & took away its load of bum to jail,
          black uniforms patrolling streets
      where suffering
          lifts a hand palsied by Parkinson’s Disease
                         to beg a cigarette.

The psychiatrist came visiting this Hotel 12th floor—
      Where does the Anger come from?
      Outside! Radio messages, images on Television,
                    Electric Networks spread
      fear of murder on the streets—
          “Communications Media”
inflict the Vietnam War & its anxiety on every private skin
      in hotel room or bus—
Sitting, meditating quietly on Great Space outside—
Bleep Bleep dit dat dit radio on, Television
                    murmuring,
      bombshells crash on flesh
          his flesh my flesh all the same.—
The Dakini in the hotel room turns in her sleep
                    while War news flashes thru Aether—
      Shouts at streetcorners as bums
                    crawl in the metal policevan.
And there’s a tiny church in middle Chicago
                         with its black spike to the black air
And there’s the new Utensil Towers round on horizon.
And there’s red glow of Central Neon
                         on hushed building walls at 4 A.M.,
And there’s proud Lights & Towers of Man’s Central City
      looking pathetic at 4 A.M., traveler passing through,
      staring outa hotel window under Heaven—
Is this tiny city the best we can do?
      These tiny reptilian towers
          so proud of their Executives
      they haveta build a big sign in middle downtown
                         to Advertise
      old Connor’s Insurance sign fading on brick
                         building side—
      Snow on deserted roofs & parkinglots—
      Hog Butcher to the World!?
      Taxi-Harmonious Modernity grown rusty-old—
The prettiness of Existence! To sit at the window
      & moan over Chicago’s stone & brick
          lifting itself vertical tenderly,
               hanging from the sky.

Elbow on windowsill,
      I lean and muse, taller than any building here
Steam from my head
      wafting into the smog
      Elevators running up & down my leg
Couples copulating in hotelroom beds in my belly
               & bearing children in my heart,
      Eyes shining like warning-tower Lights,
          Hair hanging down like a black cloud—
Close your eyes on Chicago and be God,
          all Chicago is, is what you see—
That row of lights Finance Building
          sleeping on its bottom floors,
      Watchman stirring
      paper coffee cups by bronzed glass doors—
and under the bridge, brown water
          floats great turds of ice beside buildings’ feet
      in windy metropolis
                    waiting for a Bomb.

January 8, 1967

Returning North of Vortex

      Red Guards battling country workers
               in Nanking
          Ho-Tei trembles,
               Mao’s death near,
          Snow over Iowa
          cornstalks on icy hills,
bus wheels murmuring in afternoon brilliance toward Council Bluffs
          hogs in sunlight, dead rabbits on asphalt
          Booneville passed, Crane quiet,
          highway empty—silence as
house doors open, food on table,
                    nobody home—
      sign thru windshield
      100 Miles More to the Missouri.
How toy-like Pall Mall’s red embossed pack
      cellophane gleaming in sunshine,
          Indian-head stamped crown crested,
      shewing its dry leaf of history to my eye
now that I no longer reach my hand to the ashtray
          nor since Xmas have lit a smoke.
One puff I remember the 18 year joy-musk of manhood
          that curled thru my nostrils first time I kissed
                         another human body—
          that time with Joe Army, he seduced me
                         into smoking—
I’ll give Swami a present like Santa Claus—
                              no attachment—
          No meat nor tabaccy—even sex questionable
               Now in America craving its billions
                              of needles of War.

Detach yrself from Matter, & look about
               at the bright snowy show of Iowa,
               Earth & heaven mirroring
                         eachother’s light,
          tiny meat-trucks rolling downhill
               toward deep Omaha.
This is History, to quit smoking Anger-leaf
          into one man’s lungs,
          glancing up at gravestone rows
               in hill woods thru rear window.

This is History: Iowa’s Finest Comics:
      Sunday, Rex Morgan M.D. in snowstorm,
      Mustachio’d villain cruel eyed
               with long European hair
                         doubletalking the Doc
      “Meanwhile, under the influence of LSD
      Veronica races through the fields
               in an acute panic”—
               Author Dal Curtis
In a violet box her big tits fall on snowy ground.
Gray ice floating down Missouri, sunset into Omaha
Bishop’s Buffets, German Chocolate, wall to wall carpet
               Om A Hah, Om Ah Hu?
“The land summoned them and they loved it” cut in granite
               Post Office lintel, Walt Disney
      playing at State, week after his death.
          Table service, fireplace, armchairs,
               homeostasis in Omaha.

Steve Canyon Comics in Color:
          U.S. Military Seabees chopper
               operation dropping bridges
          over the “Lake of the Black Wind”
Princess Snowflower will
          “speak over the bullhorn to the
                         herdsmen—
          So they won’t think it’s a Chincom trick.”
          Ten-year-olds in Sunday
          morning sunlight on the rug
          dreaming of slack-cheekboned blond
               big cocked Steve Canyon
                    fucking the yellow bellies
          tied face down naked on the floor of the lone helicopter
And on Sunday Evening the Reverend Preacher
          C. O. Staggerflup—
                    America’s Hope
          POB 72 Hopkins Minnesota
Isaiah denouncing the root of Evil to the Nation
14 billion 200 million a year to the Debt Money System,
               Rolling back darkness in Nebraska—
Shanghai water power cut off by Mao’s enemies
          I am a Rock, I am an Island radio souls cry
      passing north of Lincoln’s tiny bright downtown horizon;
          Square banks huddled under Capitol turret blinking red,
          electric tower steam-drifts
                         ribboned across building tops
                              under city’s ruby night-glow—
Let the Viet Cong win over the American Army!
          Dice of Prophecy cast on the giant plains!
Drum march on airwaves, anger march in the mouth,
Xylophones & trumpets screaming thru American brain—
               Our violence unabated after a year
          in mid-America returned, I prophesy against
               this my own Nation
                    enraptured in hypnotic war.
And if it were my wish, we’d lose & our will
                         be broken
& our armies scattered as we’ve scattered the airy guerrillas
               of our own yellow imagination.
Mothers weep & Sons be dumb
your brothers & children murder
          the beautiful yellow bodies of Indochina
      in dreams invented for your eyes by TV
all yr talk gibberish mouthed by radio,
          yr politics mapped by paper Star
Thought Consciousness
      Form Feeling Sensation Imagination the
                         5 skandhas, realms of Buddha
      Invaded by electronic media KLYL
                         News Bureau
          & yr trapped in red winking Kansas
      one giant delicate electrical antenna upraised
          in midwinter Nebraska plains blackness
                         January 1967
          I hope we lose this war.

Lincoln airforce Base, Ruby, Gochner
          US 80 near Big Blue River,
      The radio Bibl’d Hour, Dallas Texas
          a great nose pushed out of the dashboard
          demanding Your Faith Pledge!
          Money your dollars support
          The Radio Bible Hour.
               You pledge to God to send
          100 or 10 or 2 or $1 a month to the
               Radio Bible Hour—
The electric network selling itself:
          “The medium is the message”
          Even so, Come, Lord Jesus!
Straight thru Nebraska at Midnight
          toward North Platte & Ogallala
               returning down black superhighways to Denver.

January 8, 1967

Wales Visitation

White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
         Trees moving in rivers of wind
                     The clouds arise
     as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
         above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
                         along a green crag
         glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—

Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
     but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
         of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
                     the wisdom of earthly relations,
         of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
                orchards of mind language manifest human,
     of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
         flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
                     bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—

Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower
         & network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
     the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
     heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness
     clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—
                Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!

All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
                undulating on mossy hills
     a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
                     on the mountainside
     whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
                in granitic undertow down—
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
     and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
         and lifted the lambs to hold still
and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave

A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,
     a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean
                              tonned with cloud-hang,
                     —Heaven balanced on a grassblade.
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
     One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
         Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
     to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
                through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—

No imperfection in the budded mountain,
         Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
     daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
                     grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
                horses dance in the warm rain,
         tree-lined canals network live farmland,
                blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,
         pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—

Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
                each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
                         myriad-formed—
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells drooped
         doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
     & look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
         breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,
         smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
                tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
         moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,
     trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
         hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,

Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
                     Calling our Presence together
         The great secret is no secret
                Senses fit the winds,
                         Visible is visible,
         rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,
                gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
         rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
     breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
                Heaven breath and my own symmetric
         Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
                Sounds of Aleph and Aum
                through forests of gristle,
         my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,
                         All Albion one.

What did I notice? Particulars! The
         vision of the great One is myriad—
     smoke curls upward from ashtray,
                house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
                     starless
         upward in motion with wet wind.

July 29, 1967 (LSD)—August 3, 1967 (London)

Pentagon Exorcism

“No taxation without representation”

Who represents my body in Pentagon? Who spends

my spirit’s billions for war manufacture? Who

levies the majority to exult unwilling in Bomb

Roar? “Brainwash!” Mind-fear! Governor’s language!

“Military-Industrial-Complex!” President’s language!

Corporate voices jabber on electric networks building

body-pain, chemical ataxia, physical slavery

to diaphanoid Chinese Cosmic-eye Military Tyranny

movie hysteria—Pay my taxes? No Westmoreland wants

to be Devil, others die for his General Power

sustaining hurt millions in house security

tuning to images on TV’s separate universe where

peasant manhoods burn in black & white forest

villages—represented less than myself by Magic

Intelligence influence matter-scientists’ Rockefeller

bank telephone war investment Usury Agency

executives jetting from McDonnell Douglas to General Dynamics

over smog-shrouded metal-noised treeless cities

patrolled by radio fear with tear gas, businessman!

Go spend your bright billions for this suffering!

Pentagon wake from planet-sleep! Apokatastasis!

Spirit Spirit Dance Dance Spirit Spirit Dance!

Transform Pentagon skeleton to maiden-temple O Phantom

Guevara! Om Raksa Raksa Hu? Hu? Hu? Phat Svaha!

Anger Control your Self feared Chaos, suffocation

body-death in Capitols caved with stone radar sentinels!

Back! Back! Back! Central Mind-machine Pentagon reverse

consciousness! Hallucination manifest! A million Americas

gaze out of man-spirit’s naked Pentacle! Magnanimous

reaction to signal Peking, isolate Space-beings!

Milan, September 29, 1967

Elegy Che Guevara

European Trib. boy’s face photo’d eyes opened,
     young feminine beardless radiant kid
         lain back smiling looking upward
Calm as if ladies’ lips were kissing invisible parts of the body
Aged reposeful angelic boy corpse,
     perceptive Argentine Doctor, petulant Cuba Major
                pipe mouth’d & faithfully keeping Diary
                     in mosquitos Amazonas
Sleep on a hill, dull Havana Throne renounced
More sexy your neck than sad aging necks of Johnson
                     De Gaulle, Kosygin,
     or the bullet pierced neck of John Kennedy
Eyes more intelligent glanced up to death newspapers
     than worried living Congress Cameras passing
                dot screens into TV shade, glass-eyed
                McNamara, Dulles in old life …

Women in bowler hats sitting in mud outskirts 11,000 feet up in Heaven
                with a headache in La Paz
         selling black potatoes brought down from earth roof’d huts
                on mountain-lipped Puno
     would’ve adored your desire and kissed your Visage new Christ
They’ll raise up a red-bulb-eyed war-mask’s
     white tusks to scare soldier-ghosts
                who shot thru your lungs

Incredible! one boy turned aside from operating room
         or healing Pampas yellow eye
     To face the stock rooms of Alcoa, Myriad Murderous
                     Board Directors of United Fruit
Smog-Manufacturing Trustees of Chicago U
         Lawyer Phantoms ranged back to dead
                John Foster Dulles’ Sullivan and Cromwell lawfirm
         Acheson’s mustache, Truman’s bony hat
To go mad and hide in jungle on mule & point rifle at OAS
     at Rusk’s egoic Courtesies, the metal deployments of Pentagon
         derring-do Admen and dumbed intellectuals
                from Time to the CIA
One boy against the Stock Market all Wall Street ascream
         since Norris wrote The Pit
     afraid of free dollars showering from the Observers’ Balcony
         scattered by laughing younger brothers,
Against the Tin Company, against Wire Services,
         against infrared sensor Telepath Capitalism’s
                money-crazed scientists
     against College boy millions watching Wichita Family Den TV

One radiant face driven mad with a rifle
                Confronting the electric networks.

Venice, November 1967

War Profit Litany

To Ezra Pound

These are the names of the companies that have made money from this war

nineteenhundredsixtyeight Annodomini fourthousandeighty Hebraic

These Corporations have profited by merchandising skinburning phosphorus or shells fragmented to thousands of fleshpiercing needles

and here listed money millions gained by each combine for manufacture and here are gains numbered, index’d swelling a decade, set in order,

here named the Fathers in office in these industries, telephones directing finance,

names of directors, makers of fates, and the names of the stockholders of these destined Aggregates,

and here are the names of their ambassadors to the Capital, representatives to legislature, those who sit drinking in hotel lobbies to persuade,

and separate listed, those who drop Amphetamines with military, gossip, argue, and persuade

suggesting policy naming language proposing strategy, this done for fee as ambassadors to Pentagon, consultants to military, paid by their industry:

and these are the names of the generals & captains military, who now thus work for war goods manufacturers;

and above these, listed, the names of the banks, combines, investment trusts that control these industries:

and these are the names of the newspapers owned by these banks

and these are the names of the airstations owned by these combines;

and these are the numbers of thousands of citizens employed by these businesses named;

and the beginning of this accounting is 1958 and the end 1968, that statistic be contained in orderly mind, coherent & definite,

and the first form of this litany begun first day December 1967 furthers this poem of these States.

December 1, 1967

Elegies for Neal Cassady
(1968)
Elegy for Neal Cassady

OK Neal
     aethereal Spirit
         bright as moving air
                blue as city dawn
happy as light released by the Day
     over the city’s new buildings—

Maya’s Giant bricks rise rebuilt
                     in Lower East Side
     windows shine in milky smog.
         Appearance unnecessary now.

Peter sleeps alone next room, sad.
Are you reincarnate? Can ya hear me talkin?
If anyone had strength to hear the invisible,
And drive thru Maya Wall
     you had it—
                     What’re you now, Spirit?
That were spirit in body—

The body’s cremate
                                             by Railroad track
                         San Miguel Allende Desert,
                                             outside town,
                         Spirit become spirit,
                                             or robot reduced to Ashes.

Tender Spirit, thank you for touching me with tender hands
When you were young, in a beautiful body,
                         Such a pure touch it was Hope beyond Maya-meat,
                         What you are now,
                                             Impersonal, tender—

you showed me your muscle/warmth/over twenty years ago
when I lay trembling at your breast
                                             put your arm around my neck,
—we stood together in a bare room on 103d St.

Listening to a wooden Radio,
                                             with our eyes closed
Eternal redness of Shabda
                                             lamped in our brains
at Illinois Jacquet’s Saxophone Shuddering,
                         prophetic Honk of Louis Jordan,
                         Honeydrippers, Open The Door Richard
                                             To Christ’s Apocalypse—
The buildings’re insubstantial—
That’s my New York Vision
                                             outside eastern apartment offices
                         where telephone rang last night
                                             and stranger’s friendly Denver Voice
asked me, had I heard the news from the West?

Some gathering Bust, Eugene Oregon or Hollywood Impends
                         I had premonition.

“No” I said—“been away all week,”
                         “you havent heard the News from the West,
                                             Neal Cassady is dead—”
               Peter’s dove-voic’d Oh! on the other line, listening.

Your picture stares cheerful, tearful, strain’d,
                                             a candle burns,
                         green stick incense by household gods.

Military Tyranny overtakes Universities, your Prophecy
                         approaching its kindest sense brings us
                                             Down
                                             to the Great Year’s awakening.

Kesey’s in Oregon writing novel language
                                             family farm alone.

Hadja no more to do? Was your work all done?

                    Had ya seen your first son?

                              Why’dja leave us all here?

                    Has the battle been won?

I’m a phantom skeleton with teeth, skull
                         resting on a pillow
                         calling your spirit
               god echo consciousness, murmuring
                                             sadly to myself.

Lament in dawnlight’s not needed,
                                             the world is released,
                         desire fulfilled, your history over,
                                             story told, Karma resolved,
                                             prayers completed
                         vision manifest, new consciousness fulfilled,
                                             spirit returned in a circle,
               world left standing empty, buses roaring through streets—
                         garbage scattered on pavements galore—
               Grandeur solidified, phantom-familiar fate
                                             returned to Auto-dawn,
                                             your destiny fallen on RR track
My body breathes easy,
                                             I lie alone,
                                             living
After friendship fades from flesh forms—
heavy happiness hangs in heart,
                                        I could talk to you forever,
                                             The pleasure inexhaustible,
                                             discourse of spirit to spirit,
                                             O Spirit.

Sir spirit, forgive me my sins,
Sir spirit give me your blessing again,
Sir Spirit forgive my phantom body’s demands,
Sir Spirit thanks for your kindness past,
Sir Spirit in Heaven, What difference was yr mortal form,
                         What further this great show of Space?

                         Speedy passions generations of
                                   Question? agonic Texas Nightrides?

                                   psychedelic bus hejira-jazz,
                         Green auto poetries, inspired roads?

Sad, Jack in Lowell saw the phantom most—
                         lonelier than all, except your noble Self.

Sir Spirit, an’ I drift alone:
                                             Oh deep sigh.

February 10, 1968, 5–5:30 A.M.

Chicago to Salt Lake by Air

If Hanson Baldwin got a bullet in his brain, outrage?

If President Johnson got a bullet in his brain, fast Karma?

If Reader’s Digest got a bullet in its brain would it be smarter?

March ’68, P. 54 “Report from Vietnam, The foe is Hurting”
… “The dismal picture of 1965, when I previously visited Vietnam,
has been reversed: The Allies are winning, and the enemy is being hurt,”
wrote “The distinguished military Editor of the New York Times”
The Dinosaur moves slowly over Chicago.

Arrived on United Airlines just in time all wrong.

Anger in the back of the plane cabin, anger at Reader’s Digest
Hanson Baldwin’s “Allies”? Hanson Baldwin’s “The Enemy”?

Arguing with a schizophrenic is hopeless. A bullet in the brain.

Mr. Baldwin suggests more bullets in the brain to solve his Vietnam Problem.

Hanson Baldwin is a Military Ass-Kisser.

Dead Neal was born in Salt Lake, & Jim Fitzpatrick’s dead.

Flowers die, & flowers rise red petaled on the field.

Anger, red petal’d flower in my body

Detroit’s lake from a mile above chemical muddy,

streams of gray waste fogging the surface to the center,

more than half the lake discolored metallic—

Cancerous reproductions the house flats rows of bee boxes, DNA Molecular Patterns

microscopic reticulations topt w/Television Antennae

and the horizon edged with gray gas clouds from East to West unmoved by wind.

They fucked up the planet! Hanson Baldwin Fucked up the Planet all by himself, emitted a long Military gas cloud Dec 26 27 28 1967 in NY Times.

“Purely military considerations” he told TV—

Till Gov. LaSalle sd/ the Prexy cdnt be peaceful till election time,

as Baldwin nodded agree.

A bunch of fat & thin Schizophrenics running the planet thoughtwaves. Shit, Violence, bullets in the brain Unavailing.

We’re in it too deep to pull out.

Waiting for an orgasm, Mr. Baldwin?

Yes, waiting for an orgasm that’s all.

Give ’em all the orgasms they want.

Give ’em orgasms, give Hanson Baldwin his lost orgasms.

Give NY Times, give Reader’s Digest their old orgasms back.

It’s a gold crisis! not enuf orgasms to go round

“I take care of other people’s business” said th’ old man sleeping next seat,

Wallets & pens in his inside pocket green tie black suit boots,

“Ever since the world began Gold is the measure of Solidarity.”

Golden light over Iowa, silver cloud floor, sky roof blue deep

rayed by Western Sun set brightness from the center of the Solar System.

Neal born in Salt Lake. Died in San Miguel, met in Denver loved in Denver—

“Down in Denver/down in Denver/all I did was die.”

J. Kerouac, ’48

Airplanes, a pain in the neck. Thru Heaven, a heavy roar,

vaportrails to the sun moving behind Utah’s valley wall.

Give Heaven orgasms, give Krishna all your orgasms, give yr orgasms to the clouds. Great Salt Lake!

Fitzpatrick sobbed a lot in New York & Utah, his nervous frame racked with red eyed pain.

Farewell Sir Jim, in shiny heaven, bodiless as Neal’s bodiless …

Brainwash cried Romney, the Governor of Pollution,

Michigan’s Lakes covered w/green slime

               — “The people now see thru the Administration’s continuous brainwashing.”

Chi Trib Mar 16 ’68 AP dispatch

Mind is fragments … whatever you can remember from last year’s Time Magazine, this years sunset or gray cloudmass over Nebraska,
Leroi Jones’ deep scar brown skin at left temple hairline …
… Don McNeil emerging from Grand Central w/6 stitches in Forehead pushed thru plateglass by police, his presscard bloodied.

Deeper into gray clouds, there must be invisible farms, invisible farmers walking up and down rolling cloud-hills.

“A hole in its head” … another World, America, Vietnam.

The Martians have holes in their head, like Moore’s statuary.

& if Dolphin-like Saturnian tongues are invisible & their ecstatic language irrelevant to the Gold Supply

We’ll murder ’em like 100,000,000 Bison—

Do the Buffalo Dance in the Jetplane over Nebraska! Bring back the Gay ’90s.

Gobble gobble sd/ Sanders

& Turkeys’ hormone-white-meat drumsticks poison the glands of suburban kiddies Thanksgiving.

On their bicycles w/ poison glands & DDT livers, hallucinating Tiny Vietnams on TV.

Clouds rifts, Gold orgasms in the West,

Nebraska’s Steppes herding broken cloud-flocks—

Sun at plane’s nose, izzat the Missouri breaking the plains apart? Council Bluffs & Great Platte gone?

Oh Rockies already? Snow in granite cracks & gray crags.

Hanson Baldwin covered w/ Snowflakes.

Red oxide in air & earth, sunset flowers in clouds, Anger in the Heart,

“Croakers & doubters” … Napalm & Mace: Dogs!

Earth ripples, river snakes, iron horse tracks, car paths thin

—Wasatch peak snows, north crags’ springtime white wall over desert-lake brightness—

Salt Lake streets at dusk flowing w/ electric gold. Beautiful Million winking lights!

Neal was born in Paradise!

March 30, 1968

Kiss Ass

Kissass is the Part of Peace
America will have to Kissass Mother Earth
Whites have to Kissass Blacks, for Peace & Pleasure,
Only Pathway to Peace, Kissass

Houston, April 24, 1968

Manhattan Thirties Flash

Long stone streets inanimate, repetitive machine Crash cookie-cutting

dynamo rows of soulless replica Similitudes brooding tank-like in Army Depots

Exactly the same exactly the same exactly the same with no purpose but grimness

& overwhelming force of robot obsession, our slaves are not alive

& we become their sameness as they surround us—the long stone streets inanimate,

crowds of executive secretaries alighting from subway 8:30 A.M.

bloodflow in cells thru elevator arteries & stairway glands to typewriter consciousness,

Con Ed skyscraper clock-head gleaming gold-lit at sun dusk.

1968

Please Master

Please master can I touch your cheek

please master can I kneel at your feet

please master can I loosen your blue pants

please master can I gaze at your golden haired belly

please master can I gently take down your shorts

please master can I have your thighs bare to my eyes

please master can I take off my clothes below your chair

please master can I kiss your ankles and soul

please master can I touch lips to your hard muscle hairless thigh

please master can I lay my ear pressed to your stomach

please master can I wrap my arms around your white ass

please master can I lick your groin curled with blond soft fur

please master can I touch my tongue to your rosy asshole

please master may I pass my face to your balls,

please master, please look into my eyes,

please master order me down on the floor,

please master tell me to lick your thick shaft

please master put your rough hands on my bald hairy skull

please master press my mouth to your prick-heart

please master press my face into your belly, pull me slowly strong thumbed

till your dumb hardness fills my throat to the base

till I swallow & taste your delicate flesh-hot prick barrel veined Please

Master push my shoulders away and stare in my eye, & make me bend over the table

please master grab my thighs and lift my ass to your waist

please master your hand’s rough stroke on my neck your palm down my backside

please master push me up, my feet on chairs, till my hole feels the breath of your spit and your thumb stroke

please master make me say Please Master Fuck me now Please

Master grease my balls and hairmouth with sweet vaselines

please master stroke your shaft with white creams

please master touch your cock head to my wrinkled self-hole

please master push it in gently, your elbows enwrapped round my breast

your arms passing down to my belly, my penis you touch w/ your fingers

please master shove it in me a little, a little, a little,

please master sink your droor thing down my behind

& please master make me wiggle my rear to eat up the prick trunk

till my asshalfs cuddle your thighs, my back bent over,

till I’m alone sticking out, your sword stuck throbbing in me

please master pull out and slowly roll into the bottom

please master lunge it again, and withdraw to the tip

please please master fuck me again with your self, please fuck me Please

Master drive down till it hurts me the softness the

Softness please master make love to my ass, give body to center, & fuck me for good like a girl,

tenderly clasp me please master I take me to thee,

& drive in my belly your selfsame sweet heat-rood

you fingered in solitude Denver or Brooklyn or fucked in a maiden in Paris carlots

please master drive me thy vehicle, body of love dops, sweat fuck

body of tenderness, Give me your dog fuck faster

please master make me go moan on the table

Go moan O please master do fuck me like that

in your rhythm thrill-plunge & pull-back-bounce & push down

till I loosen my asshole a dog on the table yelping with terror delight to be loved

Please master call me a dog, an ass beast, a wet asshole,

& fuck me more violent, my eyes hid with your palms round my skull

& plunge down in a brutal hard lash thru soft drip-fish

& throb thru five seconds to spurt out your semen heat

over & over, bamming it in while I cry out your name I do love you

please Master.

               May 1968

A Prophecy

O Future bards
chant from skull to heart to ass
as long as language lasts
Vocalize all chords
zap all consciousness
I sing out of mind jail
in New York State
without electricity
rain on the mountain
thought fills cities
I’ll leave my body
in a thin motel
my self escapes
through unborn ears
Not my language
but a voice
chanting in patterns
survives on earth
not history’s bones
but vocal tones
Dear breaths and eyes
shine in the skies
where rockets rise
to take me home
                    May 1968

Bixby Canyon

Path crowded with thistle fern blue daisy,
               glassy grass, pale morninglory
                         scattered on a granite hill
bells clanging under gray sea cliffs,
dry brackensprout seaweed-wreathed
where bee dies in sand hollows
                         ant-swarmed above
white froth-wave glassed bay surge
               Ishvara-ripple on cave wall
                                   sea birds
                    skating wind swell,
Amor Krishna Om Phat Svaha air rumble at
                    ocean-lip
                                   Yesterday
Sand castles Neal, white plasm balls round
               jellies—
               Skeleton snaketubes & back
               nostrils’ seaweed-tail dry-wrinkled
               brown seabulb & rednailed
               cactus blossom-petal tongues—
Brownpickle saltwater tomato ball
               rubber tail Spaghettied
                         with leafmeat,
Mucus-softness crown’d Laurel thong-hat
               Father Whale gunk transparent
                         yellowleaf egg-sac sandy
               lotos-petal cast back to cold
                         watersurge.

                              Bouquet of old seaweed
on a striped blanket, kelp tentacle spread
round the prayer place
                                             Hermes silver
                         firelight spread over wave sunglare—
The Cosmic Miasma Anxiety meditating nakedman
                                   —Soft Bonepipe!
Musical Sea-knee gristlebone rubber
                    burp footswat beard ball bounce
of homosexual Shlurp ocean hish
                    Sabahadabadie Sound-limit
                                   to Evil—

Set limit, set limit, set limit to
                         oceansong?

Limit birdcries, limit the Limitless
                    in language? O Say
Can You See The Internationale
               Mental Traveller Marseillaise
          in waves of eye alteration Politics?

’Tis sweet Liberty I hymn in freeman’s sunlight
not limited to observe No Nakedness signs
          in silent bud-crowded pathways, artforms
                         of flowers limitless Ignorance—
Wet seaweed blossoms froth left, sun breathing
          giant mist under the bridge,
          gray cliffs cloud-skin haloed
               Yellow sunlight of Old
          shining on mossledge, tide foam
                    lapped in harmless gold light—
O Eyeball Brightness shimmering! Father Circle
whence we have sprung, thru thy bright
                    Rainbow horn, Silence!
So sings the laborer under the rock bridge,
so pipes pray to the Avalanche.

Big Sur, June 16, 1968 (grass)

Crossing Nation

Under silver wing
          San Francisco’s towers sprouting
                              thru thin gas clouds,
          Tamalpais black-breasted above Pacific azure
                    Berkeley hills pine-covered below—
Dr. Leary in his brown house scribing Independence Declaration
                         typewriter at window
                    silver panorama in natural eyeball—

Sacramento valley rivercourse’s Chinese
                         dragonflames licking green flats north-hazed
               State Capitol metallic rubble, dry checkered fields
                         to Sierras—past Reno, Pyramid Lake’s
                         blue Altar, pure water in Nevada sands’
                                   brown wasteland scratched by tires

               Jerry Rubin arrested! Beaten, jailed,
                         coccyx broken—
Leary out of action—“a public menace …
               persons of tender years … immature
                         judgment… psychiatric examination …”
i.e. Shut up or Else Loonybin or Slam

LeRoi on bum gun rap, $7,000
                         lawyer fees, years’ negotiations—
SPOCK GUILTY headlined temporary, Joan Baez’
                         paramour husband Dave Harris to Gaol
Dylan silent on politics, & safe—
                         having a baby, a man—
Cleaver shot at, jail’d, maddened, parole revoked,
Vietnam War flesh-heap grows higher,
                         blood splashing down the mountains of bodies
                                   on to Cholon’s sidewalks—
Blond boys in airplane seats fed technicolor
                         Murderers advance w/ Death-chords
                                        thru photo basement,
                         Earplugs in, steak on plastic
                                        served—Eyes up to the Image—

What do I have to lose if America falls?

               my body? my neck? my personality?

June 19, 1968

Smoke Rolling Down Street

Red Scabies on the Skin
Police Cars turn Garbage Corner—
Was that a Shot! Backfire or Cherry Bomb?

Ah, it’s all right, take the mouth off,
it’s all over.

Man Came a long way,
Canoes thru Fire Engines,
Big Cities’ power station Fumes
Executives with Country Houses—
Waters drip thru Ceilings in the Slum—
It’s all right, take the mouth off
it’s all over—
                                   New York, June 23, 1968

Pertussin

Always Ether Comes
               to dissuade the
                         goat-like
                                   sensible—
or N₂O recurring to
               elicit ironic
                         suicidal pen marks—
Parallels: in Montmartre Rousseau
               daubing or Rimbaud arriving,
                         the raw Aether
shines with Brahmanic cool moonshine
               aftertaste, midnight Nostalgia.

June 28, 1968

Swirls of black dust on Avenue D

white haze over Manhattan’s towers
               midsummer green Cattails’ fatness
                         surrounding Hoboken Marsh
                                        garbage Dumps,

Wind over Pulaski Skyway’s
               lacy networks
Trucks crash Bayonne’s roadways,
               iron engines roar

Stink rises over Hydro Pruf Factory
Cranes lift over broken earth
Brain Clouds boil out tin-cone scrap burners
                         Newark sits in gray gas
                         July heat gleams on airplanes
Trailer tyres sing toward forests of oiltowers,
Power grids dance in th’Iron Triangle,
                         Tanks roast in Flatness—
Old Soybean-oil-storage Scandals
                                        echo thru airwaves,
the family car bumps over asphalt toward Bright Mexico.

July 10, 1968

Violence

Mexcity drugstore table, giant
               sexfiend in black spats
Sticks knife in a plump faggot’s
               sportscoat seam;
at Teotihuacán in blue sunlight, I slap
               my mocking blond nephew
               for getting lost on the Moon
               Pyramid.

In Oakland, legendary police shoot a
               naked black boy running out
               of his political basement
In Pentagon giant machines humm and
               bleep in neon arcades,
Buttons click in sockets & robots
               pencil prescriptions for acid gas
               sunsets—
New York on the stairway, the dumbed
               whitefaced Junkie pulls a knife
               and stares immobile—the victim
               gasps, “oh come off it” & a sixpack
               of cokebottles
bounces down worn black steps, in
               Vietnam plastic fire
Streams down myriad phantom cheeks
               rayed over planet television—
Adrenalin runs in armpits from Los Angeles
               to Paris, Harlem & Cannes
explode thru plateglass, Sunset Strip & Sorbonne
               are crowded with Longhaired angels
               armed with gasmasks & Acid,
& Angry Democrats gather in Chicago
               fantasizing armies running
               thru Sewers sprayed with Mace.

I walk up Avenida Juárez, over
               cobbled shadows, blue-tiled streetlamps
lighting Sanborns’ arcades, behind me violent
               chic fairy gangsters with bloody hands
hustle after midnight to cut my throat from
               its beard.

July 22, 1968, 4:30 A.M.

Past Silver Durango Over Mexic Sierra-Wrinkles

Westward Mother-mountains drift Pacific, green-sloped canyons vaster than Mexico City

without roads under cloud-flowers bearing tiny shadow-blossoms on vegetable peaks—

red riverbeds snake thru paradises without electricity

—Huichol or Tarahumara solitudes hectare’d irregular, antpaths to rocky plateaux,

hollows for lone indian humility, hand-ploughed mountainside patches—

naked white cloud-fronds floating silent over silent green earth-crags.

O vast meccas of manlessness, Bright cloud-brains tower’d in blue space up to the Sun

with rainbow garlands over white water-gas, O tree-furred body defenseless thru clear air, visible green breast of America!

vaster than man the Mother Mountains manifest nakedness greater than all the bombs Bacteria ever invented

Impregnable cloud-cities adrift & dissolving no History,

white rain-ships alighted in Zenith Blue Ocean—

No ports or capitals to the horizon, emerald mesas ridged infinite-budded where rivers and ants gather garbage man left behind in the Valley of Mexico—

Iron’ll rust under living tree roots & soak back underground

to feed the sensitive tendrils of Ego covering mountains of granite green mossed unconscious.

Heaven & ocean mirror their azure, horizon lost in yellowed spectrum-mist—

Baja California Blue water lies flat to the brown armpit of United States,

River’s course muddies the delta with teardrops washed dusty from Utah— Green irrigated farm squares in desert—

& the dung colored gas, brown haze of labor near Los Angeles risen the height of Sierras—

gray smog drifts thru low mountain passes, city invisible.

                                             Floating armchairs descend

from sky in sunlight, rocking back & forth in polluted fields of air.

                                             July 22, 1968, 11 A.M.

On Neal’s Ashes

Delicate eyes that blinked blue Rockies all ash
nipples, Ribs I touched w/ my thumb are ash
mouth my tongue touched once or twice all ash
bony cheeks soft on my belly are cinder, ash
earlobes & eyelids, youthful cock tip, curly pubis
breast warmth, man palm, high school thigh,
baseball bicept arm, asshole anneal’d to silken skin
                                        all ashes, all ashes again.

August 1968

Going to Chicago

22,000 feet over Hazed square Vegetable planet Floor
Approaching Chicago to Die or flying over Earth another 40 years
to die—Indifferent, and Afraid, that the bone-shattering bullet
be the same as the vast evaporation-of-phenomena Cancer
Come true in an old man’s bed. Or Historic
Fire-Heaven Descending 22,000 years End th’ Atomic Aeon

The Lake’s blue again, Sky’s the same baby, tho papers & Noses
rumor tar spread through the Natural Universe’ll make Angel’s feet sticky.

I heard the Angel King’s voice, a bodiless tuneful teenager
Eternal in my own heart saying “Trust the Purest Joy—
Democratic Anger is an Illusion, Democratic Joy is God
Our Father is baby blue, the original face you see Sees You—”

How, thru Conventional Police & Revolutionary Fury
Remember the Helpless order the Police Armed to protect,
The Helpless Freedom the Revolutionary Conspired to honor—?

I am the Angel King sang the Angel King
as mobs in Amphitheaters, Streets, Colosseums Parks and offices
Scream in despair over Meat and Metal Microphone

August 24, 1968

Grant Park: August 28, 1968

Green air, children sat under trees with the old,
bodies bare, eyes open to eyes under the hotel wall,
the ring of Brown-clothed bodies armed
               but silent at ease leaned on their rifles—

Harsh sound of mikrophones, helicopter roar—
A current in the belly, future marches
               and detectives naked in bed—
where? on the planet, not Chicago,
               in late sunlight—

Miserable picnic, Police State or Garden of Eden?

in the building walled against the sky
magicians exchange images, Money vote
               and handshakes—
The teargas drifted up to the Vice
               President naked in the bathroom
—naked on the toilet taking a shit weeping?

Who wants to be President of the
               Garden of Eden?

Car Crash

I

Snow-blizzard sowing
ice-powder drifts on stone fenced
gardens near gray woods.

Yellow hump-backed snow plow
rocking giant tires round
the road, red light flashing
iron insect brain.

Mrow, the cat with diarrhea.

Sunlight settled into human form,
tree rings settled age after age
stone forests accumulating atoms
traveled 93,000,000 miles,
carbon deposits settled into beds,
the mountain’s head breathes light,
Earth-hairs gather gold beams
thru chlorophyll, poets walk
between the green bushes
sprouting solar language.

Broken bones in bed,
hips and ribs cracked by autos,
snowdrifts over rubber tires,
tree stumps freeze, the body stump
heals temporarily in wintertime.

II

So that’s it the body, ah!
Beat yr meat in a dark bed.

Boy friends wrinkle & shit in snow.

Girls go fat-eyed to their mother’s coffin.

Cigarettes burned my tastebuds’ youth,
I smelled my lover’s behind,
This autocrash broke my hip and ribs,
Ugh, Thud, nausea-breath at solar plexus paralyzed my bowels four days—
Eyeglasses broke, eyeballs still intact—
Thank God! alas, still alive but talk words
died in my body, thoughts died in pain.

A healthy day in the snow, white breath
and warm wool sox, hat over ears, hot broth,
nakedness in warm boudoirs, stiff prick come,
fame, physic, learning, scepter, dusk
and Aurora Borealis, hot pig flesh, turkey
stuffing—all disappear in a broken skull.

Unstable element, Sight Sound flesh Touch
& Taste, all Odour, one more consciousness
backseat of a steaming auto with broken nose—
Unstable place to be, an easy way out
by metal crash instead of mind cancer.

Unreliable meat, waving a chicken bone
in a hospital bed—get what’s coming to you
like the chicken steak you ate last year.

Impossible Dr. Feelgood Forever, gotta die
made of worm-stuff And worm thoughts?

And who’s left watching, or even
remembers the car crash that severed
the skull from the spinal column?

Who gets out of body, or who’s shut in
a box of soft pain when Napalm drops
from Heaven all over the abdomen,
breasts and cheek-skin? & tongue cut out
by inhuman knives? Cow tongue? Man tongue?

What does it feel like not to talk?

To die in the back seat, Ow!

December 21, 1968

III

Raw pine walls, ice-white windows
three weeks now, snowy flatness
foot-thick down valley meadows,
wind roar in bare ash arms, oak branch
tendrils icy gleaming, yellow stain of morning water in front
door’s snow—I walk out on crutches
to see white moonglow make snow blue
—three men just rode a space ship
round the moon last week—gnashing
their teeth in Biafra & Palestine,
Assassins & Astronauts traveling from
Athens to the sea of Venus Creatrix—
Lovers’ quarrels magnified decades to mad
violence, half naked farm boys stand
with axes at the kitchen table,
trembling guilty, slicing egg
grapefruit breasts on breakfast oilcloth.

Growing old, growing old, forget the words,
mind jumps to the grave, forget words,
Love’s an old word, forget words,
Peter with shave-head beardface
mutters & screams to himself at midnight.

A new year, no party tonite, forget
old loves, old words, old feelings.

Snow everywhere around the house,
I turned off the gas-light & came upstairs
alone to read, remembering pictures of dead
moon-side, my hip broken, the cat sick,
earhead filled with my own strong music,
in a houseful of men, sleep in underwear.

Neal almost a year turned to ash, angel
in his own midnight without a phonecall,
Jack drunk in my mind or his Florida.

Forget old friends, old words, old loves,
old bodies. Bhaktivedanta advises Christ.

The body lies in bed in ’69 alone,
a gnostic book fills the lap, Aeons
revolve ’round the household, Rimbaud
age 16 adolescent sneers tight lipt
green-eyed oval in old time gravure
—1869 his velvet tie askew, hair
mussed & ruffled by policeman’s rape.

January 1, 1969, 1:30 A.M.

Ecologues of These States
(1969–1971)
Over Denver Again

Gray clouds blot sunglare, mountains float west, plane
softly roaring over Denver—Neal dead a year—clean suburb yards,
fit boardinghouse for the homosexual messenger’s
alleyway Lila a decade back before the Atombomb.

Denver without Neal, eh? Denver with orange sunsets
& giant airplanes winging silvery to San Francisco—
watchtowers thru red cold planet light, when the Earth Angel’s dead
the dead material planet’ll revolve robotlike
& insects hop back and forth between metallic cities.

February 13, 1969

Imaginary Universes

Under orders to shoot the spy, I discharged my pistol into his mouth.

He fell face down from the position life left his body kneeling blindfold.

No, I never did that. Imagined in airport snow, Albany plane discharging passengers.

Yes, the Mexican-faced boy, 19 in Marine cloth, seat next me

Descending Salt Lake, accompanied his brother’s body from Vietnam.

“The Gook was kneeling in front of me, crying & pleading. There were two; he had a card we dropped on them.”

The card granted immunity to those V.C. surrendering.

“On account of my best friend & my brother I killed both Gooks.”

That was true, yes.

                                             February 1969

Rising over night-blackened Detroit Streets

brilliant network-lights tentacle dim suburbs
Michigan waters canalled glitter thru city building blocks’
Throne-brain lamps strung downtown, green signals’
concentrate brightness blinking metal prayers & bright Hare Krishnas
telepathic to Heavenly darkness whence I stare down and adore O beautiful!
Mankind maker of such contemplate machine! Come gentle brainwaves
delicate-soft heart-throbs tender as belly butterflies,
light as Sexual charm-penumbras be, of radiant-eyed
boys & girls black-faced & blond that Born believe
Earth-death at hand, or Eden regenerate millennial Green
their destiny under your Human Police Will, O
Masters, fathers, mayors, Senators, Presidents, Bankers & workers
sweating & weeping ignorant on your own plastic-pain Maya planet…

February 15, 1969

To Poe: Over the Planet, Air Albany-Baltimore

Albany throned in snow! It’s winter, Poe,
upstate New York scythed
               into mental fields, flat arbors & hairy woods
               scattered in Pubic mounds twittering w/ birds—
Nobody foresaw these wormpaths asphalted
               uphill crost bridges to small church towns, chill
               hoarfields streaked with metal feces-dust.

Maelstrom roar of air-boats to Baltimore!
Farmland whirlpooled into mechanic apocalypse
               on Iron Tides!
… Wheels drop in Sunlight, over
               Vast building-hive roofs glittering,
New York’s ice agleam
               in a dying world.

                         Bump down to ground
                                             Hare Krishna Preserver!

Philadelphia smoking in Gold Sunlight, pink blue
               green Cyanide tanks sitting on hell’s floor,
Many chimneys smoldering, city flats virus-linked
               along Delaware bays under horizon-smog—
airplane drifting black vapor-filaments
               above Wilmington—The iron habitations
               endless from Manhattan to the Capital.

Poe! D’jya prophesy this Smogland, this Inferno,
Didja Dream Baltimore’d Be Seen From Heaven
by Man Poet’s eyes Astounded in the Fire Haze,
                                             carbon Gas aghast!
Poe! D’jya know yr prophecies’ red death
would pour thru Philly’s sky like Sulphurous Dreams?

Walled into Amontillado’s Basement! Man
                         kind led weeping drunk into the Bomb
                         Shelter by Mad Secretaries of Defense!

South! from the Bearded Sleeper’s Wink
at History, Hudson polluted & Susquehanna
               Brown under bridges laced with factory smoke—
Proving grounds by Chesapeake,
                         Ammunition & Artillery

                    Edgewood & Aberdeen
                         Chemical munitions factories
                                   hid isolate in wooded gardens—
Poe! Frankenstein! Shelley thy Prophecy,
What Demiurge assembles Matter-Factories
               to blast the Cacodemonic Planet-Mirror apart
Split atoms & Polarize Consciousness &
               let the eternal Void leak thru Pentagon
& cover White House with Eternal Vacuum-Dust!
Bethlehem’s miles of Christ-birth Man-apocalypse
               Mechano-movie Refinery along Atlantic,
Shit-brown haze worse & worse over Baltimore
               where Poe’s world came to end—Red smoke,
Black water, gray sulphur clouds over Sparrows Point
               Oceanside flowing with rust, scum tide
                         boiling shoreward—

Red white blue yachts on Baltimore harbor,
               the plane bounds down above gas tanks,
gas stations, smokestacks flaring poison mist,
Superhighways razored thru hairy woods,
Down to Earth Man City where Poe
               Died kidnapped by phantoms
conspiring to win elections
                         in the Deathly Gutter of 19th Century.

March 1969

Easter Sunday

Slope woods’ snows melt
Streams gush, ducks stand one foot
beak eye buried in backfeathers,
Jerusalem pillars’ gold sunlight
yellow in window-shine, bright
rays spikey-white flashed in mud,
coo coo ripples thru maple branch,
horse limps head down, pale grass shoots
green winter’s brown vegetable
hair—washed by transparent trickling
ice water freshets
earth’s rusty slough bathed clean,
streams ripple leaf-bottomed
channels sounded vocal, white light
afternoon sky end—

Goat bells move, black kids bounce,
butting mother’s hairy side & tender tit
one maa’ing child hangs under Bessie’s udder
ducks waggle yellow beaks, new grass flooded,
tiger cat maeows on barn straw,
herb patch by stone wall’s a shiny marsh,
dimpling snow water glimmers, birds whistle
from icecrystal beds under bare bushes,
breeze blows rooster crow thru chill light
extended from the piney horizon.

1969

Falling Asleep in America

We’re in the Great Place, Fable Place, Beulah, Man wedded to Earth, Planet of green Grass

Tiny atomic wheels spin shining, worlds change Heavens inside out, the planet’s reborn in ashes,

Sun lights sparkle on atomic cinder, plants levitate, green moss precedes trees trembling sentient,

Stone eats blue skies solar dazzle with invisible mouths & flowers are the rocks’ excrement—

Each million years atoms spin myriad reversals, worlds in worlds interchange populations—

from worm to man’s a tiny jump from earth to earth souls are borne ever forgetful—

populations eat their own meat, roses smell sweet in the faeces of horses risen red-fac’d.

Consciousness changes nightly, dreams flower new universes in brainy skulls.

Lying in bed body darkened ear of the bus roar running, only the eye flickering grass green returns me to Nashville.

April 1969

Northwest Passage

Incense under Horse Heaven Hills
Empty logger trucks speed
                         Lake Wallula’s flatness shimmering
Under Hat Rock painted w/
                              white highschool signs.

Chemical smoke boils up
                    under aluminum-bright cloud-roof—
Smog assembling over railroad
                    cars parked rusting on thin rails—
Factory looming vaster than Johnson
                    Butte—Look at that Shit!
Smell it! Got about 30 smokestacks going!
Polluting Wallula! Boise Cascade
                                             Container Corp!
The Package is the Product, onomatopoeticized
                                             McLuhan in ’67—
Wall Street Journal Apr. 22 full
               page ad Proclaimed:

We got the trees! We got
                         the land beneath!
We Gotta invent More Forms
                         for Cardboard Country!
We’ll dig forests for Genius
                         Spirit God Stuff Gold-root
for Sale on Wall Street. Give
                         us your money! order
                         our cardboard Wastebaskets!
We just invented throwaway Planets!

Trees crash in Heaven! Sulphurous Urine
pours thru Boise, Chevron & Brea
                         Wastepipes where Snake & Wallula
                                             ripple shining
Where Sakajawea led White Men thru blue sky
                                   fresh sweet water roads
                         Towards mountains of juicy
                                   telepathic pine & open Thalassa
Thalassa! Green salt waves
                    washing rock mountains, Pacific Sirhan lives!
                              to hear his jury say
“We now fix the penalty at Death.”

Green salt waves washing Wall Street.

Rain on gray sage near Standard
                    Oil junction Eltopia,
Static at Mesa! Yodeling ancient
                    Prajnaparamita
Gaté Gaté Paragaté Parasamgaté
                                        Bodhi Svaha!
Way Down Yonder in the Bayoux
               Country in Dear old Louisian,
Hank Williams chanting to country
                                        Nature, electric
wires run up rolling brownplowed wheatfields—
Wallula polluted! Wallula polluted! Wallula polluted!

                    “For most large scale gambling enterprises to continue over any extended period of time, the cooperation of corrupt Police or local officials is necessary.” P. 1 Oregonian, “Mapping a $61 million war against organized crime, President Nixon suggested …”

“Even Jesus Christ couldn’t have
saved me.” Sirhan …
                    “shed no tears.

                    His face was ashen” AP
                    America’s heart Broken,

Chessman, Vietnam, Sirhan.

52% People thought the War
                         always had been a mistake,
                                        by April 1969. Gallup Poll.

May Day parade canceled for Prague
                         says Police Radio to
                                   the old King of May faraway—
SDS chanting thru consciousness megaphones
                                   in every university.

By now, Beatles & Beach Boys have
                         entered the Sublime
thru Acid The Crist of Kali Yuga, thru
                         Transcendental Meditation, Chanting Hare Krishna climbing Eiffel Tower,
Apollinaire & Mira Bai headless
               together with Kabir transmitted
over Apocalyptic Radios, their voice-
               vibrations roaring
thru a million loudspeakers in Green
               Autos on the world’s roads—
Matter become so thick, senses so sunk
               in Chickens & Insulation
“Love aint gonna die, I’m gonna haveta
               kill it”
god cries to himself, Christ merging with
               Krishna in Car Crash Salvation!

                    “Prosecutor John Howard called Sirhan a cold-blooded political
assassin with ‘no special claim to further preservation.’ ”
                                             Mao reelected Chinese Premier.

Where the Mullan Rd
               meets route 26
                         by 2 giant Sycamores
               approaching Hooper,
Has anyone here any “Special
                    claim to further preservation”?

These lambs grazing thru springtime
                                             by Cow Creek, quiet in
               American yellow light—
“Even J.C. couldn’t have saved me.”

Magpie, Meadowlark, rainbow
                              apparitions shafted transparent
                    down from gray cloud.

                              Dogs see
                                             in black & white.

A complete half-rainbow
               hill to hill across the highway
pots of gold anchoring the pretty bridge,
               tumbleweed passing underneath

“Saigon (AP) U.S. B52 bombers made their heaviest raids of the Vietnam War last night near the Cambodian border, dropping more than 2,000 tons of bombs along a 30 mile stretch Northwest of Saigon, the US COMMAND reported. ‘They are harassing enemy troops so as not to let them get organized,’ an American SPOKESMAN said.”

Czech student strikes unreported in Prague
Howard Marquette & George Washington U. sit-in:
Hail on new-plowed brown hilltops—
Black rainclouds and rainbows over Albion way—
Drive down valley to Main Street
                         Seattle First National Motor
                         next to Everybody’s Bank.

April 24, 1969

Sonora Desert-Edge

“Om Ah Hu? Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hu?”
—Drum H. from Gary S. from Tarthang Tulku

Brown stonepeaks rockstumps
                                             cloudless sunlight
Saguaro green arms praying up
                    spine ribs risen
                                             woodpecker-holed
                    nose-pricked limbs
                                   lifted salutation—
orange flower eyes lifted on
                    needly Ocotillo stalk
Jumping Cholla pistils closing pollened
                    eyebrow-vagina buds to the
                              poked pinkie—
Palo Verde smooth forked branch
                    above prickly-pear ears

Smoke plumed up white
          from scratched desert plain,
               chemical smoke, military copper
                    airplanes rotting,
                         4% Copper Smelter smog

—in wire cage, ivory hook-beaked
                         round black pupiled
               Bald Eagle’s head, tailfeathers
               hung below claw’d branch, symmetric
body plumes brown webbed like dollarbills,
               insecticides sterilized many
                                        adults

—green duck neck sheen spectral as
                         moon machines
Raven hopping curious black beaked
Coyote’s nose sensitive lifted to air
                         blinking eye sharp
as the rose bellied Cardinal’s ivory whistle

—tiny bright statues of Buddha
                    standing,                     blue desert valley haze—
                    cactus lessons in sentience,
Trees like mental carrots—Anaconda
                    smelters white plumesmoke in
                    San Manuel, or Phelps-Dodge
                    in Douglas?—
Yellow’d Creosote bushes in granular
                    dust, hills jeep tracked,
Prairie dogs stand quivering-spined in
                    cactus-shade. A museum,

                    minds in Ashramic City—tweetling
                         bird radios—Hopi Rain:

April 29, 1969

Reflections in Sleepy Eye
For Robert Bly

3,489 friendly people
Elm grove, willow, Blue Earth County’s
               red barns, tiny feoff with
               gas nozzle snout on hillock,
Large beetles & lizards—
                         orange-painted steel
                         cranes & truck cabs,
               Green seeder down-pointed
                         Science Toy earth-cock.

Thin floods, smooth planted acres
                         upturned, brown
               cornstubble plowed under,
               tractor pulling discs over fenced land.

Old box-alder fallen over
               on knees in pond-flood,
white painted gas tanks by
               Springfield’s rail yard woods,
                         tiny train parade by Meats
                         Groceries North Star Seeds
Our Flag at full mast
               TV antennae, large leafy antennaed
                         trees upstretched green,
                         trunks standing sunlit
               Sheep on stormfenced knoll,
                         green little wood acres—
               one forest from Canada to these
               plains—Corn silage in net bins,
                                   Windmills in Tracy,
                         Blue enamel silos cap’d
               aluminum, minarets in white sunbeam.

Cannabis excellent for drying lymph-
               glands, specific relief for
               symptoms of colds, flu,
                         ear pressure grippe &
               Eustachian tube clogging—
A tree, bent broken mid-trunk
                         branches to ground— Much land, few folk, excelsior grave
                                             yard stones
                         silver tipp’d phalloi to heaven—
Aum, Om, Ford, Mailbox
                                   telephone pole wire strung
                                   down road. Lake house
                                   fence poles, tree shade
                                             pine hill grave, Ah
Lake Benton’s blue waved waters—
                         finally, Time came to
                                   the brick barn! collapsed!
Old oak trunk sunk thick
                                             under ground.

Farm car plowman rolling discs,
                                   iron cuts smooth ground even,
                                             hill plains roll—
Cows browse under alder shoot,
               bent limbs arch clear brown
                         stream beds, trees stand
                                   on banks observing
shade, peculiar standing up or kneeling
                              groundward
Car graveyard fills eyes
               iron glitters, chrome fenders
                              rust—
White crosses, Vietnam War Dead
                                   churchbells ring
Cars, kids, hamburger stand
                              open, barn-smile
                                        white eye, door mouth.

May 9, 1969

Independence Day

Orange hawkeye stronger than thought winking above a thousand thin grassblades—

Dr. Hermon busted in Texas for green weed garden-grown

licensed Federal, Municipal-cop-prosecuted natheless—

Sweet chirrup from bush top to bush top, orange wing’d

birds’ scratch-beaked telegraphy signaled to and fro buttercup earlets—

warbles & sweet whistles swifting echo-noted by fly buzz,

jet-roar rolling down thru clouds—

So tiny a grasshopper climbing timothy stub the birds can’t tell they’re there—

intense soft leaf-spears budding symmetric,

breeze bending gentle flowerheads against yarrow their persons—

eyelids heavy, summer heavy with fear, mapletrunks heavy with green leafmass—

closed buds of hawkeye stronger than thought tremble on tall hairy stems.

•

Red shelled bedbugs crawl war sheets,

city garbage spoils wet sidewalks where children play—

A telephone call from Texas tells the latest police-state bust.

O Self tangled in TV wires, white judges and laws

your jet-thunder echoes in clouds, your DDT spread thru firmament waters poisons algae & brown pelican—

Smog veils Maya, paranoia walks great cities in blue suits with guns,

—are all these billion grassblades safe?

My stomach’s bitter, city haste & money loss—

Hawkeye stronger than thought! Horsefly and bee!

St. John’s wort nodding yellow bells at the sun! eyes close in your presence, I

lie in your soft green bed, watch light thru red lid-skin, language persistent as birdwarble in my brain.

Independence Day! the Cow’s deep moo’s an Aum!

                                             1969

In a Moonlit Hermit’s Cabin

Watching the White Image, electric moon, white mist drifting over woods

St. John’s Wort & Hawkeye wet with chance Yarrow on the green hillside

“D’ya want your Airline Transport Pilot to smoke grass? Want yr moonmen to smoke loco weed?”

What Comedy’s this Epic! The lamb lands on the Alcohol Sea—Deep voices

“A Good batch of Data”—The hours of Man’s first landing on the moon—

One and a Half Million starv’d in Biafra—Football players broadcast cornflakes—

TV mentioned America as much as Man—Brillo offers you free Moon-Map —2 labels—

And CBS repeats Man-Epic—Now here again is Walter Cronkite,

“How easy these words … a shiver down the old spine …

Russia soundly beaten! China one Fifth of Mankind, no word broadcast …”

The Queen watched the moon-landing at Windsor Castle—

Pulling a fast one on Hypnosis at Disneyland, the Kerchief-headed Crowd

Waving to the TV Camera—Ersatz Moon—

“No place gives you history today except the Moon”—

Running behind time entering Space Suits—

And a Moon-in at Central Sheep Meadow—

Western Electric’s solemn moment!

And rain in the woods drums on the old cabin!

I want! I want! a ladder from the depths of the forest night to the silvery moon-wink—

A flag on the reporter’s space-suit shoulder—

Peter Groaning & Cursing in bed, relieved of the lunatic burden at last—

’Tis Tranquillity base where the Tragedy will settle the Eve.

Alert for solar flares, clock ticks, static from Antennae—swift as death.

I didn’t think we’d see this Night.

Plant the flag and you’re doomed! Life a dream—slumber in eyes of woods,

Antennae scraping the ceiling. Static & Rain!

Saw the earth in Dream age 37, half cloud-wrapped, from a balcony in outer-space—

Méliès—giddiness—picture tube gaga—

“Men land on Sun!” decennial sentences—

Announcers going goofy muttering “142—”

Alone in space: Dump Pressure in the LEM!

Hare Krishna! Lift m’ Dorje on the kitchen table!

No Science Fiction expected this Globe-Eye Consciousness

Simultaneous with opening a hatch on Heaven.

A moth in the Déjà Vu!

This is the instant—open the hatch—every second is dust in the hourglass —Hatch open!

The Virus will grow green slime reptiles in sixty centuries,

& gobble up their fathers as we ate up God—

Imagine dying Tonight! Closing the eyes on the man in the Moon!

Sighing away forever… everyone got sleepy… On the moon porch—

A 38 year old human American standing on the surface of the moon—

Footprint on the Charcoal dust—stepped out

and it’s the old familiar Moon, as undersea or mountaintop, a place—

“Very pretty on the Moon!” oh, ’twere Solid Gold—

Voices calling “Houston to Moon”—Two “Americans” on the moon!

Beautiful view, bouncing the surface—“one quarter of the world denied these pix by their rulers”!

Setting up the flag!

                                             Cherry Valley, July Moon Day 1969

Rain-wet asphalt heat, garbage curbed cans overflowing

I hauled down lifeless mattresses to sidewalk refuse-piles,

old rugs stept on from Paterson to Lower East Side filled with bed-bugs,

gray pillows, couch seats treasured from the street laid back on the street

—out, to hear Murder-tale, 3rd Street cyclists attacked tonite—

Bopping along in rain, Chaos fallen over City roofs,

shrouds of chemical vapour drifting over building-tops—

Get the Times, Nixon says peace reflected from the Moon,

but I found no boy body to sleep with all night on pavements 3 A.M. home in sweating drizzle—

Those mattresses soggy lying by full five garbagepails—

Barbara, Maretta, Peter Steven Rosebud slept on these Pillows years ago,

forgotten names, also made love to me, I had these mattresses four years on my floor—

Gerard, Jimmy many months, even blond Gordon later,

Paul with the beautiful big cock, that teenage boy that lived in Pennsylvania,

forgotten numbers, young dream loves and lovers, earthly bellies—

many strong youths with eyes closed, come sighing and helping me come—

Desires already forgotten, tender persons used and kissed goodbye

and all the times I came to myself alone in the dark dreaming of Neal or Billy Budd

—nameless angels of half-life—heart beating & eyes weeping for lovely phantoms—

Back from the Gem Spa, into the hallway, a glance behind

and sudden farewell to the bedbug-ridden mattresses piled soggy in dark rain.

                              August 2, 1969

Death on All Fronts
                    “The Planet Is Finished”

A new moon looks down on our sick sweet planet
Orion’s chased the Immovable Bear halfway across the sky
from winter to winter. I wake, earlier in bed, fly corpses
cover gas lit sheets, my head aches, left temple
brain fibre throbbing for Death I Created on all Fronts.

Poisoned rats in the Chickenhouse and myriad lice
Sprayed with white arsenics filtering to the brook, City Cockroaches
stomped on Country kitchen floors. No babies for me.

Cut earth boys & girl hordes by half & breathe free
say Revolutionary expert Computers:
Half the blue globe’s germ population’s more than enough,
keep the cloudy lung from stinking pneumonia.

I called in Exterminator Who soaked the Wall floor with
bed-bug death-oil: Who’ll soak my brain with death-oil?

I wake before dawn, dreading my wooden possessions,
my gnostic books, my loud mouth, old loves silent, charms
turned to image money, my body sexless fat, Father dying,
Earth Cities poisoned at war, my art hopeless—
Mind fragmented—and still abstract—Pain in
left temple living death—
                                             Cherry Valley, September 26, 1969

Memory Gardens

covered with yellow leaves
                    in morning rain

—Quel Deluge
                    he threw up his hands
                              & wrote the Universe dont exist
                                        & died to prove it.

Full Moon over Ozone Park
                    Airport Bus rushing thru dusk to
                                             Manhattan,
Jack the Wizard in his
                                             grave at Lowell
for the first nite—
That Jack thru whose eyes I
                              saw
                         smog glory light
                              gold over Mannahatta’s spires
                    will never see these
                              chimneys smoking
anymore over statues of Mary
                              in the graveyard

Black misted canyons
                    rising over the bleak
                                   river
Bright doll-like ads
                    for Esso Bread—
Replicas multiplying beards
                    Farewell to the Cross—
Eternal fixity, the big headed
               wax painted Buddha doll
                    pale resting incoffined—

Empty-skulled New
                    York streets
Starveling phantoms
                    filling city—

Wax dolls walking park
                                             Ave,
Light gleam in eye glass
Voice echoing thru Microphones
Grand Central Sailor’s
                         arrival 2 decades later
                                   feeling melancholy—
Nostalgia for Innocent World
                    War II—
A million corpses running
                    across 42d street
Glass buildings rising higher
                         transparent
                                   aluminum—
artificial trees, robot sofas,
                         Ignorant cars—
One Way Street to Heaven.

•

Gray Subway Roar

A wrinkled brown faced fellow
                              with swollen hands
leans to the blinking plate glass
                         mirroring white poles, the heavy car
                         sways on tracks uptown to Columbia—
Jack no more’ll step off at Penn Station
                         anonymous erranded, eat sandwich
                         & drink beer near New Yorker Hotel or walk
under the shadow of Empire State.

Didn’t we stare at each other length of the car
                         & read headlines in faces thru Newspaper Holes?

Sexual cocked & horny bodied young, look
                         at beauteous Rimbaud & Sweet Jenny
                                   riding to class from Columbus Circle.

“Here the kindly dopefiend lived.”

and the rednecked sheriff beat the longhaired
                              boy on the ass.

—103d street Broadway, me & Hal abused for sidewalk
                              begging twenty-five years ago.

Can I go back in time & lay my head on a teenage
                         belly upstairs on 110th Street?

or step off the iron car with Jack
                         at the blue-tiled Columbia sign?

at last the old brown station where I had
a holy vision’s been rebuilt, clean ceramic
over the scum & spit & come of quarter century.

•

Flying to Maine in a trail of black smoke
Kerouac’s obituary conserves Time’s
                                        Front Paragraphs—
Empire State in Heaven Sun Set Red,
                              White mist in old October
over the billion trees of Bronx—
                                   There’s too much to see—
Jack saw sun set red over Hudson horizon
                         Two three decades back
thirtynine fortynine fiftynine
                                             sixtynine
John Holmes pursed his lips,
                                             wept tears.

Smoke plumed up from oceanside chimneys
                              plane roars toward Montauk
                                        stretched in red sunset—
Northport, in the trees, Jack drank
                              rot gut & made haiku of birds
                                        tweetling on his porch rail at dawn—
Fell down and saw Death’s golden lite
                                        in Florida garden a decade ago.

Now taken utterly, soul upward,
                                   & body down in wood coffin
                                             & concrete slab-box.

I threw a kissed handful of damp earth
                                   down on the stone lid
                                             & sighed
                              looking in Creeley’s one eye,
Peter sweet holding a flower
                              Gregory toothless bending his
                                   knuckle to Cinema machine— and that’s the end of the drabble tongued
                              Poet who sounded his Kock-rup
                                        throughout the Northwest Passage.

Blue dusk over Saybrook, Holmes
                                        sits down to dine Victorian—
& Time has a ten-page spread on
                              Homosexual Fairies!

Well, while I’m here I’ll
                         do the work—
and what’s the Work?

               To ease the pain of living.

Everything else, drunken
                                        dumbshow.

October 22–29, 1969

Flash Back

In a car Gray smoke over Elmira
The vast boy reformatory brick factory
Valed below misty hills 25 years ago
I sat with Joe Army visiting and murmured green Grass.

Jack’s just not here anymore, Neal’s ashes
Loneliness makes old men moan, God’s solitude,
O women shut up, yelling for baby meat more.

November 10, 1969

Graffiti 12th Cubicle Men’s Room Syracuse Airport
11 November 1969

I am married and would like to fuck someone else
Have a strange piece (Go Home)
USN ’69
I want to suck a big cock Make Date
Support Third World Struggle Against US Imperialism
I fucked Mom and got VD
All power to the Viet Cong!
Yeah! Max Voltage up the Ass!! O
Perhaps Man needs—But to kill is only brown butter Wax
April 20, 1965 Mike Heck & Salena Bennett
Keep on Chugglin
Eat prunes and be a regular guy.

I would like to suck a big cock.

So would I.

War is good business Invest your son.

Help me J.P.

John Wayne flunked basic training.

Pat Miller ’69 Home on Leave
My wife sucks cock.

Chickenman Lives Yes somewhere in Argentina
Peace & Love Sucks
I want a blow job Who do I call
What if someone gave a war & Nobody came?

Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be Itself again.

J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. is a Voyeur.

Man, I’m really stoned out of my skull really O-Zoned—good old LSD the colors in here are so nice really fine colors and the floor tile is really outasight if you haven’t tried it you ought to since it is the only way to really get your head together by first getting it apart LSD Forever.

CH₂CH₂N(CH₃)₂

After Thoughts

When he kissed my nipple
               I felt elbow bone thrill—
When lips touched my belly
               tickle ran up to my ear
When he took my cock head to tongue
               a tremor shrunk sphincter, joy
                         shuddered my reins
I breathed deep sighing ahh!

•

Mirror looking, combing
               gray glistening beard
Were I found sharp eyed
               attractive to the young?

Bad magic or something—
Foolish magic most likely.

November 1969

G. S. Reading Poesy at Princeton

Gold beard combd down like chinese fire gold hair braided at skullnape—

gold turning silver soon—worn face young forehead wrinkled, deep-boned smile,

tiny azure earring, turquoise finger stone, Paramita beads centered by ivory skull-nut—

On Deer Mountain, in ship’s iron belly, sat crosslegged on Princeton couch,

body voice rumbling Bear Sutra to younger selves—her long hair to rug, dungareed legs lotus-postured;

or that half-Indian boy his face so serious woe’d by tree suffering he’s

more compassionate to bear, skunk, deer, coyote, hemlock, whale

than to his own new-sprung cock. O Lizard Dharma

what doth breath, that Aums thru elm bough & rock canyon loud as thru mammal skull hummed,

hymn to bone-chaliced minds now multiplied over planet colleges

so many, with such hollow cheek gaze-eye tenderness, Fitzgerald himself’d weep to see

student faces celestial, longhaired angelic Beings planet-doomed to look thru too many human eyes—?

Princeton in Eternity! Long years fall, December’s woods in snow

Old poets half century ago their bones cracked up in death

alcohol trembling in immortal eyes, Fitzgerald & Kerouac weeping, on earth once—

earth’s voice moves time, old vows and prophecies remembered, mountain prayers repeated,

Gary’s voice echoes hollow under round electric lamps.

1970

Friday the Thirteenth

Blasts rip Newspaper Gray Mannahatta’s mid day Air Spires,

Plane roar over cloud, Sunlight on blue fleece-mist,

I travel to die, fellow passengers silk-drest & cocktailed burn oil NY to Chicago—

Blasting sky with big business, billion bodied Poetry Commerce,

all Revolution & Consumption, Manufacture & Communication

Bombburst, vegetable pie, rubber donut sex accessory & brilliant TV Jet-plane CIA Joke Exorcism Fart Mantra

or electronic war Laos to AID Gestapo training in Santo Domingo

equally massacre grass, exhaust flower power in coal factory smokedust

—O how beautiful snowy fields earth-floored below cloud-holes

glimpsed from air-roads smogged thru heavens toward Illinois—

What right have I to eat petrol guns & metal from earth heart

What right have I to burn gas air, screech overground rubber tired round midnight stoplight corners in Peoria, Fort Wayne, Ames—

What prayer restores freshness to eastern meadow, soil to cindered acres, hemlock to rusty hillside,

transparency to Passaic streambed, Blue whale multitudes to coral gulfs—

What mantra bring back my mother from Madhouse, Private Brakefield from Leavenworth, Neal from the Streets of Hades,

Hampton, King, Gold, murdered suicided millions from the War-torn fields of Sheol

where bodies twitch arm from leg torn heart beat spasmed brainless in dynamite Napalm rubble Song-My to West 11th Street Manhattan

as war bomb-blast burns along neckbone-fused nations Hanoi to Chicago Tu-Do to Wall Street,

Dynamite metastasis heading toward earth-brain cankering human world forms—

Banks burn, boys die bullet-eyed, mothers scream realization the vast tonnage of napalm

rolling down Grand Concourse, Fragmentation nails bounced off Haiphong walls

rattling machine-gunned down Halstead, the Karma of State Violence

washing terror-waves round earth-globe back to suburb TV home night kitchens

The image 3 years ago, prophetic shriek of electric screen dots bursting thru bathroom walls,

tile & pipes exploded in NY as on Saigon’s Embassy Street

—“Northrop is favorite in hot bidding on a jet fighter for a fat market overseas”—Business Week March 7, 1970

Earth pollution identical with Mind pollution, consciousness Pollution identical with filthy sky,

dirty-thoughted Usury simultaneous with metal dust in water courses

murder of great & little fish same as self besmirchment short hair thought control,

mace-repression of gnostic street boys identical with DDT extinction of Bald Eagle—

Mothers’ milk poisoned as fathers’ thoughts, all greed-stained over the automobile-body designing table—

What can Poetry do, how flowers survive, how man see right mind multitude, hear his heart’s music, feel cockjoys, taste

ancient natural grain-bread and sweet vegetables, smell his own baby body’s tender neck skin

when 60% State Money goes to heaven on gas clouds burning off War Machine Smokestacks?

When Violence floods the State from above, flowery land razed for robot proliferation

metal rooted & asphalted down 6 feet below topsoil,

then when bombcarrying children graduate from Grammar-school’s sex-drenched gymnasia

terrified of Army Finance Meatbones, busted by cops for grassy hair,

Who can prophesy Peace, or vow Futurity for any but armed insects,

steeltip Antennaed metal soldiers porting white eggbombs where genitals were,

Blue-visor’d spray-bugs, gasmasked legions in red-brick Armory Nests—

(bearded spiders ranged under attick & roof with home-brew Arsenic mercury dung plastic readied for the Queen Bee’s Immolation

in Sacramento, Trenton, Phoenix, Miami?)

The State set off a plague of bullets bombs & burning words

two decades back, & seeded Asia with Mind-thoughts excreted in Washington bathrooms—

now the Great Fear’s rolled round the world & washes over Newspaper Gray air

rolling waved through cloud-smogbanks in Heaven

as the gas-burning TWA Jet house crashes thru sound barriers over Manhattan.

Chicago Chicago Chicago Trials, screams, tears, Mace, coalgas, Mafia highways—old Massacres in suburb garages!

Autos turn to water City Halls melt in Aeon-flood,

Police & revolutionaries pass as gas cloud by eagle wing.

“What’s your name?” asks badge-man as machines eat all Name & Form,

History’s faster than thought, poetry obsolete in tiny decades tho maybe slow tunes dance eternal—

war language comes, bombblasts last a minute, coalmines exhaust earth-heart,

Chicago suburb blocks stretch new-bared earthskin under sun eye,

autos speed myriad thru gray air to jet port.

Slaves of Plastic! Leather-shoe chino-pants prisoners! Haircut junkies! Dacron-sniffers!

Striped tie addicts! short hair monkeys on their backs! Whiskey freaks bombed out on 530 billion cigarettes a year—

twenty Billion dollar advertising Dealers! lipstick skin-poppers & syndicate

Garbage telex-Heads!

Star-striped scoundrelesque flag-dopers! Car-smog hookers Fiendish on superhighways!

Growth rate trippers hallucinating Everglade real estate! Steak swallowers zonked on Television!

Old ladies on Stockmarket habits—old Wall Street paper Money-pushers!

Central Intelligence cutting Meo opium fields! China Lobby copping poppies in Burma!

How long this Addict government support our oil-burner matter-habit

shooting gasoline electric speed before the blue light blast & eternal Police-roar Mankind’s utter bust?

Robot airfields soulless Market electronic intelligence business skyscraper streets

empty-soul’d, exploding.

Sheer matter crackling, disintegrating back to void,

Sunyatta & Brahma undisturbed, Maya-cities blow up like Chinese firecrackers,

Samsara tears itself apart—Dusk over Chicago, light-glitter along boulevards,

insect-eyed autos moving slow under blue streetlamps,

plane motor buzz in eardrum, city cloud roof filling with gray gas on up into clear heaven—planet horizon auroral twilight-streaked,

blue space above human truck-moil, Empty sky

Empty mind overhangs Chicago, the universe suspended entire overhanging

Chicago.

O Jack thou’st scaped true deluge.

Smart cock, to turn to shade, I drag hairy meat loss thru blood-red sky

down thru cloud-floor to Chicago, sunset fire obliterate in black gas.

                                             March 13, 1970

Anti-Vietnam War Peace Mobilization

White sunshine on sweating skulls
Washington’s Monument pyramided high granite clouds
over a soul mass, children screaming in their brains on quiet grass
(black man strapped hanging in blue denims from an earth cross)—
Soul brightness under blue sky
Assembled before White House filled with mustached Germans
& police buttons, army telephones, CIA Buzzers, FBI bugs
Secret Service walkie-talkies, Intercom squawkers to Narco
Fuzz & Florida Mafia Real Estate Speculators.

One hundred thousand bodies naked before an Iron Robot
Nixon’s brain Presidential cranium case spying thru binoculars
from the Paranoia Smog Factory’s East Wing.

May 9, 1970

Ecologue

In a thousand years, if there’s History
America’ll be remembered as a nasty little Country
full of Pricks, thorny hothouse rose
Cultivated by the Yellow Gardeners.

“Chairman Mao” for all his politics, head of a Billion
                                        folk, important old & huge
                              Nixon a dude, specialized on his industrial
                                        Island, a clean paranoiac Mechanic—
Earth rolling round, epics on archaic tongues
                                        fishermen telling island tales—
all autos rusted away,
                                        trees everywhere.

•

Rough Wind roar, mapletop mass
                         shaking in window,
                                             a panic Cry from the garden
                         Bessie Cow’s loose near the Corn!

The little dakini playing her bells
                         & listening to late baritone Dylan
               dancing in the living room’s forgot almost
                         th’electric supply’s vanishing
                                   from the batteries in the pasture.

Chairs shifting downstairs, kitchen voices
               Smell of apples & tomatoes bubbling on the stove.

Behind the Chicken house, dirt flies from the shovel
               hour after hour, tomorrow they’ll be a big hole.

The editor sleeps in his bed, morning Chores are done,
               Clock hands move noonward, pig roots by flagstone
                              pathways, papers & letters lie quiet
                                             on many desks.

                    Books everywhere, Kabbalah, Gnostic Fragments, Mahanirvana & Hevajra Tantras, Boehme Blake & Zohar, Gita & Soma Veda, somebody reads—one cooks, another digs a pighouse foundation, one chases a Cow from the vegetable garden, one dances and sings, one writes in a notebook, one plays with the ducks, one never speaks, one picks the guitar, one moves huge rocks.

The wind charger’s propeller
                         whirs & trees rise windy
one maple at woods edge’s turned red.

Chickens bathe in dust at the house wall,
rabbit at fence bends his nose to a handful of Cornsilk,
                                             fly lights on windowsill.

At the end of a long chain, Billy makes a Circle in grass
               by the fence, I approach
                              he stands still with long red stick
                                        stretched throbbing between hind legs
                    Spurts water a minute, turns his head down
                              to look & lick his thin pee squirt—
                         That’s why he smells goat like.

Horse by barbed wire licking salt,
                              lifts his long head & neighs
                    as I go down by willow thicket
                              to find the 3-day-old heifer.

At bed in long grass, wet brown fur—
her mother stands, nose covered with a hundred flies.

The well’s filled up—
                    the Cast-iron ram
                         that pushes water uphill
                              by hydraulic pressure
                                        flowed from gravity
Can be set to motion soon,
                         & water flow in kitchen sink tap.

some nights in sleeping bag
               Cricket zinging networks dewy meadows,
               white stars sparkle across black sky,
falling asleep I listen & watch
               till eyes close, and wake silent—
                         at 4 A.M. the whole sky’s moved,
a Crescent moon lamps up the woods.

& last week one Chill night
                         summer disappeared—
          little apples in old trees red,
                         tomatoes red & green on vines,
green squash huge under leafspread,
                         corn thick in light green husks,
sleepingbag wet with dawn dews
               & that one tree red at woods’ edge!

Louder wind! ther’ll be electric to play the Beatles!

At summer’s end the white pig got so fat
                         it weighed more than Georgia
                                   Ray Bremser’s 3-year-old baby.

          Scratch her named Dont Bite Me under hind leg,
               she flops over on her side sweetly grunting,
               nosing in grass tuft roots, soft belly warm.

Eldridge Cleaver exiled w/ bodyguards in Algiers
Leary sleeping in an iron cell,
                    John Sinclair a year jailed in Marquette
Each day’s paper more violent—
                         War outright shameless bombs
                                        Indochina to Minneapolis—
                         a knot in my belly to read between lines,
                                        lies, beatings in jail—
                                        Short breath on the couch—
                              desolation at dawn in bed—
                                             Wash dishes in the sink, drink tea, boil an egg—
                                   brood over Cities’ suffering millions two
                                             hundred miles away
                                        down the oilslicked, germ-Chemicaled
                                             Hudson river.

Ed Hermit comes down hill
                         breaks off a maple branch
                         & offers fresh green leaves to the pink eyed rabbit.

Under birch, yellow mushrooms
                    sprout between grassblades & ragweed—
               Eat ’em & you die or get high & see God—
                    Waiting for the exquisite mycologist’s visit.

Winter’s coming, build a rough wood crib
                    & fill it with horse dung, hot horse dung,
                              all round the house sides.

Bucolics & Eclogues!
                    Hesiod the beginning of the World,
                              Virgil the end of his World—
          & Catullus sucked cock in the country
                         far from the Emperor’s police.

Empire got too big, cities too crazy, garbage-filled Rome
                    full of drunken soldiers, fat politicians,
                                        circus businessmen—
          Safer, healthier life on a farm, make yr own wine
                              in Italy, smoke yr own grass in America.

Pond’s down two feet from drainpipe’s rusty top—
Timothy turned brown, covered with new spread manure
                    sweet-smelt in strong breeze,
                              it’ll be covered in snow couple months.

               & Leary covered in snow in San Luis Obispo jail?

               His mind snowflakes falling over the States.

Did Don Winslow the mason come look at the basement
               So we can insulate a snug root cellar
                    for potatoes, beets, carrots,
               radishes, parsnips, glass jars of corn & beans
Did the mortician come & look us over for next Winter?

Black flies walking up and down the metal screen,
                                             fly’s leg tickling my forehead—
                                        “I’ll play a fly’s bone flute
                                        & beat an ant’s egg drum”
                                             sang the Quechua Injun
                                             high on Huilca snuff, Medieval
                                             Peruvian DMT.

Phil Whalen in Japan
                              stirring rice, eyes in the garden,
                                             fine pen nib lain by notebook.

Jack in Lowell farming worms, master of his
                                   minuscule deep acre.

Neal’s ashes sitting under a table piled with
                              books, in an oak drawer,
                                             sunlight thru suburb windows.

O wind! spin the generator wheel, make Power Juice
To run the New Exquisite Noise Recorder, & I’ll sing
                         praise of your tree music.

Squash leaves wave & ragweeds lean, black tarpaulin
                    plastic flutters over the bass-wood lumber pile
               Hamilton Fish’s Congressional letter
                         reports “Stiffer laws against peddling smut”
                    flapping in dusty spiderwebs by the windowscreen.

What’s the Ammeter read by the Windmill? Will
                    we record Highest Perfect Wisdom all day tomorrow,
                                   or Blake’s Schoolboy uninterrupted next week?

Fine rain-slant showering the gray porch
                    Returnable Ginger Ale Bottles
                              on the wood rail, white paint flaked
                                        off into orange flowered
                                             blossoms

Out in the garden, rain
                    all over the grass, leaves, roofs,
                                   rain on the laundry.

•

Night winds hiss thru maple black masses
Gas light shine from
                         farmhouse window upstairs
               empty kitchen wind
Cassiopeia zigzag
                              Milky Way thru cloud
                                             September 4

The baby pig screamed and screamed
                              four feet rigid on grass
                              screamed and screamed
                                             Oh No! Oh No!

                    jaw dripping blood
                                             broken by the horse’s hoof.

Slept in straw all afternoon, eyes closed,
                                        snout at rest between paws—
                              ate hog mash liquid—two weeks
                                             and his skull be healed
                                        said the Vet in overalls.

That bedraggled duck’s sat under the door
                    June to Labor Day, three hatched
                                   yellow chicks’ dry fur bones found
                                             by the garage side—
                    two no-good eggs left, nights chillier—
                                   Next week, move her nest
                                             to the noisy chickenhouse.

We buried lady dog by the apple tree—
                    spotted puppy daughter Radha
                              sniffed her bloated corpse, flies
                                             whisping round eyeball & dry nostril,
                              sweet rot-smell, stiff legs, anus puffed out,
                    Sad Eyes chased the milk truck & got killed.

               How many black corpses they found in the river
               looking for Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner?

Man and wife, they weep in the attic
                    after bitter voices,
                                        low voices threatening.

                              Broken Legs in Vietnam!
                              Eyes staring at heaven,
                                             Eyes weeping at earth.

               Millions of bodies in pain!
                                   Who can live with this Consciousness
                                   and not wake frightened at sunrise?

The Farm’s a lie!
                    Madmen growing giant organic zucchini
                              mulching asparagus, boiling tomatoes for Winter,
                                   drying beans, pickling cucumbers
                              sweet & garlicked, salting cabbage for sauerkraut,
                                   canning fresh corn & tossing Bessie husks—

          Marie Antoinette had milkmaid costumes ready,
                    Robespierre’s eyeball hung on his cheek
                              in the tumbril to guillotine—

                    Black Panther’s teeth knocked out in Paterson,
                                   red blood clotted on black hairy skin—
                                             Millions of bodies in pain!

One by one picked orange striped soft potato bugs off
                                             withered brown leaves
                              dropped them curl’d up in kerosene,
                              or smeared them on ground with small stones—

Moon rocket earth photo, peacock colored,
                                             tacked to the wood wall,
                                        globe in black sky
                                             living eyeball bathed in cloud swirls—
                                             Is Earth herself frightened?

Does she know?

Oh No! Oh No! the Continuous scream
                              of the pig
                                        Don’t Bite Me in the backyard,
                                        bloody jawbone askew.

Uphill on pine forest floor
                    Indian peace pipes curl’d up thru dry needles,
                    half translucent fungus, half metal blossom

Frog sat half out on mud shallows’
                                             minnow-rippling surface,
                                             & stared at our Universe—
So many fish frog, insect ephemera, swamp fern
                                   —So many Ezekiel-wheeled Dragonflies
                                             hovering over old Hemlock root moss—
                                   They wont even know when humans go

Waking 2 A.M. clock tick
                              What was I dreaming
                    my body alert
                    Police light down this dirt road?

                    Justice Dogs sniffing field for Grass Seeds?

Would they find a little brown mushroom button
                                             tossed out my window?

                    BI read this haiku?

Four in the morning
                                        rib thrill eyes open—
                                             Deep hum thru the house—
                                        Windmill Whir? Hilltop Radar Blockhouse?

                              Valley Traffic 5 miles downtown?

               When’ll Policecar Machinery assemble
                                             outside State pine woods?

     Head out window—bright Orion star line,
                    Pleiades and Dipper shining silent—

Bathrobe flashlight, uproad Milky Way
                    Moved round the house this month
                    —remember Taurus’ Horn up there last fall?

White rabbit on goat meadow, got over the chickenwire?

          Hop away from flash light? Wait till Godly
                                             Dog wakes up!
Come back! He’ll bite you! Here’s a green beet leaf!
                                             Pwzxst! Pwzxst! Pwzxst!

Attic window lit between trees,
                    Clouds drift past the sickle moon—
Tiny lights in the dark sky
                                             Stars & Crickets everywhere
                                        Electric whistle-blinks
                                             tweedle-twinks
                                             Squeak-peeks
                                             Locust planet
                                             zephyr sizzle
                                             Squinks—
Grasshoppers in cold dewy fall grass
                                             Singing lovesongs as they die.

•

Morning, the white rabbit stiff, eyes closed,
                         lain belly up in grass, tooth nosed,
                                        beside the manure pile—dig a hole
                         —Shoulda introduced him to dogs in daylight—

Cripple Jack drove up
                         to judge the ducks—
                                             All eggs sterile,
                    smashed on rock, wet guts
                                             & rotted-throat smell—
                    Bedraggled duck mother,
                                             dragged off straw nest
                                             & pecking skin at my wrist,
                                        All afternoon walked up and down quacking
                                             thru chickenwire fence

Pig on her side woke up,
                         slurped beet juice, rooted at porch wood
               ignorant of broken head bones—

Morning dew, papery leafs & sharp blossoms
                         of sunflower ripped off battered stalks,
               Who’d do that!? Too late
                         to fix the barbed wire fence,
                         intelligent Bessie Cow strays in the moonlight.

Leary’s climbed the chainlink fence & two strands of
                                             barbedwire too
                                        This weekend, “Armed & Dangerous,”
                                             Signed with Weathermen!
                                        Has Revolution begun? World War III?

May no Evil Eye peek thru window, keyhole or
                                        gunsight at his white haired face!

Now’s halfmoon over America,
                         leaves tinged red fall blush scattered overhill,
                         down pasture singular trees orange foreheads think
                                             Autumn time in pines—
                         The maple at woods’ edge fire-red’s brighter
Australian Aborigines’ Eternal Dream Time’s come true—
Usta be bears on East Hill; fox under old Hemlock,
Usta be otter—even woolly mammoths in Eternal
                                             dream time—
Leary’s out in the woods of the world—cockroaches immune
                                             to radiation?

Richard Nixon has means to end human Worlds,
                                             Man has machines for Suicide,

Pray for Timothy Leary in the planet’s Woods!
                                             Om Mani Padme Hu?

                                             & Hare Krishna!
“ As we forgive those who trespass against us,
                                             Thy Will be done
                                             on Earth as in Heaven”
                                   Oh Bessie you ate my unborn sunflowers!
“God never repeats himself” Harry Smith telephoned tonite.

We may not come back, Richard Nixon.

                    We may not come back, dear hidden Tim.

Will Peter fix the sink’s hand pump? the basement freeze?

Backyard grasses stink, if kitchen drains
                                   to septic tank, will Bacteria die
                                             of soap, Ammonia & Kerosene?

Get rid of that old tractor or fix it!
                                   Cardboard boxes rotten in garageside rain!
Old broken City desks under the appletree! Cleanum
                                        up for firewood!
Where can we keep all summer’s bottles?

               Gas pumps, broken mandolins, old tires—
                                             Ugly backyard—Shelf the garage!
Where stack lumber handy to eye?

Electric generator money? Where keep mops in Wintertime?

Leary fugitive, Sinclair sent up for a decade—
               though 83% of World’s illegal opium’s fixed
          in Central Intelligence Agency’s Indochinese Brain!
               Fed State Local Narcs peddle junk—
                              Nixon got a hard hat from Mafia,
Pentagon Public Relations boodle’s 190 million A.D. 1969.

                         J. E. Hoover’s a sexual blackmailer,
                                             Times pities “idealistic students”
                                             Police killed 4 Blacks in New Orleans
Fascism in America:—
     i.e. Police control Cities, not Mayors or philosophers—
          Police, & Police alone, cause most crime.

Preventive Detention now law in D.C.

Mexico & Senegal close borders to Adam Longhair

So many apples in abandoned orchards,
                                   and such fresh sweet Cider, supper tonite—
                                             onions & cabbage fried on iron—
                                   groundwells overflow, hydraulic ram
                                             works steady again,
Eclogues! the town laundry’s detergent phosphate
                    glut’s foul’d clear Snyders Creek—
                    I have a beautiful boy in the house,
                    learn keyboard notation, chords, & improvise
                         freely on Blake’s mantras at midnite.

Hesiod annaled Beginnings
                    I annal ends for No man.

Hail to the Gods, who are given Consciousness.

Hail to Men Conscious of the Gods!

Electric tempest!
                              Entire hillsides turned wet gold,
                              Leaf death’s begun, universal September
                                             Emerges in old maples
Goat bells near the house, not much in the
                              garden they can eat now anyway,
               & cow got beet tops and mangles already—
                                             What do dogs hear?

Birds squeak & chatter as Rooster call
                    echoes round house wall

Civilization’s breaking down! Freezertray’s
                         lukewarm, who knows why?

The year-old Toilet’s leaking at the heel—Wind
               Charger’s so feeble batteries are almost down—
Hundreds of black spotted tomatoes
               waiting near the kitchen wood stove
“Useless! useless! the heavy rain driving into the sea!”
Kerouac, Cassady, Olson ash & earth, Leary the Irish
                                   coach on the lam,
Black Magicians screaming in anger Newark to Algiers,
How many bottles & cans piled up in our garbage pail?

Fall 1970

Guru Om

October 4, 1970

Car wheels roar over freeway concrete

Night falls on Dallas, two buildings shine under sickle moon

Many boys and girls in jail for their bodies poems and bitter thoughts

My belly’s hollow breath sighs up thru my heart

Guru Om Guru Om enlarges in the vast space of the breast

The Guru has a man’s brown belly and cock long hair white beard short hair orange hat no person

The bliss alone no business for my body but to make Guru Om dwell near my heart

shall I telephone New York and tell my fellows where I am silent

shall I ring my own head & order my own voice to be silent but

How giant, silent and feather-soft is the cave of my body eyes closed

To enter the body is difficult, the belly’s full of bad smelling wind

the body’s digesting last weekend’s meat thinking of Cigarettes, bright eyes of boys

What Acid eight hours equals eight hours’ Om continuous attention—

the Guru is equal to the Om of the Seeker

Guru Guru Guru Guru Guru Guru Guru Sitaram Omkar Das Thakur thin voic’d recommended “Give up desire for children”

Dehorahava Baba sat on the Ganges and described eat & drinking pranayam

Nityananda floated thru his giant photo body

Babaji’s hand the hand of a dead man in my dead man’s fingers

Out the plane window brown gas rises to heaven’s blue sea

—how end the poetry movie in the mind?

how tell Kabir Blake & Ginsberg shut their ears?

Folded in silence invisible Guru waits to fill his body with Emptiness

I am leaving the world, I will close my eyes & rest my tongue and hand.

October 5, 1970

To look in the City without hatred

the orange moon edge sunk into blue Cloud

a second night autos roar to and fro Downtown towers’ horizon

airplane moving between moon and white-lit bank towers

lightning haze above twinkling-bulbed man city flats

It is mind-City risen particularly solid.

What elder age grew such cities visioned from these far towers’ windows

Seraph armchaired in Babylonic Déjà Vu from Hilton Inn?

October 6, 1970

Dallas buildings’ heaped rock tangled steel electric lit under quarter moon

Cars crash at dusk at Mockingbird Lane, Drugstore Supermarket signs revolve with dumb beckoning persistence over North Central Freeway

Leary leaped over the wall with a sword, Errol Flynn’s in the grave, flags & bombs fly over Dallas’ stock exchange

oil flows thru the Hilton Faucets, gasoline fumes smother Neem trees in Ganeshpuri—

Maya revolves on rubber wheels, Samsara’s glass buildings light up with neon, Illusion’s doors open on aluminum hinges—

my mother should’ve done asanas & Kundalini not straightjackets & Electroshock in the birthdays of Roosevelt’s FBI—

Where in the body’s the white thumbsize subtle corpus, in the neck they say

where’s the half-thumbjoint black causal body, down in the heart hidden?

where’s the lentil-sized Cosmic Corpse, a tiny blue speck in the navel?

All beings at war in the Gross body, armor’d Cars & Napalm, rifles & grass huts burning, Mace on Wall Street, tear gas flooding the fallen stockmarket.

Look in halls of the head, nervous leg halls, universe inside Chest dark baby kingdom in the skull.

“Have You Seen This Movie?”

Old maple hairytrunks root asphalt grass marge, November branches rare leaved,

Giant woodlegged wiretowers’ threads stretch above pond woods highway, white sun fallen hills West.

Car rolling underpass, radio hornvoice “the sight of Bobby Seale bound & gagged at Trial” denied lawyer presum’d innocent?

MDA Love Drug Cure Junk Habit? Rochester Exit one mile flashing out Volkswagen window—

Blue sky fring’d with clouds’ whale-ghost-blue schools north drift—

High, high Manson sighed on Trial, how many folk in jail for grass Ask Congressman?

Highway Crash! Politics! Police! Dope! armed robbery Customary E. 10th street, no insurance possible.

—Brown deer tied neat footed dead eye horned across blue Car trunk, old folks Front seat, they’re gonna eat it!

Help! Hurrah! What’s Going on here? Samsara? Illusion? Reality?

What’re all these trailers row’d up hillside, more people? How can Lyca sleep?

Cows on Canandaigua fields lactate into rubber stainless steel plastic milk-house machinery vats ashine—

Revolutionary Suicide! Driving on Persian gasoline?

Kill Whale & ocean? Oh one American myself shits 1000 times more Chemical waste into freshwater & seas than any single Chinaman!

America Suicide Cure World Cancer! Myself included dependent on Chemicals, wheels, dollars,

metal Coke Cans Liquid propane batteries marijuana lettuce avocados cigarettes plastic pens & milkbottles—electric

in N.Y.C. heavy habit, cut airconditioners isolation from street nightmare smog heat study decentralized Power sources 10 years

not atomic thermopollutive monolith. Om. How many species poisoned biocided from Earth realms?

O bald Eagle & Blue Whale with giant piteous Cat Squeak—Oh Wailing whale ululating underocean’s sonic roar of Despair!

Sing thy Kingdom to Language deaf America! Scream thy black Cry thru Radio electric Aether—

Scream in Death America! Or did Captain Ahab not scream Curses as he hurled harpoon

into the body of the mother, great White Whale Nature Herself,

thrashing in intelligent agony innocent vast in the oil-can sick waters?

All Northvietnam bomb-Cratered ruined topsoil Laos in secrecy more bombs than many W W II’s!

Mekong swamp lethicided by Monsanto Pentagon Academy Death-brains!

What wisdom teaching this? What Mafia runs N.J.? What Mafia knew J. Edgar FBI?

What’s Schenley’s Whiskey trader Fleischmann’s Hoover Institute?

What opium’s passed thru CIA Agents’ airplane’s luggage in Saigon, Bangkok, Athens, Washington?

What narcotic agent’s not dependent on Shit for a living?

What Bank’s money created ex nihil serves orphan, widow, monk, philosopher?

or what Bank’s money serves real Estate Asphalt over widow’s garden? Serves old Nick in the Pentagon?

Old Indian prophecies believe Ghost Dance peace will Come restore prairie Buffalo or great White Father Honkie

be trampled to death in his dreams by returning herds’ thundering reincarnation!

Oh awful Man! What have we made the world! Oh man capitalist exploiter of Mother Planet!

Oh vain insect sized men with metal slaves by Great Lake Erie, tenderest Passaic & Hudson poisoned by dollars!

bid tampering probed in lackawanna Buffalo News headline folded on rubber floor, car vibrating smooth to sun ruddy woods’ dusk quiet—

Radio hissing cough words dashboard noisemusic—Any minute Apocalypse Rock!

Brown Pelican eggs softened by DDT. Seal’s livers poisoned to Northman. Oceans Dead 2000 A.D.?

Television Citizen 6% Earths human Americans ingest half the planet’s raw matter as alchemized by Syracuse Gen. Electric Power brown robot palace near 8 Lane Thruway’s Exit before Ramada Inn.

HXL Trucks sleeping on brokenearthed embankment past Iron-strutted passages,

fields aglitter with damp metallic garbage under th’electricwire trestles—

And woods survive into another Thanksgiving’s brown sacred silence—

Lights on cars front Western Lane gray twilight falls on rolling robotland.

November 1970

Milarepa Taste

Who am I? Saliva,
                         vegetable soup,
                                   empty mouth?

Hot roach, breathe smoke
                         suck in, hold, exhale—
                                        light as ashes.

Over Laramie

Western Air boat bouncing
     under rainclouds stippled
          down gray Rockies
                    Springtime dusk,
Look out on Denver, Allen,
          mourn Neal no more,
     Old ghost loves departed
     New lives whelm the plains, rains
          wash Rocky mountainsides
World turns under sun eye
     Man flies a moment Cheyenne’s
          dry upland highways
A tiny fossil brachiapod in pocket
     Precambrian limestone clam
                    fingernail small
four hundred fifty million years old

Brain gone, flesh passed thru myriad
     phantom reincarnations,
the tiny-ridged shell’s delicate
                    as hardened thought.

—over Laramie, Front Range
     pine gully snow pockets,
Monolith Cement plume smoke
     casting dust gas over
          the red plateau
     into the New World.

April 12, 1971

Bixby Canyon to Jessore Road (1971)
Bixby Canyon Ocean Path Word Breeze

Tiny orange-wing-tipped butterfly
fluttering sunlit
from violet
blossom to violet
blossom

Ocean is private
you have to visit
her to see her
Garden undercliff
     Dewey Pinks,
          bitter Mint,
     Sea Sage,
          Orange flaming
               Paintbrush
     greenspiked fleurs,
     Thick dainty stalked
          Cow Parsley,
     Starleaf’d violet bushes,
     yelloweyed blue
          Daisy clump—
red brambled mature sour
               blackberry briars,
yellow budded
               Lupine
     nodding stalkheads
     in Sunwarm’d
               breezes
by the brooks tricklet
     wash in the ravine
               Bridged with cloud
Ruddy withwine morning
     glory’s tiny tender
                    cowbells,
     guarded by poison oak sprigs
                    oily hands
Green horned little
          British chickweed,
waxlight-leafed black
               seed stalk’s
     lilac sweet budcluster
Ah fluted morning
     glory bud
          oped
& tickled to yellow
     tubed stamen root
     by a six legged
          armed mite
     deeping his head
     into sweet pollened
                    crotches,
Crawls up yr veined
     blossom wall
     to petal lip in
          sunshine clear
     and dives again
     to your tongue-stamen’s
          foot-pipe, your
     bloom unfolded
     to light—

     Above ye the
     Spider’s left
     his one strand
     catgut silk
          shining
               bridge
     between
          cuckoospitted
               mint leafheads
     & newgreen leafsprig’d
               seedy lilac
Granite Sagely
     Browed above the Path’s
          black pepper peapod marge—
Gray rock dropping
     seed,
withered bush-fingers
     tangled up
     stoneface
—cracked with
     green stalk
          sprout—
Brooktrickle deep
     below Airplane
          Bridge
               Concrete
     arches balcony’d
     Pendant over
     Oceancrash
          waves
falling empty eyed
     breathing water
          wash afar

Morning Night shade
     in alder shadow’d
Pathside—Nettle plant
     Leaf-shoulder
     vegetable wing’d
     baby faces,
          green earmouths
               sprouting
     Celery handspread
          Heal-All mudras
     open asking why me.

Sunlight trembling
     branch-leafy willow,
yellow haired wingy bee’s
          black horn
bowed into threadpackt mauve
     round thistle mouth,
     dewey web throat
          green needle collar’d,
Symmetric little
          Cathead erect
     electric thorn’d
     under giant hogweed
          stalked parasol blossoms—

Ash branch’s tender
          pinecone cluster
     proffered by leathery
     sawtooth rib leafs

red browed beedle
          perched on Egyptian
     bridge of Spider fern’s
          soft-jointed spike-sticks
Brown water
streaming
          underbrush
sparrowsong
          winged brown
          whistling above
cold water pebble
          silver pour …
Shrouded
     under the
Ash spread, on
     damp leafwither,
shield tubes
     & condensers
          of small Sony
          TV machine enwired
          rusty w/resistances

giant grass
     leafspears
morning glory hillside
     perched over clearing
All branches lifting up
     papery seedhusks,
parasolspiked Fern
     Tramping together
          upright pushing
               a thistle aside,
     groundwheat leaned
     by beach path—

Oh ocean white-
          waved pouring
     foamy noises over
          rocky sandshore
Chevrolet writ
     on radiatormouth
Set above
          Private Land
Do Not Enter
     incised wood
          Sign-beams

Frying chickens from
     Arkansas!

Musselshells’
     Briared graveyard
          footplot—
Dewey round bushes
     guarding ocean
          path with
     myriad greenstar’d
          leafarms
     cradling white-walled
               dewdrops

Telephone
     pole trunk
stuck
     out of old
     landslide head
     Covered with iceplant
     green lobsterclaw
          trefoil solid
               edged,
     pinked with
     hundredfingerpetaled
          Sea vine blossoms
Dry brown kelp
     ribs washed
     in a heap at
     streamside in
          wet brown sand
          to listen to
               oceanroar
          and wait the
          slow moon
               tide.

Stream water
     rushing flat through
beachmound
     Sand precipices,
tiny wet arizonas
flood lips
          —cliffs
cradling the last
     graysmooth boulders
     shat by the rains
pissed out
     by spring storm
          from
the forests
          bladder
          hills
     Small granite
     blackpocked
          hearthstones
     washed to last rest
Ocean wavelet’s
               salt tongue
               touching
               forward thru
                    sand throated
               streambed
                    to lave foam &
               pull back bubbles
               from the iron
          Car’s rusty
               under carriage
                    kelp pipes
                         & brown chassis,
                    one rubber wheel
                         black poked from
                              Sand mattresses
                                   rock wash
O Kerouac
          thy broken
          car Behold
     Digested in
          Saltwater
               sandbottom
     giant soulless
          Chicken
               sea gizzard filled
                    with unthinking
               marble rocks—
     Poured down
          road in
               avalanche!
     to the granite
          snout of the
               seacliff

O see the great
          Snake kelp’s
     beet green head still lettuce-
               haired
          stretch forth
               a fingerthick tailroot
above seaweed broider
          wavelets
          rushing foam
               tongued—
Was that kelp
     Intelligent
Einstein hairleafed
          faceless bulbhead

Oh father
          Welcome!
     The seal’s
          head lifted
     above the wave,
     eyes watching
          from black
               face
     in waterfroth
          floating!
     Come back again!

Huge white
waves rolling
in gray mist
birds flocking
     rocks foamed
     floating above
     the
          horizon’s
               watery
                    wrinkled
                         skin
grandmother
     oceanskirt
          rumbling
               pebbles
     silver hair ear to ear

May 28, 1971

Hum Bom!

I

Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!

Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom Bomb?
You bomb you!

What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do!
Who do we bomb?

What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb them!

Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!

May 1971

II

Why bomb?
We don’t want to bomb!
Why bomb?
We don’t want to bomb!
Why bomb?
You don’t want to bomb!
Why bomb?
You don’t want to bomb!

Who said bomb?
Who said we had to bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said we had to bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you had to bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you had to bomb?

We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!

for Don Cherry and Elvin Jones
New York, June 16, 1984

September on Jessore Road

Copyright © 1972 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg

September on Jessore Road

Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road—long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone

Millions of souls Nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under gray sun
A million are dead, the millions who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads dont talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there

on one floor mat with a small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother’s eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry

Two children together in palmroof shade
Stare at me no word is said
Rice ration, lentils one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days eat while they can
Then children starve three days in a row
and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.

On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees
Bengali tongue cried mister Please
Identity card torn up on the floor
Husband still waits at the camp office door

Baby at play I was washing the flood
Now they won’t give us any more food
The pieces are here in my celluloid purse
Innocent baby play our death curse

Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys
Crowded waiting their daily bread joys
Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks
to whack them in line They play hungry tricks

Breaking the line and jumping in front
Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt
Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage
The guards blow their whistles & chase them in rage

Why are these infants massed in this place
Laughing in play & pushing for space
Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread
Why this is the House where they give children bread

The man in the bread door Cries & comes out
Thousands of boys & girls Take up his shout
Is it joy? is it prayer? “No more bread today”
Thousands of Children at once scream “Hooray!”

Run home to tents where elders await
Messenger children with bread from the state
No bread more today! & no place to squat
Painful baby, sick shit he has got.

Malnutrition skulls thousands for months
Dysentery drains bowels all at once
Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep
Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep

Refugee camps in hospital shacks
Newborn lay naked on mothers’ thin laps
Monkeysized week-old Rheumatic babe eye
Gastroenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die

September Jessore Road rickshaw
50,000 souls in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo huts in the flood
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food

Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,
American Angel machine please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?

Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok’s green shade.
Where is America’s Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President’s Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine food and relief?
Napalming North Vietnam and causing more grief?

Where are our tears? Who weeps for this pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road’s children close their big eyes
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?

Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this shit flood foul’d lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!

Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe
Ring out ye voices for Love we dont know
Ring out ye bells of electrical pain
Ring in the conscious American brain

How many children are we who are lost
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care?
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare—

Cries in the mud by the thatch’d house sand drain
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet shit-field rain
waits by the pump well, Woe to the world!
whose children still starve in their mothers’ arms curled.

Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my loins?

What should we care for our cities and cars?
What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars?
How many millions sit down in New York
& sup this night’s table on bone & roast pork?

How many million beer cans are tossed
in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost?
Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams
Stinking the world and dimming star beams—

Finish the war in your breast with a sigh
Come taste the tears in your own Human eye
Pity us millions of phantoms you see
Starved in Samsara on planet TV

How many millions of children die more
before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord?
How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild
Armed forces that boast the children they’ve killed?

How many souls walk through Maya in pain
How many babes in illusory rain?
How many families hollow eyed lost?
How many grandmothers turning to ghost?

How many loves who never get bread?
How many Aunts with holes in their head?
How many sisters skulls on the ground?
How many grandfathers make no more sound?

How many fathers in woe
How many sons nowhere to go?
How many daughters nothing to eat?
How many uncles with swollen sick feet?

Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children nowhere to go

New York, November 14–16, 1971

IX
MIND BREATHS ALL OVER THE PLACE
(1972–1977)

Sad Dust Glories (1972–1974)

Ego Confessions (1974–1977)

Sad Dust Glories
(1972–1974)
Ayers Rock / Uluru Song

When the red pond fills fish appear

When the red pond dries fish disappear.

Everything built on the desert crumbles to dust.

Electric cable transmission wires swept down.

The lizard people came out of the rock.

The red Kangaroo people forgot their own song.

Only a man with four sticks can cross the Simpson Desert.

One rain turns red dust green with leaves.

One raindrop begins the universe.

When the raindrop dries, worlds come to their end.

Central Australia, March 23, 1972

Voznesensky’s “Silent Tingling”

Must be thousands of sweet gourmets rustling through
leaf crowded branches, thrushes cracking seedling shells
all over America like crystalline carillon bells,
a really strange silent tingling.

Silent carillons, not to celebrate Main Street
but rustling up some food their only scene—
No miracle but millions of hungry souls
silently tingling.

This tingling silence heralds
an orgy of hermit thrushes eating
like thousands of song-men’s clapsticks clacking
or faraway Moscow’s million bells
—some dream collective—generational vogue.

Thrush communes don’t be afraid of the big Broom,
your flock continues an ancient tradition,
now all over America—collective marriage;
though some detractors put down your in-group, not big enough!

A silent Individualist in top hat & tails drest
coffinlike denounces your collective struggles in bed—
but his own wife wears rings on every finger,
as if she wound up in a group marriage.

This gentle gang’s only enemy’s insects,
Cleaning up bark parasites—silently, silently—
Anybody can crush bones and oink louder
but cant beat this silent tingling.

Fast New York Sydney chicks—
thanks Brisbane birds & Chicago thrushes
for your own silent tingling—your cities’ trees’
leaves tremble like golden curlicues on Byzantine crosses.

Maybe someday our descendants
’ll ask about this poet—What’d he sing about?
I didn’t ring Halleluiah bells, I didn’t clank leg-irons,
I was silently tingling.

Translated with Andrei Voznesensky
Darwin Land—Cairns, Australia, March 26–29, 1972

These States: to Miami Presidential Convention

I

Philadelphia city lights boiling under the clouds
green Babylon’s heat attracting rain,
          lightning, smoke gathered
     about the excited city—shouts, vibration
          of trucks, radio antennae, streets’
solid electric glitter under sulphur waterfumes—
the plane glides to Miami Beach over Atlantic’s
          Coast metropolis
     red downtown sores of theater money,
          bar sign pinprick bulbs under
               Cloud curtain’d sunlit velvet horizon
To the political drama, march to
          Auditorium thru tacky downtown
          Cuban neons blinking angry language,
     Yippies survived unto this Presidentiad!

Woe to the States, whoever’s the empty President
          Nixon McGovern X or Caesar
Must decree end to matter habit,
     America swallowing aluminum sleep pills
Cries of millions of trees travel thru TV
          loudspeakers to the Athletic Club’s basement steamroom—
          Millions of yellow faces call thru radio
Cries of the longhairs in the Rockies,
          Choruses of American prophets in their graves
     echo thru newspaper horns to the
                    Ear Consciousness Mind
Matter Consumption must end,
          Dirty alchemy destroys the House—
     Billion year old leaf plates become inert matter
          Plastic particles mixed
                         with living cells in the Walleyed
                              pike’s retina—

Soaring over Atlantic’s lit-up electric
                    houses to the politics Warre
Ah! Shall be my mantra—America’s gasp of Awe—
     Ah as Fireworks ascend & light glitters
          faery shimmering in treetop darkness
               sky over Eastside Park July 4th—Ah
As the enlightened Aborigine sighs his
     soul-journey with birds to New Guinea
Ah! the madman screamed
          to himself in the silence of the Ward
Ah as car owner collapsed into
          his ruined heap of metal on his own
               Front Yard
Ah! the divorcee steps off her plane onto Mexico City Airport—
Ah! as I ride spitting petrol into the exquisite
                              Midnight Atmosphere
          above cloud cities
toward another gateway of Police Boys
     & State Powers convened
Clocks Ticking two centuries
          now America
approaching the great Ah of all cities
     burning under Clouds, Conscious
          of Death Machines Downtown.
                         Ah, for the garden—

After conversation with Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, Boulder, Spring 1972

II

O Peaceful & Wrathful Dieties & Politicians Rejoice, Rejoice
          left and right!
Ah! liberty—we here together conscious of
          heart’s feeling ah!
Massacre ah! selling images in America
          bellied meadow bombcrater photo mind
               scream face skin afire
          eyes penetrated by war needles
Ah! to the Heart from Heart ever Grateful
     for mercy human understanding sigh—
Ah! for our loves dead & gone
Ah! for miseries we caused, youthful screaming
          Pig Cop selves
     Violence in other streets and nations
          Heads of State
               eyes flashing angry—

Ah! that we know ourselves better,
     Ah! that America rise from
          the dead matter
& transcend this body heavy asphalt usury
          being with each other
          Trembling with city hatred
          dropping acid Death Fear
     lovelessness alone on metal
          planet floor—or
          grass green meadow
among Equal Creatures, trees flourishing their Barken Kind leaf flared—
ah What Seek we in Miami Heaven Earth
          But End to Fear
Ah! to rejoice in World Illusion
     airplane sound street body under sky—
Apocatastasis Ah!
               Release of our knowledge
                         our suffering in kind—

Ah! together, ah! make peace!
     Ah What is this lightness that we know
          body empty & the mind
               Myriad Ah’d in Mid Metropolis zonked
                    & baffled by its own Being,

Angers, Loves & Wars—Great Politics shakes
          planet tremors through our souls—
Ah! Great Consciousness Here
Salutations to the Great Self we come to know
Ah to All souls, Republican empty as
Democrat—Identity we Citizens
          share this late century
Conscious after matter madness
          Drunkenness-drug’d manufacture
               Business Consumption
                    Transitory petrochemical toy
                         plastic aluminum
               airconditioned hotel & old folks
                         home atrembling in our mortal bed
for the Big Nigger, the FBI the CIA the
          NLF the ITT USSR the U.S.A.
Great Government Robot State
     above us dominates our news,
takes up our telephone time labor paper work
     in Magic War,
Ah! that we return to our Bodies alert
     electric limb’d, lungs & heart
               empty tingling, lightness
          we all know Heaven on Earth
          Our Will Be Thine as we Say

Our Ah—of Suffering Understood,
          our life itself in pain
     Ah! our ignorance! our desire!
Ah to know that suffering ends,
          surrendered self’s sweet death—
our Ah to search the way together thru
                         some Eightfold Endless Path!
Ah! for the Hell we have made in America,
          Ah for the Heaven we see among Us
Ah! for the Earth we are here!
Ah Miami streets, hotels lobbies crowded
          auditorium! Ah for the fat sad police—
               Ah for sad soldiers forlorn all over the world
Ah for the Madman in White House asylum
          who dreams Planet Fate—
Depression armaments? Conspicuous
     Consumption Cars! Great Ah
Protect us! Ah! for the Petrochemical Wonderland,
     Conscious vast glittery buildings
                         fog dream neon’d
                              for Magical Emphasis
                    Hypnosis Money
A billfold full of Ah!
          Ah! credit card plastic
               broke in wastebasket
Ah for Cosa Nostra, Imagined or Real
               Ah! Ah! Ah!
Ah Mayor Daley, Senator Humphrey voluble
     Redeemed in Paradise, ah Laborer
          Meany hatted with Milkweed
                         & Day Lilies,
Chiefs Nixon Agnew crowned with
          Pigweed & snowballs’ tender blue blossoms
     sent with Jersey Greeting,
Governor Wallace flowered with Mushrooms, magic
          amanita & psilocybin, & Morning Glory halo’d
McGovern McCarthy ringed with Roses & Laurels,
ourselves all decked with Common Grass,
          plebeian pleasures, ah
Ah! Normal voiced & Future President
          Whoever Ye Are True Ah to Thee
Ah! to the Republic how it fare, Ah
          sad flag, color transmuted
               into all Three Worlds
                    This prayer to All Souls in America
               Citizens of Body Mind & Speech
                              Ah! Ah! Ah!

July 9, 1972, 10:15 P.M.

Xmas Gift

I met Einstein in a dream
Springtime on Princeton lawn grass
I kneeled down & kissed his young thumb
like a ruddy pope
his face fresh broad cheeked rosy
“I invented a universe separate,
something like a Virgin”—
“Yes, the creature gives birth to itself,”
I quoted from Mescaline
We sat down open air universal summer
to eat lunch, professors’ wives
at the Tennis Court Club,
our meeting eternal, as expected,
my gesture to kiss his fist
unexpectedly saintly
considering the Atom Bomb I didn’t mention.

New York, December 24, 1972

Time Wheel Mandala (Tibetan Buddhist XX Century Woodblock). Six worlds, with Heaven and Angry Warrior Realms consolidated upper left section. At center, Cock Pig Snake eating each other’s tails. Twelve-fold chain of interdependent co-origination represented on wheel rim, held in hands of Time.

Thoughts Sitting Breathing

OM—the pride of perfumed money, music food from China, a place to sit quiet

MA—How jealous! the million Pentagon myrmidons with dollar billions to spend on Rock & Roll, restaurant high thrones in sky filled with Electric Bombers—Ah! how jealous they are of the thin stomached Vietnamese boy.

NI—Lust in heart for the pink tender prick’d school-boy upstairs bedroom naked with his books, high school locker shower, stretching on the bed, the young guitar player’s ass

PA—Impercipience, cat meows natural words at the window, dog barks cheerful morn, cockroach feelers touch the wall, the fly buzzes long long on the sunny windowsill lying upside-down in deathly prayer exhausted, man bends over oblivious books, buds stick forth their heart-tips when ice melts New Year’s eve, green grass shoots show ’neath melted snow, screams rise out of thousands of mouths in Hanoi—

DMI—alone the misery, the broken legs of carcrash alcohol, gimme another cigarette, I ain’t got a dime for coffee, got no rupee for rice ain’t got no land I got hunger in my gland my belly’s swollen potatoes my knees got cut on the Tanks—

HUM—the pigs got rocks in their head, C.I.A. got one eye bloody mind tongue, fiends sold my phonograph TV set to the junkman, Hate that dog shat my rug, hate Gook Heaven, hate them hippies in Hell stinking Marijuana smog city.

OM—Give it all away, poetry bliss & ready cash for taxicabs, walk Central Park alone & cook your beans in empty silence watching the Worm crawl thru meat walls—

MA—sit down crosslegged and relax, storm Heaven with your mental guns? Give up let Angels alone to play their guitars in Hollywood and drink their Coke-snuff in mountainside bathroom peace—

NI—Light as ashes, love for Neal sublimed into Poesy, love for Peter gone into the Vegetable garden to grow corn & tomatoes—

PA—Dog bark! call the mind gods! scream happiness in Saigon behind the bar my mother in throes of Police vomit rape! that garbage can I threw in Atlantic Ocean floats over Father Fisheye’s sacred grave—

DMI—I forgive thee Cord Meyer secret mind police suborned the Student Congress Cultural Freedom & destroyed Intellect in Academe Columbia Harvard made great murder Indochina War our fantasy-bomb gutted New York’s soul— HUM—Miserable victims flashing knives, Hell’s Angels Manson Nixon Calley-Ma, all the cops in the world and their gangster lovers, car salesmen Wall Street brokers smoking in rage over dwindling oil supplies, O poor sick junkies all here’s bliss of Buddha-opium, Sacred Emptiness to fix your angry brains—

March: Thoughts Sitting Breathing

Copyright © 1978 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg

OM—the Crown of Emptiness, relax the skullcap wove of formal thought, let light escape to Heaven, floating up from heart thru cranium, free space for Causeless Bliss—

MA—Speech purified, worlds calmed of alcoholic luxury & irritable smoking, jealous fucking rush thru taxicab cities, mental cancer pig war fever machines—Heart through throat, free space for Causeless Bliss!

NI—How vast, how brightly empty and how old, the breath within the breast expands threefold, the sigh of no restraint, sigh love’s release, the rest and peacefulness of sweethearts’ ease, from Heart to Heart —free space for Causeless Bliss!

PA—Dog bellies crying happy in the snow, worms share mind’s heaviest part, elephants carry Angels whose animal trumpets blow from abdomen deep navel up into the heart—free space for Causeless Bliss

DMI—Down in the pecker, the empty piece of wood—Everyone I fucked is dead and gone—everyone I’m gonna fuck is turning to a ghost— All my penis blessedness never’ll get lost, but rise from loins & come in my heart—free space for Causeless Bliss

HUM—I shit out my hate thru my asshole, My sphincter loosens the void, all hell’s legions fall thru space, the Pentagon is destroyed

     United States armies march thru the past
     The Chinese legions rage
     Past the Great Wall of Maya
     And scream on the central stage
     I loose my bowels of Asia
     I move the U.S.A.
     I crap on Dharmakaya
     And wipe the worlds away
White House filled with fuel gas bombs
Slums with rats’ faeces & teeth
All Space is fore-given to Emptiness—
From earth to heart, free space
                    for Causeless Bliss

January 1, 1973

“What would you do if you lost it?”

said Rinpoche Chögyam Trungpa Tulku in the marble glittering apartment lobby

looking at my black hand-box full of Art, “Better prepare for Death” …

The harmonium that’s Peter’s

the scarf that’s Krishna’s the bell and brass lightningbolt Phil Whalen selected in Japan

a tattered copy of Blake, with chord notations, black books from City Lights,

Australian Aborigine song sticks, green temple incense, Tibetan preciousmetal finger cymbals—

A broken leg a week later enough reminder, lay in bed and after few days’ pain began to weep

no reason, thinking a little of Rabbi Schacter, a little of father Louis, a little

of everything that must be abandoned,

snow abandoned,

empty dog barks after the dogs have disappeared

meals eaten passed thru the body to nourish tomatoes and corn,

The wooden bowl from Haiti too huge for my salad,

Teachings, Tantras, Haggadahs, Zohar, Revelations, poetries, Koans

forgotten with the snowy world, forgotten

with generations of icicles crashing to white gullies by roadside,

Dharmakaya forgot, Nirmanakaya shoved in coffin, Sambhogakaya eclipsed in candle-light snuffed by the playful cat—

Goodbye my own treasures, bodies adored to the nipple,

old souls worshipped flower-eye or imaginary auditory panoramic skull—

goodbye old socks washed over & over, blue boxer shorts, subzero longies,

new Ball Boots black hiplength for snowdrifts near the farm mailbox,

goodbye to my room full of books, all wisdoms I never studied, all the Campion, Creeley, Anacreon Blake I never read through,

blankets farewell, orange diamonded trunked from Mexico Himalayan sheepwool lugged down from Almora days with Lama Govinda and Peter trying to eat tough stubborn halfcooked chicken.

Paintings on wall, Maitreya, Sakyamuni & Padmasambhava, Dr. Samedi with Haitian spats & cane whiskey,

Bhaktivedanta Swami at desk staring sad eye Krishna at my hopeless selfconsciousness,

Attic full of toys, desk full of old checks, files on NY police & C.I.A. peddling Heroin,

Files on laughing Leary, files on Police State, files on ecosystems all faded & brown, notebooks untranscribed, hundreds of little poems & prose my own hand,

newspaper interviews, assemblaged archives, useless paperworks surrounding me imperfectly chronologic, humorous later in eternity, reflective of Cities’ particular streets studios and boudoirs—

goodbye poetry books, I don’t have to take you along anymore on a chain to Deux Magots like a red lobster

thru Paris, Moscow, Prague, Milan, New York, Calcutta, Bangkok, holy Benares, yea Rishikesh & Brindaban may yr prana lift ye over the roof

of the world—

my own breath slower now, silent waiting & watching—

Downstairs pump-organs, musics, rags and blues, home made Blake hymns, mantras to raise the skull of America,

goodbye C chord, F chord, G chord, goodbye all the chords of The House of the Rising Sun

Goodbye farmhouse, city apartment, garbage subways Empire State, Museum of Modern Art where I wandered thru puberty dazzled by Van Gogh’s raw-brained star-systems pasted on blue thick skyey Suchness—

Goodbye again Naomi, goodbye old painful legged poet Louis, goodbye Paterson the 69 between Joe Bozzo & Harry Haines that out-lasted childhood & poisoned the air o’er Passaic Valley,

goodbye Broadway, give my regards to the great falls & boys staring marijuana’d in wonder hearing the quiet roar of Godfather Williams’ speech

Goodbye old poets of Century that taught fixed eye & sharp tongue from Pound with silent Mouni heart to Tom Veitch weeping in Stinson Beach,

goodbye to my brothers who write poetry & play fiddle, my nephews who blow tuba & stroke bass viol, whistle flute or smile & sing in blue rhythm,

goodbye shades of dead living loves, bodies weeping bodies broken bodies aging, bodies turned to wax doll or cinder

Goodbye America you hope you prayer you tenderness, you IBM 135–35 Electronic Automated Battlefield Igloo White Dragon-tooth Fuel-Air Bomb over Indochina

Goodbye Heaven, farewell Nirvana, sad Paradise adieu, adios all angels and archangels, devas & devakis, Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, rings of Seraphim, Constellations of elect souls weeping singing in the golden Bhumi Rungs, goodbye High Throne, High Central Place, Alleluiah Light beyond Light, a wave of the hand to Thee Central Golden Rose,

Om Ah Hu? A La La Ho Sophia, Soham Tara Ma, Om Phat Svaha Padmasambhava Marpa Mila sGam.po.pa Karmapa Trungpaye!

Namastaji Brahma, Ave atque vale Eros, Jupiter, Zeus, Apollo, Surya, Indra

Bom Bom! Shivaye! Ram Nam Satyahey! Om Ganipatti, Om Saraswati Hrih Sowha! Ardinarishvara Radha Harekrishna faretheewell forevermore!

None left standing! No tears left for eyes, no eyes for weeping, no mouth for singing, no song for the hearer, no more words for any mind.

Cherry Valley, February 1, 1973

Who

From Great Consciousness vision Harlem 1948 buildings standing in Eternity

I realized entire Universe was manifestation of One Mind—

My teacher was William Blake—my life work Poesy,

transmitting that spontaneous awareness to Mankind.

February 3, 1973

Yes and It’s Hopeless

hundred million cars running out of gasoline

million coalstoves burning shale carbonmist over cities

Hopeless I’ll never get laid again, O what a beautiful body that boy from Jersey City last night

Hopeless, locked in plaster-of-Paris leg cast, bones, skull heart, intestines, liver, eyes and tongue

All hopeless, the entire solar system running Thermodynamics’ Second Law

down the whole galaxy, all universes brain illusion or solid electric hopeless emptiness

evacuating itself through quasar pressure Furnaces,

hopeless the 300,000 junkies in N.Y.

hopeless President waging war, “fighting for peace” sending State Secretary to Israel, the moon, China, Acapulco,

hopeless the Dutch boy standing with his finger in the dike,

the energy crisis, the protein crisis 1990, the Folklore Crisis, the Aboriginal Crisis, the Honkie Crisis, the old Nazi Crisis, the Arab Crisis, the Chrysophrase Crisis, Tungsten, the crisis in Panama, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Santa Domingo, Haiti, Cuba, Florida, Alabama, Texas, New Jersey, New York, East 10th Street, the Crisis in San Juan Capistrano, the Oil-spill in Bolinas Bay, Santa Barbara’s tar tide, the crisis of the Loch Ness Monster & the Dublin Bomb Crisis,

all hopeless, the overpopulation of dogs, humans, cockroaches, rats, Crown of Thorn Starfish, green algae in Lake Erie—

Hopeless, hopeless, Jesus on the Cross or Buddha voided passing through

Hopeless, the First Zen Institute, the Second Church of the Resurrection, the Third Eye System Inc., the 4th Estate, the 5th Column in the Kundalini, the 6th sense, the Seventh Seal Chowder & Marching Society the 8th Nerve in the Vagus Nebula System the 9th Degree Samadhi Monopoly the 10th sorry passenger on the bus crashed over Freeway’s iron ropes down into the Swamp Abyss outsida Roanoke—

OK hopeless, Rolling Stone Consciousness, Mammoth Sunday NY Times

Hopeless all silence, all Yoga, all quiet Ecstasies of Saints and Starvation Monks Ceylon to Bhutan—

Hopeless two million deaths in Indochina, the half million Communists assassinated in Indonesia? Slaughter of Innocents in Mexico City, Massacres of Wounded Knee Mylai Lidice Attica, 15 million never came back from Siberia

the jail murder of George Jackson, Sacco & Vanzetti electrocuted Rosenbergs, bullet assassination of Kennedy, Luther King, Malcolm X, the burning of Zwingli, hemlock death of Socrates the headless catastrophe Jayne Mansfield’s autocrash & Jimmy Dean’s highway wreck-aged body—

Hopeless, the poems of Dante & Shakespeare, such stuff as dreams are made of, Burroughs’ Orwell systems, Spengler & Vico’s cycles, Padmasambhava Krishnamurti—empty, hopeless

as the great oilfields of Persia

reservoirs of petrochemicals under Alaskan permafrost & Indochinese ocean wave

petroleum cracker tanks in Venezuela & robot pumps of Los Angeles,

brokendown cars on the farm, the tire-less Ford,

Oldsmobile sans batteries, dead corpse of Myron the neighbor Farmer the live corpse of Ginsberg the prophet

Hopeless.

New York, March 10, 1973

Under the world there’s a lot of ass, a lot of cunt

a lot of mouths and cocks,

under the world there’s a lot of come, and a lot of saliva dripping into brooks,

There’s a lot of Shit under the world, flowing beneath cities into rivers,

a lot of urine floating under the world,

a lot of snot in the world’s industrial nostrils, sweat under the world’s iron arm, blood

gushing out of the world’s breast,

endless lakes of tears, seas of sick vomit rushing between hemispheres

floating toward Sargasso, old oily rags and brake fluids, human gasoline—

Under the world there’s pain, fractured thighs, napalm burning in black hair, phosphorus eating elbows to bone

insecticides contaminating oceantide, plastic dolls floating across Atlantic,

Toy soldiers crowding the Pacific, B-52 bombers choking jungle air with vaportrails and brilliant flares

Robot drones careening over rice terraces dropping cluster grenades, plastic pellets spray into flesh, dragontooth mines & jellied fires fall on straw roofs and water buffalos,

perforating village huts with barbed shrapnel, trenchpits filled with fuel-gas-poison’d explosive powders—

Under the world there’s broken skulls, crushed feet, cut eyeballs, severed fingers, slashed jaws,

Dysentery; homeless millions, tortured hearts, empty souls.

April 1973

Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit

Annotations to Amitendranath Tagore’s Sung Poetry

“In later days, remembering this I shall certainly go mad.”

Reading Sung poems, I think of my poems to Neal
dead few years now, Jack underground
invisible—their faces rise in my mind.
Did I write truthfully of them? In later times
I saw them little, not much difference they’re dead.
They live in books and memory, strong as on earth.

“I do not know who is hoarding all this rare work.”

Old One the dog stretches stiff legged,
soon he’ll be underground. Spring’s first fat bee
buzzes yellow over the new grass and dead leaves.

What’s this little brown insect walking zigzag
across the sunny white page of Su Tung-p’o’s poem?
Fly away, tiny mite, even your life is tender—
I lift the book and blow you into the dazzling void.

“I fear that others may know I am here;
An immortal may appear to welcome me.”

Right leg broken, can’t walk around
visit the fishpond to touch the cold water,
tramp thru willows to the lonely meadow across the brook—
here comes a metal landrover, brakes creaking hello.

“You live apart on rivers and seas …”

You live in apartments by rivers and seas

Spring comes, waters flow murky, the salt wave’s covered with oily dung

Sun rises, smokestacks cover the roofs with black mist

winds blow, city skies are clear blue all afternoon

but at night the full moon hesitates behind brick.

How will all these millions of people worship the Great Mother?

When all these millions of people die, will they recognize the Great Father?

“I always remember the year I made it over the mountain pass.”

Robins and sparrows warble in mild spring dusk
sun sets behind green pines in the little valley
High over my roof gray branches sway gently under motionless clouds
Hunters guns sounded three times in the hillside aspen
The house sat silent as I looked above my book,
quiet old poems about the Yi & Tsangpo Rivers—
I always remember the spring I climbed Glacier Peak with Gary.

Cherry Valley, April 20, 1973

Night Gleam

Over and over thru the dull material world the call is made

over and over thru the dull material world I make the call

O English folk, in Sussex night, thru black beech tree branches

the full moon shone at three AM, I stood in under wear on the lawn—

I saw a mustached English man I loved, with athlete’s breast and farmer’s arms,

I lay in bed that night many loves beating in my heart

sleepless hearing songs of generations electric returning intelligent memory

to my frame, and so went to dwell again in my heart

and worship the Lovers there, love’s teachers, youths and poets who live forever

in the secret heart, in the dark night, in the full moon, year after year

over & over thru the dull material world the call is made.

July 16, 1973

What I’d Like to Do

Retire abandon world sd Swami Bhaktivedanta my age 47 approaching half-century

Go to San Marino see Blake’s vision of Moloch, go to Manchester see Moloch

Visit Blake’s works all over World West, study prophetic Books interpret Blake unify Vision

Step in same river twice

Build hermitage of wood and stone with porch 3000 foot up Rockies, Sierras, Catskills fine soft forests

sit crosslegged straight spine belly relaxed heart humming Ah each exhalation

Inspiration established compose English Apocalypse American science Greek rhythm Tibetan mantra Blues

long hours half-lotus-legged at desk window pine trees omming in rainy wind

Spend three years in solitude Naropa’s Six Doctrines mastered and another hundred days intermediate State twixt Death and Birth

Read Milton’s Paradise Lost decipher Egyptian Book of Dead and Annutara Tantra etc.

Compose poems to the wind

Chant into electric microphones, pacify Rock, enrich

skull emptiness with vocal salami taxicabs, magnetize nervous systems,

destroy Empire State’s dead Life Time smog

Masturbate in peace, haunt ancient cities for boys, practice years of chastity, save Jewels for God my own ruddy body, hairy delicate antennae

Vegetable, eat carrots, fork cabbage, spoon peas, fry potatoes, boil beets, ox forgiven, pig forgotten, hot dogs banished from celestial realms cloud-roofed over Kitkitdizze’s green spring weeds—milk, angel-Milk

Read Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov I laid down half-finished a dozen times decades ago

Compose last choirs of Innocence & Experience, set music to tongues of Rossetti Mss. orchestrate Jerusalem’s quatrains—

War’s over, soft mat wood floor, flower vase on inkstand, blue oaks gazing in the window.

London, August 1973

On Illness

Lord Heart, heal my right temple bang’d soft pain the bookshelf

rising to fuck Peter embrac’d naked on big wooden couch mattress sheeted blanketed

My broken leg Lord Heart heal crooked bone above stiff ankle, straight tibia tender sore

Lord Heart, more near, lax abdomen muscle, nausea hiatus hernia

That I never eat too much Lord Heart eat Lord’s parts sick with solar plexus pain,

deep breath your airy body tingling empty pleasur’d skin kissed cock surrender’d rising buttock entering yr Lord Heart—

Entered I surrender to Lord Heart himself disguised Krishna Ke Jai yr blue lingam—Hey Bom Shivaye!

Lord Heart your female poetry bottom, penis female sensitive—

ass kissed & tongued by Jove Jupiter Zeus

Ganymede-ass or Tara ladybelly

Om Saraswati Hrih Sowha

MOM

Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom

Lord Heart my baldness cure thru confident eye my lover’s open pupil

My teeth Lord Heart keep clean as I do brush them twice daily. Keep me from pain.

My hernia rupture paunch healed no pain these coughs—soft muscle stomach-fold sewn insentient muscle skin.

Lord Heart not smoke cigarette butts anymore—

Keep me Lord Heart for yr Works & Destruction

Body meat cries, sighs, sits immobile Ah, pain passed over—

Lord Heart, my aged father’s hand is cool, legs stumbling

defend us from Death Fear, Matter-formed fear faces, disgrac’d mere Flesh

Gone known Lord Heart ourselves defend from Foul Fiend

Grant peace this body Lord Heart, this Soul, this Spirit hand & tongue—

this Great Presence defend Lord Heart your silent Inviolable Witness—

Lord Heart the Great Planet defend this Space Mirror of our Vast Emptiness

Lord Heart come fill my Soul with Mountain snow & Glacier-melt slow Aeon’s Gnosis—

ancient voice Lord Heart, your thousand arms & eight, of preservation & compassion

Conch Shell, Lotus, Diamond Sceptre, Book of Memory, Umbrella, Fish & Mirror & Machine Wheel

Eternal One Lord Heart accept my soul and body as your own

Free play of causeless bliss.

London, August 29, 1973

News Bulletin

“Criminal possession of a controlled substance—
     Marijuana” came over the radio
I got mad & sent Gov. Rockefeller a
     crystal skull postcard

Abbie Hoffman just got busted
     million pounds of Cocaine
I wrote the wrong essay & combed burrs
     out of a Godly dog’s hide

A lady asked text on Jewish Holocaust
     I filed her letter and made sugar borscht

Tim Leary silent Folsom Jail’d I jacked
     off with a plastic cock in my ass

Catastrophe everywhere today propane
     shortage prophesied I answered my mail
I stuck my head out the edge of
     Universe wheels in starry wheels
while Supreme Court struck down pornography
     for the umpteenth time

It’ll begin all over dope raids
     sex flick police assassinations
     mass Television in Vietnam
Mugging on streets your favorite
     policeman peddling junk
your favorite President falling falling falling
     endlessly the dream cliff
receding into Heaven Vice
     President falling falling
stars flying by the earth
     oceans awash with blue
galaxies spinning past I washed
     my big toe
I exercised my painful ankle smoked
     a joint I came I wrote letters
     scratched my head
Populations flee the flood, crowds
     move downstreet in teargas clouds,
camel riders footweary skeletons
     walk away from drought
desert burning, sea screaming,
     Bacteria frothing mouth preserve
     jars
I made toast I fried mushrooms I ate
     raw corn

Armies moved on Phnom Penh I
     watched a new born butterfly
     flutter orange-winged in circles
     round me on the grass
Nixon met Agnew papers said Resign
     I resigned I sat and stared at
     a flat gray cloud over the roof—

Three boys in jail on trial in
     Brussels for translating Anarchist’s
     Cookbook I held the cloth
thru which Peter poured boiling beet
     juice into an Aluminum pot.

Cherry Valley, September 1, 1973

On Neruda’s Death

Some breath breathes out Adonais & Canto General
Some breath breathes out Bombs and dog barks
Some breath breathes silent over green snow mountains
Some breath breathes not at all

Teton Village, September 25, 1973

Mind Breaths

Thus crosslegged on round pillow sat in Teton Space—

I breathed upon the aluminum microphone-stand a body’s length away

I breathed upon the teacher’s throne, the wooden chair with yellow pillow

I breathed further, past the sake cup half emptied by the breathing guru

Breathed upon the green sprigged thick-leaved plant in a flowerpot

Breathed upon the vast plateglass shining back th’ assembled sitting Sangha in the meditation cafeteria

my breath thru nostril floated out to the moth of evening beating into window’d illumination

breathed outward over aspen twigs trembling September’s top yellow leaves twilit at mountain foot

breathed over the mountain, over snowpowdered crags ringed under slow-breathed cloud-mass white spumes

windy across Tetons to Idaho, gray ranges under blue space swept

with delicate snow flurries, breaths Westward

mountain grass trembling in tiny winds toward Wasatch

Breezes south late autumn in Salt Lake’s wooden temple streets,

white salt dust lifted swirling by the thick leaden lake, dust carried up over Kennecott’s pit onto the massive Unit Rig,

out towards Reno’s neon, dollar bills skittering downstreet along the curb,

up into Sierras oak leaves blown down by fall cold chills

over peaktops snowy gales beginning,

a breath of prayer down on Kitkitdizze’s horngreen leaves close to ground,

over Gary’s tile roof, over temple pillar, tents and manzanita arbors in Sierra pine foothills—

a breath falls over Sacramento Valley, roar of wind down the sixlane freeway across Bay Bridge

uproar of papers floating over Montgomery Street, pigeons flutter down before sunset from Washington Park’s white churchsteeple—

Golden Gate waters whitecapped scudding out to Pacific spreads

over Hawaii a balmy wind thru Hotel palmtrees, a moist warmth swept over the airbase, a dank breeze in Guam’s rotten Customs shed,

clear winds breathe on Fiji’s palm & coral shores, by wooden hotels in Suva town flags flutter, taxis whoosh by Friday night’s black promenaders under the rock & roll discotheque window upstairs beating with English neon—

on a breeze into Sydney, and across hillside grass where mushrooms lie low on Cow-Flops in Queensland, down Adelaide’s alleys a flutter of music from Brian Moore’s Dobro carried in the wind—

up thru Darwin Land, out Gove Peninsula green ocean breeze, clack of Yerkalla village song sticks by the trembling wave

Yea and a wind over mercurial waters of Japan North East, a hollow wooden gong echoes in Kyoto’s temple hall below the graveyard’s wavy grass

A foghorn blowing in the China Sea, torrential rains over Saigon, bombers float over Cambodia, visioned tiny from stone Avelokitesvera’s many-faced towers Angkor Wat in windy night,

a puff of opium out of a mouth yellowed in Bangkok, a puff of hashish flowing thick out of a bearded saddhu’s nostrils & eyes in Nimtallah Burning Ghat,

wood smoke flowing in wind across Hooghly Bridge, incense wafted under the Bo Tree in Bodh Gaya, in Benares woodpiles burn at Manikarnika returning incensed souls to Shiva,

wind dallies in the amorous leaves of Brindaban, still air on the vast mosque floor above Old Delhi’s alleyways,

wind blowing over Kausani town’s stone wall, Himalayan peaktops ranged hundreds of miles along snowy horizon, prayer flags flutter over Almora’s wood brown housetops,

trade winds carry dhows thru Indian Ocean to Mombasa or down to Dar ’Salaam’s riverside sail port, palms sway & sailors wrapped in cotton sleep on log decks—

Soft breezes up thru Red Sea to Eliat’s dry hotels, paper leaflets scatter by the Wailing Wall, drifting into the Sepulchre

Mediterranean zephyrs leaving Tel Aviv, over Crete, Lassithi Plains’ windmills still turn the centuries near Zeus’ birth cave

Piraeus wave-lashed, Venice lagoon’s waters blown up over the floor of San Marco, Piazza flooded and mud on the marble porch, gondolas bobbing up & down choppy waters at the Zattere,

chill September fluttering thru Milan’s Arcade, cold bones & overcoats flapping in St. Peter’s Square,

down Appian Way silence by gravesites, stelae stolid on a lonely grass path, the breath of an old man laboring up road—

Across Scylla & Charybdis, Sicilian tobacco smoke wafted across the boat deck,

into Marseilles coalstacks black fumes float into clouds, steamer’s white driftspume down wind all the way to Tangier,

a breath of red-tinged Autumn in Provence, boats slow on the Seine, the lady wraps her cloak tight round her bodice on toppa Eiffel Tower’s iron head—

across the Channel rough black-green waves, in London’s Piccadilly beercans roll on concrete neath Eros’ silver breast, the Sunday Times lifts and settles on wet fountain steps—

over Iona Isle blue day and balmy Inner Hebrides breeze, fog drifts across Atlantic,

Labrador white frozen blowing cold, down New York’s canyons manila paper bags scurry toward Wall from Lower East side—

a breath over my Father’s head in his apartment on Park Avenue Paterson,

a cold September breeze down from East Hill, Cherry Valley’s maples tremble red,

out thru Chicago Windy City the vast breath of Consciousness dissolves, smokestacks and autos drift expensive fumes ribboned across railroad tracks,

Westward, a single breath blows across the plains, Nebraska’s fields harvested & stubble bending delicate in evening airs

up Rockies, from Denver’s Cherry Creekbed another zephyr risen,

across Pike’s Peak an icy blast at sunset, Wind River peaktops flowing toward the Tetons,

a breath returns vast gliding grass flats cow-dotted into Jackson Hole, into a corner of the plains,

up the asphalt road and mud parking lot, a breeze of restless September, up wood stairways in the wind

into the cafeteria at Teton Village under the red tram lift

a calm breath, a silent breath, a slow breath breathes outward from the nostrils.

September 28, 1973

Flying Elegy

Denver tower blocks group’d under gray haze

on tracted plains gassed to azure horizon—“no place to take revenge.”

Alan Watts epicure drank much

sang bass Christo voice a long long long breathed Aum passed on

in sleep exhausted heart philosopher

wandering age 58 in Chinese dressing gown to seek love, or enter Buddha blind

like this blue sky wing plunged thru rainbow halo in clouds’ drifty whiteness

The skandas are a veil suchlike, no place to take revenge

Blessed the dead who can’t fight back resent a poem knife thought

Blessed the dead in ignorance, dead with no sores or cigarette yen

Blessed the dead that don’t get laid, don’t eat fine casseroles herb-spiced with crusty cheese

don’t drink slow tea

don’t waste petrol surveying clouds in Heaven

don’t waste words at their condition, no one to talk to

Bless the free dead lecturing in the deep with moveless tongue

perfect meditators without thought, accomplished in Sunyata

Bless the dead last Philosophers, thought of the thought of Philosophers

Perfected Wisdom’s teachers escaped from Blessing and the Bliss of grasping prayer

’scaped from the curse of meditation on a cushion on yr ass

Dead that’ve left breath, renounced sex body, suffered stroke & begone

alone, the drinker, thinker, divorcé, grandfather weary wise

dying in bed night’s stillness silent and wake.

November 17, 1973

Teton Village

Snow mountain fields
seen thru transparent wings
of a fly on the windowpane

November 29, 1973

Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass

lemme kiss your face, lick your neck
touch your lips, tongue tickle tongue end
nose to nose, quiet questions
ever slept with a man before?
hand stroking your back slowly down to the cheeks’ moist hair soft asshole
eyes to eyes blur, a tear strained from seeing—

Come on boy, fingers thru my hair
Pull my beard, kiss my eyelids, tongue my ear, lips light on my forehead
—met you in the street you carried my package—
Put your hand down to my legs,
touch if it’s there, the prick shaft delicate
hot in your rounded palm, soft thumb on cockhead—

Come on come on kiss me full lipped, wet tongue, eyes open—
animal in the zoo looking out of skull cage—you
smile, I’m here so are you, hand tracing your abdomen
from nipple down rib cage smooth skinn’d past belly veins, along muscle to your silk-shiny groin
across the long prick down your right thigh
up the smooth road muscle wall to titty again—
Come on go down on me your throat
swallowing my shaft to the base tongue
cock solid suck—
I’ll do the same your stiff prick’s soft skin, lick your ass—
Come on Come on, open up, legs apart here this pillow
under your buttock
Come on take it here’s vaseline the hard on here’s
your old ass lying easy up in the air—here’s
a hot prick at yr soft mouthed asshole—just relax and let it in—
Yeah just relax hey Carlos lemme in, I love you, yeah how come
you came here anyway except this kiss arms round my neck mouth open your
     two eyes looking up, this hard slow thrust this
               softness this relaxed sweet sigh.

New York, January 3, 1974

Jaweh and Allah Battle

     Jaweh with Atom Bomb
          Allah cuts throat of Infidels
Jaweh’s armies beat down neighboring tribes
Will Red Sea waters close & drown th’armies of Allah?

Israel’s tribes worshipping the Golden Calf
                    Moses broke the Tablets of Law.

Zalmon Schacter Lubovitcher Rebbe what you say
          Stone Commandments broken on the ground
     Sufi Sam whaddya say
          Shall Prophet’s companions dance circled
     round Synagogue while Jews doven bearded electric?

Both Gods Terrible! Awful Jaweh Allah!
                    Both hook-nosed gods, circumcised.
Jaweh Allah which unreal?
                         Which stronger Illusion?
                              Which stronger Army?
                    Which gives most frightening command?
     What God maintain egohood in Eden? Which be Nameless?
                         Which enter Abyss of Light?
Worlds of Gods, jealous Warriors, Humans, Animals & Flowers,
               Hungry Ghosts, even Hell Beings all die,
          Snake cock and pig eat each other’s tails & perish
     All Jews all Moslems’ll die All Israelis all Arabs
     Cairo’s angry millions Jerusalem’s multitudes
          suffer Death’s dream Armies in battle!
Yea let Tribes wander to tin camps at cold Europe’s walls?
Yea let the Million sit in desert shantytowns with tin cups?
I’m a Jew cries Allah! Buddha circumcised!
                    Snake sneaking an apple to Eden—
               Alien, Wanderer, Caller of the Great Call!
What Prophet born on this ground
                    bound me Eternal to Palestine
          circled by Armies tanks, droning bomber motors,
                         radar electric computers?
What Mind directed Stern Gang Irgun Al Fatah
                              Black September?
     Meyer Lansky? Nixon Shah? Gangster? Premier? King?
                                        one-eyed General Dayan?
          Golda Meir & Kissinger bound me with Arms?
HITLER AND STALIN SENT ME HERE!
          WEIZMANN & BEN-GURION SENT ME HERE!
               NASSER AND SADAT SENT ME HERE!
ARAFAT SENT ME HERE! MESSIAH SENT ME HERE!
                              GOD SENT ME HERE!
          Buchenwald sent me here! Vietnam sent me here!
               Mylai sent me here!
                              Lidice sent me here!
     My mother sent me here!
               I WAS BORN HERE IN ISRAEL, Arab
          circumcised, my father had a coffee shop in Jerusalem
One day the Soldiers came & told me to walk down road my hands up
               walk away leave my house business forever!
                    The Israelis sent me here!
     Solomon’s Temple the Pyramids & Sphinx sent me here!
                         JAWEH AND ALLAH SENT ME HERE!
Abraham will take me to his bosom!
          Mohammed will guide me to Paradise!
                         Christ sent me here to be crucified!
     Buddha will wipe us out and destroy the world.
The New York Times and Cairo Editorialist Heykal sent me here!
     Commentary and Palestine Review sent me here!
     The International Zionist Conspiracy sent me here!
     Syrian Politicians sent me here! Heroic Pan-Arab
               Nationalists sent me here!
                    They’re sending Armies to my side—
The Americans & Russians are sending bombing planes tanks
     Chinese Egyptians Syrians help me battle for my righteous
          house my Soul’s dirt Spirit’s Nation body’s
                    boundaries & Self’s territory my
          Zionist homeland my Palestine inheritance
The Capitalist Communist & Third World Peoples’
     Republics Dictatorships Police States Socialisms & Democracies
          are all sending Deadly Weapons to our aid!
We shall triumph over the Enemy!
          Maintain our Separate Identity! Proud
               History evermore!
     Defend our own bodies here this Holy Land! This hill
          Golgotha never forget, never relinquish
                    inhabit thru Eternity
          under Allah Christ Yaweh forever one God
Shema Yisroel Adonoi Eluhenu Adonoi Echad!
                    La ilah illa’ Allah hu!

     OY! AH! HU! OY! AH! HU!
     SHALOM! SHANTIH! SALAAM!

New York, January 13, 1974

Manifesto

Let me say beginning I don’t believe in Soul
The heart, famous heart’s a bag of shit I wrote 25 years ago
O my immortal soul! youthful poet Shelley cried
O my immortal Ego—little knowing
he didn’t believe in God. Neither do I.
Nor all science reason reality and good moral Will—
collections of empty atoms as Kerouac Buddha scribed.

Neither does great love immortal defy pain nightmare Death Torture Saigon Police Underground Press Pravda Bill of Rights—

And while we’re at it, let’s denounce Democracy, Fascism, Communism and heroes.

Art’s not empty if it shows its own emptiness

Poetry useful leaves its own skeleton hanging in air

like Buddha, Shakespeare & Rimbaud.

Serious, dispense with law except Cause & Effect, even the latter has exceptions

No cause & effect is not foolproof.

There is Awareness—which confounds the Soul, Heart, God, Science Love Governments and Cause & Effects’ Nightmare.

New York, January 28, 1974, 1 A.M.

Sad Dust Glories

To the Dead

You were here on earth, in cities—
          where now?
Bones in the ground,
          thoughts in my mind.

*

Teacher
bring me to heaven
or leave me alone.
Why make me work so hard
when everything’s spread around
open, like forest’s poison oak turned red
empty sleepingbags hanging from
               a dead branch.

*

When I sit
I see dust motes in my eye
Ponderosa needles trembling
               shine green
in blue sky.
Wind sound passes thru
               pine tops, distant
windy waves flutter black
               oak leaves
and leave them still
like my mind
which forgets
why the bluejay across the woods’
                    clearing
squawks, mid afternoon.

*

The mood
is sadness, dead friends,
or the boy I slept with last night
came twice silently
and I still lie in the colored
                    hammock, half naked
reading poetry
Sunday
in bright sun pine shade.

*

KENJI MYAZAWA

“All is Buddhahood
to who has cried even once
Glory be?”
So I said glory be
     looking down at a pine
               feather
risen beside a dead leaf
on brown duff
where a fly wavers an inch
               above ground
midsummer.

*

Could you be here?
Really be here
     and forget the void?
I am, it’s peaceful, empty,
filled with green Ponderosa
     swaying parallel crests
fan-like needle circles
glittering haloed
in sun that moves slowly
     lights up my hammock
          heats my face skin
               and knees.

*

Wind makes sound
          in tree tops
like express trains like city
          machinery
Slow dances high up, huge
branches wave back & forth sensitive
needlehairs bob their heads
—it’s too human, it’s not human
It’s treetops, whatever they think,
It’s me, whatever I think,
It’s the wind talking.

*   *

The moon followed by Jupiter thru pinetrees,

A mosquito comes round your head buzzing
you know he’s going to bite you if he can—

First you look at your thoughts
then you look at the moon
then look at the reflection of the moon in your eyeball
                    splatter of light on surface retina
                         opening and closing the blotched circle
and the mosquito buzzes, disturbing your senses
                    and you remember your itching thumb as mind
                                        wanders again.

*

Shobo-an

The Acorn people
     read newspapers
          by kerosene light.

*

By Kitkitdizze Pond in June with Gary Snyder

Bookkeeping in the moonlight
     —“frogs count
          my checks.”

*

Driving Volkswagen
          with tired feet
returned from camping
          in Black Buttes
thru sad dust glories
turning off Malakoff
     Diggings road
Blinded by sunlight
     squirrel in
          windshield.

September 1974

Ego Confessions
(1974–1977)
Ego Confession

I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America

Introduced to Gyalwa Karmapa heir of the Whispered Transmission Crazy Wisdom Practice Lineage

as the secret young wise man who visited him and winked anonymously decade ago in Gangtok

Prepared the way for Dharma in America without mentioning Dharma—scribbled laughter

Who saw Blake and abandoned God

To whom the Messianic Fink sent messages darkest hour sleeping on steel sheets “somewhere in the Federal Prison system” Weathermen got no Moscow Gold

who went backstage to Cecil Taylor serious chat chord structure & Time in a nightclub

who fucked a rose-lipped rock star in a tiny bedroom slum watched by a statue of Vajrasattva—

and overthrew the CIA with a silent thought—

Old Bohemians many years hence in Viennese beergardens’ll recall

his many young lovers with astonishing faces and iron breasts

gnostic apparatus and magical observation of rainbow-lit spiderwebs

extraordinary cooking, lung stew & Spaghetti a la Vongole and recipe for salad dressing 3 parts oil one part vinegar much garlic and honey a spoonful

his extraordinary ego, at service of Dharma and completely empty

unafraid of its own self’s spectre

parroting gossip of gurus and geniuses famous for their reticence—

Who sang a blues made rock stars weep and moved an old black guitarist to laughter in Memphis—

I want to be the spectacle of Poesy triumphant over trickery of the world

Omniscient breathing its own breath thru War tear gas spy hallucination

whose common sense astonished gaga Gurus and rich Artistes—

who called the Justice department & threaten’d to Blow the Whistle

Stopt Wars, turned back petrochemical Industries’ Captains to grieve & groan in bed

Chopped wood, built forest houses & established farms

distributed monies to poor poets & nourished imaginative genius of the land

Sat silent in jazz roar writing poetry with an ink pen—

wasn’t afraid of God or Death after his 48th year—

let his brains turn to water under Laughing Gas his gold molar pulled by futuristic dentists

Seaman knew ocean’s surface a year

carpenter late learned bevel and mattock

son, conversed with elder Pound & treated his father gently

—All empty all for show, all for the sake of Poesy

to set surpassing example of sanity as measure for late generations

Exemplify Muse Power to the young avert future suicide

accepting his own lie & the gaps between lies with equal good humor

Solitary in worlds full of insects & singing birds all solitary

—who had no subject but himself in many disguises

some outside his own body including empty air-filled space forests & cities—

Even climbed mountains to create his mountain, with ice ax & crampons & ropes, over Glaciers—

San Francisco, October 1974

Mugging

     I

Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street’s dusk—

Walked out of my home ten years, walked out in my honking neighborhood

Tonite at seven walked out past garbage cans chained to concrete anchors

Walked under black painted fire escapes, giant castiron plate covering a hole in ground

—Crossed the street, traffic lite red, thirteen bus roaring by liquor store,

past corner pharmacy iron grated, past Coca Cola & Mylai posters fading scraped on brick

Past Chinese Laundry wood door’d, & broken cement stoop steps For Rent hall painted green & purple Puerto Rican style

Along E. 10th’s glass splattered pavement, kid blacks & Spanish oiled hair adolescents’ crowded house fronts—

Ah, tonite I walked out on my block NY City under humid summer sky Halloween,

thinking what happened Timothy Leary joining brain police for a season?

thinking what’s all this Weathermen, secrecy & selfrighteousness beyond reason—F.B.I. plots?

Walked past a taxicab controlling the bottle strewn curb—

past young fellows with their umbrella handles & canes leaning against a ravaged Buick

—and as I looked at the crowd of kids on the stoop—a boy stepped up, put his arm around my neck

tenderly I thought for a moment, squeezed harder, his umbrella handle against my skull,

and his friends took my arm, a young brown companion tripped his foot ’gainst my ankle—

as I went down shouting Om Ah Hu? to gangs of lovers on the stoop watching

slowly appreciating, why this is a raid, these strangers mean strange business

with what—my pockets, bald head, broken-healed-bone leg, my softshoes, my heart—

Have they knives? Om Ah Hu?—Have they sharp metal wood to shove in eye ear ass? Om Ah Hu?

& slowly reclined on the pavement, struggling to keep my woolen bag of poetry address calendar & Leary-lawyer notes hung from my shoulder

dragged in my neat orlon shirt over the crossbar of a broken metal door

dragged slowly onto the fire-soiled floor an abandoned store, laundry candy counter 1929—

now a mess of papers & pillows & plastic car seat covers cracked cockroachcorpsed ground—

my wallet back pocket passed over the iron foot step guard

and fell out, stole by God Muggers’ lost fingers, Strange—

Couldn’t tell—snakeskin wallet actually plastic, 70 dollars my bank money for a week,

old broken wallet—and dreary plastic contents—Amex card & Manf. Hanover Trust Credit too—business card from Mr. Spears British Home Minister Drug Squad—my draft card—membership ACLU & Naropa Institute Instructor’s identification

Om Ah Hu? I continued chanting Om Ah Hu?

Putting my palm on the neck of an 18 year old boy fingering my back pocket crying “Where’s the money”

“Om Ah Hu? there isn’t any”

My card Chief Boo-Hoo Neo American Chruch New Jersey & Lower East Side

Om Ah Hu?—what not forgotten crowded wallet—Mobil Credit, Shell? old lovers addresses on cardboard pieces, booksellers calling cards—

—“Shut up or we’ll murder you”—“Om Ah Hu? take it easy”

Lying on the floor shall I shout more loud?—the metal door closed on blackness

one boy felt my broken healed ankle, looking for hundred dollar bills behind my stocking weren’t even there—a third boy untied my Seiko Hong Kong watch rough from right wrist leaving a clasp-prick skin tiny bruise

“Shut up and we’ll get out of here”—and so they left,

as I rose from the cardboard mattress thinking Om Ah Hu? didn’t stop em enough,

the tone of voice too loud—my shoulder bag with 10,000 dollars full of poetry left on the broken floor—

November 2, 1974

II

Went out the door dim eyed, bent down & picked up my glasses from step edge I placed them while dragged in the store—looked out—

Whole street a bombed-out face, building rows’ eyes & teeth missing

burned apartments half the long block, gutted cellars, hallways’ charred beams

hanging over trash plaster mounded entrances, couches & bedsprings rusty after sunset

Nobody home, but scattered stoopfuls of scared kids frozen in black hair

chatted giggling at house doors in black shoes, families cooked For Rent some six story houses mid the street’s wreckage

Nextdoor Bodega, a phone, the police? “I just got mugged” I said

to the man’s face under fluorescent grocery light tin ceiling—

puffy, eyes blank & watery, sickness of beer kidney and language tongue

thick lips stunned as my own eyes, poor drunken Uncle minding the store!

O hopeless city of idiots empty eyed staring afraid, red beam top’d car at street curb arrived—

“Hey maybe my wallet’s still on the ground got a flashlight?”

Back into the burnt-doored cave, & the policeman’s gray flashlight broken no eyebeam—

“My partner all he wants is sit in the car never gets out Hey Joe bring your flashlight—”

a tiny throwaway beam, dim as a match in the criminal dark

“No I can’t see anything here” … “Fill out this form”

Neighborhood street crowd behind a car “We didn’t see nothing”

Stoop young girls, kids laughing “Listen man last time I messed with them see this—”

rolled up his skinny arm shirt, a white knife scar on his brown shoulder

“Besides we help you the cops come don’t know anybody we all get arrested

go to jail I never help no more mind my business everytime”

“Agh!” upstreet think “Gee I don’t know anybody here ten years lived half block crost Avenue C

and who knows who?”—passing empty apartments, old lady with frayed paper bags

sitting in the tin-boarded doorframe of a dead house.

December 10, 1974

Who Runs America?

Oil brown smog over Denver
Oil red dung colored smoke
level to level across the horizon
     blue tainted sky above
Oil car smog gasoline
     hazing red Denver’s day
          December bare trees
               sticking up from housetop streets
Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over
               radar wheels, black smoke
                    drifts wobbly from tailfins

Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains
Oil from Texas, Bahrain, Venezuela Mexico
Oil that turns General Motors
          revs up Ford
     lights up General Electric, oil that crackles
thru International Business Machine computers,
          charges dynamos for ITT
     sparks Western Electric
          runs thru Amer Telephone & Telegraph wires
Oil that flows thru Exxon New Jersey hoses,
rings in Mobil gas tank cranks, rumbles
                    Chrysler engines
shoots thru Texaco pipelines,
          blackens ocean from broken Gulf tankers
spills onto Santa Barbara beaches from
               Standard of California derricks offshore.

Braniff Air, Denver-Dallas, December 3, 1974

Thoughts on a Breath

Cars slide minute down asphalt lanes in front of

Dallas Hilton Inn

Trees brown bare in December’s smog-mist roll up

to the city’s squared towers

beneath electric wire grids trestled toward country water tanks

distanced under cloud streak crossed with fading

vapor trails.

Majestic in a skirt of human fog, building blocks

rise at sky edge,

Branches and house roofs march to horizon.

I sat again to complete the cycle, eyes open seeing

dust motes in the eye screen

like birds over telephone wires, curve of the eyeball

where Dallas and I meet—

white motel wall of the senses—ear roar

oil exhaust, snuffle and bone growl

motors rolling North Central freeway

Energy playing over Concrete, energy

hymning itself in emptiness—

What’ve I learned since I sat here four years ago?

In the halls of the head or out thru the halls of the senses,

same space

Trucks rolling toward Dallas skyscrapers

or mind thoughts floating thru my head

vanish on a breath—What was it I began

my meditation on?

Police state, Students, Poetry open tongue,

anger and fear of Cops,

oil Cops, Rockefeller Cops, Oswald Cops,

Johnson Cops Nixon Cops

president Cops

SMU Cops Trustee Cops CIA Cops

FBI Cops Goon Squads of Dope

Cops busted Stony Burns and sent him to

Jail 10 years and a day

for less than a joint of Grass, a Citizen

under republic, under Constitution, of Texas?

We sit here in police state and sigh, knowing

we’re trapped in our bodies,

our fear of No meat, no oil, no money, airplanes

sex love kisses jobs no

work

Massive metal bars about, monster machines

eat us, Controlled by army

Cops, the Secret Police, our own thoughts!

Punishment! Punish me! Punish me! we scream

in our hearts, cocks spurting alone

in our fists!

What thoughts more flowed thru our hearts alone

in Dallas? Flowed thru our hearts like oil

thru Hilton’s faucets?

Where shall we house our minds, pay

rent for Selves, how

protect our bodies

from inflation, starvation, old age, smoking

Cancer, Coughing Death?

Where get money to buy off the

skeleton? If we work with Kissinger

Can we buy time, get off on parole? Does

Rockefeller want Underground

Newspapers printing his subsconscious mind’s

nuclear oil wars?

Will 92nd Armored Division be sent to seize

Arabia oilfields

as threatened December’s US News &

World Report?

What’d we remember that destroyed these armies

with a breath?

How pay rent & stay in our bodies

if we don’t sell our minds to Samsara?

If we don’t join the illusion—that Gas is life—

How can we in Dallas SMU

look forward to our futures?

work with our hands

like niggers growing Crops in the field,

& plow and harvest our own corny

fate?

Oh Walt Whitman salutations you knew the laborer,

the sexual intelligent horny handed

man who lived in Dirt

and fixed the axles of Capitalism, dumbed and laughing at hallucinated Secretaries

Of State!

Oh intellect of body back & Cock whose red neck

supports the S&M freaks of Government

police & Fascist Monopolies—

Kissinger bare assed & big buttocked

with a whip, in leather boots

scrawling on a memo to Chile “No more

civics lectures please”

When the ambassador complained about Torture

methods used in the Detention Stadium!

And I ride the planes that Rockefeller gassed

when he paid off Kissinger!

Stony Burns sits in jail, in a stone cell in

Huntsville

and breathes his news to solitude.

Homage

to the Gurus, Guru om! Thanks to the teachers

who taught us to breathe,

to watch our minds revolve in emptiness,

to follow the rise & fall of thoughts,

Illusions big as empires flowering &

Vanishing on a breath!

Thanks to aged teachers whose wrinkles

read our minds’ newspapers &

taught us not to Cling to yesterday’s

thoughts,

nor thoughts split seconds ago, but

let cities vanish on a breath—

Thanks to teachers who showed us behold

Dust motes in our own eye,

anger our own hearts,

emptiness of Dallases where we

sit thinking knitted brows—

Sentient beings are numberless I vow

to liberate all

Passions unfathomable I vow to

release them all

Thought forms limitless I vow to

master all

Awakened space is endless I vow to

enter it forever.

Dallas, December 4, 1974

We Rise on Sun Beams and Fall in the Night

Dawn’s orb orange-raw shining over Palisades
bare crowded branches bush up from marshes—
New Jersey with my father riding automobile
highway to Newark Airport—Empire State’s
spire, horned buildingtops, Manhattan
rising as in W. C. Williams’ eyes between wire trestles—
trucks sixwheeled steady rolling overpass
beside New York—I am here
tiny under sun rising in vast white sky,
staring thru skeleton new buildings,
with pen in hand awake …

December 11, 1974

Written on Hotel Napkin: Chicago Futures

Wind mills churn on Windy City’s
     rooftops          Antennae
          collecting electric
above thick-loamed gardens
     on Playboy Tower
Merchandise Mart’s compost
                    privies
     supply nightsoil for Near North Side’s
                    back Gardens
Cabbages, celery & cucumbers
     sprout in Mayor Daley’s
                    frontyard
          rich with human waste—
Bathtub beer like old days
Backyard Mary Jane like
                    old days,
Sun reflectors gather heat
     in rockpile collectors
          under apartment walls
Horses graze in Parks &
     streets covered with grass
Mafia Dons shovel earth
     & bury Cauliflower
                    leaves
Old gangsters & their sons
     tending grapevines

Mid-March 1975

Hospital Window

At gauzy dusk, thin haze like cigarette smoke
ribbons past Chrysler Building’s silver fins
tapering delicately needletopped, Empire State’s
taller antenna filmed milky lit amid blocks
black and white apartmenting veil’d sky over Manhattan,
offices new built dark glassed in bluish heaven—The East
50s & 60s covered with castles & watertowers, seven storied
tar-topped house-banks over York Avenue, late may-green trees
surrounding Rockefellers’ blue domed medical arbor—
Geodesic science at the waters edge—Cars running up
East River Drive, & parked at N.Y. Hospital’s oval door
where perfect tulips flower the health of a thousand sick souls
trembling inside hospital rooms. Triboro bridge steel-spiked
raftertops stand stone-piered over mansard
penthouse orange roofs, sunset tinges the river and in a few
Bronx windows, some magnesium vapor brilliances’re
spotted five floors above E 59th St under gray painted bridge
trestles. Way downtown along the river, as Monet saw Thames
100 years ago, Con Edison smokestacks 14th street,
& Brooklyn Bridge’s skeined dim in modern mists—
Pipes sticking up to sky nine smokestacks huge visible—
U.N. Building hangs under an orange crane, & red lights on
vertical avenues below the trees turn green at the nod
of a skull with a mild nerve ache. Dim dharma, I return
to this spectacle after weeks of poisoned lassitude, my thighs
belly chest & arms covered with poxied welts,
head pains fading back of the neck, right eyebrow cheek
mouth paralyzed—from taking the wrong medicine, sweated
too much in the forehead helpless, covered my rage from
gorge to prostate with grinding jaw and tightened anus
not released the weeping scream of horror at robot Mayaguez
World self ton billions metal grief unloaded
Phnom Penh to Nakhon Thanom, Santiago & Tehran.
Fresh warm breeze in the window, day’s release
from pain, cars float downside the bridge trestle
and uncounted building-wall windows multiplied a mile
deep into ash-delicate sky beguile
my empty mind. A seagull passes alone wings
spread silent over roofs.

May 20, 1975 (Mayaguez Crisis)

Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox

Hadda be flashing like the Daily Double

Hadda be playing on Tee Vee

Hadda be loudmouthed on the Comedy Hour

Hadda be announced over Loud Speakers

CIA & Mafia are in Cahoots

Hadda be said in old ladies’ language

Hadda be said in American Headlines

Kennedy stretched & smiled & got doublecrossed by low life goons & Agents

Rich bankers with Criminal Connections

Dope pushers in CIA working with dope pushers from Cuba

working with Big Time syndicate Tampa Florida

Hadda be said with big mouth

Hadda be moaned over Factory foghorns

Hadda be chattered on Car Radio News Broadcast

Hadda be screamed in the kitchen

Hadda be yelled in the basement where uncles were fighting

Hadda be Howled on the streets by Newsboys to bus conductors

Hadda be foghorned into N.Y. Harbor

Hadda echo under hard hats

Hadda turn up the Volume in University ballrooms

Hadda be written in library books, footnoted

Hadda be in headlines of the Times & Le Monde

Hadda be barked over TV

Hadda be heard in side alleys thru bar room doors

Hadda be played on Wire Services

Hadda be bells ringing, Comedians stopt dead in the middle of a joke in Las Vegas,

Hadda be FBI chief J. E. Hoover & Frank Costello syndicate mouthpiece meeting in Central Park N.Y. together weekends reported posthumously Time magazine

Hadda be the Mafia & CIA together

started War on Cuba Bay of Pigs & Poison assassination headlines

Hadda be the Dope Cops & the Mafia

sold all that Heroin in America

Hadda be FBI & Organized Crime working together in Cahoots “against the Commies”

let Lucky Luciano out of Jail take over Sicily Mediterranean drug trade

Hadda be Corsican goons in Office Strategic Services’ Pay busted 1948 dock strikes in Marseilles, sixties port transshipment Indochina heroin,

Hadda be ringing on Multinational Cashregisters

world-wide laundry for organized Criminal money

Hadda be CIA & Mafia & FBI together

bigger than Nixon, bigger than War.

Hadda be a gorged throat full of murder

Hadda be mouth and ass a solid mass of rage

a Red hot head, a scream in the back of the throat

Hadda be in Kissinger’s brain

Hadda be in Rockefeller’s mouth

Hadda be Central Intelligence The Family “Our Thing” the Agency Mafia Organized Crime FBI Dope Cops & Multinational Corporations

one big set of Criminal gangs working together in Cahoots

Hit Men murderers everywhere outraged, on the make

Secret drunk Brutal Dirty Rich

on top of a Slag heap of prisons, Industrial Cancer, plutonium smog, garbaged cities, grandmas’ bedsores, Fathers’ resentments

Hadda be the Rulers wanted Law & Order they got rich on

wanted Protection status quo, wanted Junkies wanted Attica Wanted Kent State Wanted War in Indochina

Hadda be CIA & the Mafia & the FBI

Multinational Capitalists’ Strong arms squads, “Private detective Agencies for the very rich”

And their Armies, Navies and Air Force bombing Planes.

Hadda be Capitalism the Vortex of this rage, this

competition man to man, horses’ heads in the Capo’s bed, Cuban turf & rumbles, hit men, gang wars across oceans,

bombing Cambodia settled the score when Soviet Pilots manned Egyptian fighter planes

Chile’s red democracy bumped off with White House pots & pans a warning to Mediterranean governments

Secret Police embraced for decades, NKVD & CIA keep eachother’s secrets, OGPU & DIA never hit their own, KGB & FBI one mind—brute force

world-wide, and full of money

Hadda be rich, hadda be powerful, hadda hire technology from Harvard

Hadda murder in Indonesia 500,000

Hadda murder in Indochina 2,000,000

Hadda murder in Czechoslovakia

Hadda murder in Chile

Hadda murder in Russia

Hadda murder in America

New York, May 30, 1975, 3 A.M.

Come All Ye Brave Boys

Come all you young men that proudly display
Your torsos to the Sun on upper Broadway
Come sweet hearties so mighty with girls
So lithe and naked to kiss their gold curls
Come beautiful boys with breasts bright gold
Lie down in bed with me ere ye grow old,
Take down your blue jeans, we’ll have some raw fun
Lie down on your bellies I’ll fuck your soft bun.

Come heroic half naked young studs
That drive automobiles through vaginal blood
Come thin breasted boys and fat muscled kids
With sturdy cocks you deal out green lids
Turn over spread your strong legs like a lass
I’ll show you the thrill to be jived up the ass
Come sweet delicate strong minded men
I’ll take you thru graveyards & kiss you again

You’ll die in your life, wake up in my arms
Sobbing and hugging & showing your charms
Come strong darlings tough children hard boys
Transformed with new tenderness, taught new joys
We’ll lie embrac’d in full moonlight till dawn
Whiteness shows sky high over the wet lawn
Lay yr head on my shoulder kiss my lined brow
& belly to belly kiss my neck now

Yeah come on tight assed & strong cocked young fools
& shove up my belly your hard tender tools,
Suck my dick, lick my arm pit and breast
Lie back & sigh in the dawn for a rest,
Come in my arms, groan your sweet will
Come again in my mouth, lie silent & still,
Let me come in your butt, hold my head on your leg,
Let’s come together, & tremble & beg.

Boulder, August 25, 1975, 4 A.M.

Sickness Blues

Sickness Blues

Lord Lord I got the sickness blues, I must’ve done something wrong
There ain’t no Lord to call on, now my youth is gone

Sickness blues, don’t want to fuck no more
Sickness blues, can’t get it up no more
Tears come in my eyes, feel like an old tired whore

I went to see the doctor, he shot me with poison germs
I got out of the hospital, my head was full of worms

All I can think is Death, father’s getting old
He can’t walk half a block, his feet feel cold

I went down to Santa Fe take vacation there
Indians selling turquoise in dobe huts in Taos Pueblo Square
Got headache in La Fonda, I could get sick anywhere

Must be my bad karma, fuckin these pretty boys
Hungry ghosts chasing me, because I been chasing joys
Lying here in bed alone, playing with my toys

I musta been doing something wrong meat & cigarettes
Bow down before my lord, 100 thousand regrets
All my poems down in hell, that’s what pride begets

Sick and angry, lying in my hospital bed
Doctor Doctor bring morphine before I’m totally dead
Sick and angry at the national universe O my aching head

Someday I’m gonna get out of here, go somewhere alone
Yeah I’m going to leave this town with noise of rattling bone
I got the sickness blues, you’ll miss me when I’m gone

Boulder, July 19, 1975

Gospel Noble Truths

Gospel Noble Truths

Born in this world
You got to suffer
Everything changes
You got no soul

Try to be gay
Ignorant happy
You get the blues
You eat jellyroll

There is one Way
You take the high road
In your big Wheel
8 steps you fly

Look at the View
Right to horizon
Talk to the sky
Act like you talk

Work like the sun
Shine in your heaven
See what you done
Come down & walk

Sit you sit down
Breathe when you breathe
Lie down you lie down
Walk where you walk

Talk when you talk
Cry when you cry
Lie down you lie down
Die when you die

Look when you look
Hear what you hear
Taste what you taste here
Smell what you smell

Touch what you touch
Think what you think
Let go Let it go Slow
Earth Heaven & Hell

Die when you die
Die when you die
Lie down you lie down
Die when you die

New York Subway, October 17, 1975

Lay Down Yr Mountain

Rolling Thunder Stones

I

LAY DOWN YR MOUNTAIN

Lay down     Lay down yr mountain     Lay down God
Lay down     Lay down your music     Love lay down

Lay down     Lay down yr hatred     Lay yrself down
Lay down     Lay down your nation     Lay your foot on the rock

Lay down yr whole creation     Lay yr mind down
Lay down     Lay down yr empire     Lay your whole world down

Lay down your soul forever     Lay your vision down
Lay down yr bright body     Down your golden heavy crown

Lay down     Lay down yr magic hey!     Alchemist lay it down clear
Lay down your practice precisely     Lay down yr wisdom dear

Lay down yr skillful camera     Lay down yr image right
Lay down your brilliant image     Lay down light

Lay down     your ignorance     Roll yr wheel once more
Lay down yr empty suffering     Lay down yr Lion’s Roar

October 31, 1975

II

Sunrise Ceremony Verse
Improvised with Australian Aborigine Song-Sticks
at Request of Medicine Man Rolling Thunder November 5, 1975

When Music was needed Music sounded
When a Ceremony was needed a Teacher appeared
When Students were needed Telephones rang.
When Cars were needed Wheels rolled in
When a Place was needed a Mansion appeared
When a Fire was needed Wood appeared
When an Ocean was needed Waters rippled waves
When Shore was needed Shore met Ocean
When Sun was needed the Sun rose east
When People were needed People arrived
When a circle was needed a Circle formed.

Plymouth

III

SNOW BLUES

Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine
Jiggling yr knees blankeyed in the rain
When it snows in yr nose you catch cold in yr brain

Danbury, November 10, 1975

IV

TO THE SIX NATI ONS AT TUSCARORA RE SERVATION

We give thanks for this food, deer meat & indian-corn soup
Which is a product of the labor of your people
And the suffering of other forms of life
And which we promise to transform into friendly song and dancing
To all the ten directions of the Earth.

November 18, 1975

V

Snow falls
souls freeze
Speed kills
heart’s ease
Alcohol
fools wills
O slaves
Who craves
junk raves
Downer’s
angers
eyes blur—
I sing
Rolling
Thunder
Ho ho!
Macho
frenzy
in thee
’s a drag
dead bag.
Smoke grass
Yaas Yass
Shake ass
mind’s wealth
joint’s health
Ready?
Meditations
patience
eyes keen
serene
as graves
saves! saves
nations.

Montreal, December 4, 1975

Cabin in the Rockies

I
Sitting on a tree stump with half cup of tea,
               sun down behind mountains—
                    Nothing to do.

Not a word! Not a Word!
Flies do all my talking for me—
and the wind says something else.

Fly on my nose,
I’m not the Buddha,
There’s no enlightenment here!

Against red bark trunk
               A fly’s shadow
lights on the shadow of a pine bough.

An hour after dawn
I haven’t thought of Buddha once yet!
—walking back into the retreat house.

II
Walking into King Sooper after Two-week Retreat

A thin redfaced pimpled boy
          stands alone minutes
looking down into the ice cream bin.

Boulder, September 16, 1975

Reading French Poetry

Poems rise in my brain
like Woolworth’s 5 & 10¢ Store perfume
O my love with thin breasts
17 year old boy with smooth ass
O my father with white hands
specks on your feet & foul breath bespeak tumor
O myself with my romance
fading but fat bodies remain
in bed with me warm passionless
unless I exercise myself like a dumbbell
O my Fiftieth year approaching
like Tennessee like Andy a failure, big nothing—
very satisfactory subjects for Poetry.

New York, January 12, 1976

Two Dreams

I
As I passed thru Moscow’s grass lots I heard
a voice, a small green dwarf, leaf-clothed &
thin corn-stalk arms, head capped with green
husk & tassel, walking toward me talking:
“You see these other tassel heads stalking
thru long green grass spears half buried
in empty lots where building-ghosts stand
razed by police state but bursting from ground
Springtime as now seeds grown natural
So I full grown sprite of Friendship salute
you who seek love in Roman Moscow circuses—
Be cheerful our enemy’s enemy is Death
and since Death is We, since all die, all
is not lost but to Death, & what lives eccentric
as yourself & Me, ancient friends, lives
humorous and democratic as your leaves of grass
which die also prophesied but live as you and I.
Bee cheerful, good Sir. Cockhead green am I
an entertainer triumphant in the tiny cliffs
between buildings, in old grasslots of Paterson
where the wrecker’s ball creates a tiny farm
for worms, and bottles glint in new turned earth—
and weeds and we sprout renewing Nature’s
humor where the architectural police are on the nod.
The sun will rise and I’ll accompany your eye
that walks thru Moscow looking for human love.”

March 1, 1976

II     sludge
Dantean, the cliffside whereon I walked
With volumes of Milton & the Tuscan Bard enarmed:
Highway prospecting th’ocean Sludged transparent
lipped to asphalt built by Man under sky.
Far down below the factory I espied, and plunged
full clothed into the Acid Tide, heroic precipitous
Stupidly swam the noxious surface to my goal—
An Oil platform at land’s end, where Fellows watched
my bold approach to the Satanic World Trade Center.

Father dying tumored, Industry smog
o’erspreads dawn sky, gold beams descend
on Paterson thru subtle tar fumes, viewless
to wakened eye, transfused into family meat.
Capitalism’s reckless industry cancers New Jersey.

New York, March 6, 1976

C’mon Jack

Turn me on your knees
Spank me & Fuck me
Hit my ass with your hand
Spank me and Fuck me
Hit my hole with your fingers
Hit my ass with your hand
Spank me and fuck me
Turn me on your knees
Ah Robertson it’s you
Yes hit my ass with your hand
real hard, ass on your knees
sticking up hard harder slap
Spank me and Fuck me
Got a hard on Spank me
When you get a hard on Fuck me.

March 29, 1976

Pussy Blues

for Anne Waldman

You said you got to go home     & feed your pussycat
When I ast you to stay here tonight     Where’s your pussy at?

Keep your pussy here     Try our hot cat food
Yeah lotsa cats around here     & they’s all half nude
Going home alone     do your pussy no good

Hey it’s 4th of July     Say it’s your U.S. birthday
Yeah stay out all night     National Holiday
Tiger on your fence     Don’t let him get away

Pussy pussy come home     I’m gonna feed you fish
Yeah pussy pussy here     come your big red dish
I’ll tickle your belly     All the eats you wish

Hey there pussy     Cantcha catch my mouse
Hey please pussy     Play with my white mouse
You can stay all night     You can clean my house

Boulder, Independence Day 1976, 1 A.M.

Don’t Grow Old

I

Old Poet, Poetry’s final subject glimmers months ahead

Tender mornings, Paterson roofs snowcovered

Vast

Sky over City Hall tower, Eastside Park’s grass terraces & tennis courts beside Passaic River

Parts of ourselves gone, sister Rose’s apartments, brown corridor’d high schools—

Too tired to go out for a walk, too tired to end the War

Too tired to save body

too tired to be heroic

The real close at hand as the stomach

liver pancreas rib

Coughing up gastric saliva

Marriages vanished in a cough

Hard to get up from the easy chair

Hands white feet speckled a blue toe stomach big breasts hanging thin

hair white on the chest

too tired to take off shoes and black sox

Paterson, January 12, 1976

II

He’ll see no more Times Square
honkytonk movie marquees, bus stations at midnight
Nor the orange sun ball
rising thru treetops east toward New York’s skyline
His velvet armchair facing the window will be empty
He won’t see the moon over house roofs
or sky over Paterson’s streets.

New York, February 26, 1976

III
Wasted arms, feeble knees
     80 years old, hair thin and white
          cheek bonier than I’d remembered—
head bowed on his neck, eyes opened
     now and then, he listened—
     I read my father Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality
“… trailing clouds of glory do we come
     from God, who is our home …”
          “That’s beautiful,” he said, “but it’s not true.”

“When I was a boy, we had a house
     on Boyd Street, Newark—the backyard
          was a big empty lot full of bushes and tall grass,
     I always wondered what was behind those trees.
When I grew older, I walked around the block,
     and found out what was back there—
          it was a glue factory.”

May 18, 1976

IV
Will that happen to me?
Of course, it’ll happen to thee.

Will my arms wither away?
Yes yr arm hair will turn gray.

Will my knees grow weak & collapse?
Your knees will need crutches perhaps.

Will my chest get thin?
Your breasts will be hanging skin.

Where will go—my teeth?
You’ll keep the ones beneath.

What’ll happen to my bones?
They’ll get mixed up with stones.

June 1976

Father Death Blues

V

FATHER DEATH BLUES

Hey Father Death, I’m flying home
Hey poor man, you’re all alone
Hey old daddy, I know where I’m going

Father Death, Don’t cry any more
Mama’s there, underneath the floor
Brother Death, please mind the store

Old Aunty Death Don’t hide your bones
Old Uncle Death I hear your groans
O Sister Death how sweet your moans

O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths
Sobbing breasts’ll ease your Deaths
Pain is gone, tears take the rest

Genius Death your art is done
Lover Death your body’s gone
Father Death I’m coming home

Guru Death your words are true
Teacher Death I do thank you
For inspiring me to sing this Blues

Buddha Death, I wake with you
Dharma Death, your mind is new
Sangha Death, we’ll work it through

Suffering is what was born
Ignorance made me forlorn
Tearful truths I cannot scorn

Father Breath once more farewell
Birth you gave was no thing ill
My heart is still, as time will tell.

July 8, 1976 (Over Lake Michigan)

VI
Near the Scrap Yard my Father’ll be Buried
Near Newark Airport my father’ll be
Under a Winston Cigarette sign buried
On Exit 14 Turnpike NJ South
Through the tollgate Service Road 1 my father buried
Past Merchants Refrigerating concrete on the cattailed marshes
past the Budweiser Anheuser-Busch brick brewery
in B’Nai Israel Cemetery behind a green painted iron fence
where there used to be a paint factory and farms
where Pennick makes chemicals now
under the Penn Central power Station
transformers & wires, at the borderline
between Elizabeth and Newark, next to Aunt Rose
Gaidemack, near Uncle Harry Meltzer
one grave over from Abe’s wife Anna my father’ll be buried.

July 9, 1976

VII
What’s to be done about Death?
Nothing, nothing
Stop going to school No. 6 Paterson, N.J., in 1937?
Freeze time tonight, with a headache, at quarter to 2 A.M.?
Not go to Father’s funeral tomorrow morn?
Not go back to Naropa teach Buddhist poetics all summer?
Not be buried in the cemetery near Newark Airport some day?

Paterson, July 11, 1976

“Junk Mail”

I received in mail offer beautiful certificate National Conference Synagogue Youth

invites subscriber Monthly Review Independent Socialist Mag

Congressman Koch reports on collapse of our cities

Epilepsy Foundation misdelivered for Mr. Pantonucci light candle understanding 4 million Americans

Dear Mr. Orlovsky put Salvation Army on your Christmas List $50 return enclosed envelope

American Friends Service Committee act now meet urgent human needs hungry families Prisoners

in remote penal institutions Rehabilitation Vietnam Laos Northern Great Plains Indians block land-destruction by energy seeking industries Contact between Israeli Jews & Arabs

Psychoenergetics workshops in Vermont Green Mountain Quarterly’s Imperialist Ideology in Donald Duck with a new bibliography Sri Aurobindo and the Mother protected by Intnl. copyright laws News of Auroville

Dear Friend: we are Michael & Robert Meeropol, sons of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg executed by U.S. Government 22 years ago.

Sue the Government for the Files duplicating fees alone Twenty-five

Thousand Dollars

Christmas Greetings Help Hospitalized Veterans art or craft Kit enthused busily working for days Bob Hope helps.

Fund For Peace if your blood boils Press accounts C.I.A. blackmail assassination a powerful alternative to World Violence Private Citizens acting Global

Gay Peoples Union NYU faces bankruptcy Dance Halloween

Boycott Gallo Grapes lettuce United Farmworkers of America Our struggle is not over make checks payable Si Se Puede Cesar E. Chavez Union Label

Announcing Energy & Evolution Quarterly how to make harps lyres & dulcimers Quantum Theory Tantra & land reform organic gardening

Give Poets & Writers’ CODA to a friend subscribe United Nations Childrens’ Fund severe malnutrition Starvation faces 400 to 500 million children poorer countries. Dwarfism

disease blindness mental retardation stunted growth crop failures drought flood exhausted wheat rice reserves skyrocketing fuel costs fertilizer shortages Desperately need your help.

Racial motives lead to Innocent Marine’s conviction in Georgia murder trial a thick envelope from Southern Poverty Law Center Julian Bond

“I didn’t mean to harm anyone. I only went into that Police Station to see what they were doing to my brother…” sd Marine Sgt. Roy Patterson

Won’t you help millions in desperate need Thanksgiving urgently bless Carl’s Holiday Food Crusade “Yes! use my tax deductible donation to keep them alive.”

Catholic Peace Fellowship Activist Fund’s special appeal help the Staff to foster Christian Pacifist Continental Walk Disarmament & Social Justice

() I have no money at present but I wish to remain on the mailing list () Please take my name off your mailing list

An important message from Robert Redford about the Environment 80 separate legal actions Dirty air you pay your life Aerosol Spray cancer the National Resources Defense Council needs your support

The Continental Walk itself: the Nations spent $4.5 Trillion military security since 1946 This year $240 Billion join us walk across ? of the Planet’s surface Nonviolent resistance Unilateral Disarmament

Aum Sri Ganeshaya Namah Tantra Non-salacious in tone & intent lecturer Dr. Thackur George Washington Hotel Lexington Avenue NYC

Dear Friend: the War Resisters International is in a desperate financial situation

Nuclear Age pacifist work must advance leafleting soldiers British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign

We are in need of the kind of Miracle you can bring to pass. The huge influx of Russian Immigrants upon Bikur Cholem Hospital in the heart of Jerusalem—Don’t turn your back on the Herculean efforts …

First priority reservation on new gold $100 Canadian Olympic Coin now available at just $110! for American Express Cardmembers—

Ad Hoc Coalition for a New Foreign Policy (formerly Coalition to Stop Funding the War) hopes you will join the network by filling out the enclosed envelope

Human Rights Amendment, end Vietnam Trade Embargo, cut foreign military assistance encourage people to people Friendshipments to Vietnam

A literary miracle 843 poems written in 24 hours by Indian Yogi Sri Chinmoi Aum Publications

If you haven’t joined the Great Falls Development Corp. now’s the time to do so

& subscribe to the William Carlos Williams Newsletter. Penmaen Press: Two fascinating heretofore unpublished letters written in 1956 to Richard Eberhart by Allen Ginsberg …

Please won’t you help Central America Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Subcontinent? Give generously to Planned Parenthood—World Population

Confidential—Memo to supporters of Open Housing from Fund for Open Society a nonprofit mortgage Co. to advance equal housing: fight racial steering

Dear Citizen of the World: First days explosion bomb radioactivity starve Ozone layer? Isn’t it time we did something?

1) Send cooperators ten addresses w/ zip codes 2) Mail friends endorsement 3) Write your Congressman President Newspaper editor & Presidential Candidate.

As a final move, the World Authority would destroy all Nuclear Weapons.

Opened Midnight, New York, September 4, 1976

“You Might Get in Trouble”

Opening a bus window in N.Y.
     with the left hand in front of
     Bellevue you might get a
                    hernia.
Walking across First avenue
     you might stumble in a
                    pothole
& get your head run over by
                    taxicab
Plowing the field by Cherry
     Creek your trailer might
     turn over & fall on your ear
you might get your ear cut off
     arresting a junkie
or having an angry conversation with
     a speedfreak on E. 10 street
or arguing your case before the
     supreme court
someone might shoot you in
     the brain
There’s nothing you can do to
     keep your nose clean
taking baths plunging in the
     ice & snow
you might catch cold, the
     flu Swine epidemic’s
     “in” this year
according to the Authorities.

September 18, 1976

Land O’Lakes, Wisc.

Buddha died and
left behind a
big emptiness.

October 1976

“Drive All Blames into One”

It’s everybody’s fault but me.

I didn’t do it. I didn’t start the universe.

I didn’t steal Dr. Mahler’s tiles from his garage roof for my chicken coop

where I had six baby chicks I paid for so I could attract

my grammar school boyfriends to play with me in my backyard

They stole the tiles I’m going across the street to the candystore

and tell the old uncle behind the glass counter I’m mad at my boyfriends

for stealing that slate I took all the blame—

Last night I dreamt they blamed me again on the streetcorner

They got me bent over with my pants down and spanked my behind I was ashamed

I was red faced my self was naked I got hot I had a hard on.

New York, October 25, 1976

Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin: Vajrayana Seminary

Candle light blue banners incense
aching knee, hungry mouth—
any minute the gong—potatoes and sour cream!

Sunlight on the red zafu,
clank of forks & plates—
I’ll never be enlightened.

*

Did you ever see yourself
a breathing skull
looking out the eyes?

*

Under wooden roof beams
a hundred people
sit
sniffling, coughing, clearing throat
sneezing, sighing
breathing through nose
shifting on pillows in clothes
swallowing saliva,
listening.

November 11, 1976

For Creeley’s Ear

The whole
weight of
everything
too much

my heart in
the subway
pounding
subtly

head ache
from smoking
dizzy
a moment

riding
uptown to see
Karmapa Buddha
tonight.

New York, December 13, 1976

Haunting Poe’s Baltimore

I     POE IN DUST
Baltimore bones groan maliciously under sidewalk
Poe hides his hideous skeleton under church yard
Equinoctial worms peep thru his mummy ear
The slug rides his skull, black hair twisted in roots of threadbare grass
Blind mole at heart, caterpillars shudder in his ribcage,
Intestines wound with garter snakes
midst dry dust, snake eye & gut sifting thru his pelvis
Slimed moss green on his phosphor’d toenails, sole toeing black tombstone—
O prophet Poe well writ! your catacomb cranium chambered
eyeless, secret hid to moonlight ev’n under corpse-rich ground
where tread priest, passerby, and poet
staring white-eyed thru barred spiked gates
at viaducts heavy-bound and manacled upon the city’s heart.

January 10, 1977

II HEARING “ LENORE ” READ ALOUD AT 203 AMITY STREET
The light still gleams reflected from the brazen fire-tongs
The spinet is now silent to the ears of silent throngs
For the Spirit of the Poet, who sang well of brides and ghouls
Still remains to haunt what children will obey his vision’s rules.

They who weep and burn in houses scattered thick on Jersey’s shore
Their eyes have seen his ghostly image, though the Prophet walks no more
Raven bright & cat of Night; and his wines of Death still run
In their veins who haunt his brains, hidden from the human sun.

Reading words aloud from books, till a century has passed
In his house his heirs carouse, till his woes are theirs at last:
So I saw a pale youth trembling, speaking rhymes Poe spoke before,
Till Poe’s light rose on the living, and His fire gleamed on the floor—

The sitting room lost its cold gloom, I saw these generations burn
With the Beauty he abandoned; in new bodies they return:
To inspire future children ’spite his Ravens “Nevermore”
I have writ this antient riddle in Poe’s house in Baltimore.

January 16, 1977

Contest of Bards

For Jonathan Robbins

I

THE ARGUMENT: Old bard lived in solitary stone house at ocean edge three decades retired from the world, Young poet arrives naked interrupting his studies & announces his own prophetic dreams to replace the old Bard’s boring verities. Young poet had dreamed old poet’s scene & its hidden secret, an Eternal Rune cut in stone at the hearth-front hidden under porphyry bard-throne. Young bard tries to seduce old Boner with his energy & insight, & makes him crawl down on the floor to read the secret riddle Rhyme.

And the youth free stripling bounding along the Hills of Color

And the old man bearded, wrinkled, browed in his black cave

Meet in the broken house of stone, walls graven by Prophet Hands,

& contend for the Mysteries, vanity against vanity, deciphering

Eternal runes of Love, & Silence, & the Monster of Self

Covered with Blood & Lilies, covered with bones and hair and skin:

They glory in Night & Starvation the Fat Bright Cherub of Resurrection,

Bliss & God: Terrible Mental Cherub of Chemistry Imagination & Vanity

Bard after Bard orating and perishing, casting his image behind on men’s brains

thru sounds symboled on the mind’s stone walls reverberating Syllables Visionary

Perfect formed to ’dure Millennia, but Phantom is such Rock,

Phantom as the Cellular Believer in’s own tangible re-creation.

“I hear the Bard’s stone words Build my Immortal Architecture:

This body stone hands and genitals this Heart stone Tenderness

and Delight This head Stone language to Rafter the Stone Bed of Love.

Come lay down on this rock pillow, kid, lay down your tender breast,

Pale face, red hair, soft belly hairy tender foot and Loins

Under the hard immortal blanket, mattress of Rock sheeted with Vocables!

In twenty years I’ll vanish from this shore & Solitary Eternal Cave—

Here I studied & Deciphered the Granite Alphabet surrendered

from Graves from Sands that swirled at the door, from star-fish

spotted boulders in seas’ low tide when full-moon-gleam

Pulls bones of Leviathan & tiny bass-fins tide-pool’d

many in ancient nights.” So one spoke, ocean serpents curl’d around

his whitened beard, eyes wide in horror he be left by the Dark Shore,

to burn his memories in the rocky hearth & keep his cold loins warm

in winter-rain days or in snowy night’s vastness filled

with stars and planets, spring summer & autumn mortality.

Sly, craven, conquering he spoke, his words like rainbows,

or firelight, or shadows, moving humorous thru his beard,

falling in the air, clothing his body in hypocritic webs of truth,

to hide his shame, his empty nakedness. He meditated

remembering deeper Buddhic prophecies, abhoring his own runes solid

immovable but by time and storm inexorable, half visible on his walls.

The youth the color of the hills laughed delighted at his Vanity

and cried, “Under the hearth stone’s a rune, old Bard of Familiarity,

your eyes forgot, or tempest-addled brain, so busy boiling meat

and tending to your threadbare cares and household hermitage

& fishing day by day for thirty years for thoughts! Behold!”

He naked bent and moved the porphyry-smooth red fire-seat aside:

“Read what’s writ on earth here before you Ignorant Prophet,

Learn in your age what True Magicians spelled for all Futurity,

Cut in the vanity of rock before your feeble hand grasped iron Pen

Or feather fancy tickled your gross ear: There have been sages here

before you, and I am after to outlive your gloomy miserous

hospitality. I loved you Ungrateful Unimaginative Bard

And Came over hills thru small cities to companion your steadfast study.

I dreamed of your eyes and beard and rocks and oceans, I dreamed

this room these pitted moss green walls & runes you scraped

deciphered and memorized, pillars worn by tide and smoke

of your lamp You Grow near blind reading mind on your own house walls,

I dreamt you sitting on your fire-seat reading the vaporous language of flame tongues

nescient to the airy rune cut in the Bedrock under yr very Shamanic Throne

You stare at the ceiling half asleep, or sit on your pillow with heavy eyelid

murmuring old bards Truths to your brain, repetitive

imagining me, or some other red-buttocked stripling savior come

to yr stone bed naked to renew your old body’s intelligence

and help you read again when blind now what you already memorized

and forgot, peering like a boor illiterate in Shadows 30 years—

Yes I have come but not for your feeble purpose, come of my own dreamed will

To show you what you forgot dreamt, Immortal Text neglected

under your groaning seat as you sat self-inspired by your mortal fire.

O Self Absorbed vulgar hungry Demon, leave your body & mine

Take eyes off your own veined hands and worm thoughts, lower

Your watery selfish infatuate eyes from my breast to my feet

& read me aloud in Bardic Voice, that Voice of Rock you boast so well so many decades,

Yea Face inland to the fields and railroads skyscrapers & Viaducts.

Youths maddened by Afric jukeboxes & maidens simpering at Picture shows

Read thru smoky air to a hopeless hundred million fools!

Read what young mind’s Pearl Majesty made round oracular Beauteous

More unworldly than your own self-haunted snaily skull & stony household shell.”

Pointing downward, his arm stiff in disdain dismissing lesser Beauty,

Like radiant lively Adolescence rejecting joy or sorrow, shrewd

with bright glance Innocent, albescent limbs ruddy and smooth in Sea-Wrack Firelight

Proud with centuries of learning in New-woke brain and boyish limbs, so stood the young messenger.

Startled, the wool-wrapped bard looked up at eyes mocking shining into his own:

Looked down at the boy’s neck unwrinkled white unlike his own: the breast

thin muscled unawakened silken flesh: the belly with a corse of tawny hair

rosed round the pricked virgin-budding genitals, shining in hearth light,

thighs ready and careless like a strong Child’s, playful walking & dancing tho awkward,

Thick calves with new hair light to the foot long as a man’s.

Humbled, bewilderment Touching his tongue, heart beating his ribs rewakened

The bard mused on this mortal beauty, remembering dead bodies he’d embraced in rough and silken beds

Years, years, and years of loves ago—his breast grew light, eyes lost

in dream—Then in his forehead Time gapped all youthful-imaged bodies there

Devouring their Shadows, as the sea surged out the rocky door.

The stars inclined thru cold air, moved so slow blue shining past

he saw them barely touch the ocean wave and rise and blink and glimmer silently engulfed—

Then to the Prophesied Task his inner eyes returned to their dim outward orbs:

Saw the gloom in his own stony shell: stone letters wavering on chill walls,

Iron Pots carbon black on shelves, old seaweed clothes in a stone closet, folded green

for Holiday Solitude at Vernal Equinox and full Moon face—brass fire tongs

from old Paumanok City bought with gold gleaming strong at the hearth’s light—

The hearth seat was moved, the porphyry throne worn smooth by the sea’s muscles

His eyes fell down to the messenger’s foot, toes spread firm on the runed lintel:

THE RUNE

Where the years have gone,     where the clouds have flown
                                   Where the rainbow shone
We vanish,     and we make no moan

Where the sun will blind     the delighting mind
                                   in a diamond wind
We appear,     our beauty refined.

Icy intellect,     fi’ry Beauty wreck
                                   but Love’s castled speck
of Moonbeam,     nor is Truth correct.

Wise bodies leave here     with the mind’s false cheer,
                                   Eternity near
as Beauty,     where we disappear.

When sufferings come,     when all tongues lie dumb
                                   when Bliss is all numb
with knowledge,     a bony white sum,

We die neither blest     nor with curse confessed
                                   wanting Earth’s worst Best:
But return,     where all Beauties rest.

January 17–22, 1977

The Rune

II

THE ARGUMENT: The Rune having been discovered by the Boy to the Man, the messenger commands the Hermit Sage to go out into the world with him, seek the ancient unearthly Beauty the riddle indicated. The old man gets mad, he says he’s near death, has lost Desire. The boy reads his mind and lies down with the sage to make love. At dawn he gets up says he’s disgusted with the body, condemns the sage to Chastity, demands the hermit leave his cell forever, and promises to lead him to the land of Poetry in the Sky. Exasperated, the old bard reveals the secret of the mysterious riddle.

And the old man silver bearded gold faced bald kneeling at his black cave’s ruddy fireplace

Read the airy verses, humming them to himself, hands to the cold floor to support his aching spine

watery eyed, one palsied cheek the muscles of the eyelid weak

dripped with empty tears, unsorrowful soul’d, conning & eyeing the bright rhymes’ No Truth

Unfrowning, pondering old thought arisen on a breath from Meditation’s hour—

Inspirations drawing populous-hued tides of living plasm thru seaweed pipes

from breast to brain, phantasms of interior ocean freshening the surface of the eyeball,

old breath familiar exhaling into starry space that held shore & heaven

where sat his tiny stone house, lost in black winds lapped by black waters fishy eyed

oft phosphorescent when jellied monster sprites floated to the golden sand,

wet bubbles of vehemence mouth’d by a ripple, tiny translucent spirits

dried in the eyebeams of the frowning Face o’ the moon, with the tip of a planet

beaming twinkled deeper in Blackness washed by deep waves in the ear.

Dead bearded propped on his knees the old bard stared thru his beating mind’s universe

At sharp stanza’d riddles chiseled with thought & filled with wise gold

at the bright colored foot of the boy, reddened by light of driftwood afire.

“What is your mind?” yelled the youth, his proud contention shaped on red little lips

beardless, ready to argue & instruct for he had dreamed well clear accurate

Each stony word, each flame of the hearth fire, each tear in the eyelid of the elder Sage,

each silver lock of hair, each worried frown wrinkling that skull, each conscious smile

that crept along the prophet’s thick lips involuntary, who knelt still

at the young teacher’s knees—“What Beauty’s stopped your Poetry! old speaker-forth

of Naked Thoughts?” the ruddy legged messenger laughed down, skillfultongued, black eye beaming merry—

“Will you obey my will and follow me through a riot of cities, to delicateporched countryhouses

& rich polished-marble mansions, where we’ll sport with Princes & Millionaires

and make fun of the world’s kings and Presidents Pomps & Limousines all present in their Unbeauty?

Come leave your stupid business of seashells & seawrack, gathering wrinkles of the sea?

Come with your pearls and banks of Ambergris hidden under yr bed & in yr stone closets?

Come wrapped with seaweed round your belly & Neptunic laurel moist on yr skull’s half century?

Carry yr vowelic conch & give blast midnights in Midcity canyons Wall Street to Washington,

Granite Pillars echoing ocean mouthed pearly syllables along Chicago’s Lakeshore

& reverberating in Pittsburgh’s National Banks—Dance with the golden Trident of Fame in Hollywood

Lift the Inspired Lyre to Strike the Ears of hotels in Los Angeles?”

The old man changed his thought, and stared in the boy’s eye, interrupting his beauty—

His voice grown wrathful, he lifted himself up on his haunches & glared

at the childish youth’s face till it paled, brow furrowed in self consideration

small mouth open breathing doubtful thoughts, and tiny sighs uttered to match his listening.

“Innocent!” the squinting bearded palsied resentful Shaman yelled,

“Come over sunshine colored hills naked thru suburbs boasting

Your beauty intelligence and sexual joy O Delicate Skulled Youth,

You bring news of old prophecy! You wake my wrathful Desires!

old lust for mental power and vain body’d joy! Blind craving for Bliss

of Breast and Loins! Shadow Conquest! Uncompassionate Angel!

Know th’ emptiness your own Soul? Think you’re a king in oceans of Thought?

Neptune himself with his Crown of drown’d gold over a beardless face

pale ivory with vanity! Re-waken ignorant desires no mortal boy can satisfy?

I go to a death you never dreamed, in iron oceans! homeless skull

washed underwave with octopus and seahorse, flicked by soft wings of pink fish my eyelids!

Teeth a silver wormhouse on the sandy bottom, polypus & green-suckered squid in my ribs, wavy

snake-tailed insensible kelp and water-cactus footed in watery loins! clams breathe

their cold valved zephyrs where my heart ached on translucent shelves! Typhoons carry my voice away!

There is no God or Beauty suffering on earth nor starred in nebulous blue heaven

but only Dream that floats vast as an Ocean under the moon—

The moon, the cold full moon, boy, fills the window—look at the sea

waving with lunar glitter like your eye—out there’s the moon

Mirror to give back cold pure cheer light on us, fade these Plutonian Images.

There’s a clear light without soul or vanity shining thru the stone window

shafting square on that rune uncovered at the hearth—the fire’s down but we can read it still—

Hermetic years’ve passed me by here, Cooled my anger like this moonlight cools the eye

—my loves & all desires burnt away, like this hearth’s wood to ash.”

“Behind the ashes of your face your mind wanders strongly—what your mind was

I knew as a young boy of books and dreams” the messenger replied calm voiced

speaking carefully, piping his thoughts intellectual clear in the old bard’s ear—

He settled down on the tiger, deer & sheep-skin covered floor, where the old man lay

with bearded head uplifted on the gold haird neck of a Lion amber eyed

Staring silent at the moon, huge pelt outstretched four-legged with yellow claws

and hard tail laid out on white lamb fleece toward the new discovered hearth-Rune.

Shivering in moonlight musing at the fire, the messenger put his nakedness against the white robed Elder’s

Giant form, slow-breathed resting back on the soft floor, silent eyes awake—

“I know your present mind, old heart, I’ll satisfy that as you wish

Unspoken, I know your work & nature beyond the wildest daydream

Y’ever had naked in hot sunshine summer noon ecstatic far from mankind

or downy-bearded in your animal bed embraced with glad phantom heroes

in midnight reverie down below Orion’s belt, right hand clasped in the heat of Creaturehood,

I saw your hard revelry with bodiless immortal companions,” the messenger cajoled,

laying his mournful sweet visage on the silenced Sage’s shoulder, drawing his right arm down his nippled thin-ribbed chest.

He shook & trembled chill, for the low moon paled over green ocean waves

and cold bright sun-fire passed upward whitening the long horizon—

The cloud-glory’d orange Orb arc’d living in blue still space, then lifting its bulk aflame

circled slowly over the breathing earth, while tiny oil tankers moved thru dawn

floating across the widespread ocean’s far edge silently going from world to world.

The boy took wrinkled years on his flesh, the snow whiskered bard trembled and touched

his breast, embracing, adoring from nipple to pink kneecap

and kissing behind him and before, using his form as a girl’s.

The youth of colored hills closed his eyes in virgin pleasure, uttered small moans

of merciful-limbed ecstasy in his throat, ah tremorous daydream pleasure,

body tingling delicate, made tender, open’d flower-soft, skull top to sole-skin touched.

The messenger, young and cold as the sun, sad face turned up to his earth-worn host

shuddered then as morning warmed the chill world, shuddered with more than world’s chill

drawing his old Companion closer face to face embraced, silent thoughted, calm and still.

The boy looked in his elder’s eyes, which gazed in his while bare branches on the hillside stood trembling in sky

blue dawn light. Honey bees woke under heaven inland and sought the lilac, Honeysuckle, rose,

pale dew dript from day-lily leaf to leaf, green lamps went out in windows on Minneapolis avenues,

Lovers rose to work in subways, buses ground down empty streets in early light, the country

robin lit from the maple leaf whistling, cat scratched the farmhouse door bulls groaned in barns, the aluminum pail clanked on cement by wooden stools in steaming flop

& stainless-steel mouths sucked milk from millions of cows into shining vats,

Black nannygoats whinnied nubian complaints to the stinking spotted dog

whose clump’d hair hung from his belly tangled with thistle, Church organs sang,

Radios Chattered the nasal weather from barn to barn, the last snow patch slipped from the tarpaper roof of the tractor lean-to,

Ice melted in the willow bog, stars vanished from the sky over gravestones stained with water melt,

The White House shined near pillared Courts on electric-lit avenues wide roaring with cars.

The messenger remembered his dream vision, the Rune discovered by the bright fire,

the Hermit’s startled wrath, magnificent and vainly noised all night,

his softness now, his careful fear, the wrinkle that remained around his eye

still watery with emotionless tears tho he held love in his arms, a silent thinking boy.

The naked messenger returned his thought. “I came for Love, old bard, tho you mistook

my youth for Innocence; I came for love, Old Prophet, and I brought you Prophecy,

Though you knew all; I came from Beauty, I came to Beauty, and I brought more beauty.

I knew the Beauty here; not your ass on your stone seat but under your prophetic throne,

older Beauty than your own, that laughs at wrinkled or smooth loins:

thus I have proved pure Beauty to your empty heart—and now you sigh.

It is that Beauty that I love in you, & not your intestinal self—

A Babe I saw more horror than your smoky ocean holds, your empty heaven,

& your tattered Earth. Follow the Prophecy I showed on your floor

Follow the Ancient Command, chase diamonds in the wind, chase years, chase clouds

chase this rainbow I brought you, chase Beauty again—

chase wrinkled lust away or chase a moonbeam, chase the rising Sun and then Chase setting sun

chase off your Mind thru ocean, chase mind Under the World,

Chase your body down to the grave & rejoice, Chase Chastity at last!

Chaste virgin suffering for you now old bony lecherous Poet.”

The boy raged on, with tongue caught fire from the dawn sun lifted now over the heavy

skulled rafters of the hermitage long-haired with sea moss barnacled at foot, stone girders snailed and starfish stinking, sea sperm rotten in kelp masses at the porch stone. “Your door’s the musty stone door of a tomb, old man, corpses of corrupted loves’re buried under the smooth stone bed we lie on, pitted with yr fearful tears! What animal skins you vulgarize your bed with, boorish stained with creepy-handed dream stuff jacked out of your Impotent loins in Pain—

This toothless lion, stuffed head, ear bit off by sea moths, this your love?

Deerskin stol’n from a Dead Buddha, snatched from wanderings in your boring Buddhafields?

A gutless Lamb for a pillow I hear you baah & bleat your Terrified Love—

Naked I have you now, bared, wrinkled, heaving heavy breaths on me you brought to your bed, and covered with hides of deskeletoned sheep.”

Wondering between shame and Longing the old Bard lay thick bellied open eyed

Bewilderment at heart, chill-loined, urgent to press that Cherry raving angel mouth a soft kiss,

tie down the juvenile prophet on the stone bed back upturned to slap his shamed white cheeks

in furious sexual punishment, pubescent weakling pale with anger,

rouse his virgin blood to blush thin buttocks ruddy tingling, humiliated

cock hard pink with desire, heart tamed submissive, soft lipped, tearful.

The kid-like messenger laughed in the bed Despairing and looked the old man in the eye:

“Now slap my face, I want to Feel! Hard with all your Love’s strength coward Bard!

Show your Power!” Bold mute the Bard hit once, and then hit hard—

Cold faced, the Boy complained, “Now hit again, I want to feel an honest hand!” The old man struck

his naked cheek with a rough palm, thrice shocked by harsh joy, pain enough!

“Now!” said the Changeling boy, “We prove the last verse of this Prophecy—

Yes the Prophecy old & Confounded Fool, that rune on your floor you never beheld before

I forced your gaze to my foot, the prophecy some Elder Mysterious Forebear Bard Magician left us—

that prophecy I dreamed & made real before your eyes, renewing your Beauty

thru suffering dumb knowledge, yourself roused at my Beauteous Command—

All but the Last verse I understand, thick rhymed with senses and nonsenses of worst Beauty

no man or boy can interpret in this stupid dank closed cell

Under this Skull that hides the Sun, behind walls covered with yr chill laborious decipherings,

your 30 years moony babbling fishy solitude—one verse remains undeciphered,

Magical worthy our mutual war thru Society & Nations, Bards at large on the planet

seeking to answer the Text! old man of Love I give you my virgin mind—

You read my youthful Beauty, tender lip and merry eye or Changeling glance

and love you think this silken muscular body, red hair even-parted curling round my skull—

Sir I do love you, but hate this earth and myself in it and the ignorance

creeping in this house! Sir I do love your beard which you know is Beautiful to me,

as beardless my tender-muscled abdomen to you: But my Beauty you love most

is that of the aethereal Changeling of Poesy, the same I love in you

which Frightens you; then know yourself slave of Immortality, Master of Unearthly Beauty

nothing less, not God nor Empty Gurus of Thibet not Meditation’s quiet starlit hour

nor aching prostration to the Dharma King nor realms of human poetry

washed at your doorstep everymorn by the sea, stamp’d with gold sand dollars

licked by scummy wavelets, nor all the old beloved ghost boys dead

made famous by your Immortality. Here’s rotten Fish, Leviathan honor stinks your shore!

and makes this hermit house no more habitable! Leave your wordy life behind!

Chase the Last Beauty with me till we find the author, even if we enter Death Trance with ’im,

rise & gather your Sea gold, all your grassy Emeralds & champagne Amber hidden safe

Under the rune stone at the Hearth Yes Sir your Sparkling diamond treasury

I dreamed it well! Clear Sapphires blue as ice you see in sky! And hoarded rubies

red & multitudinous enough to make Each maiden and each boy on earth blush red with genius joy!

Naked! Naked! rise with me take all your Secrets in the air, the Sun’s at height, the morning’s ope’d blue sky,

Grandfather Clocks bong noon in oriental Carpet living-rooms in the Capital!

Close the stone door behind you, close this tomb lest gulls that swim the sea air

pluck the blind eyes of this lion out of its straw-brained head! Come out horrid Corpse!

But memorize the rune before we go, it’ll encompass our lov’d wanderings!

As Dante had his Virgil & as Blake his own Miltonic Fiend, I your Cherub & Punk Idol

’ll be Companion of th’ Aethereal Ways till we discover of the Secret Eidolon

What Beauteous Paradise is spelled, & what the Speller of the Stanza was

Who chiseled his unearthly riddle on this floor before I was born.”

The old bard trembled pale, at last his heart grew cold, composed to hear the fair youth raving

thru Hells and Heavens, paradise on his red lips, tricking, ravening Commanding,

hissing words half-cursed half prayers! Rending the breathing blue-green globe apart

in Vanity for what is not, aethereal Death and Life, while Love and sorrow ache

in the breast of the living moment under living skin, breath thrilled with sigh,

great Death & Life together One & love but a soul Aware,

For mind in heart is one with the body, Truth is the Depth of that,

and Poetry the Groan of Body lost in the Grave, for Thought is the love of Earth.

“I knew this Rune once long ago, cold Demon inspired kid, bright boy—

thank you for discovering it me again, ’twas meant for you to read in Dreams

and find at your own bare foot one day. I hardly visioned to be here when you came

naked maddened with delight into my room, demanding I respect your lips & loins.

Listen now, my turn to tell the story of a day when I was young as you,

Was in this room, for I was here lone witness to the Stranger, Alien, Wanderer,

Caller of the Great Call, Serpent minded Messenger that came like yourself

Naked from Beauty to Beauty. He came in the door as you did, but no one was home

to greet him, make fire to shine on runes or warm him in beds of Power, Wrath and

Meditation, Service or Tenderness. Nor was Sea gold gathered No nor any rhymed

or unrhymed Rune, not in this house on America’s Eastern Shore.

Some house was here before, but broken down a Century Past, & Uninhabitable.

I gathered icy diamonds in the salt sea, plucked the blue eye of the whale for wisdom,

Green emeralds I found in the growing grass and on tree boughs in their Springtime buds,

For thirty years enriched with witty penury I gathered Amber from the generous laurel

and Rubies rolled out of my heart. I threw away the Pearl, back to the sea

To keep God out of trouble under his blue wet blanket, and be done

with clammy envy and his watery blisses and grasping waves.

I brought the shining fire tongs here from Bardic Mannahatta, & the Red Porphyry Chair of Poetry

from the Ind. I set it beside the hearth and built a fire out of seawracked thrones of wooden kings

I found on the illuminated shore, and lay down on my belly in my healthy youth

and Carved your Beauteous riddle on this bedrock basalt floor with the tooth of an Angel

I imagined one night for Company in Meditation; & Pushed this red porphyry seat

smooth over that Mantric Rune with a Prayer to my visible & invisible teachers—

Beloved Stranger, Naked Beauty, terrible Eidolon O my youth I never dreamt that you would come.”

Washington, January 22, 1977, 3 A.M.–11:30 AM.

III

EPILOGUE

THE ARGUMENT: Last words spoken by the bard to the boy on a train between Washington and NY.

“Some day when we surrender to each other and become One friend,

we’ll walk back to this hermitage, returned from America

thru Cities and Bars and Smoking Factories & State Capitols

Universities, Crowds, Parks and Highways, returned from glass-glittering shrines

& diamond skyscrapers whose windows gleam sunset wealth Golden & Purple,

White & Red & Blue as Clouds that reflect Smog thru Western heavens.

Back here in our bodies we may renew these studies & labors

of Iron & Feather, dream copybooks, & waking Levitation of heavy Mind.

Now still bodied separate in Vanity & minded contrary each in’s Phantasy

only Poetry’s Prophetic beauty Transports us on one Train back to households

in our north Vast City connected with telephones and buses. We may trip out

again into Hidden Beauty, Hearts beating thru the world’s Mills & Wires, Radiant

at Television Noon or on Ecstatic midnite bed with broken bone or body Forgetfulness.

Now we go from our Chambered Cranium forth thru Strangeness:

Careful to respect our Heart, mindful of Beauty’s slow working Calm Machine,

Cigarette Vending Contraption or neon yellow Sun its face to your face—

All faces different, all forms present a Face to look into with Care:

The College boy his ignorant snub nose is a button whereon Sexual mercies

Press their lusty thumbs & wake his studious energy. The grey hair’d dirty

Professor of history’s sought thru ages to find that Country where Love’s face is King,

While the Care on his face is King of Centuries. And thoughts in his mind are

Presidents elected by fresh nerves every seven years to pass new laws of Consciousness.

Each Maple waits our gaze erecting tricky branches in the air we breathe.

Nothing is stupid but thought, & all thought we think’s our own.

My face you’ve seen palsied bearded White & Changing energies

from Slavelike lust to snowy emptiness, bald Anger to fishy-eyed prophecy,

Your voice you’ve heard naked and hard commanding arrogant, pale dandied

in a fit of Burgundy Pique, Childlike delighted fingers twisting my beard

on Lion coverlets in caves far from the Iron Domed Capitol,

Intelligent deciphering runes yours and mine, dreamed & undreamt.

Plebeian Prince of the Suburb, I return to my eastern office pleased with our work

accident of our causes & Eidolons, Planned Careful in your Dreams & in my daylight Frenzies: failed Projections!

Our icy wills resolved in watery black ink’s translucent tears,

Love’s vapors are dissolved on seaboard’s clear noon open to the Sun

shining thru railroad windows on new-revealed faces, our own inner forms!”

January 23, 1977

I Lay Love on My Knee

I nurs’d love where he lay
I let love get away
I let love lie low
I let my love go
I let love go along
I knew love was strong
So I let love go stray
I told love go away

I called love come home
my tongue wasn’t dumb
I kissed love on the neck
& told love to come back
I told love come stay
Down by me love lay
I told love lie down
Love made a fine sound

I told love to Work
as musician or clerk
I sent love to the farm
He could do earth no harm
I told love get married
With children be harried
I said love settle down
with the worms in the ground
I told love have pity
Build me a good city

I taught love to sit
to sharpen his wit
I taught love to breathe
mindful of death
I showed love a straight spine
energetic as mine
I told love take it easy
Manners more breezy
Thoughts full of light
make love last all night

I kissed love on the brow
Where he lay like a cow
moaning and pleasured
his happy heart treasured
I kissed love’s own lips
I laid love on his hips
I kissed love on his breast
When he lay down to rest
I kissed love on his thigh
Up rose his cock high

I bid Love leave me now
rest my feverish brow
I’m sick love goodbye
I must close my eye
No love you’re not dead
Go find a new bed
for a day for a night
& come back for delight
after thought with new health
For all time is our wealth.

New York, February 21, 1977

Stool Pigeon Blues

I was born in Wyoming, Cody is my home town
Got myself busted, the sheriff brought me down
The Feds hit my nose, I felt like a dirty Clown

I turned in my sister, just like they asked me to
I turned in my brother, I had to, wouldn’t you?
If they beat me again, I guess I’d turn you in too

Please don’t blame me, they had me for twenty years
An ounce of weed, they planted it in my ears
They found one seed, and watered it with my tears

I got A’s in highschool, smartest boy in class
Got laid at eleven, the sweetest piece of ass
They found us in bed smoking a stick of grass

Girl broke down crying, the Narcs liked her looks in the nude
Asked us for blowjobs, I told them that was too crude
Took us to jail & accused us of being lewd

Ten years for resisting arrest, ten years for a little joint
Ten years kid, beginning to get the point?
Feds want a big bust, let’s hear you sing oink oink!

Who do you know in highschool, how many’s dealing lids?
Who do you smoke with? We want the names of kids.
They’ll bust all our parents, unless Good God forbids!

I’m just a poor stoolie, got busted in Wyoming
From Cody, to Casper, to Riverton I will sing!
From Gillette to Powell a pigeon I’m on the wing.

Governor Governor Get me out of this fix!
President President decriminalize the sticks,
Out here in Wyoming, Sheriffs play dirty tricks.

Casper, April 16, 1977

Punk Rock Your My Big Crybaby

I’ll tell my deaf mother on you! Fall on the floor
and eat your grandmother’s diapers! Drums,
Whatta lotta Noise you want a Revolution?
Wanna Apocalypse? Blow up in Dynamite Sound?
I can’t get excited, Louder! Viciouser!
Fuck me in the ass! Suck me! Come in my ears!
I want those pink Abdominal bellybuttons!
Promise you’ll murder me in the gutter with Orgasms!
I’ll buy a ticket to your nightclub, I wanna get busted!
50 years old I wanna Go! with whips & chains & leather!
Spank me! Kiss me in the eye! Suck me all over
from Mabuhay Gardens to CBGB’s coast to coast
Skull to toe Gimme yr electric guitar naked,
Punk President, eat up the FBI w/ yr big mouth.

Mabuhay Gardens, May 1977

Love Replied

Love came up to me
& got down on his knee
& said I am here to serve
you what you deserve
All that you wish
as on a gold dish
eyes tongue and heart
your most private part.

Why do you eat
my behind & my feet
Why do you kiss
my belly like this
Why do you go down
& suck my cock crown
when I bare you the best
that is inside my breast

I lay there reproved
aching my prick moved
But Love kissed my ear
& said nothing to fear
Put your head on my breast
There let your skull rest
Yes hug my breast, this
is my heart you can kiss

Then Love put his face
in my tenderest place
where throbbed my breast sweet
with red hot heart’s heat
There, love is our bed
There, love lay your head
There you’ll never regret
all the love you can get.

From the hair to the toes
neck & knees in repose
Take the heart that I give
Give heart that you live
Forget my sweet cock
my buttock like a rock
Come up from my thighs
Hear my heart’s own straight sighs

I myself am not queer
Tho I hold your heart dear
Tho I lie with you naked
tho my own heart has ached
breast to breast with your bare
body, yes tho I dare
hug & kiss you all night
This is straight hearts’ delight.

So bring your head up
from my loins or the cup
of my knees and behind
where you touch your lips blind
Put your lips to my heart
That is my public part
Hold me close and receive
All the love I can give

Boulder, June 18, 1977, 5 A.M.

X
PLUTONIAN ODE
(1977–1980)

What’s Dead?

Clouds’ silent shadows passing across the Sun above Teton’s mountaintop I saw on LSD

Movies dead shadows

ocean 40% dead said expert J. Cousteau A.D. 1968

Shakespeare the magician, Rimbaud visionary dead

silent vamp Alla Nazimova’s corpse-lip black dust

Walt Disney of Mickey Mouse, Buck Rogers in the Twenty-fifth Century, Hollywood lost in shade

Tragedian Sophocles passed this shore with Charon thru Styx

Ex-Emperor Napoleon obituaried in 1821

Queen Liliuokalani giv’n to her reward

Chief Joseph buried on a brown hill in Washington State

General Douglas MacArthur urged atombombs to blow up China

Eisenhower & Xerxes led armies to the grave

The Skeleton Man in 1930 Barnum & Bailey Circus’ Freakshow bony in’s coffin

The mother Cat I played with in the basement Paterson New Jersey when I was ten

with the Lindbergh baby kidnapped found in a swamp of laundry

My father’s grave writ “Answer a riddle with a stone” wet with rain in Newark

Jesus Christ & Mary for all their Assumption, dust in this world

Buddha relieved of his body, empty vehicle parked noiseless

Allah the Word in a book, or muezzin cry on a Tower

Not even Moses reached Promised Land, went down to Sheol.

Tickertape for heroes, clods of dirt for forgotten grandpas—

Television ghosts still haunt living room & bed chamber

Crooner Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley rock’n’roll Star, Groucho Marx a mustached joker, Einstein invented the universe, Naomi Ginsberg Communist Muse, Isadora Duncan dancing in diaphanous scarves

Jack Kerouac noble Poet, Jimmy Dean mystic actor, Boris Karloff the old Frankenstein,

Celebrities & Nonentities set apart, absent from their paths shadows left behind, breathing no more—

These were the musings of Buddhist student Allen Ginsberg.

Hawaii, October 16, 1977

Grim Skeleton

Grim skeleton come back & put me out of Action

looking thru the rainy window at the Church wall

yellow vapor lamped, 9 P.M. Cars hissing in street water

—woken dizzy from nicotine sleep—papers piled on my desk

myself lost in manila files of yellow faded newspaper Clippings

at last after twenty five years tapes wound thru my brain

Library of my own deeds of music tongue & oratoric yell—

Is it my heart, a cold & phlegm in my skull or radiator

Comfort cowardice that I slumber awake wrapped in Mexican

Blanket, wallet & keys on the white chair by my head.

Is it the guru of music or guru of meditation whose harsh force

I bear, makes my eyelid heavy mid afternoons, is’t Death

stealing in my breast makes me nauseous mornings, work undone

on a typewriter set like a green skull by the window

When I wake unwilling to rise & take the narcotic Times

above a soft Boiled egg and toasted English muffin daily noon?

Beauty, Truth, Revolution, what skeleton in my closet

makes me listen dumb my own skull thoughts lethargic

Gossip of Poets silenced by drunken Mussolinis every Country on Earth?

My own yatter of meditation, while I work and scream in frenzy

at my wooden desk held up by iron filedrawers stuffed w/press paper

& prophetic fake manuscripts, ears itching & scabbed w/anger

at ghost Rockefeller Brothers pay-off of CIA, am I myself the CIA

bought with acid meat & alcohol in Washington, silenced in meditation

on my own duplicity, stuck in anger at puerto rican wounded

beerdrunk fathers walking East 12th street and their thieving kids

violent screaming under my window 4 A.M.? Some Fantasy of Fame

I dreamt in adolescence Came true last week over Television,

Now homunculus I made’s out there in American streets

talking with my voice, accounted ledgered opinionated

Interviewed & Codified in Poems, books & manuscripts, whole library

shelves stacked with ambitious egohood’s thousand pages imaged

forth smart selft over half a lifetime! Who’m I now, Frankenstein

hypocrite of good Cheer whose sick-stomached Discretion’s grown

fifty years overweight—while others I hate practice sainthood in Himalayas

or run the petrochemical atomic lamplit machines, by whose power

I slumber cook my meat & write these verses captive of N.Y.C.

What’s my sickness, flu virus or Selfhood infected swollen sore

confronting the loath’d work of poetic flattery: Gurus, Rock stars

Penthoused millionaires, White House alrightniks crowding my brain

with orders & formulae, insults & smalltalk, threats & dollars

Whose sucker am I, the media run by rich whitemen like myself, jew

intellectuals afraid of poverty bust screaming beaten uncontrolled behind bars

or the black hole of narcotics Cops & brutal Mafiosi, thick men in dark hats,

hells angels in blue military garb or wall street cashmere drag

hiding iron muscles of money, so the street is full of potholes, I’m afraid

to go out at night around the block to look at the moon in the Lower East Side

where stricken junkies break their necks in damp hallways of

abandoned buildings gutted & blackwindowed from old fires. I’m afraid

to write my thoughts down lest I libel Nelson Rockefeller, Fidel

Castro, Chögyam Trungpa, Louis Ginsberg & Naomi, Kerouac or Peter O.

yea Henry Kissinger & Richard Helms, faded ghosts of Power and Poesy

that people my brain with paranoia, my best friend shall be Nameless.

Whose public speech is this I write? What stupid vast Complaint!

For what impotent professor’s ears, which Newsman’s brainwave? What jazz king’s devil blues?

Is this Immortal history to tell tales of 20th Century to striplings

naked centuries hence? To get laid by some brutal queen who’ll

beat my hairy buttocks punishment in a College Dorm? To show my ass

to god? To grovel in magic tinsel & glitter on stinking powdered pillows?

Agh! Who’ll I read this to like a fool! Who’ll applaud these lies

December 16, 1977

Ballade of Poisons

With oil that streaks streets a magic color,
With soot that falls on city vegetables
With basement sulfurs & coal black odor
With smog that purples suburbs’ sunset hills
With Junk that feebles black & white men’s wills
With plastic bubbles aeons will dissolve
With new plutoniums that only resolve
Their poison heat in quarter million years,
With pesticides that round food Chains revolve
May your soul make home, may your eyes weep tears.

With freak hormones in chicken & soft egg
With panic red dye in cow meat burger
With mummy med’cines, nitrate in sliced pig
With sugar’d cereal kids scream for murder,
With Chemic additives that cause Cancer
With bladder and mouth in your salami,
With Strontium Ninety in milks of Mommy,
With sex voices that spill beer thru your ears
With Cups of Nicotine till you vomit
May your soul make home, may your eyes weep tears.

With microwave toaster television
With Cadmium lead in leaves of fruit trees
With Trade Center’s nocturnal emission
With Coney Island’s shore plopped with Faeces
While blue Whales sing in high infrequent seas
With Amazon worlds with fish in ocean
Washed in Rockefellers greasy Potion
With oily toil fueled with atomic fears
With CIA tainting World emotion
May your soul make home, may your eyes weep tears.

          Envoi

President, ’spite cockroach devotion,
Folk poisoned with radioactive lotion,
’Spite soulless bionic energy queers
May your world move to healthy emotion,
Make your soul at home, let your eyes weep tears.

January 12, 1978

Lack Love

Love wears down to bare truth
My heart hurt me much in youth
Now I hear my real heart beat
Strong and hollow thump of meat

I felt my heart wrong as an ache
Sore in dreams and raw awake
I’d kiss each new love on the chest
Trembling hug him breast to breast

Kiss his belly, kiss his eye
Kiss his ruddy boyish thigh
Kiss his feet kiss his pink cheek
Kiss behind him naked meek

Now I lie alone, and a youth
Stalks my house, he won’t in truth
Come to bed with me, instead
Loves the thoughts inside my head

He knows how much I think of him
Holds my heart his painful whim
Looks thru me with mocking eyes
Steals my feelings, drinks & lies

Till I see Love’s empty Truth
Think back on heart broken youth
Hear my heart beat red in bed
Thick and living, love rejected.

New York, February 8, 1978, 3 A.M.

Father Guru

Father Guru     unforlorn
Heart beat Guru whom I scorn
Empty Guru Never Born
Sitting Guru every morn
Friendly Guru chewing corn
Angry Guru Faking Porn
Guru Guru Freely torn
Garment Guru neatly worn
Guru Head short hair shorn
Absent Guru Eyes I mourn
Guru of Duncan Guru of Dorn
Ginsberg Guru like a thorn
Goofy Guru Lion Horn
Lonely Guru Unicorn
O Guru whose slave I’m sworn
Save me Guru Om Ah Hum

Austin, February 14, 1978

Manhattan May Day Midnight

I walked out on the lamp shadowed concrete at midnight May Day passing a dark’d barfront,

police found corpses under the floor last year, call-girls & Cadillacs lurked there on First Avenue

around the block from my apartment, I’d come downstairs for tonight’s newspapers—

refrigerator repair shop’s window grate padlocked, fluorescent blue

light on a pile of newspapers, pages shifting in the chill Spring wind

’round battered cans & plastic refuse bags leaned together at the pavement edge—

Wind wind and old news sailed thru the air, old Times whirled above the garbage.

At the Corner of 11th under dim Street-light in a hole in the ground

a man wrapped in work-Cloth and wool Cap pulled down his bullet skull

stood & bent with a rod & flashlight turning round in his pit halfway sunk in earth

Peering down at his feet, up to his chest in the asphalt by a granite Curb

where his work mate poked a flexible tube in a tiny hole, a youth in gloves

who answered my question “Smell of gas—Someone must’ve reported in”—

Yes the body stink of City bowels, rotting tubes six feet under

Could explode any minute sparked by Con Ed’s breathing Puttering truck

I noticed parked, as I passed by hurriedly Thinking Ancient Rome, Ur

Were they like this, the same shadowy surveyors & passers-by

scribing records of decaying pipes & Garbage piles on Marble, Cuneiform,

ordinary midnight citizen out on the street looking for Empire News,

rumor, gossip, workmen police in uniform, walking silent sunk in thought

under windows of sleepers coupled with Monster squids & Other-Planet eyeballs in their sheets

in the same night six thousand years old where Cities rise & fall & turn to dream?

May 1, 1978, 6 A.M.

ADAPTED FROM Neruda’s
“Que dispierte el leñador”

V
Let the Railsplitter Awake!
Let Lincoln come with his ax
and with his wooden plate
to eat with the farmworkers.
May his craggy head,
his eyes we see in constellations,
in the wrinkles of the live oak,
come back to look at the world
rising up over the foliage
higher than Sequoias.
Let him go shop in pharmacies,
let him take the bus to Tampa
let him nibble a yellow apple,
let him go to the movies, and
talk to everybody there.

Let the Railsplitter awake!

Let Abraham come back, let his old yeast
rise in green and gold earth of Illinois,
and lift the ax in his city
against the new slavemakers
against their slave whips
against the venom of the print houses
against all the bloodsoaked
merchandise they want to sell.
Let the young white boy and young black
march singing and smiling
against walls of gold,
against manufacturers of hatred,
against the seller of his own blood,
singing, smiling and winning at last.

Let the Railsplitter awake!

VI
Peace for all twilights to come,
peace for the bridge, peace for the wine,
peace for the letters that look for me
and pump in my blood tangled
with earth and love’s old chant,
peace for the city in the morning
when bread wakes up,
peace for Mississippi, the river of roots,
peace for my brother’s shirt,
peace in the book like an airmail stamp,
peace for the great Kolkhoz of Kiev,
peace for the ashes of these dead
and those other dead, peace for the black
iron of Brooklyn, peace for the lettercarrier
going from house to house like the day,
peace for the choreographer shrieking
thru a funnel of honeysuckle vines,
peace to my right hand
that only wants to write Rosario,
peace for the Bolivian, secret as a lump of tin,
peace for you to get married, peace
for all the sawmills of Bio-Bio,
peace to Revolutionary Spain’s torn heart
peace to the little museum of Wyoming
in which the sweetest thing
was a pillowcase embroidered with a heart,
peace to the baker and his loaves,
and peace to all the flour: peace
for all the wheat still to be born,
peace for all the love that wants to flower,
peace for all those who live: peace
to all the lands and waters.

And here I say farewell, I return
to my house, in my dreams
I go back to Patagonia where
the wind beats at barns
and the Ocean spits ice.
I’m nothing more than a poet:
I want love for you all,
I go wander the world I love:
in my country they jail the miners
and soldiers give orders to judges.
But down to its very roots
I love my little cold country.
If I had to die a thousand times
that’s where I’d want to die:
if I had to be born a thousand times
that’s where I’d want to be born,
near the Araucanian wilds’
sea-whirled south winds,
bells just brought from the bellmaker.
Don’t let anybody think about me.
Let’s think about the whole world,
banging on the table with love.
I don’t want blood to come back
and soak the bread, the beans
the music: I want the miner
to come with me, the little girl,
the lawyer, the sailor, the dollmaker,
let’s all go to the movies and come
out and drink the reddest wine.

I didn’t come here to solve anything.

I came here to sing
And for you to sing with me.

Boulder, 1978–1981

Nagasaki Days

I A Pleasant Afternoon

for Michael Brownstein & Dick Gallup

One day 3 poets & 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chautauqua tent in Aurora

listening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating words singing by in mountain winds

on a pleasant sunny day of rest—the wild wind blew thru blue Heavens

filled with fluffy clouds stretched from Central City to Rocky Flats, Plutonium sizzled in its secret bed,

hot dogs sizzled in the Lions Club lunchwagon microwave mouth, orangeade bubbled over in waxen cups

Traffic moved along Colefax, meditators silent in the Diamond Castle shrine-room at Boulder followed the breath going out of their nostrils,

Nobody could remember anything, spirits flew out of mouths & noses, out of the sky, across Colorado plains & the tent flapped happily open spacious & didn’t fall down.

June 18, 1978

II Peace Protest

Cumulus clouds float across blue sky
     over the white-walled Rockwell Corporation factory
                         —am I going to stop that?

*

Rocky Mountains rising behind us
     Denver shining in morning light
—Led away from the crowd by police and photographers

*

Middleaged Ginsberg & Ellsberg taken down the road
     to the grayhaired Sheriff’s van—
But what about Einstein? What about Einstein? Hey, Einstein Come back!

III Golden Courthouse

Waiting for the Judge, breathing silent
     Prisoners, witnesses, Police—
the stenographer yawns into her palms.

August 9, 1978

IV Everybody’s Fantasy

I walked outside & the bomb’d
     dropped lots of plutonium
     all over the Lower East Side
There weren’t any buildings left just
     iron skeletons
groceries burned, potholes open to
     stinking sewer waters

There were people starving and crawling
     across the desert
the Martian UFOs with blue
     Light destroyer rays
passed over and dried up all the
     waters

Charred Amazon palmtrees for
     hundreds of miles on both sides
     of the river

August 10, 1978

V Waiting Room at the Rocky Flats Plutonium Plant

“Give us the weapons we need to protect ourselves!”
     the bareheaded guard lifts his flyswatter above the desk
                                   —whap!

*

A green-letter’d shield on the pressboard wall!
     “Life is fragile. Handle with care”—
My Goodness! here’s where they make the nuclear bomb-triggers.

August 17, 1978

VI Numbers in Red Notebook

2,000,000 killed in Vietnam
13,000,000 refugees in Indochina 1972
200,000,000 years for the Galaxy to revolve on its core
24,000 the Babylonian Great Year
24,000 half life of plutonium
2,000 the most I ever got for a poetry reading
80,000 dolphins killed in the dragnet
4,000,000,000 years earth been born

Boulder, Summer 1978

Plutonian Ode

I

1  What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there a new thing under the Sun?

At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative, Scientific theme

First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poisonous hand, named for Death’s planet through the sea beyond Uranus

whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-King worshipped once

5  with black sheep throats cut, priest’s face averted from underground mysteries in a single temple at Eleusis,

Spring-green Persephone nuptialed to his inevitable Shade, Demeter mother of asphodel weeping dew,

her daughter stored in salty caverns under white snow, black hail, gray winter rain or Polar ice, immemorable seasons before

Fish flew in Heaven, before a Ram died by the starry bush, before the Bull stamped sky and earth

or Twins inscribed their memories in cuneiform clay or Crab’d flood

10  washed memory from the skull, or Lion sniffed the lilac breeze in Eden—

Before the Great Year began turning its twelve signs, ere constellations wheeled for twenty-four thousand sunny years

slowly round their axis in Sagittarius, one hundred sixty-seven thousand times returning to this night

Radioactive Nemesis were you there at the beginning black Dumb tongueless unsmelling blast of Disillusion?

I manifest your Baptismal Word after four billion years

15  I guess your birthday in Earthling Night, I salute your dreadful presence lasting majestic as the Gods,

Sabaot, Jehova, Astapheus, Adonaeus, Elohim, Iao, Ialdabaoth, Aeon from Aeon born ignorant in an Abyss of Light,

Sophia’s reflections glittering thoughtful galaxies, whirlpools of star-spume silver-thin as hairs of Einstein!

Father Whitman I celebrate a matter that renders Self oblivion!

Grand Subject that annihilates inky hands & pages’ prayers, old orators’ inspired Immortalities,

20  I begin your chant, openmouthed exhaling into spacious sky over silent mills at Hanford, Savannah River, Rocky Flats, Pantex, Burlington, Albuquerque

I yell thru Washington, South Carolina, Colorado, Texas, Iowa, New Mexico,

where nuclear reactors create a new Thing under the Sun, where Rockwell war-plants fabricate this death stuff trigger in nitrogen baths,

Hanger-Silas Mason assembles the terrified weapon secret by ten thousands, & where Manzano Mountain boasts to store

its dreadful decay through two hundred forty millennia while our Galaxy spirals around its nebulous core.

25  I enter your secret places with my mind, I speak with your presence, I roar your Lion Roar with mortal mouth.

One microgram inspired to one lung, ten pounds of heavy metal dust adrift slow motion over gray Alps

the breadth of the planet, how long before your radiance speeds blight and death to sentient beings?

Enter my body or not I carol my spirit inside you, Unapproachable Weight,

O heavy heavy Element awakened I vocalize your consciousness to six worlds

30  I chant your absolute Vanity. Yeah monster of Anger birthed in fear O most

Ignorant matter ever created unnatural to Earth! Delusion of metal empires!

Destroyer of lying Scientists! Devourer of covetous Generals, Incinerator of Armies & Melter of Wars!

Judgment of judgments, Divine Wind over vengeful nations, Molester of Presidents, Death-Scandal of Capital politics! Ah civilizations stupidly industrious!

Canker-Hex on multitudes learned or illiterate! Manufactured Spectre of human reason! O solidified imago of practitioners in Black Arts

35  I dare your Reality, I challenge your very being! I publish your cause and effect!

I turn the Wheel of Mind on your three hundred tons! Your name enters mankind’s ear! I embody your ultimate powers!

My oratory advances on your vaunted Mystery! This breath dispels your braggart fears! I sing your form at last

behind your concrete & iron walls inside your fortress of rubber & translucent silicon shields in filtered cabinets and baths of lathe oil,

My voice resounds through robot glove boxes & ingot cans and echoes in electric vaults inert of atmosphere,

40  I enter with spirit out loud into your fuel rod drums underground on soundless thrones and beds of lead

O density! This weightless anthem trumpets transcendent through hidden chambers and breaks through iron doors into the Infernal Room!

Over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony floats audible, these jubilant tones are honey and milk and wine-sweet water

Poured on the stone block floor, these syllables are barely groats I scatter on the Reactor’s core,

I call your name with hollow vowels, I psalm your Fate close by, my breath near deathless ever at your side

45  to Spell your destiny, I set this verse prophetic on your mausoleum walls to seal you up Eternally with Diamond Truth! O doomed Plutonium.

II

The Bard surveys Plutonian history from midnight lit with Mercury Vapor streetlamps till in dawn’s early light

he contemplates a tranquil politic spaced out between Nations’ thought-forms proliferating bureaucratic

& horrific arm’d, Satanic industries projected sudden with Five Hundred Billion Dollar Strength

around the world same time this text is set in Boulder, Colorado before front range of Rocky Mountains

50  twelve miles north of Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility in United States on North America, Western Hemisphere

of planet Earth six months and fourteen days around our Solar System in a Spiral Galaxy

the local year after Dominion of the last God nineteen hundred seventy eight

Completed as yellow hazed dawn clouds brighten East, Denver city white below

Blue sky transparent rising empty deep & spacious to a morning star high over the balcony

55  above some autos sat with wheels to curb downhill from Flatiron’s jagged pine ridge,

sunlit mountain meadows sloped to rust-red sandstone cliffs above brick townhouse roofs

as sparrows waked whistling through Marine Street’s summer green leafed trees.

III

This ode to you O Poets and Orators to come, you father Whitman as I join your side, you Congress and American people,

you present meditators, spiritual friends & teachers, you O Master of the Diamond Arts,

60  Take this wheel of syllables in hand, these vowels and consonants to breath’s end

take this inhalation of black poison to your heart, breathe out this blessing from your breast on our creation

forests cities oceans deserts rocky flats and mountains in the Ten Directions pacify with this exhalation,

enrich this Plutonian Ode to explode its empty thunder through earthen thought-worlds

Magnetize this howl with heartless compassion, destroy this mountain of Plutonium with ordinary mind and body speech,

65  thus empower this Mind-guard spirit gone out, gone out, gone beyond, gone beyond me, Wake space, so Ah!

July 14, 1978

Old Pond

Old Pond

The old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Hard road! I walked till both feet stunk—
Ma!Ma! Whatcha doing down on that bed?
Pa!Pa! what hole you hide your head?

Left home got work down town today
Sold coke, got busted looking gay
Day dream, I acted like a clunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Got hitched, I bought a frying pan
Fried eggs, my wife eats like a man
Won’t cook, her oatmeal tastes like funk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Eat shit exactly what she said
Drink wine, it goes right down my head
Fucked up, they all yelled I was drunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Saw God at six o’clock tonight
Flop house, I think I’ll start a fight
Head ache like both my eyeballs shrunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Hot dog! I love my mustard hot
Hey Rube! I think I just got shot
Drop dead She said you want some junk?
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Oh ho your dirty needle stinks
No no I don’t shoot up with finks
Speed greed I stood there with the punk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Yeh yeh gimme a breath of fresh air
Guess who I am well you don’t care
No name call up the mocking Monk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

No echo, make a lot of noise
Come home you owe it to the boys
Can’t hear you scream your fish’s sunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Just folks, we bought a motor car
No gas I guess we crossed the bar
I swear we started for Podunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

I got his banjo on my knee
I played it like an old Sweetie
I sang plunk-a-plunk-a-plunk plunk plunk plunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

One hand I gave myself the clap
Unborn, but still I took the rap
Big deal, I fell out of my bunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Hey hey! I ride down the blue sky
Sit down with worms until I die
Fare well! Hum Hum Hum Hum Hum Hum!
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Red barn rise wet in morning dew
Cockadoo dle do oink oink moo moo
Buzz buzz—flyswatter in the kitchen, thwunk!
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

August 22, 1978

Blame the Thought, Cling to the Bummer

I am Fake Saint

magazine Saint Ram Das

Who’s not a Fake Saint consciousness, Nobody!

The 12th Trungpa, Karmapa 16, Dudjom lineage of Padmasambhava, Pope Jean-Paul, Queen of England crowned with dignity’s brilliant empty Diamonds Sapphires Emeralds, Amber, Rubies—

The sky is Fake Saint, emptyhearted blue

The Sacramento Valley floor fields no saints either, tractors in green corn higher than the T-shirted jogger.

This Volkswagen Fake Saint, license-plate-light wires smoking shorted in the rear-engine door.

Filter cigarette butt still smoking in the ashtray

No saints longhaired boys at the busdriver’s wheel

Hard workers no Fake Saints laborers everywhere behind desks in Plutonium offices

swatting flies under plastic flower-power signs

Driving Ponderosa & Spruce roads to the poet’s shrine at Kitkitdizze

Bedrock Mortar hermitage—Shobo-An temple’s copper roof on a black-oak groved hillside—

Discontinuous, the thought—empty—no harm—

To blame the thought would cling to the Bummer—

Unborn Evil, the Self & its systems

Transitory intermittent gapped in Grass Valley stopping for gas

Plutonium blameless, apocalyptic gift of Furies

Insentient space filled with green bushes—clouds over Ranger Station signs

Uncertain as incense.

Nevada City, September 7, 1978

“Don’t Grow Old”

     I

Twenty-eight years before on the living room couch he’d stared at me, I said

“I want to see a psychiatrist—I have sexual difficulties—homosexuality”

I’d come home from troubled years as a student. This was the weekend I would talk with him.

A look startled his face, “You mean you like to take men’s penises in your mouth?”

Equally startled, “No, no,” I lied, “that isn’t what it means.”

Now he lay naked in the bath, hot water draining beneath his shanks.

Strong shouldered Peter, once ambulance attendant, raised him up

in the tiled room. We toweled him dry, arms under his, bathrobe over his shoulder—

he tottered thru the door to his carpeted bedroom

sat on the soft mattress edge, exhausted, and coughed up watery phlegm.

We lifted his swollen feet talcum’d white, put them thru pajama legs,

tied the cord round his waist, and held the nightshirt sleeve open for his hand, slow.

Mouth drawn in, his false teeth in a dish, he turned his head round

looking up at Peter to smile ruefully, “Don’t ever grow old.”

     II

At my urging, my eldest nephew came

to keep his grandfather company, maybe sleep overnight in the apartment.

He had no job, and was homeless anyway.

All afternoon he read the papers and looked at old movies.

Later dusk, television silent, we sat on a soft-pillowed couch,

Louis sat in his easy-chair that swiveled and could lean back—

“So what kind of job are you looking for?”

“Dishwashing, but someone told me it makes your hands’ skin scaly red.”

“And what about officeboy?” His grandson finished highschool with marks too poor for college.

“It’s unhealthy inside airconditioned buildings under fluorescent light.”

The dying man looked at him, nodding at the specimen.

He began his advice. “You might be a taxidriver, but what if a car crashed into you? They say you can get mugged too.

Or you could get a job as a sailor, but the ship could sink, you could get drowned.

Maybe you should try a career in the grocery business, but a box of bananas could slip from the shelf,

you could hurt your head. Or if you were a waiter, you could slip and fall down with a loaded tray, & have to pay for the broken glasses.

Maybe you should be a carpenter, but your thumb might get hit by a hammer.

Or a lifeguard—but the undertow at Belmar beach is dangerous, and you could catch a cold.

Or a doctor, but sometimes you could cut your hand with a scalpel that had germs, you could get sick & die.”

Later, in bed after twilight, glasses off, he said to his wife

“Why doesn’t he comb his hair? It falls all over his eyes, how can he see?

Tell him to go home soon, I’m too tired.”

Amherst, October 5, 1978

     III

     Resigned

A year before visiting a handsome poet and my Tibetan guru, Guests after supper on the mountainside
we admired the lights of Boulder spread glittering below through a giant glass window—
After coffee, my father bantered wearily
“Is life worth living? Depends on the liver—”
The Lama smiled to his secretary—
It was an old pun I’d heard in childhood.
Then he fell silent, looking at the floor
     and sighed, head bent heavy
          talking to no one—
               “What can you do …?”

Buffalo, October 6, 1978

Love Returned

Love returned with smiles
three thousand miles
to keep a year’s promise
Anonymous, honest
studious, beauteous
learned and childlike
earnest and mild like
a student of truth,
a serious youth.

Whatever our ends
young and old we were friends
on the coast a few weeks
In New York now he seeks
scholarly manuscripts
old writs, haunted notes
Antique anecdotes,
rare libraries lain
back of the brain.

Now we are in bed
he kisses my head
his hand on my arm
holds my side warm
He presses my leg
I don’t have to beg
his sweet penis heat
enlarged at my hip,
kiss his neck with my lip.

Small as a kid
his ass is not hid
I can touch, I can play
with his thighs any way
My cheek to his chest
my body’s his guest
he offers his breast
his belly, the rest
hug and kiss to my bliss

Come twice at last
he offers his ass
first time for him
to be entered at whim
of my bare used cock—
his cheeks do unlock
tongue & hand at soft gland
Alas for my dreams
my part’s feeble it seems

Familiar with lust
heartening the dust
of 50 years’ boys’
abandoned love joys
Not to queer my idea
he’s willing & trembles
& his body’s nimble
where I want my hard skin
I can’t get it on in.

Well another day comes
Church bells have rung
dawn blue in New York
I eat vegetables raw
Sun flowers, cole slaw
Age shortens my years
yet brings these good cheers
Some nights’re left free
& Love’s patient with me

December 16, 1978, 6 A.M.

December 31, 1978

Shining Diamonds & Sequins glitter
     Grand Ballroom Waldorf
     Astoria on the TV Screen
radiant shifting goodbye to
     Times Square Phantoms
     waving
massed eyeglasses & umbrellas’
     rainy hands over
     heads
Celebrating China
     diplomatic relations
     Disco in Peking
Congressional black & tan faces
     on the news-dots sober Committee Report
     Concludes Conspiracy Killing
     Kennedy & Martin Luther King
President & Peacemaker last
     Decade departed
mysteriously gloomy miasma
     mind of NY Times Vietnam
     nuclear Warren Commission
     exploded, lies & confusion
popping firecrackers Razz-ma-Tazz
     in mylar hats under klieg lights
     dancing to Guy Lombardo
Hitchy Kitchy Koo in eyeglasses
     & bowties
with tinkling Pianos, Trombones
     & tubas above the round white
     champagne tables
Old Folks smiling into camera one
     last time
appreciating the Royal Canadian
     Nostalgia
among sweepstake kitchen
     sinks & refrigerators
advertised before the deodorized
     stickup by Count Dracula
     with popping eyeballs.
How enthusiastic the soap ads
     while masses honk paper
     horns
between December’s canyon’d building
walls straight-sided up
     thru red misted sky
     above Gotham
Broadway Oomp-pa-pa-ing its
     regards to Heaven the
     umpteenth time,
tin Trumpets waiting to
     announce the year’s
     midnight,
Big teeth having a good time,
     Puerto Ricans smiling
under 44th Street marquees
     greeting the camera’s
     million-eyed blank
     Hope the itching’s gone—
Live from New York! thousands
     scream delight
roaring the clock along simultaneous
     congratulations Network Chairman
     Wm. S. Paley—
Forgiveness! Time! the ball’s
     falling down, drums
     roll loud
across America’s speaker
     systems to
Balloons! Happy New Year!
     Trumpets & Bubbles wave
     thru the brain!
Raise yr hat & shake yr bracelet
     Telephone Edie! Blow yr Trumpet
     Ganymede with a mustache
Ring yr brazen horns ye
     Fire engines of Soho!
Bark ye dogges in lofts, explode
     yr honking halos ye
     weightless Angels of
     Television!
It’s gonna be a delightful
     time, thank god nothing’s
     happening muchachos
Tonite but parties & car crashes,
     births & ambulance sirens,
Confetti falling over
     heartbroken partygoers
     doing the Lindy Hop at the
     back window of the loft
years ago when Abstract-Expressionist
     painters & poets had a party
     celebrating U.S. Eternity
     on New Year’s Eve before the War.

Brooklyn College Brain

For David Shapiro & John Ashbery

You used to wear dungarees & blue workshirt,
sneakers or cloth-top shoes, & ride alone
on subways, young & elegant unofficial
bastard of nature, sneaking sweetness into Brooklyn.
Now tweed jacket & yr father’s tie on yr breast,
salmon-pink cotton shirt & Swedish bookbag
you’re half bald, palsied lip & lower eyelid
continually tearing, gone back to college.
Goodbye Professor Ginsberg, get your identity
card next week from the front office so you can
get to class without being humiliated dumped on the
sidewalk by the black guard at the Student Union door.

Hello Professor Ginsberg have some coffee,
have some students, have some office hours
Tuesdays & Thursdays, have a couple subway tokens
in advance, have a box in the English Department,
have a look at Miss Sylvia Blitzer behind the typewriter
Have some poems er maybe they’re not so bad have a
good time workshopping Bodhicitta in the Bird Room.

March 27, 1979

Garden State

It used to be, farms,
stone houses on green lawns
a wooded hill to play Jungle Camp
asphalt roads thru Lincoln Park.

The communists picnicked
amid spring’s yellow forsythia
magnolia trees & apple blossoms, pale buds
breezy May, blue June.

Then came the mafia, alcohol
highways, garbage dumped in marshes, real
estate, World War II, money
flowed thru Nutley, bulldozers.

Einstein invented atom bombs
in Princeton, television antennae
sprung over West Orange—lobotomies
performed in Greystone State Hospital.

Old graveyards behind churches
on grassy knolls, Erie Railroad
bridges’ Checkerboard underpass
signs, paint fading, remain.

Reminds me of a time pond’s pure
water was green, drink or swim.
Traprock quarries embedded
with amethyst, quiet on Sunday.

I was afraid to talk to anyone
in Paterson, lest my sensitivity
to sex, music, the universe, be discovered &
I be laughed at, hit by colored boys.

“Mr. Professor” said the Dutchman
on Haledon Ave. “Stinky Jew” said
my friend black Joe, kinky haired.
Oldsmobiles past by in front of my eyeglasses.

Greenhouses stood by the Passaic in the sun,
little cottages in Belmar by the sea.
I heard Hitler’s voice on the radio.
I used to live on that hill up there.

They threw eggs at Norman Thomas the Socialist speaker
in Newark Military Park, the police
stood by & laughed. Used to murder
silk strikers on Mill St. in the twenties.

Now turn on your boob tube
They explain away the Harrisburg
hydrogen bubble, the Vietnam war,
They haven’t reported the end of Jersey’s gardens,

much less the end of the world.
Here in Boonton they made cannonballs
for Washington, had old iron mines,
spillways, coach houses—Trolleycars

ran thru Newark, gardeners dug front lawns.
Look for the News in your own backyard
over the whitewashed picket fence, fading signs
on upper stories of red brick factories.

The Data Terminal people stand on Route 40
now. Let’s get our stuff together. Let’s
go back Sundays & sing old springtime music
on Greystone State Mental Hospital lawn.

Spring 1979

Spring Fashions

Full moon over the shopping mall—
     in a display window’s silent light
the naked mannequin observes her fingernails

Boulder, 1979

Las Vegas: Verses Improvised for El Dorado H.S. Newspaper

Aztec sandstone waterholes known by Moapa’ve
dried out under the baccarat pits
of M.G.M.’s Grand Hotel.

If Robert Maheu knew
          who killed Kennedy
would he tell Santos Trafficante?

If Frank Sinatra had to grow his own
          food, would he learn
how to grind piñon nuts?

If Sammy Davis had to find original water
would he lead a million old ladies laughing
     round Mt. Charleston to the Sheepshead Mountains
               in migratory cycle?

Does Englebert know the name of
the mountains he sings in?

When gas and water dry up
will wild mustangs
     inhabit the Hilton Arcade?

Will the 130-billion-dollared-Pentagon guard
     the radioactive waste dump at Beatty
          for the whole Platonic Year?

Tell all the generals and Maitre D’s
to read the bronze inscriptions
          under the astronomical flagpole at Hoover Dam.

Will Franklin Delano Roosevelt
     Bugsy Siegel and Buddha
all lose their shirts at Las Vegas?

Yeah! because they don’t know how to gamble
     like mustangs and desert lizards.

September 23, 1979

To the Punks of Dawlish

Your electric hair’s beautiful gold as Blake’s Glad Day boy,

you raise your arms for industrial crucifixion

You get 45 Pounds a week on the Production line

and 15 goes to taxes, Mrs. Thatcher’s nuclear womb swells

The Iron Lady devours your powers & hours your pounds and pride &

scatters radioactive urine on your mushroom dotted sheep fields.

“Against the Bourgeois!” you raise your lip & dandy costume

Against the Money Establishment you pogo to garage bands

After humorous slavery in th’ electronic factory

put silver pins in your nose, gold rings in your ears

talk to the Professor on the Plymouth train, asking

“Marijuana rots your brain like it says in the papers, insists on the telly?”

Cursed tragic kids rocking in a rail car on the Cornwall Coastline, Luck to your dancing revolution!

With bodies beautiful as the gold blond lads’ of Oxford—

Your rage is more elegant than most purse-lipped considerations of Cambridge,

your mouths more full of slang & kisses than tea-sipping wits of Eton whispering over scones & clotted cream

conspiring to govern your music tax your body labor & chasten your impudent speech with an Official Secrets Act.

Cornwall, November 18, 1979

Some Love

After 53 years
I still cry tears
I still fall in love
I still improve

My art with a kiss
My heart with bliss
My hands massage
Kids from the garage

Kids from the grave
Kids who slave
At study or labor
Still show me favor

How can I complain
When love like rain
Falls all over the land
On my head on my hand

On my breast on my shoes
Kisses arrive like foreign news
Mouths suck my cock
Boys wish me good luck

How long can I last
Such love gone past
So much to come
Till I get dumb

Rarer and rarer
Boys give me favor
Older and older
Love grows bolder

Sweeter and sweeter
Wrinkled like water
My skin still trembles
My fingers nimble

Siegen, December 12, 1979

Maybe Love

Maybe love will come
cause I am not so dumb
Tonight it fills my heart
heavy sad apart
from one or two I fancy
now I’m an old fairy.

This is hard to say
I’ve come to be this way
thru many loves of youth
that taught me most heart truth
Now I come by myself
in my hand a potbellied elf

It’s not the most romantic
dream to be so frantic
for young men’s bodies,
a fine sugar daddy
blest respected known
but left to bed alone.

How come love came to end
flaccid, how pretend
desires I have used
Four decades as I cruised
from bed to bar to book
Shamefaced like a crook

Stealing here & there
pricks & buttocks bare
by accident, by circumstance
Naiveté or horny chance
stray truth or famous lie,
How come I came to die?

Love dies, body dies, the mind
keeps groping blind
half hearted full of lust
to wet the silken dust
of men that hold me dear
but won’t sleep with me near.

This morning’s cigarette
This morning’s sweet regret
habit of many years
wake me to old fears
Under the living sun
one day there’ll be no one

to kiss & to adore
& to embrace & more
lie down with side by side
tender as a bride
gentle under my touch—
Prick I love to suck.

Church bells ring again
in Heidelberg as when
in New York City town
I lay my belly down
against a boy friend’s buttock
and couldn’t get it up.

’Spite age and common Fate
I’d hoped love’d hang out late
I’d never lack for thighs
on which to sigh my sighs
This day it seems the truth

I can’t depend on youth,
I can’t keep dreaming love
I can’t pray heav’n above
or call the pow’rs of hell
to keep my body well
occupied with young devils
tongueing at my navel.

I stole up from my bed
to that of a well-bred
young friend who shared my purse
and noted my tender verse,
I held him by the ass
waiting for sweat to pass

until he said Go back
I said that I would jack
myself away, not stay
& so he let me play
Allergic to my come—
I came, & then went home.

This can’t go on forever,
this poem, nor my fever
for brown eyed mortal joy,
I love a straight white boy.
Ah the circle closes
Same old withered roses!

I haven’t found an end
I can fuck & defend
& no more can depend
on youth time to amend
what old ages portend—
Love’s death, & body’s end.

Heidelberg, December 15, 1979, 8 A.M.

Ruhr-Gebiet

Too much industry
too much eats
too much beer
too much cigarettes

Too much philosophy
too many thought forms
not enough rooms—
not enough trees

Too much Police
too much computers
too much hi fi
too much Pork

Too much coffee
too much smoking
under gray slate roofs
Too much obedience

Too many bellies
Too many business suits
Too much paperwork
too many magazines

Too much industry
No fish in the Rhine
Lorelei poisoned
Too much embarrassment

Too many fatigued
workers on the train
Ghost Jews scream
on the streetcorner

Too much old murder
too much white torture
Too much one Stammheim
too many happy Nazis

Too many crazy students
Not enough farms
not enough Appletrees
Not enough nut trees

Too much money
Too many poor
turks without vote
“Guests” do the work

Too much metal
Too much fat
Too many jokes
not enough meditation

Too much anger
Too much sugar
Too many smokestacks
Not enough snow

Too many radioactive
plutonium wastebarrels
Take the Rhine gold
Build a big tomb

A gold walled grave
to bury this deadly nuclear slag
all the Banks’ gold
Shining impenetrable

All the German gold
will save the Nation
Build a gold house
to bury the Devil

Heidelberg, December 15, 1979

Love Forgiven

Tübingen-Hamburg Schlafwagen

     I
Why am I so angry at Kissinger?
     Kent State? Terrorism began in 1968!
“Berlin Student Protesting Shah Shot by Police.”

     II
Building lights above black water!
     passing over a big river, railroad bridge & tower.
Mmm Fairyland! Must be Frankfurt!

December 1979

Love Forgiven

     Straight and slender
     Youthful tender
Love shows the way
     And never says nay

     Light & gentle-
     Hearted mental
Tones sing & play
     Guitar in bright day

     Voicing always
     Melodies, please
Sing sad, & say
     Whatever you may

     Righteous honest
     Heart’s forgiveness
Drives woes away,
     Gives Love to cold clay

Tübingen, December 16, 1979

Verses Written for Student Antidraft Registration Rally 1980

The Warrior is afraid

the warrior has a big trembling heart

the warrior sees bright explosions over Utah, a giant bomber moves over Cheyenne Mountain at Colorado Springs

the warrior laughs at its shadow, his thought flows out with his breath and dissolves in afternoon light

The warrior never goes to War

War runs away from the warrior’s mouth

War falls apart in the warrior’s mind

The Conquered go to War, drafted into shadow armies, navy’d on shadow oceans, flying in shadow fire

only helpless Draftees fight afraid, big meaty negroes trying not to die—

The Warrior knows his own sad & tender heart, which is not the heart of most newspapers

Which is not the heart of most Television—This kind of sadness doesn’t sell popcorn

This kind of sadness never goes to war, never spends $100 Billion on MX Missile systems, never fights shadows in Utah,

never hides inside a hollow mountain near Colorado Springs with North American Aerospace Defense Command

waiting orders that he press the Secret button to Blow up the Great Cities of Earth

Shambhala, Colorado, March 15, 1980

Homework

Homage Kenneth Koch

If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran

I’d throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,

I’d wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,

Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,

Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love Canal

Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,

Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow return white as snow,

Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie

Then I’d throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange,

Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,

& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon till it came out clean.

Boulder, April 26, 1980

After Whitman & Reznikoff

1
What Relief

If my pen hand were snapped by a Broadway truck
—What relief from writing letters to the Nation
disputing tyrants, war gossip, FBI—
My poems’ll gather dust in Kansas libraries,
adolescent farmboys opening book covers with ruddy hands.

2
Lower East Side

That round faced woman, she owns the street with her three big dogs,
screeches at me, waddling with her shopping bag across Avenue B
Grabbing my crotch, “Why don’t you talk to me?”
baring her teeth in a smile, voice loud like a taxi horn,
“Big Jerk … you think you’re famous?”—reminds me of my mother.

April 29, 1980

Reflections at Lake Louise

     I
At midnight the teacher lectures on his throne
Gongs, bells, wooden fish, tingling brass
Transcendent Doctrines, non-meditation, old dog barks
Past present future burn in Candleflame
incense fills intellects—
Mornings I wake, forgetting my dreams,
dreary hearted, lift my body out of bed
shave, wash, sit, bow down to the ground for hours.

     II
Which country is real, mine or the teacher’s?
Going back & forth I cross the Canada border, unguarded,
     guilty, smuggling 10,000 thoughts.

III
Sometimes my guru seems a Hell King, sometimes a King in Eternity,
     sometimes a newspaper story, sometimes familiar eyed
          father, lonely mother, hard working—
Poor man! to give me birth who may never grow up
     and earn my own living.

May 7, 1980

     IV

Now the sky’s clearer, clouds lifted, a patch of blue

shows above Mt. Victoria. I should go walking to the Plain of the Six Glaciers

but I have to eat Oryoki style, prostrate hours in the basement, study for Vajrayana Exams—

If I had a heart attack on the path around the lake would I be ready to face my mother?

Noon

     V
Scandal in the Buddhafields
     The lake’s covered with soft ice inches thick.
Naked, he insulted me under the glacier!
     He raped my mind on the wet granite cliffs!
He misquoted me in the white mists all over the Nation.
Hurrah! the Clouds drift apart!
     Big chunks of blue sky fall down!
Mount Victoria stands with a mouth full of snow.

     VI

I wander this path along little Lake Louise, the teacher’s too busy to see me,

my dharma friends think I’m crazy, or worse, a lonely neurotic, maybe I am—

Alone in the mountains, same as in snowy streets of New York.

     VII

Trapped in the Guru’s Chateau surrounded by 300 disciples

I could go home to Cherry Valley, Manhattan, Nevada City

to be a farmer forever, die in Lower East Side slums, sit with no lightbulbs in the forest,

Return to my daily mail Secretary, Hard Times, Junk mail and love letters, get wrinkled old in Manhattan

Fly out and sing poetry, bring home windmills, grow tomatoes and Marijuana

chop wood, do Zazen, obey my friends, muse in Gary’s Maidu Territory, study acorn mush,

Here I’m destined to study the Higher Tantras and be a slave of Enlightenment.

Where can I go, how choose? Either way my life stands before me,

mountains rising over the white lake 6 A.M., mist drifting between water and sky.

May 7–9, 1980

τεθνάκην δ’ όλίγω ’πιδενης ϕαίόμ’ άλαία

Red cheeked boyfriends tenderly kiss me sweet mouthed
under Boulder coverlets winter springtime
hug me naked laughing & telling girl friends
          gossip till autumn

Aging love escapes with his Childish body
Monday one man visited sleeping big cocked
older mustached crooked-mouthed not the same teenager
          I sucked off

This kid comes on Thursdays with happy hard ons
long nights talking heart to heart reading verses
fucking hours he comes in me happy but I
          can’t get it in him

Cherub, thin-legged Southern boy once slept over
singing blues and drinking till he got horny
Wednesday night he gave me his ass I screwed him
good luck he was drunk

Blond curl’d clear eyed gardener passing thru town
teaching digging earth in the ancient One Straw
method lay back stomach bare that night blew me
          I blew him and came

Winter dance Naropa a barefoot wild kid
jumped up grabbed me laughed at me took my hand and
ran out saying Meet you at midnight your house
          Woke me up naked

Midnight crawled in bed with me breathed in my ear
kissed my eyelids mouth on his cock it was soft
“Doesn’t do nothing for me,” turned on belly
          Came in behind him

Future youth I never may touch any more
Hark these Sapphics lipped by my hollow spirit
everlasting tenderness breathed in these vowels
          sighing for love still

Song your cadence formed while on May night’s full moon
yellow onions tulips in fresh rain pale grass
iris pea pods radishes grew as this verse
          blossomed in dawn light

Measure forever his face eighteen years old
green eyes blond hair muscular gold soft skin whose
god like boy’s voice mocked me once three decades past
          Come here and screw me

Breast struck scared to look in his eyes blood pulsing
my ears mouth dry tongue never moved ribs shook a
trembling fire ran down from my heart to my thighs
          Love-sick to this day

Heavy limbed I sat in a chair and watched him
sleep naked all night afraid to kiss his mouth
tender dying waited for sun rise years ago
          in Manhattan

Boulder, May 17-June 1, 1980

Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters

Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof
out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross
surveys the city’s blue-gray clouds. Larry Rivers
’ll come at 10 A.M. and take my picture. I’m taking
your picture, pigeons. I’m writing you down, Dawn.
I’m immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus.
O Thought, now you’ll have to think the same thing forever!

New York, June 7, 1980, 6:48 A.M.

Ode to Failure

Many prophets have failed, their voices silent

ghost-shouts in basements nobody heard dusty laughter in family attics

nor glanced them on park benches weeping with relief under empty sky

Walt Whitman viva’d local losers—courage to Fat Ladies in the Freak Show! nervous prisoners whose mustached lips dripped sweat on chow lines—

Mayakovsky cried, Then die! my verse, die like the workers’ rank & file fusilladed in Petersburg!

Prospero burned his Power books & plummeted his magic wand to the bottom of dragon seas

Alexander the Great failed to find more worlds to conquer!

O Failure I chant your terrifying name, accept me your 54 year old Prophet

epicking Eternal Flop! I join your Pantheon of mortal bards, & hasten this ode with high blood pressure

rushing to the top of my skull as if I wouldn’t last another minute, like the Dying Gaul! to

You, Lord of blind Monet, deaf Beethoven, armless Venus de Milo, headless Winged Victory!

I failed to sleep with every bearded rosy-cheeked boy I jacked off over

My tirades destroyed no Intellectual Unions of KGB & CIA in turtlenecks & underpants, their woolen suits & tweeds

I never dissolved Plutonium or dismantled the nuclear Bomb before my skull lost hair

I have not yet stopped the Armies of entire Mankind in their march toward World War III

I never got to Heaven, Nirvana, X, Whatchamacallit, I never left Earth,

I never learned to die.

Boulder, March 7 / October 10, 1980

Birdbrain!

Birdbrain runs the World!

Birdbrain is the ultimate product of Capitalism

Birdbrain chief bureaucrat of Russia, yawning

Birdbrain ran FBI 30 years appointed by F. D. Roosevelt and never chased Cosa Nostra!

Birdbrain apportions wheat to be burned, keep prices up on the world market!

Birdbrain lends money to Developing Nation police-states thru the International Monetary Fund!

Birdbrain never gets laid on his own he depends on his office to pimp for him

Birdbrain offers brain transplants in Switzerland

Birdbrain wakes up in middle of night and arranges his sheets

I am Birdbrain!

I rule Russia Yugoslavia England Poland Argentina United States El Salvador

Birdbrain multiplies in China!

Birdbrain inhabits Stalin’s corpse inside the Kremlin wall

Birdbrain dictates petrochemical agriculture in Afric desert regions!

Birdbrain lowers North California’s water table sucking it up for Orange County Agribusiness Banks

Birdbrain harpoons whales and chews blubber in the tropics

Birdbrain clubs baby harp seals and wears their coats to Paris

Birdbrain runs the Pentagon his brother runs the CIA, Fatass Bucks!

Birdbrain writes and edits Time Newsweek Wall Street Journal Pravda Izvestia

Birdbrain is Pope, Premier, President, Commissar, Chairman, Senator!

Birdbrain voted Reagan President of the United States!

Birdbrain prepares Wonder Bread with refined white flour!

Birdbrain sold slaves, sugar, tobacco, alcohol

Birdbrain conquered the New World and murdered mushroom god Xochopili on Popocatepetl!

Birdbrain was President when a thousand mysterious students were machinegunned at Tlatelulco

Birdbrain sent 20,000,000 intellectuals and Jews to Siberia, 15,000,000 never got back to the Stray Dog Café

Birdbrain wore a mustache & ran Germany on Amphetamines the last year of World War II

Birdbrain conceived the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem in Europe

Birdbrain carried it out in Gas Chambers

Birdbrain borrowed Lucky Luciano the Mafia from jail to secure Sicily for U.S. Birdbrain against the Reds

Birdbrain manufactured guns in the Holy Land and sold them to white goyim in South Africa

Birdbrain supplied helicopters to Central America generals, kill a lot of restless Indians, encourage a favorable business climate

Birdbrain began a war of terror against Israeli Jews

Birdbrain sent out Zionist planes to shoot Palestinian huts outside Beirut

Birdbrain outlawed Opiates on the world market

Birdbrain formed the Black Market in Opium

Birdbrain’s father shot skag in hallways of the lower East Side

Birdbrain organized Operation Condor to spray poison fumes on the marijuana fields of Sonora

Birdbrain got sick in Harvard Square from smoking Mexican grass

Birdbrain arrived in Europe to Conquer cockroaches with Propaganda

Birdbrain became a great International Poet and went around the world praising the Glories of Birdbrain

I declare Birdbrain to be victor in the Poetry Contest

He built the World Trade Center on New York Harbor waters without regard where the toilets emptied—

Birdbrain began chopping down the Amazon Rainforest to build a wood-pulp factory on the river bank

Birdbrain in Iraq attacked Birdbrain in Iran

Birdbrain in Belfast throws bombs at his mother’s ass

Birdbrain wrote Das Kapital! authored the Bible! penned The Wealth of Nations!

Birdbrain’s humanity, he built the Rainbow Room on top of Rockefeller Center so we could dance

He invented the Theory of Relativity so Rockwell Corporation could make Neutron Bombs at Rocky Flats in Colorado

Birdbrain’s going to see how long he can go without coming

Birdbrain thinks his dong will grow big that way

Birdbrain sees a new Spy in the Market Platz in Dubrovnik outside the Eyeglass Hotel—

Birdbrain wants to suck your cock in Europe, he takes life very seriously, brokenhearted you won’t cooperate—

Birdbrain goes to heavy duty Communist Countries so he can get KGB girlfriends while the sky thunders—

Birdbrain realized he was Buddha by meditating

Birdbrain’s afraid he’s going to blow up the planet so he wrote this poem to be immortal—

Hotel Subrovka, Dubrovnik, October 14, 1980, 4:30 A.M.

Eroica

White marble pillars in the Rector’s courtyard

at the end of a marble-white street in the walled city of Dubrovnik—

All the fleet sunk, Empire foundered, Doges all skeletons & Turks vanished to dust

World Wars passed by with cannonfire mustard gas & amphetamine-wired Führers—

Beethoven’s drum roll beats again in the stone household

White jackets and Black ties the makers of Dissonant thunderbolts concentrate on music sheets

Bowing low, the Timpanist bends ear to his Copper Kettledrums’ heroic vibration—

Bassists with hornrim glasses and beards, young and old pluck ensemble with middle fingers at thin animal strings—

Bassoonists press lips to wooden hollow wands,

The Violinists fiddle up and down excitedly—First Violin

with a stubborn beard (at his music stand with a young girl in black evening dress) waits patiently the orchestra tuning and tweedling to a C—

The Conductor moves his baton & elbows to get the Beethoven bounce jumping

Sweating in the cool Adriatic air at 10:15 white collar round his neck, black longtailed jacket & celluloid cuffs, high heeled black shoes—he turns the glossy page of the First Movement—

The brasses ring out, trumpets puffing, French horns blaring for Napoleon!

Conductor whips it to a Bam Bam Bamb.

But Beethoven got disgusted with Napoleon & scratched his hero name off the Dedication page—

Now the Funeral March! I used to listen to this over the radio in Paterson during the Spanish Civil War—

At last I know it’s the bassoons Carry the wails of high elegy

at last I see the cellos in their chairs, violinists swaying forward, bassmen standing looking sad

as all bow together the mournful lament & dead march for Europe,

The end of the liberty of Dubrovnik, the idiot cry March on Moscow!

Dubrovnik’s musicians take revenge on Napoleon,

by playing Beethoven’s heroic chords in a Castle by the sea at Night—

Electric Globes on wrought iron stands light the year 1980 (Emperor Napoleon & Emperor Beethoven alike snoring skulls)

in the Rector’s house reconstructed a Concert Hall for Tourists

Beethoven’s heart pulses in the drums, his breath huffs and puffs, the black robed violin lady & the bearded Concert-master swing their arms.

The Funeral Fugue Begins! The Death of Kings, the screaming of Revolutionary multitudes

as the Middle Ages tumble before Industrial Revolution

a Mysterious Clarion! an extended brassy breath!

serene rows of island cities in violin language,

working back and forth from violins to bassoons—

The drum beats the footfalls of Coffin Carriers—

over the roofs the lilt of a sad melody emerges,

like silent cats on red tile, the strings Climb up sadder—

a broken-muzzled lion’s head sticks out of a white plaster Fountain wall in the courtyard

Now rats and lions chase each other round the orchestra from fiddle string to bass gut staccato—

Hunting horns echo mellow against marble staircase blocks—

Napoleon has himself crowned Emperor by the Pope!

Unbelievable! Atom Bombs drop on Japan! Hitler attacks Poland! The Allies fire-bomb Dresden alive! America goes to war—

Now Violins and Horns rise Counterpoint to a thunderous bombing! Kettledrums war up! Bam Bamb! End of Scherzo!

Finale—Tiptoeing thru history, Pizzicato on the Bass Cello & Violins as Time marches on.

Running thru the veins, the lilt of victory, the Liberation of man from the State!

It’s a big dance, a festival, every instrument joined in the Yea Saying!

Who wouldn’t be happy meeting Beethoven at Jena in 1812 or 1980! It’s a small world, standing up to sing like a big beating heart!

Getting ready for the Ecstatic European Dance! Off we go on one ear, then another, Titanic Footsteps over Middle Europe—

And a waltz to quiet down the joy, But the big dance will come back like Eternity like God like

a hurricane an Earthquake a Beethoven Creation

a new Europe! A new world of Liberty almost 200 years ago

Prophesied thru brass and catgut, wood bow & breath

Gigantic Heartbeat of Beethoven’s Deaf Longing—

The Prophecy of a Solid happy peaceful Just Europe—

Big as the Trumpets of the Third Symphony.

The Unification of the World! The triumph of the Moon! Mankind liberated to Music!

Enough to make you cry in the middle of the Rector’s Palace, thinking of Einstein’s

Atom Bomb exploded out of his head—

In the middle of a note, an interruption! Cloudburst!

The Conductor wipes his head & runs away,

basses and cellos lift up their woods and vanish into Cloakrooms,

French Horns Violins and Bassoons lift eyes to the shower & scatter under balconies

in the middle of a note, in the middle of a big Satyric Footstep,

Pouf! Rain pours thru the sky!

Musicians and audience flee the stone floor’d courtyard,

Atrium of the Rector’s House Dubrovnik October 14, 1980, 10:45 P.M.

“Defending the Faith”

Stopping on the bus from Novi Pazar in the rain
I took a leak by Maglic Castle walls
and talked with the dogs on Ivar River Bank
They showed me their teeth & barked a long long time.

October 20, 1980

Capitol Air

I don’t like the government where I live
I don’t like dictatorship of the Rich
I don’t like bureaucrats telling me what to eat
I don’t like Police dogs sniffing round my feet

I don’t like Communist Censorship of my books
I don’t like Marxists complaining about my looks
I don’t like Castro insulting members of my sex
Leftists insisting we got the mystic Fix

I don’t like Capitalists selling me gasoline Coke
Multinationals burning Amazon trees to smoke
Big Corporation takeover media mind
I don’t like the Top-bananas that’re robbing Guatemala banks blind

I don’t like K.G.B. Gulag concentration camps
I don’t like the Maoists’ Cambodian Death Dance
15 Million were killed by Stalin Secretary of Terror
He has killed our old Red Revolution for ever

I don’t like Anarchists screaming Love Is Free
I don’t like the C.I.A. they killed John Kennedy
Paranoiac tanks sit in Prague and Hungary
But I don’t like counterrevolution paid for by the C.I.A.

Tyranny in Turkey or Korea Nineteen Eighty
I don’t like Right Wing Death Squad Democracy
Police State Iran Nicaragua yesterday
Laissez-faire please Government keep your secret police offa me

I don’t like Nationalist Supremacy White or Black
I don’t like Narcs & Mafia marketing Smack
The General bullying Congress in his tweed vest
The President building up his Armies in the East & West

I don’t like Argentine police Jail torture Truths
Government Terrorist takeover Salvador news
I don’t like Zionists acting Nazi Storm Troop
Palestine Liberation cooking Israel into Moslem soup

Capital Air

I don’t like the Crown’s Official Secrets Act
You can get away with murder in the Government that’s a fact
Security cops teargassing radical kids
In Switzerland or Czechoslovakia God Forbids

In America it’s Attica in Russia it’s Lubianka Wall
In China if you disappear you wouldn’t know yourself at all
Arise Arise you citizens of the world use your lungs
Talk back to the Tyrants all they’re afraid of is your tongues

Two hundred Billion dollars inflates World War
In United States every year They’re asking for more
Russia’s got as much in tanks and laser planes
Give or take Fifty Billion we can blow out everybody’s brains

School’s broke down ’cause History changes every night
Half the Free World nations are Dictatorships of the Right
The only place socialism worked was in Gdansk, Bud
The Communist world’s stuck together with prisoners’ blood

The Generals say they know something worth fighting for
They never say what till they start an unjust war
Iranian hostage Media Hysteria sucked
The Shah ran away with 9 Billion Iranian bucks

Kermit Roosevelt and his U.S. dollars overthrew Mossadegh
They wanted his oil then they got Ayatollah’s dreck
They put in the Shah and they trained his police the Savak
All Iran was our hostage quarter-century That’s right Jack

Bishop Romero wrote President Carter to stop
Sending guns to El Salvador’s Junta so he got shot
Ambassador White blew the whistle on the White House lies
Reagan called him home cause he looked in the dead nuns’ eyes

Half the voters didn’t vote they knew it was too late
Newspaper headlines called it a big Mandate
Some people voted for Reagan eyes open wide
3 out of 4 didn’t vote for him That’s a Landslide

Truth may be hard to find but Falsehood’s easy
Read between the lines our Imperialism is sleazy
But if you think the People’s State is your Heart’s Desire
Jump right back in the frying pan from the fire

The System the System in Russia & China the same
Criticize the System in Budapest lose your name
Coca Cola Pepsi Cola in Russia & China come true
Khrushchev yelled in Hollywood “We will bury You”

America and Russia want to bomb themselves Okay
Everybody dead on both sides Everybody pray
All except the Generals in caves where they can hide
And fuck each other in the ass waiting for the next free ride

No hope Communism no hope Capitalism Yeah
Everybody’s lying on both sides Nyeah nyeah nyeah
The bloody iron curtain of American Military Power
Is a mirror image of Russia’s red Babel-Tower

Jesus Christ was spotless but was Crucified by the Mob
Law & Order Herod’s hired soldiers did the job
Flowerpower’s fine but innocence has got no Protection
The man who shot John Lennon had a Hero-worshipper’s connection

The moral of this song is that the world is in a horrible place
Scientific Industry devours the human race
Police in every country armed with Tear Gas & TV
Secret Masters everywhere bureaucratize for you & me

Terrorists and police together build a lowerclass Rage
Propaganda murder manipulates the upperclass Stage
Can’t tell the difference ’tween a turkey & a provocateur
If you’re feeling confused the Government’s in there for sure

Aware Aware wherever you are No Fear
Trust your heart Don’t ride your Paranoia dear
Breathe together with an ordinary mind
Armed with Humor Feed & Help Enlighten Woe Mankind

Frankfurt-New York, December 15, 1980

APPENDIX

Notes

Epigraphs from Original Editions

Dedications

Acknowledgments

Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Empty Mirror

Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Howl

Author’s Cover Writ

Index of Proper Names

Notes

Notes were composed 1961–1984 in collaboration with Fernanda Pivano, Italian translator; Jean-Jacques Lebel, Mary Beach and Claude Pelieu, Gérard-Georges Lemaire and Philippe Mikriammos, French translators; as well as Carl Weissner, Heiner Bastien, Bernd Samland, Jürgen Schmidt and Michael Kellner, German translators. Ever-patient confidante, guide, adviser and scholar Fernanda Pivano has borne the burden of pioneer interpretation of American personal and ephemeral references in these texts to her Italian readers, and other translators, for almost a quarter century. Musician-poet Steven Taylor integrated notes from four languages. The author edited and expanded the work through Summer 1984. Poet Philip Whalen, Sensei, aided interpretation of Buddhist terminology.

A.G.

I
EMPTY MIRROR: GATES OF WRATH
(1947–1952)

The four poems that follow, dedicated to Neal Cassady in the first years of our friendship, were set among “Earlier Poems: 1947,” appended to Gates of Wrath, a book of rhymed verse. These compositions, college imitations of Marlowe, Marvell and Donne (and Hart Crane), are now relocated among these notes. Subsequent poems of Summer 1948, also imitative in style, are placed with the main body of the collection because they deal with primary visionary experience.

A FURTHER PROPOSAL

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some old pleasures prove.
Men like me have paid in verse
This costly courtesy, or curse;

But I would bargain with my art
(As to the mind, now to the heart),
My symbols, images, and signs
Please me more outside these lines.

For your share and recompense,
You will be taught another sense:
The wisdom of the subtle worm
Will turn most perfect in your form.

Not that your soul need tutored be
By intellectual decree,
But graces that the mind can share
Will make you, as more wise, more fair,

Till all the world’s devoted thought
Find all in you it ever sought,
And even I, of skeptic mind,
A Resurrection of a kind.

This compliment, in my own way,
For what I would receive, I pay;
Thus all the wise have writ thereof,
And all the fair have been their love.

1947

A LOVER’S GARDEN

How vainly lovers marvel, all
To make a body, mind, and soul,
Who, winning one white night of grace,
Will weep and rage a year of days,
Or muse forever on a kiss,
If won by a more sad mistress—
Are all these lovers, then, undone
By him and me, who love alone?

O, have the virtues of the mind
Been all for this one love designed?
As seconds on the clock do move,
Each marks another thought of love;
Thought follows thought, and we devise
Each minute to antithesize,
Till, as the hour chimes its tune,
Dialectic, we commune.

The argument our minds create
We do, abed, substantiate;
Nor we disdain, in our delight,
To flatter the old Stagirite:
For in one speedy moment, we
Endure the whole Eternity,
And in our darkened shapes have found
The greater world that we surround.

In this community, the soul
Doth make its act impersonal,
As, locked in a mechanic bliss,
It shudders into nothingness—
Three characters of each may die
To dramatize that Unity.
Timed, placed, and acting thus, the while,
We sit and sing, and sing and smile.

What life is this? What pleasure mine!
Such as no image can insign:
Nor sweet music, understood,
Soft at night, in solitude
At a window, will enwreathe
Such stillness on my brow: I breathe,
And walk on earth, and act my will,
And cry Peace! Peace! and all is still.

Though here, it seems, I must remain,
My thoughtless world, whereon men strain
Through lives of motion without sense,
Farewell! in this benevolence—
That all men may, as I, arrange
A love as simple, sweet, and strange
As few men know; nor can I tell,
But only imitate farewell.

1947

LOVE LETTER

          Let not the sad perplexity
          Of absent love unhumor thee:
     Sighs, tears, and oaths, and laughter I have spent
To make my play with thee resolve in merriment;
          For wisest critics past agree
          The truest love is comedy.
Will thou not weary of the tragic argument?

          Wouldst thou make love perverse, and then
          Preposterous and crabbed, my pen?
     Tempt Eros not (he is more wise than I)
To suck the apple of thy sad absurdity.
          Love, who is a friend to men,
          You’ld make a Devil of again:
Then should I be once more exiled, alas, in thee.

          Make peace with me, and in my mind,
          With Eros, angel of the mind,
     Who loves me, loving thee, and in our bliss
Is loved by all of us and finds his happiness.
          Such simple pleasures are designed
          To entertain our days, I find,
And so shalt thee, when next we make a night of this.

          This spring we’ll be not merely mad,
          But absent lovers, therefore sad,
     So we’ll be no more happy than we ought—
That simple love of Eros may be strangely taught.
          And wit will seldom make me glad
          That spring hath not what winter had,
Therefore these nights are darkened shadows of my thought.

Grieve in a garden, then, and in a summer’s twilight,
     Think of thy love, for spring is lost to me.
     Or as you will, and if the moon be white,
     Let all thy soul to music married be,
To magic, nightingales, and immortality;
     And, if it pleases thee, why, think on Death;
     For Death is strange upon a summer night,
     The thought of it may make thee catch thy breath,
And meditation hath itself a great beauty;
Wherefore if thou must weep, now I must mourn with thee.

Easter Sunday, 1947

DAKAR DOLDRUMS

I
Most dear, and dearest at this moment most,
Since this my love for thee is thus more free
Than that I cherished more dear and lost;
Most near, now nearest where I fly from thee:
Thy love most consummated is in absence,
Half for the trust I have for thee in mind,
Half for the pleasures of thee in remembrance—
Thou art most full and fair of all thy kind.

Not half so fair as thee is fate I fear,
Wherefore my sad departure from this season
Wherein for some love of me thou held’st me dear,
While I betray thee for a better reason.
I am a brutish agonist, I know
Lust or its consummation cannot ease
These miseries of mind, this mask like sorrow:
It is myself, not thee, shall make my peace.

Yet, O sweet soul, to have possessed thy love,
The meditations of thy mind for me,
Hath half deceived a thought that ill shall prove.
It was a grace of fate, this scene of comedy
Foretold more tragic acts in my short age.
Yet ’tis no masque of mine, no mere sad play
Spectacular upon an empty stage—
My life is more unreal, another way.

To lie with thee, to touch thee with desire,
Enrage the summer nights with thy mere presence—
Flesh hath such joy, such sweetness, and such fire!
The white ghost fell on me, departing thence.
Henceforth I must perform a winter mood;
Belovèd gestures freeze in bitter ice,
Eyes glare through a pale jail of solitude,
Fear chills my mind: Here endeth all my bliss!

Cursed may be this month of Fall! I fail
My full and fair and near and dear and kind.
I but endure my role, my own seas sail,
Far from the sunny shores within thy mind.
So this departure shadoweth mine end:
Ah! what poor human cometh unto me,
Since now the snowy spectre doth descend,
Henceforth I shall in fear and anger flee.

II
Lord, forgive my passions, they are old,
And restive as the years that I have known.
To what abandonments have I foretold
My bondage? And have mine own love undone!
How mad my youth, my sacramental passage!
Yet I dream these September journeys true:
When five days flowed like sickness in this knowledge,
I vomited out my mockery, all I knew.

III
Five nights upon the deep I suffered presage,
Five dawns familiar seabirds cried me pale:
I care not now, for I have seen an image
In the sea that was no Nightingale.

—My love, and doth still that rare figurine
In thy sad garden sing, now I am gone?
Sweet carols that I made, and caroller serene,
They broke my heart, and sang for thee alone.
Secret to thee the Nightingale was Death;
So all the figures are that I create.
For thee awhile I breathed another breath,
To make my Death thy Beauty imitate.—

More terrible than these are the vast visions
Of the sea, nor comprehensible.
Last night I stared upon the Cuban mountains,
Tragic in the mist, as on my soul,
Star studded in the dark, sea shaded round
And still, a funeral of Emperors,
Wind wound in ruined shrouds and crescent crowned
And tombed in desolation on dead shores.

The place was dread with age: the evening tide,
Eternal wife of death that washed these bones,
Turns back to sea by night, eternal bride:
She clasped my ship and rocked to hear its groans.
I did imagine I had known this sea,
Had been an audience to this before;
The place was prescient, like a great stage in me,
As out of a dream that late I dream no more.

I did imagine I had known this sea;
It raged like a great beast in my passage,
Till I, enragèd creature, anciently
Engendered here, cried out upon mine image:
“How long in absence O thou journeyest,
Ages my soul and ages! Here ever home
In this sea’s endangerments thou sufferest;
And do, and do, and now my will hath done!”

Ah, love, I tell thee true, nor false affix
The solitude I watched by th’iron prow:
While I interpreted I stared me sick
At transformations in the tides below;
For the grim bride rose up, and all surrounding,
Carried me through the star-piercèd air,
Till I cried Stay! and Stay! surrendering
My movèd soul in flight to faster fear.

As I dived then I cried, delving all depthed in foam,
“Now close in weeds thy wave-lipped womb, mistress!”
But she ope’d her watering wounds and drew me down
And drove me dancing through the white-wreathed darkness.
Though I stood still to memorize the deep,
And woke my eyes wild-wide upon the height,
My soul it feareth its descent to keep,
My soul it turneth in its famous flight.

IV
Ha! now I die or no, I fear this tide
Carrieth me still, perishing, past where I stood,
So mild, to gaze whereat I long had died,
Or shall, as well, in future solitude.
What other shores are there I still remember?
I was in a pale land, I looked through a pure vision
In a pallid dawn, with a half-vacant glare.
Alas! what harbour hath the imagination?

O the transparent past hath a white port,
Tinted in the eye; it doth appear
Sometime on dark days, much by night, to sport
Bright shades like dimes of silver shining there,
On red dull sands on green volcanic shores.
I thought these stanzas out this cloudy noon,
Past Cuba now, past Haiti’s stony jaws,
In the last passage to Dakar. The moon

Alone was full as it had been all year,
Orange and strange at dawn. It was my eyes,
Not Africa, did this: they shined so pure
Each island floated by a sweet surprise.
Coins, then, on Cape Verde’s peakèd cones
Sparkle out with pallors various.
It makes me God to pass these mortal towns:
Real people sicken here upon slopes sulphurous.

So in my years I saw my serious cities
Colored with Love and chiming with Nightingales,
Architectural with fantasies,
With fools in schools and geniuses in jails.
When in sweet vivid dreams such rainbows rise,
and spectral children dance among the music,
I watch them still: hot emeralds are their eyes!
My eyes are ice, alas! How white I wake!

V
Twenty days have drifted in the wake
Of this slow agèd ship that carries coal
From Texas to Dakar. I, for the sake
Of little but my causelessness of soul,
Am carried out of my chill hemisphere
To unfamiliar summer on the earth.
I spend my days to meditate a fear;
Each day I give the sea is one of death.

This is the last night of the outward journeying,
The darkness falleth westward unto thee;
And I must end my labors of this evening,
And all the last long night, and all this day:
It doth give peace, thus to torment the soul,
Till it is sundered from its forms and sense,
Till it surrendereth its knowledge whole,
And stares on the world out of a sleepless trance.

So on these stanzas doth a peace descend,
Now I have journeyed through these images
To come upon no image in the end.
So are we consummated in these passages,
Most near and dear and far apart in fate.
As I mean no mere sweet philosophy,
So I, unto a world I must create,
Turn with no promise and no prophecy.

South Atlantic, 1947

          Sweet Levinsky

27 LEVINSKY: Leon Levinsky is a character in Jack Kerouac’s The Town and the City.

          A Poem on America

72 ACIS AND GALATEA … versilov: In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s penultimate novel, A Raw Youth, hero Dolgoruki’s father, Versilov, the ex-revolutionary, wore a hair shirt and mused on Poussin’s painting.

II
THE GREEN AUTOMOBILE
(1953–1954)

The Green Automobile

94 NEAL: Neal Cassady, to whom the poem is dedicated.

Neal Cassady (1925–1968) in his first suit, bought second hand in Chinatown, 1946, the day before his return to Denver on Greyhound bus.

Sakyamuni Coming Out from the Mountain

98 SAKYAMUNI: Buddha (563–483 B.C.) Sage born to warrior-caste Sakya family; human aspect of Buddha. Poem interprets noted Chinese painting, Sung dynasty.

98 ARHAT: Self-liberated sage who has not taken Bodhisattva’s vows to liberate all sentient beings.

Havana 1953

100 CAB CALLOWAY: (b. 1907) Ex-law student, stage-show black jazz singer, slick-haired satin-suited early hipster popular band leader who composed and sang “Minnie the Moocher,” “Are You Hep to the Jive,” “Are You All Reet” and “Hi-De-Ho Man.”

101 VIVA JALISCO: Mexican state mariachi music macho whoop, like Viva Texas!

101 FREER: Gallery of Oriental Art, Mall adjunct to Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution.

Siesta in Xbalba

105 UXMAL …: Proper names mentioned in the first part of the poem are those of ruined cities. Xbalba, translatable as Morning Star in Region Obscure, or Hope, and pronounced Chivalvá, is the area in Chiapas between the Tabasco border and the Usumacinta River at the edge of the Petén rain forest; the boundary of lower Mexico and Guatemala today is thereabouts. The locale was considered a Purgatory, or Limbo (the legend is vague), in the (Old) Mayan Empire. To the large tree at the crest of what is now called Mount Don Juan, at the foot of which this poem was written, ancient craftsmen came to complete work left unfinished at their death.

On Burroughs Work

122 Written on receiving early “routines” from Burroughs in Tangier, including Dr. Benway in the Operating Room and The Talking Asshole.

W. S. Burroughs, 206 East 7th Street, N.Y.C., Fall 1953, at time assembling “Yage Letters” and visioning Inter-zone Market Naked Lunch. Photo by A.G.

III
HOWL, BEFORE AND AFTER: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
(1955–1956)

Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo

131 MALEST, CORNIFICI, TUO CATULLO: Catullus #38, probably addressed to the erotic “new poet” friend of Catullus, a verse note beginning “I’m ill, Cornificus, your Catullus is ill,” asking for a little friendly word, and ending “Maestius lacrimis Simonideis”—“Sad as the tears of old Simonides.” Ginsberg to Kerouac, on meeting Peter Orlovsky.

Peter Orlovsky by Robert LaVigne, 1954, San Francisco. Author met Orlovsky immediately after viewing this painting, 1403 Gough Street.

Jack Kerouac on Avenue A, Manhattan, 1953, at time of The Subterraneans. Photo by A.G.

Dream Record: June 8, 1955

132 HUNCKE: Herbert E. Huncke (1915–1996), American prose writer. Friend and early contact for Kerouac, Burroughs and the author in explorations circa 1945 around Times Square, where he hung out at center of the hustling world in early stages of his opiate addictions. He served as connection to midtown’s floating population for Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s interviews with that population segment in his celebrated surveys of human sexuality. Huncke introduced Burroughs and others to the slang, information and ritual of the emergent “hip” or “beat” subculture. See the author’s preface to Huncke’s book of sketches and stories, The Evening Sun Turned Crimson (Cherry Valley, N.Y.: Cherry Valley Editions, 1980): “Huncke’s figure appears variously in Clellon Holmes’s novel Go, there is an excellent early portrait in Kerouac’s first bildungsroman The Town and the City, fugitive glimpses of Huncke as Gotham morphinist appear in William Lee’s Junkie, Burroughs’ dry first classic of prose. He walked on the snowbank docks with shoes full of blood into the middle of Howl, and is glimpsed in short sketches by Herb Gold, Carl Solomon and Irving Rosenthal scattered through subsequent decades. … Kerouac always maintained that he was a great story teller.”

Herbert Huncke, 1983. Photo by A.G.

Howl

134 PARADISE ALLEY: A slum courtyard N.Y. Lower East Side, site of Kerouac’s Subterraneans, 1958.

139 ELI ELI LAMMA LAMMA SABACTHANI: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Christ’s last words from the cross (“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”: Matthew 27:46).

139 MOLOCH: Or Molech, the Canaanite fire god, whose worship was marked by parents burning their children as propitiatory sacrifice. “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech” (Leviticus 18:21).

A Supermarket in California

144 GARCíA LORCA
Not for one moment, old beautiful Walt Whitman,
have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies
nor your corduroy shoulders worn down by the moon …
Not for one moment, virile beauty who in mountains of coal, posters and railroads,
dreamed of being a river and sleeping like a river
with whatever comrade would lay on your breast
the little pain of an ignorant leopard.

—Federico García Lorca,
“Oda a Walt Whitman” (adapted by Allen Ginsberg)

Sir Francis Drake Hotel tower, Powell and Sutter Streets, San Francisco, seen from Nob Hill, original motif of Moloch section of Howl, Part II. Photo 1959 by Harry Redl. (See n.p. 139.)

America

154 WOBBLIES: International Workers of the World, strong on Northwest coast, some Anarchist-Buddhist-Populist tinge, primarily lumber and mining workers, pre-World War I activist precursors to organized American labor unions. For “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night…” see Little Red Song Book.

155 TOM MOONEY: (1882–1942) Labor leader accused of bomb-throwing, 1919 San Francisco Preparedness Day Parade; imprisoned still protesting innocence till pardoned 1939 by Governor Earl Warren; cause célèbre in left-wing populist circles worldwide.

155 SACCO & VANZETTI: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian-American anarchists convicted of robbery and murder, executed in Massachusetts, 1927, after international protest. Vanzetti’s last speech to the court: “I found myself compelled to fight back from my eyes the tears, and quanch my heart trobling to my throat to not weep before him. But Sacco’s name will live in the hearts of the people when your name, your laws, institutions and your false god are but a dim rememoring of a cursed past in which man was wolf to the man.” And a letter to his son, April 1927: “If it had not been for this thing I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man, as now we do by accident. … Our words—our lives—our pains: nothing. The taking of our lives—lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler—all! That last moment, belongs to us—that agony is our triumph.”

155 SCOTTSBORO BOYS: Nine black youths arrested 1931 by mob in Paint Rock, Alabama, jailed in Scottsboro, set up and sentenced to death for alleged train rape of two white girls, despite popular belief in their innocence. Their cause focused international attention on Southern U.S. legal injustice and racial discrimination. Supreme Court reversed convictions twice, setting landmark precedents for adequate counsel representation and fair race-balanced juries.

155 SCOTT NEARING: (1883–1983) Sociology professor bounced from Academe for anti-World War I views, Socialist congressional candidate 1919, staunch pro-Soviet historian and autobiographer. In old age, Nearing evolved into “new age” counterculture role model with publication of Living the Good Life (pioneering, building, organic gardening, cooperation and vegetarian living on a self-subsistent Vermont homestead; working plans for a twenty-year project), 1954; and The Maple Sugar Book (account of the art and history of sugaring; practical details for modern sugar-making; remarks on pioneering as a way of living in the twentieth century), 1950; both coau-thored with Helen Nearing (reprint ed., New York: Schocken Books, 1970, 1971).

155 MOTHER BLOOR: Ella Reeve Bloor (1862–1951) Communist leader, writer, traveling union strike organizer and speechmaker.

155 EWIG-WEIBLICHE: (German) Eternal feminine.

155 ISRAEL AMTER: (1881–1954) A leading American Communist, Yiddish part of movement, traveling orator, ran for N.Y. governor 1930s.

Fragment 1956

157 TOMBS: New York City jailhouse.

Afternoon Seattle

158 MANDALA: Map of psychological universe, generally Hindu-Buddhist. See Time Wheel Mandala, p. 590.

158 SNYDER: Gary Snyder (b. 1930) Naturalist-woodsman, poet, early U.S. student of Zen, hitchhiked Northwest with author 1956, as described in poem. Prototype for Kerouac’s Dharma Bums hero.

158 GREEN PARROT THEATER: First Avenue vaudeville movie playhouse, whose marquee was celebrated for Art Nouveau design and extravagant variety of neon colors in tail of its green parrot insignia. At time of poem, the 1930s Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald movie Maytime was rerun. See Maytime song quotes, “Iron Horse.”

158 FRANK H. LITTLE: His dry mummy stood in a glass case in a curio shop on Seattle waterfront, as described.

IV
REALITY SANDWICHES: EUROPE! EUROPE!
(1957–1959)

To Aunt Rose

193 THE ATTIC OF THE PAST AND EVERLASTING MINUTE: Books of lyric poetry by the author’s father, Louis Ginsberg (1896–1976). The Everlasting Minute was published 1937 by Horace Liveright, N.Y. Certain poems were anthologized in various editions of Louis Untermeyer’s standard anthology Modern American and British Poetry.

Laughing Gas

198 SATORI: (Japanese) Sudden flash of enlightenment, awakening a glimpse of ordinary mind, often result of prolonged Zazen meditation practice. See also opening pages of Kerouac, Satori in Paris (New York: Grove Press, 1966). (There are various kinds of Satori: it is believed that a Zen master can recognize what kind and how profound, long lasting, or life-changing some person’s Satori is.—P.W.)

198 SUTRAS: Buddhist discourses or dialogues, joining teacher and student in transmission of Dharma, or doctrine, over generations.

201 CZARDAS: East European dance, wildly spirited.

202 SHERMAN ADAMS: Assistant to President Eisenhower, who did resign; involved in minor White House scandal for accepting fur coat as gift.

V
KADDISH AND RELATED POEMS
(1959–1960)

Kaddish

217 FIRST POISONOUS TOMATOES OF AMERICA: Russian immigrants to U.S. at turn of the century had not seen tomatoes; some believed them poisonous.

218 YPSL: Young People’s Socialist League.

221 GRAF ZEPPELIN: Refers to giant hydrogen-inflated German airship Hindenburg, destroyed in flames with 36 deaths while mooring at Lakehurst, N.J., May 6, 1937, arrived on its first transatlantic crossing.

222 PARCAE: The Three Fates: goddess Clotho, spinning thread of life; Lachesis, holding and fixing length; and Atropos, whose shears cut thread’s end.

222 THE GREEN TABLE: German Jooss Ballet’s 1930s classic, wherein warmonger capitalists in black tie and tails pirouette round long green table at diplomatic conference, arranging mobilization, combat, arms profit, refugee fate and division of spoils, with Death figure dancing in foreground throughout eight-scene parable WWI.

222 DEBS: Eugene Victor Debs (1855–1926) Rail union organizer, founder IWW, “one big union,” Socialist presidential candidate 1900–1920, ran from Atlanta penitentiary during ten-year sentence under so-called Espionage Act for speech denouncing U.S. entry into WWI; received nearly 1 million votes 1920.

Naomi, Allen, and Louis Ginsberg, New York World’s Fair, June 15, 1940.

222 ALTGELD: John P. Altgeld (1847–1902) First Democratic governor of Illinois (1892–1896) since Civil War. Pardoned surviving anarchists of 1886 Haymarket Riots, initiated prison reform, protected laboring women and reformed child labor laws, opposed use of fed troops to suppress RR strikes, incorruptible, rich entering governorship, which he left penniless. See Vachel Lindsay’s poem “The Eagle That Is Forgotten”: “Sleep softly … eagle forgotten … under the stone. Time has its way with you there, and clay has its own. / ‘We have buried him now,’ thought his foes, and in secret rejoiced … / Sleep on, O brave hearted, O wise man, that kindled the flame— / To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name …”—Vachel Lindsay, Collected Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1925).

Hindenberg Explosion. (See n.p. 221.) The Bettmann Archive, Inc.

222 LITTLE BLUE BOOKS: Tiny blue-covered booklets, first mass-market paperbacks in U.S., freethinking content, distributed from immigrant socialist town Girard, southeast Kansas, by E. Haldeman-Julius (1889–1951), whose mission was to educate the masses by offering great literature at cheapest price, including all Shakespeare, much Oscar Wilde, Tom Paine, Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, the agnostic orator Robert Ingersoll, and Mark Twain. For publishing The FBI—The Basis of an American Police State, The Alarming Methods of J. Edgar Hoover, by Clifton Bennett, 1948, Haldeman-Julius was hounded by FBI; withdrew The Black International, by Joseph McCabe, 20-pamphlet series exposing relation between Roman Catholic Church and fascist Axis.

224 ZHDANOV: Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov (1896–1948) Bolshevik Central Committee Secy, Politburo member, etc., later noted for “anticosmopolitan” chauvinistic pronouncements, 1946, as Stalin’s literary and cultural affairs chief. “Doctors’ Plot” accusations that ten Jewish Kremlin physicians were responsible for the death of Zhdanov and other high military figures signaled a purging of the Party in the year preceding Stalin’s death in 1953.

225 METRAZOL: Used with insulin for shock treatment in common but now abandoned mental therapy experiments.

225 STENKA RAZIN: Russian song, name of folk-heroic Cossack river pirate, tortured and killed in Moscow in 1671.

226 WORKMEN’S CIRCLE: Newark-area Jewish immigrants’ Socialist community service organization.

227 YISBORACH … B’RICH HU: Heart of Kaddish prayer for the dead; for translation see lines 1–2, “Hymmnn” section of Kaddish.

229 BUBA: (Yiddish) Grandmother.

229 SHEMA Y’ISRAEL: (Hebrew) Listen, O Israel!

229 SRUL AVRUM: (Hebrew) Israel Abraham, equivalent to Irwin Allen, names on the author’s birth certificate.

231 CAMP NICHT-GEDEIGET: (Yiddish) Camp “No Worry,” near Monroe, N.Y., summer settlement used by left-wing families, 1930s.

Mescaline

236 MESCALINE: Active psychedelic ingredient in peyote cactus, Southwest Indian religious-vision use. See Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

Lysergic Acid

239 LYSERGIC ACID: Synthetic psychoactive chemical with which author first experimented at Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, California, whence poem is dated.

240 GHOST TRAP: A multicolor-stringed wool antenna, to trap stupid ghosts, used during LSD experiments at Stanford Mental Research Institute.

240 ELEPHANT MANDALA: A picture of the universe borrowed by the author from Prof. Frederic Spiegelberg for study during a Lysergic Acid vision and described in section six of the accompanying poem. The mandala and various Ghost Traps—see section five—were brought by Prof. Spiegelberg from a monastery in Sikkim. He writes: “The inscription consists mainly of Mantras, power-words in Sanskirt, which do not carry any mental symbolism, no intellectually expressible meaning, but are supposed to be directly effective as a transforming soul-influence” etc.

To an Old Poet in Peru

247 OLD POET: Martín Adán, pseud. (1908–1985) Refers to his celebrated sonnets in La Rosa de la Espenela, 1939.

247 DISAGUADEROS: Railroad station behind presidential palace in Lima, across from which, in Hotel Comercio, “Old Poet” and “Aether” were written.

247–254 CHANCAY, PACHACAMAC, NASCA: Pre-Incaic cultures of coastal desert Peru. Myriad relics were found by graverobbers opening the sand of these necropolises.

Aether

257 PHILIP WHALEN (1923–2002): San Francisco Renaissance poet and Soto Zen priest, born Northwest 1923, peer among poets Kerouac, Snyder, Welch, McClure, Creeley.

258 ADONOI ECHAD: (Hebrew) “The Lord is one,” end of the “Eli Eli” prayer song.

263–267 Magic Psalm, The Reply and The End record visions experienced after drinking Ayajuasca (Yage or Soga de Muerte, Banisteriopsis caapi), a vine infusion used by Amazon curanderos as spiritual potion, for medicine and sacred vision. See author’s The Yage Letters, w/ William S. Burroughs (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1963). The message is: Widen the area of consciousness.

The End

267 YIN: Feminine principle, receptivity or emptiness, in Chinese Taoist apposition to Yang, active masculine form.

VI
PLANET NEWS: TO EUROPE AND ASIA
(1961–1963)

Who Will Take Over the Universe?

273 CLINT MURCHISON: (1895–1969) Dallas billionaire industrialist (banks, rail, steamships, real estate, gas, oil, publishing, office equipment, movie theaters, restaurants, fishing tackle), conservative establishment Democrat.

273 JUDGE YALE MCFATE: His July 1960 decision affirmed constitutional protection for Native American Church use of psychedelic peyote cactus. Weston LaBarre, The Peyote Cult (New York: Shocken paperback, 1977), pp. 224–25: “The legal action most likely to set precedent, however, is the disposition of the case against Mary Attakai, a member of the Navaho Native American Church, under an anti-peyote ordinance of the Navaho Tribe. The local judge in Flagstaff, Arizona, H. L. Russell, disqualified himself, whereupon the Hon. Yale McFate was sent from Phoenix to preside over the case in the Superior Court of Coconino County in Flagstaff. In a notably lucid and well-informed opinion, rendered on 26 July 1960, the Court held that:

‘Peyote is not a narcotic. It is not habit-forming. … There are about 225,000 members of the organized church, known as the Native American Church, which adheres to this practice. … The use of peyote is essential to the existence of the peyote religion. Without it, the practice of the religion would be effectively prevented. … It is significant that many states which formerly outlawed the use of peyote have abolished or amended their laws to permit its use for religious purposes. It is also significant that the Federal Government has in nowise prevented the use of peyote by Indians or others.’

Inasmuch as the statute under which Mary Attakai was convicted of illegal possession is contrary to both the 14th Amendment of the Federal Constitution and Article II Sections 4, 8, 12, and 13 of the Arizona Constitution, the Court found the statute unconstitutional, exonerated the bond, and dismissed the case. Expert opinion has widely admired the decision of Judge McFate.”

273 JOHN FOSTER DULLES: (1888–1959) Eisenhower secretary of state (1953–1959), who escalated cold war with China at 1954 Geneva Conference, where, refusing to shake hands or speak with Chinese foreign minister, he walked past icily, thereby initiating the thirty-year U.S.-China “containment policy.” U.S. refused to sign the French-Indo-Chinese Peace Agreement at Geneva for fear “80% of the populace [of united Vietnam] would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader.”

273 FORRESTAL: James V. Forrestal (1892–1949) First U.S. secretary of defense; inaugurated first U.S. peacetime draft 1948, early cold war time (never before in U.S. history!) by illegally spending military-budget money for pro-draft propaganda. Next year, in mental decline, obsessed with Zionists and Communist Russian invasion of America, he threw himself out of Bethesda government mental hospital window, May 22, 1949.

Journal Night Thoughts

275 HARRY SMITH (1923–1991): Celebrated experimental filmmaker, artist, philosopher, hermeticist; editor Ethnic Folkways Records’ The Kiowa Peyote Meeting (FE 4601, 1973) and three-volume, six-disc Anthology of American Folk Music (FA 2951–3, 1952), influential on midcentury world folk-rock renaissance.

275 ATMAN: Notion of individual self, identifiable with permanent self, Brahman.

275 KABBALA: Hebrew Gnostic numerical meditation practice using letters of Pentateuch (Torah). “Natural language letters.”—H. Smith.

277 SPIRO MOUND: Southern Cult (A.D. 1200) Indian mound in Spiro, Oklahoma.

277 PENFIELD’S HOMUNCULUS: Map of brain areas controlling motor and sensory functions. See design p. 70, Fig. III-15, in Wilder Penfield and Jasper Herbert, Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954).

277 KALI YUGA: Present era is last aeon in Hindu cycle of four ages, an age of iron during which spiritual awareness is at nadir, and cosmic apocalyptic destruction follows.

Combination sensory and motor homunculus (as they appear from above on Rolandic cortex). Penfield’s Homunculus. (See n.p. 277.)

Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber

280 ENKIDU: Friend-servant of Gilgamesh, for whose shade’s sake Gilgamesh visited the dusts of Deathworld.

280 LAFCADIO: L. Orlovsky, brother of poet Peter Orlovsky; see “Lazarus” portrait, Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, Book Two, Part One, section 10.

280 CHANGO: Afro-Cuban Oricha, Lord of Drum, phallic creation divinity, somewhat equivalent to Hindu Shiva among polytheistic systems.

280 BARDO THODOL: Experience of gap between death and rebirth; see The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo, trans. Francesca Fremantle, commentary by Chögyam Trungpa (Boulder: Shambhala, 1975).

281 KULCHUR: Magazine of new writing, 1961, ed. Leroi Jones et al.

281 IRVING ROSE IN THRALL: Irving Rosenthal (with Paul Carroll), editing 1959 Big Table magazine, published first eighty-page chunk of Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, previously censored in Chicago Review.

281 KALPA: Complete Aeonic four-yuga cycle, according to Hindu mythology.

285 CHESSMAN: Caryl Chessman (1921–1960) Executed for murder in California after lengthy court appeals intelligently written by himself, and despite world protest in favor of his life.

285 CHATTERLEY ATTACKED: Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield laid copy of D. H. Lawrence’s long-banned masterpiece, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, on President Eisenhower’s desk with certain words underlined as “obscene,” and asked for permission to ban its transport by U.S. mail. “Terrible, we can’t have that,” said Ike in Time magazine (according to author’s memory, 1959).

285 ROCHESTER: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, Milton’s contemporary, whose brilliant gaudy lyrics, published 1950s Paris by Olympia Press, when imported to America were confiscated and burned by Eisenhower U.S. Customs, along with novels by Henry Miller, D. H. Lawrence, Jean Genet, etc.

296 2,000,000 PIECES MAIL: At beginning of cold war, 1945, U.S. Customs and Post Office departments burned as propaganda all second-class mail (books and printed matter) arriving from China, N. Vietnam, and other Communist lands. Two million items a year were incinerated. The practice was ended by President John Kennedy.

287 FABIAN BLDG.: Downtown Church and Market streets, Paterson, New Jersey, movie theater where author in boyhood saw movie phantoms of Jeanette Mac-Donald, Nelson Eddy, Ronald Reagan.

288 ANGELICA BALABANOFF: (1876–1965) Kiev-born aristocrat, first Secretary of Third Communist International 1919, quit disillusioned 1923 with Lenin’s & Trotsky’s use of “unscrupulous calumny” for centralization of power, went her own way, radical, poet. Earlier as Benito Mussolini’s mistress she sheltered and introduced him to Socialist ideology, co-edited Rome socialist daily Avanti; later broke with him, was betrayed and confined, when he formed Italian Fascist Party. See My Life as a Rebel (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938; reprint Indiana University Press, 1978). Author met her briefly at pacifist gathering, Brooklyn, 1945.

289 SS SANTA MARIA: “Cruise ship Santa Maria, with 600 passengers aboard, seized … by armed band of 69 … leader identified as [Portuguese dictator] Salazar foe, Army ex-Capt Galvao … colonial policy manifesto demands creation of Fed Repub of the US of Portugal including overseas territories … Portuguese exiles in GB open drive against Salazar regime” (New York Times, January 24–27, 1961). See also Time, February 10, 1961.

290 DEVAS: Hindu or Buddhist gods, attendant psychological spirits.

290 RAY BREMSER: American poet (b. 1934) See The New American Poetry, ed. Donald M. Allen (New York: Grove Press, 1960). Much praised by Kerouac and Bob Dylan for his celebrated word-syncopation, as in Blowing Mouth (Cherry Valley Editions, 1978).

Seabattle of Salamis Took Place off Perama

296 PANYOTIS … YORGIS: Greek youths’ common given names.

296 AHARISTI … NA-TI-THE-MA-FEZ: Bouzouki songs, Athens suburb jukebox, 1961.

296 OPEN THE DOOR RICHARD, I’M CASTING A SPELL ON YOU: American jukebox songs, the latter by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, actually titled “I Put a Spell on You.”

Stotras to Kali Destroyer of Illusions

298 YONI: Vagina, counterpart to lingam, in Hindu iconography.

Heat

302 HOOGHLY: River Ganges at Calcutta.

302 BIDI: Tiny cheap Indian cigarette.

Describe: The Rain on Dasaswamedh Ghat

303 KALI MA: Benares beggar lady with a holy name; see her photograph, Indian Journals (NY: Grove Press, 1996).

303 JAI RAM: “Victory to Ram” (aspect of Vishnu the Preserver).

304 JAI SHANKAR: Shankar or Shiva, patron lord of Benares.

304 BAUL: Mystical sect of wandering, patchwork-clothed Vaishnav singers, some devoted to Krishna, in North Bengal. See Obscure Religious Cults, Sashi Bhusan Das Gupta (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Makhopadhyay, 1959). “The elephant is caught in the spider web, and the ant bursts out laughing.” Influenced Tagore songs.

Death News

305 GANGA-MA: Mother Ganges, represented traditionally riding a crocodile.

305 HOLLAND: John P. Holland (1841–1914) Irish born. His invention, the first iron submarine, the Fenian Ram, launched and sank in 1878, was fished up rusty from the Passaic in 1927, and exhibited thereafter in the Paterson Museum. Holland cofounded Electric Boat Co., ancestor General Dynamics Corp.

Patna-Benares Express

308 MAIDAN: Area that contains a horse track and polo field in Bankipore, sector of Patna city.

308 PATNA: Capital, Bihar state on right bank of Ganges, 125 miles from Benares.

Angkor Wat*

314 AVALOKITESVERA: The gates to the palaces and some temples of Angkor Wat are made of giant heads of Avalokitesvera (Down-Glancing Lord, Buddha of Mercy) facing in four directions. Principal Bodhisattva of Lotus Sutra pantheon, Chinese Kwan-Yin mercy god, Japanese Lady Kannon, sometimes thousand-armed energetic in compassionate activity.

314 BANYANS: Banyan trees, whose giant roots grow out of ruined walls and temple roofs.

314 SITARAM: Sitaram Onkar Das Thakur, a Vaishnavite guru who told the author in Benares, “Give up desire for children,” and gave other instructions for purity.

316 CHURNING OF THE OCEAN: Bas-reliefs of old Hindu myth “Churning of the Ocean” cover one wall of Angkor Wat (a theme repeated throughout the temple areas).

317 BUDDHA DHARMA SANGHA: Buddham Saranam Gochamee—I take my refuge in the Buddha; Dhammam Saranam Gochamee—I take my refuge in the Dharma; Sangham Saranam Gochamee—I take my refuge in the Sangha. The Three Refuges, which the author interprets as: I take my refuge in my Self, I take my refuge in the nature of my Self, I take my refuge in the company of my fellow Selfs. [Non-Self interpretation.—A.G., 1984.]

317 HARE KRISHNA: This Maha Mantra (Great Prayer) for the Kali Yuga, first recommended to the author by Shivananda, consisting of different names of Vishnu the Preserver, can be sung with ecstatic rock beat.

318 ABHAYA MUDRA: Mudra—Buddhist hand gesture; Abhaya—gesture of calm, stilling stormy waters. Commonly seen on seated Buddhist statuary.

318 LEROI MOI: The American radical poet Leroi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka.

319 LEARY: Dr. Timothy Leary, an early heroic explorer of Psychedelic Consciousness.

319 AP BAC: Early guerilla battle in Vietnam won by Viet Cong, with many unreported losses of life by S. Vietnam Government soldiers and great confusion of leadership.

320 TA-PHROM … TA-KEO … THOMMANOM: Giant ruined Khmer civilization temple areas near Angkor Wat.

320 GARUDA: God of the Hindu pantheon, bird-headed, aide of King Ram in the Ramayana. [Spontaneously self-born enlightenment, Vajrayana Buddhist view—A.G., 1984.]

320 CHAMS: A northern tribe that conquered and burned the wooden Khmer cities that surrounded the temples.

320 TA-PHROM: Huge temple in giant stone-walled enclosure, unreconstructed by archaeologists, its paths cleaned of small overgrowth to show the Baynan jungle encroachment on the tumbling stone architecture.

322–323 “BLIND … RAIN!”: The entire text of this composition was written in one night half sleeping and waking, as transcription of passages of consciousness in the author’s mind made somnolent by an injection of morphine-atrophine in a hotel room in the town of Siemreap, adjacent to the ruins of Angkor Wat. The passage incorporated in quotation marks was notes taken earlier that day high on ganja (pot) on the roof of the temple of Angkor Thom.

324 LOLEI: A small ruined temple with an active monastery in the same compound, a few miles on the highway out of Siemreap.

325 HUé: S. Vietnamese city on north coast above Saigon, where student protests against suppression of Buddhist radio ceremonies ended in blister-gas riots, reported by telephone to UP office in Saigon, June 1963.

325 RAINY NIGHT AT THE BORDER: “Rainy Night at the Border,” a popular song like “Lili Marlene,” and classic complaint of Oriental soldiers, was banned in the nightclubs of Saigon by Mme. Nhu (wife of Catholic Premier Diem) as being “too pessimistic and demoralizing.”

326 XALOI TEMPLE: Center of Buddhist Association hunger strike, early resistance to Diem government.

326 AFRAID TO PUBLISH: A letter from Jon Edgar Webb of Outsider magazine, apologizing for not publishing a dream of Negroes by the author, for fear of violent white gang reprisals against his office in New Orleans.

327 SUKOTHAI: Very graceful early Thai style of Buddha statues, one hand delicately flowing behind, one hand raised in reassurance, one foot set forward as he steps out into the world of action.

327 LINGAM: Stone phallus universally worshipped in India as basic form of Shiva the Creator.

328 BUDDHA FOOTPRINT: Three fish with one head—a sign of Buddhahood incised in giant stone carving of Buddha footprint found under Bo Tree at Bodh Gaya, mythological Indian site of the Buddha’s realization.

329 RADIOACTIVE DOLPHINS: From a letter from J. Kerouac describing the twentieth-century complaints of his Canuck cousins.

330 10 TINY BUDDHAS: A little fragment of the twelfth-century miniature Stupa carried by the author from broken-down Hindu garden near Bo Tree as a present to poet Gary Snyder in Kyoto.

330 MEA SHEARIM: Orthodox Hasidic section of modern Jerusalem.

331 PEKING’S JEWELRY FEET: See poem “Magic Psalm.”

331 “MAKE ME READY—BUT NOT YET”: A line from W. H. Auden, out of St. Augustine: “O Lord, make me chaste—but not yet.”

The Change: Kyoto–Tokyo Express

333 “… CONVOLUTED …”: See “The Clouds,” part IV, in William Carlos Williams, The Collected Later Poems (New York: New Directions, 1963), p. 128.

VII
KING OF MAY: AMERICA TO EUROPE
(1963–1965)

Morning

345 JULIUS: Julius Orlovsky, brother of the poet Peter Orlovsky, rescued by latter 1958 after twelve years’ residence Central Islip State Hospital, N.Y. See Robert Frank film Me and My Brother, 1966.

Today

353 SWAMI SHIVANANDA: (1887–1962) “Your own heart is the guru.” Spoken to author, Rishikesh, 1962. See dedication, Ginsberg, Indian Journals.

354 BENJAMIN PéRET & RENé CREVEL: Péret—French surrealist poet (1899–1959); Crevel—French dada dandy poet suicide (1900–1935).

355 FAINLIGHT: Harry Fainlight, young British poet active N.Y. underground film literary circles early 1960s. Participated Albert Hall, London, Poetry Incarnation, 1965. Died 1982.

355 ED: Edward Sanders (b. 1939) American poet, classicist, and musician, leader of Fugs rock group, editor Fuck You/A Magazine of the Arts.

Message II

356 GOLEM: Artificial man created, in one Hebrew legend, by the Kabbalist Rabbi Löw, Prague, end of sixteenth century. Parallel to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster.

356 BREUGHEL: Pieter Breughel (1520?-1569) His painting Winter Landscape of Prague (including Vltava panorama) is exhibited in that city.

Big Beat

357 KALKI: Final avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu, appearing at close of Kali Yuga (see “Journal Night Thoughts” note) to destroy world and initiate Maha Yuga, the aeon of greatest spiritual virtue, first Yuga of four in Hindu Kalpa cycle.

357 MAITREYA: Future Buddha, aspect of compassion, personification of love, parallel formation to maitri (Sanskrit), friendship.

The Moments Return

360 SEBASTIAN SAMPAS: Youthtime poet friend of Jack Kerouac, brother of widow Stella, killed at Anzio beachhead WW II a few weeks after sending Kerouac a recording: “I weep for Adonais, he is dead. … Goodbye, Jack.”

360 OZONE PARK: In Queens, N.Y., where Jack Kerouac lived with his family late 1940s and wrote The Town and the City, his first novel.

The author setting forth from hotel with throne and crown on flatbed truck to Prague Culture-Park for May King election; May 1, 1965. Note formal-dressed students for May Day holiday. Photographer unknown.

360 GURU: Sitaram Onkar Das Thakur. See “Wichita Vortex Sutra.”

Kraj Majales

361 KRAL MAJALES: May King. Traditional May Day festival, suspended after German occupation prior to WWII. Previous years’ student disturbances persuaded Czech government to restore May King and Queen crowning ceremony in 1965, the occasion of massive public park demonstration by festive Prague populace. Nominated by Polytechnic students, author was elected May King by 100,000 citizens; ministers of culture and education objected. A week later, detained incommunicado, his Prague notebook confiscated, author was deported by plane to London, poem scribed en route.

361 KABIR: (1450?–1518) Illiterate Benares mystic poet-singer, weaver, disciple of Saint Ramanand, comparable to Blake: “If I heard love in exchange for the head in market is being sold,/I shall lose no time in entering the bargain and instantly sever my head, and offer it.” (Sufis, Mystics and Yogis of India, trans. Bankey Behari [Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1962], p. 224.) See Kabir poems also translated by Tagore, Bly, Linda Hess.

361 BOUZERANT: (Czech slang) Homosexual.

361 AND I WAS SENT FROM HAVANA: Author was deported from Cuba, February 1965 for private criticism of speech at Havana University in which Fidel Castro denounced homosexuals and ordered purge of theater school. Detained in hotel room, held incommunicado from Casa de las Americas, which hosted the month-long Interamerican Poetry contest he’d been invited to help judge, author was expelled by plane to Prague.

361 JOSEPH K: See Kafka, The Trial.

362 BUNHILL FIELDS: Chief nonconformist burial ground of Old London. Site where Blake’s bones are buried, adjacent to gravestones of Daniel Defoe, John Wesley and Isaac Watts.

362 HAMPSTEAD HEATH: “The great old piece of uncultivated common land and woods whose ancient oaks were protected by Royal Charter in North London, haunt of painter John Constable and poet John Keats, who wrote ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ in a house which still stands at the heath’s edge in Hampstead.”—Tom Pickard

Guru

364 Poem occasioned by a nap at dusk on the site of Druid mysteries, the grassy crest of London’s Primrose Hill, overlooking London’s towery skyline.

Who Be Kind To

367 HARRY: Harry Fainlight (see “Today” note).

369 MONK IN THE 5 SPOT: Thelonious Monk (1918–1982) Genius of spare precise “out” piano harmony and innovator of “bop” rhythm, long denied by drug bureaucracy the necessary police “cabaret card” permit to work in N.Y., returned early 1960s to play many months at Bowery’s Five Spot, jazz club.

Studying the Signs

371 STUDYING THE SIGNS: 360-degree panorama sketch of Piccadilly Circus composed after midnight conclusion of Albert Hall International Poetry Incarnation.

371 BRIGGFLATTS: Late long poem by English master Basil Bunting (1900–1985), who’d suggested to Ezra Pound that Poetry be equated with Condensation, as in Briggflatts verse describing a Northumbrian road cart: “Rut thuds the rim …” See his Collected Poems, Oxford University Press, 1980.

VIII
THE FALL OF AMERICA
(1965–1971)

Thru the Vortex West Coast to East (1965–1966)

A Methedrine Vision in Hollywood

388 TITLE: See Earl of Rochester’s satire “Upon Nothing”: “Ere time and place were, time and place were not, / When primitive Nothing something strait begot, / Then all proceeded from the great united—What?”

Wichita Vortex Sutra

403 PRAJNAPARAMITA SUTRA: Highest Perfect Wisdom Sutra, central to Zen and Tibetan Buddhist practice. It includes the phrase “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” and mantra “Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.”

404 LA ILLAHA EL (LILL) ALLAH HU: “There is no god but God [Allah],” Sufi chant for trance dance as taught by Bay Area Sufi Sam circa 1967.

405 WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN: (1860–1925) Congressman, presidential candidate 1908. Later involved in Baby Doe silver mine speculation; leader of populist silver monetary movement: “Thou shalt not crucify Mankind upon a Cross of Gold.” See Vachel Lindsay’s poem “Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan” (1919):

I brag and chant of Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,
Candidate for President who sketched a silver Zion,
The one American who could sing outdoors …

Where is Altgeld, brave as the truth,
Whose name the few still say with tears?
Gone to join the ironies with old John Brown,
Whose fame rings loud for a thousand years.

Where is that Boy, the Heaven-born Bryan
That Homer Bryan, who sang from the West?
Gone to join the shadows with Altgeld the Eagle,
Where the kings and the slaves and the troubadors rest.
—Vachel Lindsay, Collected Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1925), p. 96.

405 WHO DIDN’T WANT TO BE A MONKEY: John T Scopes disobeyed 1920’s Tennessee law prohibiting high-school teaching of Darwin evolution theory. Defended at trial by Clarence Darrow, he was, interestingly, opposed by Biblical fundamentalist W. J. Bryan, who maintained that God created Adam and Eve in 4004 B.C.

406 AIKEN REPUBLICAN: George D. Aiken (1892–1984) Vermont senator from 1940 through Vietnam War, author, Pioneering with Wildflowers, 1933, other nature books. Interviewed by newsmen on Face the Nation broadcast through Midwest heard by author (through Volkswagen radio) February 20, 1966, on Kansas roads. Senator Aiken pronounced the entire Indochina war involvement “a bad guess” by policymakers who had predicted in 1962 that “8,000 American troops could handle the situation.” Defense Secretary McNamara contended that U.S. was defending South Vietnam from invasion by North Vietnam. “China Lobby” ideologues saw Chinese expansionist plot behind Hanoi and urged nuclear bombing of China.

Senator Aiken argued that the quarter-million South Vietnamese Viet Cong guerrilla army outweighed Hanoi’s troops in confounding the U.S. technologic army then massing toward half-million men. That month, Senator Strom Thurmond backed nuclear arms to win the war.

Later, General Curtis LeMay urged America to “bomb North Vietnam back to the Stone Age.” Carpet bombing of north did take place, and Mekong jungle cover was saturated with Agent Orange.

In mid-’70s chaos after American withdrawal, North Vietnam dismantled and bypassed what was left of the same South Vietnamese Provisional Revolutionary Government (P.R.G. or Viet Cong) political infrastructure U.S. had rejected 1966. Traditional hostilities were renewed between Vietnam and China at disputed border areas. By then, U.S. was allied with China. Doves & hawks both lost the war, always “a bad guess.”

406 MCNAMARA: Robert S. McNamara (b. 1916) Defense secretary under President LBJ during 1960s Vietnam War, brought managerial sophistication to Pentagon mechanized warfare, though privately doubted its purpose.

406 MANDATE FOR CHANGE: “It was generally conceded that had an election been held, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected Premier.” (p. 337–38) “I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader. …” (p. 372) Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change (New York: Doubleday, 1963).

406 STENNIS: John C. Stennis (1901–1995) U.S. senator, Mississippi, Armed Services Committee man and “hawk,” urged nuclear war for Indochina, 1966.

407 AUNT BETTY: Highway billboard advertising bread.

407 RUSK SAYS TOUGHNESS … VIETNAM WAR BRINGS PROSPERITY: Literal headlines, Midwest newspapers February 1966.

407 BEATRICE: Nebraska town, Route 77.

408 HUTCHINSON … EL DORADO: Kansas towns en route between Lincoln, Nebraska, & Wichita.

408 ABILENE: Dwight D. Eisenhower’s hometown, site of his Presidential Library.

408 NATION “ OF THE FABLED DAMNED”: See concluding paragraphs of Whitman’s Democratic Vistas for prophetic warning against America’s hawkish materialism.

410 CLARK: Joseph S. Clark (1901–1990) U.S. senator, Pennsylvania, described Vietnam War at the time as “open-ended”—i.e., could go on forever, including war with China.

410 MORSE: Wayne Morse (1900–1974) U.S. senator, Oregon, outstanding legislative “dove” in active opposition to America’s undeclared war in Vietnam.

411 OR SMOKING CIGARETTES/AND WATCHING CAPTAIN KANGAROO: Pop song of the day referring to children’s TV program.

411 UNITED FRUIT: United Fruit Company’s law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, had employed State Secretary Dulles (see “Who Will Take Over the Universe?” note), whose brother, Allen, heading CIA, coordinated the 1954 then-covert overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz, elected president of Guatemala. The event is notorious throughout Latin America as a mid-twentieth-century example of “banana republic” repression by North American imperium. By 1980, the U.S.-trained Guatemalan military had reportedly genocided 10 percent of jungle Indian population as part of “pacification” program to “create a favorable business climate.”

Birbhum yogi, likely Khaki Baba. Photographer unknown.

411 OAKLAND ARMY TERMINAL: California students had passed leaflets and picketed this Pacific war transshipment center. Gary Snyder & Zen companions had sat meditating at its gates.

412 MILLIONAIRE PRE SSURE: Refers to a Mr. Love from Wichita, second biggest backer of cold-war-conspiracy-obsessed John Birch Society.

412 TELEPHONE VOICES: When Peter Orlovsky and author came to read poetry, Philosophy Department hosts at Wichita’s Kansas State University received many crank phone complaints.

413 AGING WHITE HAIRED GENERAL: Lewis B. Hershey (1893–1977) Selective Service director since Truman appointment 1948, time of first U.S. peacetime draft.

413 REPUBLICAN RIVER: Runs from Kansas City to Junction City.

414 OLD HEROES OF LOVE: Neal Cassady, born in Independence, Mo.

414 MCCLURE: Michael McClure, American Romantic bard and playwright (b. 1932), Marysville, Kansas. See The New American Poetry, Donald M. Allen, ed. (New York: Grove Press, 1960), for McClure’s part as key biological philosopher-poet in 1950s “San Francisco Renaissance” and subsequent “generational” culture.

414 OLD MAN’S STILL ALIVE: Ex-President Harry S. Truman.

414 SHAMBU BHARTI BABA: A Naga (naked) saddhu the author often met at Benares’s Manikarnika Ghat cremation ground. See photographs, Indian Journals.

414 KHAKI BAB A: North Bengali (Birbhum area) 19th-century saint who, dressed in khaki loincloth, is pictured sometimes sitting surrounded by dog friends and protectors. (See photograph on page 786.)

414 DEHORAHAVA BABA: A yogi author met at Ganges River across from Benares, 1963.

414 SATYANANDA: Calcutta swami encountered by author 1962, had twin-thumbed hands, and said, “Be a sweet poet of the Lord.”

414 KALI PADA GUHA ROY: Tantric acharya or guru visited by author in Benares, 1963.

414 SHIVANANDA: Swami, teacher to Satchitananda, visited by author, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder and Joanne Kyger, Rishikesh, 1962: “Your own heart is your Guru.”

415 SRIMATA KRISHNAJI: Contemporary Brindaban lady saint, translator of poet Kabir, advised author thus.

415 BRINDABAN: Holy town near Delhi where Krishna spent childhood in play as cow herder.

415 CHAITANYA: 16th-century North Bengali saint, founder of Hare Krishna Mahamantra lineage, pictured dancing, singing.

415 DURGA-MA: Mother Durga, aspect of Shiva’s consort Parvati emphasized in Bengali Hindu mythology, 10-armed goddess of war fields, who consumes evil through violence.

415 TATHAGATA: (Sanskrit) Buddha characterized as “He who has passed through,” or “that which passed.” (“Thus come,” and also “Thus gone”: “Thus come [One].”)

415 DEVAS: Indian gods, seen as aspects of human or divine being.

415 MANTRA: Sacred verbal spell or prayer composed of elemental sound “seed” syllables, used in meditative concentration practice. Literally, “mind protection” speech.

416 “KENNEDY URGES CONG GET CHAIR” …: February 14, 1966, news headlined Senator Robert Kennedy’s proposal that U.S. offer Viet Cong share of power in South Vietnam. This was major break with administration war policy.

416 CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE: In February 14, 1966, Wichita Eagle.

416 BONG SON: 100 Viet Cong soldiers were killed close to Bong Son and were reported struck by many bullets before falling.

417 LA DRANG: Vietnamese battlefield mentioned in news reports third week February 1966.

417 BURNS: Tiny Kansas town near Wichita.

418 KELLOGG: Main drag in Wichita.

418 HOTEL EATON: On Douglas Street, near local Vortex Gallery patronized by Charles Plymell and Kansas artists.

418 CARRY NATION: “(b. Garrard Co., 1846; d. Leavenworth, Kans., 1911), temperance agitator. An ignorant, unbalanced, and contentious woman of vast energies, afflicted with an hereditary paranoia, she was subjected to early hardships that fused all her great physical and emotional powers into a flaming enmity toward liquor and its corrupt purveyors. From her first saloon-smashing ventures at Medicine Lodge, Kans., she carried her campaign to Wichita (1900), where her distinctive weapon, the hatchet, was first used, and then on to many of the principal American cities. Arrested thirty times for ‘disturbing the peace,’ she paid fines from sales of souvenir hatchets, lecture tours, and stage appearances. Her autobiography was published, 1904.”—Concise Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Scribner’s, 1964), p. 721.

419 NIGGERTOWN: Area of Wichita between Hydraulic and 17th streets.

Kansas City to Saint Louis

421 CHARLIE PLYMELL: American poet, filmmaker and pioneer editor, accompanied author in Kansas-Nebraska travel.

421 THE JEWEL-BOX REVIEW: Transvestite club show, Kansas City.

421 SEX FACTORIES: Kinsey Institute, University of Indiana, Bloomington, gave birth to this jump-cut phrase.

421 BURCHFIELD: Charles Burchfield (1893–1967) American painter, best known for portraits of particular solitary gabled Victorian houses in bare U.S. regional landscapes.

421 WALKER EVANS: (1903–1975) Classic American photographer whose record of Boston houses, poets’ faces, Cuban visages, Southern agrarian scenes (for Farm Security Administration Project, 1930s), billboards, junkyards, main streets, subway riders, Chicago corners and train glimpses helped define a second generation of American photography, and influenced younger eyes, including Robert Frank’s.

423 KENNEY … MORPHY: Friends of William S. Burroughs in 1930s St. Louis.

423 W.S.B.: William Seward Burroughs

425 FRENCH TRUTH, DUTCH CIVILITY: “French Truth, Dutch prowess, British Policy,/Hibernian Learning, Scotch civility,/Spaniards Dispatch, Danes wit,/are mainly seen in thee.”—Earl of Rochester, “On Nothing”

425 CRANE: See Hart Crane’s address to Whitman, The Bridge, end of Cape Hatteras section.

Bayonne Entering NYC

429 CANNASTRA: William Cannastra, ex-Harvard Law suicide-accident-dead (1950) friend of N.Y. painters and poets, including W. H. Auden and Jack Kerouac. See “In Memoriam,” September 1950.

Uptown

432 MADAME GRADY: Panna Grady, patron of letters, friend of poets Charles Olson, John Wieners and William Burroughs, once lived at Dakota Apartments, Central Park West, N.Y., and held literary salon there.

Zigzag Back Thru These States
(1966–1967)

Iron Horse

442 EDWARD CARPENTER: Contemporary, disciple of Whitman, British educator-poet. See “Turin-Paris Express” from his poem book Towards Democracy, 1902, a rare example of successful Whitmanic line.

442 HOMER: Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s late sizable black dog, subject of several popular poems.

443 MULADHARA SPHINCTER: Refers to anal chakra (one of seven bodily centers of spirit energy in Orient yoga practice).

443 SAHASRARAPADMA: Seventh chakra, “thousand-petal lotus” at skulltop.

443 GAVIN ARTHUR: (d. 1972) Bay area astrologer, grandson of U.S. President Chester A. Arthur, had slept with Carpenter, who’d slept with Whitman, according to written testament entrusted to author. See text, Gay Sunshine Interviews, ed. Winston Leyland, vol. 1, San Francisco, 1978, pp. 126–28.

444 MR. CUMMINGS & MR. VINAL: E. E. Cummings wrote much-anthologized poem mocking lesser poet Harold Vinal: “Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal.”

444 SEBSI: Moroccan clay pipe for kif.

446 NA-MU SA-MAN-DA … SO-MO-KO: “Dharani of Removing Disasters,” repeated thrice in temple usage. See D. T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove Press, 1960).

447 WALTER LIPPMANN: (1889–1974) Aging political columnist/philosopher wrote thus in newspapers the week of “Iron Horse” ride.

447 SAM LEWIS: “Sufi Sam”—world traveler, founder of Sufi sect in San Francisco, friend of Gavin Arthur.

447 DR. LOURIA: Leon Louria, Naomi’s boyfriend, “Dr. Isaac” of “Kaddish,” had served as consulting physician for National Maritime Union until purged as left-winger in Senator Joe McCarthy era, early 1950s.

447 FREEHOLD NEW JERSEY: Geyshe Wangyal, first Gelugpa sect Tibetan Buddhist teacher in America, founded his monastery at Freehold in 1950s.

450 GEORGE E. TURNER: Ephemeral Texas journalist (b. 1925) whose acid comments author read on train newspaper.

451 YEVTUSHENKO: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the then-popular Russian poet, had written an open letter to novelist John Steinbeck questioning his support for U.S. military occupation of South Vietnam.

455 THE WOMAN IN THE RED DRESS: The woman who “informed” on “Public Enemy No. 1,” John Dillinger, leading FBI to the Biograph movie house where he was cornered and shot.

455 PURVIS: FBI agent who organized Dillinger’s fatal ambush.

455 HENRY CROWN: (1896–1990) Chicago business hustler, made early fortune buying municipally owned rock waste and selling it back to Chicago for road construction; later major stockholder and 1959–1966 chairman executive committee, director, of then-number-one military-industrial-complex corporation, General Dynamics.

457 FULBRIGHT: Senator James William Fulbright (1905–1995) Head of Senate Foreign Relations Committee 1959–1974, made eloquent public attack on President Johnson’s expansion of the Vietnam War.

458 SHERI MARTINELLI: American painter and miniaturist, formerly N.Y. fashion model, friend-companion to Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C., in mid-’50s. An acquaintance of Charlie Parker, she served somewhat as Pound’s connection to the new cultural life in U.S. postwar underground. A tiny book of her portraits, with prefatory note by Pound, was published by Editions Scheiwiller, Milan, 1956.

458 YAJALóN VALLEY: Isolated mountain valley town, Chiapas.

458 XOCHIMILCO: Ancient floating gardens, Mexico City, where Kerouac, Orlovsky and the author met a party of Mexican ballet boys in a sightseeing boat. See Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, Book Two, Part One, section 20.

458 FIJIJIAPAN: town close to Guadalajara, Mexico, notable for its candy.

459 KEDERNATH & BADRINATH & GANGOTRI: Northwest India Hindu pilgrimage sites on the way to Kailash, Shiva’s sacred Tibetan border mountain abode, source of Ganges.

459 MANASAROVAR: Iced lake on Kailash.

450 KARMA: Hindu-Buddhist concept of inevitable interconnection of cause and effect. Karma may be “white” and “black,” wholesome and unwholesome, meritorious or unmeritorious, or neutral, in mixed degrees, according to the activities of Mind, Speech, and Body that initiate karmic momentum and payback. “Black” karma example: As ignorant greed motivates agribusiness to aggressive exploitation of soil, so soil may collapse under assault of chemical poisons, finally become barren, eroded, no longer nourishing its bewildered and inconsiderable stewards. Further example: As American populace is indifferent to military sufferings its government wreaks on distant nations, Indochina to Central America, so will that public heartlessness progressively discourage private trust and adhesiveness between government and populace. On individual scale, a father, careless of his children, may not have faithful helpers on his deathbed.

Such karmic patterns may be altered and their energy made wholesome through meditative mindfulness, conscious awareness, the practice of appreciation, which burns up karma on the spot. Traditionally, attentive appreciation of an enlightened teacher who has transcended his/her own karma may inspire the student/seeker/citizen to work from “black” through “white” situations toward holistic primordial experience, or unconditioned states of mind and activity, exchanging self for others, liberated from karma as may be Mahatma Gandhi or certain Buddhist folk or Native American elders.

461 SRI RAMA NA MAHARSHI: 20th-century South Indian ascetic saint, instructed meditation practice, “Who Am I?” Quotations are from his book Maha Yoga.

464 MANNAHATTA:

Starting from fish-shaped Paumanok where I was born,
Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother,
After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,
Dweller in Mannahatta, my city … (“Starting from Paumanok”)

“Thus Walt Whitman, born in Long Island, paraphrases the old Indian name for New York City. ‘Mannahatta! How fit a name for America’s great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires glistening in the sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!’” (Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980] p. 107.)

Sri Ramana Maharshi. Photographer unknown. (See n.p. 461.)

City Midnight Junk Strains

465 FRANK O HARA: (1926–1966) Gay central figure in N.Y. literary art life 1950s till his death; MOMA exhibitions department curator, inspired a whole generation of N.Y. “Personism” poets; died struck by beach buggy, dark midnight accident Fire Island. See “The Day Lady Died,” in his Collected Poems (New York: Knopf, 1972).

465 KLINE: Franz Kline (1910–1962) American abstract expressionist pioneer painter, on whose work Frank O’Hara wrote monograph, died of heart attack.

466 EDWIN DENBY: (1903–1983) China-born, influential dance critic, poet, friend of younger writers of “New York School,” 1960s–1980s; frequented N.Y.C. Ballet and St. Mark’s Poetry Project. (Collected Poems published by Full Court Press, New York, 1975.)

Holy Ghost on the Nod over the Body of Bliss

475 KUAN YIN: Chinese name, Avelokitesvera, compassionate aspect of Buddha. See “Angkor Wat.”

475 SHIVA: Lord energy of creation and destruction, symbolized in Hindu shrines by Shiva lingam or phallus, generally a standing rounded oblong rock covered with flowers and incense.

475 OUROBOROS: Great cosmic snake, tail in mouth completing Einsteinian circle.

475 PARVATI: Shiva’s consort.

475 YOD: Hebrew abbreviation, divine unutterable name.

475 COYOTE: Amerindian trickster-hero god.

475 RAMAKRISHNA: Ecstatic Hindu saint (1836–1886), founder of Vedanta order, entered all religious practices. See The Gospel of Shri Ramakrishna, trans. Swami Nikhilananda (Madras, India: Shri Ramakrishna Math, 1957).

475 BODHIDHARMA: Twenty-eighth Zen patriarch after Sakyamuni in orthodox transmission line, brought Buddism from India to Canton in the West 520 A.D., thus first Chinese patriarch of “Wall-gazing” Chan (Zen) practice; died aged 150 years.

Hui-K’o (486–593) cut off his arm and gave it to Bodhidharma, token of sincerity: “I have no peace of mind … Please pacify it.”

“Bring your mind here.”

“I can’t find it.”

“There, I have pacified your mind.”

An Open Window on Chicago

481 BOUFFANT ROOTS: Upswept hairstyle, with undyed roots growing visible.

482 DAKINI: Buddhist sky goddess, conveyor of insight.

Wales Visitation

488 VISITACIONE: Ancient bardic visiting round in Wales.

488 LLANTHONY VALLEY: Pastoral vale, Welsh Black Mountains.

490 CAPEL-Y-FFN: Ancient ruined chapel at green bottom of Llanthony Valley. Eric Gill, type-font designer and craftsman, dwelt there 1920s with arts commune.

490 LORD HEREFORD S KNOB: Mountain walling north side Llanthony Valley.

490 (LSD): First draft main body of poem was written in fifth hour LSD-inspired afternoon.

Pentagon Exorcism

491 EXORCISM: Gary Snyder’s 1967 Bay Area broadside, A Curse Against the Men in Pentagon, Washington, helped initiate flower-power era mass peace-protest “Levitation” of Pentagon, the demystification of its authority. See Norman Mailer’s extensive account in Armies of the Night (New York: New American Library, 1971 reprint).

491 DIAPHANOID: From title of science fiction movie the author saw 1967 at S. Gemignano while traveling from Florence to Milan.

491 WESTMORELAND: General William C. Westmoreland (b. 1914) “Hawk” commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam 1964–1968, who, not realizing that the majority of Vietnamese didn’t welcome American/Catholic domination of South Vietnam as part of China-containment policy, urged escalation of war, all-out victory by any means, including nuclear.

491 USURY: Allusion to Ezra Pound’s monetarist theory: that banks’ usurous (fast buck high interest) abuse of credit as a commodity, for speculative moneymaking rather than productive ends, cankers the entire economic system of the West. See the Cantos of Ezra Pound, “Canto XLV” (New York: New Directions, 1970): “With Usura the line grows thick.”

491 MCDONNELL DOUGLAS TO GENERAL DYNAMICS: These corporations were chief military contractees to Pentagon, 1967.

491 APOKATASTASIS: Event wherein ignorant or “satanic” energy is transformed instantaneously to divine wisdom light, as might be at end of Kali Yuga.

491 RAKSA: Tibetan mantra to purify site for a ceremony, from Hevajra Tantra. Raksa is an energy daemon.

491 PEKING: At time of composition, diplomatic nonrecognition of existence of People’s Republic of China was an obsession central to U.S. anti-red cold war monolithic “containment policy” strong-armed politically by “China Lobby,” including then ex-Vice-President Richard Nixon.

Elegy Che Guevara

492 RUSK: Secretary of State Dean Rusk (1909–1994) President Johnson’s hawkish diplomatic executive for Vietnam War.

493 NORRIS: Frank Norris (1876–1902) Novelist, author of naturalist novel The Pit, drama of frenzied Chicago grain market.

493 OBSERVERS’ BALCONY: “Street theater action” initiated 1968 by Abbie Hoffman at New York Stock Exchange, throwing a bag of dollars on the exchange floor as war protest. Thenceforth balcony was walled with glass.

Elegies for Neal Cassady
(1968)

Elegy for Neal Cassady

496 SHABDA: (Sanskrit) Sound or vibration, a path of yoga.

496 GREAT YEAR: 24,000-year cycle of the sun, which rises for 2,000 years each through 12 zodiacal constellations, as it wobbles almost imperceptibly on its sidereal axis; presently entering Age of Aquarius.

497 HEJIRA: Mohammed’s flight from Mecca, A.D. 622; Kesey’s bus trip, A.D. 1964, Neal Cassady at driver’s wheel.

497 LOWELL: Massachusetts Merrimack River redbrick mill town where Jack Kerouac was raised, site of many novels.

Ecologues of These States
(1969–1971)

Over Denver Again

519 ALLEYWAY LILA: Lila (Sanskrit), “play,” as in Krishna’s play on earth, “Krishna Lila.”

Falling Asleep in America

525 BEULAH: Blake term for mythic realm of subconscious, source of dream-poetic inspiration.

Northwest Passage

526 JOHNSON BUTTE: High mountain plateau overlooking Lake Wallula at confluence of Snake and Columbia rivers. Horse Heaven Hills top the vast butte.

526 SAKAJAWEA: Indian lady guide for Lewis and Clark expedition through Northwest native territory hitherto unknown by white men.

526 THALASSA: (Greek) Sea.

527 SIRHAN: Sirhan J. Sirhan, young Palestine-born assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, Los Angeles 1968. His comments on conviction, and description of his visage, were taken from Associated Press reports.

527 52% PEOPLE: Refers to 1968 Gallup poll.

527 SDS: Radical activist Students for a Democratic Society, whose early 1960s “Port Huron Declaration” proposed patriotic reform of institutionalized race prejudice and abusive imperial exploitation of nature and human labor. SDS rose as an alternative to the relatively passive “establishment” National Students Association, which had absorbed much natural student energy but was revealed during mid-1960s Senate investigation to have been funded by the CIA as a front for covert propaganda activity and an illegal domestic training ground for agents. SDS was later infiltrated and sabotaged covertly by the FBI, whose “cointel” (counterintelligence) policy was blueprinted to create leadership dissension and split white student youth from alliance with black activist groups. SDS fragmented in early 1970s, having helped spearhead early civil rights struggle in South and later extreme student opposition to U.S. military invasion of Indochina.

528 MIRA BAI: 14th-century Indian poetess, ecstatic Krishna worshiper. Her sacred devotional songs are still sung in villages and cities of India.

Sonora Desert-Edge

530 DRUM H.: Arizona poet Drummond Hadley (student of Charles Olson, friend of Gary Snyder), from whom author first heard Padmasambhava mantra.

530 TARTHANG TULKU: N’yingma-pa lineage Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Berkeley friend of Gary Snyder, taught the millennial Padmasambhava mantra quoted: “Body, Speech, Mind, Lotus-Flower-Power Diamond-Teacher, Hum.”

530 SAGUARO … OCOTILLO … CHOLLA … PALO VERDE: Varieties of cacti.

Memory Gardens

539 MEMORY GARDENS: Cemetery near Albany Airport glimpsed on way to Jack Kerouac’s funeral in Lowell, Mass. Poem was written on that trip.

540 HAL: Hal Chase, Denver-bred contemporary and friend of Cassady and Kerouac, later boat and lute builder in Bolinas, California, 1960s.

541 JOHN HOLMES: John Clellon Holmes (1926–1988) Author of first published (1952) Beat romance, Go (New York: New American Library, 1980).

Graffiti 12th Cubicle Men’s Room Syracuse Airport

543 LSD: Formula for lysergide written on the john wall differs from that given in Dorland’s Medical Dictionary (1981): C₂₀H₂₅ N₃O.

Friday the Thirteenth

546 FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH: Allusion to date of explosion in town house West 11th Street, New York. While parents were on vacation, it was used as safe-house bomb factory by “Weathermen.”

546 HAMPTON, KING, GOLD: Fred Hampton, Chicago Black Panther murdered in bed by police with FBI collaboration, 1968. Martin Luther King, assassinated in Memphis, April 5, 1968. Theodore Gold, killed in Weathermen blast (see note above).

546 SONG-MY: Vietnamese village blasted and burned by U.S. forces “to save it from the Viet Cong.”

546 TU-DO: Main Saigon hotel-café street during U.S. occupation.

Ecologue

550 MAHANIRVANA & HEVAJRA TANTRAS: Buddhist Vajrayana texts used by advanced meditation practitioners.

552 JOHN SINCLAIR: Poet, pioneer Detroit publisher, jazz critic, leader of Ann Arbor “White Panthers.” Arrested 1969 for giving two marijuana joints to police spies in his Artists Workshop interracial poet-musicians’ enterprise, he was sentenced to 9½–10 years jail, and liberated by state legislation the weekend after John Lennon-Yoko Ono’s “Free John Sinclair” concert, Ann Arbor, 1972. This libertarian protest provoked unsuccessful Nixon administration deportation proceedings against Lennon.

553 QUECHUA: The Quechua Indian city Macchu Picchu is located in Huilca Bamba valley.

553 DMT: Dimethyltryptamine, a short-lived “high,” psychedelic drug related to traditional Peruvian intoxicant Huilca. The chemical was later described by an early experimenter, Dr. Oscar Janiger, as “most powerful of all hallucinogenic agents.” DMT use has not yet been experimentally discerned in a cultural climate (1970s–1980s) discouraging to this area of scientific investigation.

555 GOODMAN, CHANEY, SCHWERNER: N.Y. Jewish boys and a Southern black were murdered together while traveling in Mississippi, 1964, to aid black civil rights campaign.

558 WEATHERMEN: Underground radical extreme confrontation-protest antiwar SDS splinter group engineered pot-convict scientist Dr. Timothy Leary’s over-the-wall departure from half-ounce grass-bust twenty-year sentence to California prison.

558 EAST HILL: Highest point Otsego County, N.Y., 2,400 feet near Cherry Valley town (pop. 300).

Guru Om

561 PRANAYAM: Yogic conscious breath attention practice.

561 NITYANANDA: Swami, guru to Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, from whom author received meditation instruction at time of writing.

562 SAMSARA: World of illusory suffering, or existence seen as condition of suffering.

562 ASANAS: Yogic postures.

562 KUNDALINI: Energy wakened by yogic practice. See The Serpent Power, by Arthur Avalon (New York: Dover, 1974), celebrated early exposition-translation by Westerner.

Milarepa Taste

565 MILAREPA: “Cotton-clad” Himalayan yogi poet, early father of Kagyu lineage, Tibetan Buddhist hero, author The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, trans. Garma C. C. Chang, 2 vols. (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1962).

Bixby Canyon to Jessore Road
(1971)

Bixby Canyon Ocean Path Word Breeze

569 MUDRAS: Sacramental or yogic hand gestures, bodily or psychologic attitudes.

570 BEEDLE: Beetle, or beadle: church official who bears the mace. See Blake, Songs of Innocence, “Holy Thursday”: “Grey headed beadles walked before / with wands as white as snow / …”

September on Jessore Road

579 JESSORE ROAD: At time of author’s visit, millions of Hindu refugees from East Pakistan communal strife crowded starving in floods on this main road between Bangladesh and Calcutta.

582 SUNIL POET: Calcutta poet Sunil Ganguly (Ganghopadhyay), with whom author traveled Jessore Road, in company with American Buddhist student and poet John Giorno.

IX
MIND BREATHS ALL OVER THE PLACE
(1972–1977)

Sad Dust Glories
(1972–1974)

Thoughts Sitting Breathing

597 OM MANI PADMI HUM: (Sanskrit) “Hail jewel in the lotus,” Tibetan mantra for compassion practice, each syllable penetrating its equivalent among the six worlds pictured in Time Wheel Mandala: Heaven Realm, Human Realm, Hungry Ghost Realm, Hell Realm, Animal Realm, Angry Warrior Realm, transitory delusive states of consciousness, all revolving on the axle of vanity, greed and ignorance. The poem explores the cycle thrice. See illustration to poem.

597 CORD MEYER: CIA officer responsible for covert subsidization of international intellectuals’ opinion-making organizations and periodicals, 1950s–60s Committee for Cultural Freedom, Encounter magazine, etc.

599 DHARMAKAYA: Buddhist term—kaya: realm, world or body; dharma: truth, law or nature. World of absolute, in the sense of totally accommodating open space, nondiscriminating ultimate reality, equivalent to the nonconceptualizing awareness of ordinary mind.

“What would you do if you lost it?”

600 RINPOCHE CHöGYAM TRUNGPA TULKU: (1939–1987) Rinpoche, honorific title for lamas: “precious jewel”; Tulku, one of succession of teachers “reincarnated” or trained in specific lineage teachings. Chögyam Trungpa, the author’s Vajracharya, or Mantrayana-style meditation practice master, born in Tibet, abbot of Surmang Monastery, is presently director of Vajradhatu Buddhist Centers and Naropa Institute. See his Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, 1973, and First Thought, Best Thought (108 poems), with introduction by Allen Ginsberg, 1984, both Shambhala Press, Boulder.

600 TANTRAS: Buddhist texts for Mantrayana practice mode.

600 HAGGADAHS: Hebrew liturgy, Passover Seder service.

600 ZOHAR: Kabbalist-gnostic theosophical work expounding Pentateuch mysteries.

600 KOANS: Extrarationalistic riddles for nonconceptual mindfulness and “nonlinear” awareness used in Zen meditation practice with a committed teacher’s guidance.

600 DHARMAKAYA … NIRMANAKAYA … SAMBHOGAKAYA: “body of truth” (absolute Buddha nature), “body of creation” (earthly or grounded Buddha form) and “body of bliss” (visionary communicative aspect of Buddha as speech).

600 PADMASAMBHAVA: Founder Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma or “old sect,” A.D. 747 author of Tibetan Book of the Dead.

600 DR. SAMEDI: Traditional Vodun presence in Haitian graveyard, dressed as described.

600 BHAKTIVEDANTA SWAMI: Founder of U.S. Hare Krishna movement, spiritual friend of author; died 1977.

600 FILES ON NY POLICE AND C.I.A. PEDDLING HEROIN: See section “Narcotics Agents Peddling Drugs,” including “Brief bibliography of news reports showing that narcotics agents, federal, state and local, the bulk of each group, are themselves involved in dope trafficking,” pp. 63–70, and “CIA Involvement with Opium Traffic at Its Source,” pp. 71–97, Allen Verbatim, ed. Gordon Ball (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974). See also Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).

601 JOE BOZZO & HARRY HAINES: Respectively, reputed 1930s mob boss, Paterson N.J., and publisher of Paterson Evening News.

601 MOUNI: (Sanskrit) Wise man, sage, sometimes vowed to silence.

601 TOM VEITCH: American poet (b. 1941) See his Death Collage, (Berkeley: Big Sky, 1976), with afterword by Allen Ginsberg.

601 IBM 135–35: During U.S. invasion of Vietnam, world’s largest computer located at Nakon Thanom Airbase, Thailand, directed “electronic battlefield” Indochina bombing.

601 IGLOO WHITE: U.S. project to destroy supply trucks and people moving down Laotian Ho-Chi-Minh jungle trail, 1967 on. Sensors, implanted on ground or suspended from trees by air drop, sent electronic messages to aircraft overhead, for relay to central computer control station. Then flying gunships equipped with low light-level TV systems and infrared detectors were directed to strike area.

601 DRAGON-TOOTH: Plastic pellet bombs which devastated football-field-sized areas.

601 FUEL-AIR BOMB: Scattered a powder gas which exploded after penetrating underground caves and shelters used by Viet Cong.

601 BODHISATTVAS: Who take Four Vows: (1) Sentient Beings are numberless, I vow to liberate all; (2) Obstacles are countless, I vow to uncover all; (3) Gates of Dharma are innumerable, I vow to enter all; (4) Buddha path is endless, I vow to follow through.

601 BHUMI: (Sanskrit) World, realm, among graduated stages of awareness. For Ten Bhumis, see Gampopa, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, trans. H. V Guenther (Boulder: Shambhala Press, 1971).

601 RUNG: (Hebrew mystic term) Realm or state of attainment.

601 OM AH HU?: Trikaya mantra of body, speech and mind.

601 A LA LA HO: Salutation mantra.

601 SOPHIA: Gnostic wisdom goddess.

601 SOHAM: Pranayama breath mantra, “I am.”

601 TA RA MA: Mother Tara, Hindu-Buddhist compassion aspect goddess; also, a female Buddha.

601 OM PHAT SVAHA: Mantra of offering to affective spirits. See D. L. Snellgrove, Hevajra Tantra (New York: Oxford, 1959). (For traditional use, consult lineage teacher.)

602 MARPA … GAMPOPA: Kagyu order, early Tibetan lineage teachers. Marpa the translator (1012–1096), farmer-yogi; Milarepa (1052–1135), yogi-poet; Gampopa (1079–1153), consolidator of teachings, author guidebook, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation.

602 TRUNGPAYE: Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, a current bearer of Kagyu teachings.

602 NAMASTAJI: Intimate Indian salutation.

602 BRAHMA: Formless aspect of Hindu trinity with Vishnu, Preserver, and Shiva, Changer.

602 SURYA: Vedic sun god, much like Occidental Apollo.

602 INDRA: Chief Vedic god, rain-lightning-thunder.

602 BOM BOM! SHIVAYE!: Mantra of offering cried out, often at cremation grounds, by cannabis-smoking saddhus to grace a chilam (clay ganja pipe) before inhaling.

602 RAM NAM SATYAHEY: “Ram’s name is the truth,” traditional chant of Hindus bearing corpse litter to Ganges cremation ground.

602 GANIPATTI: Or Ganesha, four-armed, elephant-headed Remover of Obstacles, god of wisdom, prudence and learning, son of Shiva and Parvati, whose vehicle is a rat.

602 OM SARASWATI HRIH SOWHA: Traditional mantric invocation to goddess of music, learning and poetry.

602 ARDINARISHVARA: Hermaphrodite-bodied Hindu divinity.

602 RADHA: Krishna’s consort.

602 HAREKRISHNA: Krishna, seventh of nine avatars of Vishnu, lord of preservation. Hare may be shakti of Krishna, consort, or spiritual-bliss potency of supreme person of universe.

Who

603 WHO: Reply to request from Who’s Who for self-characterization.

Yes and It’s Hopeless

604 HALF MILLION COMMUNISTS ASSASSINATED: Indonesian slaughter accompanying 1965–1966 overthrow of President Sukarno, political coup influenced by U.S. business intelligence.

604 SLAUGHTER … MEXICO CITY: Refers to 1968 machine-gun massacre of 1,000 student protesters at Tlatelolco Square, a clean-up of political dissidents preparatory to Olympic festivals. See also “Birdbrain.”

What I’d Like to Do

610 NAROPA’S SIX DOCTRINES: Psychic Heat, Illusory Body, Dream State, Clear Light, After Death State, and Consciousness Transference; see Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, W. Y. Evans-Wentz (Oxford, 1967).

610 KITKITDIZZE: Wintun Indian name for tarweed, bear clover or mountain misery, dark green shrub varying 3–15 inches in height, tarry touch and smell, belonging to rose family. Typical ground cover, western slope Sierra ponderosa pine forest. Poet Gary Snyder’s Sierra household is named Kitkitdizze, after this common plant, Chamaebatia foliolosa.

Mind Breaths

616 AH: Calligraphy by Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, 1978. Symbol of Tibetan Buddhist Kagyu order; one syllable summary of Prajnaparamita Sutra; mantra for purification of speech, and appreciation of space; related to Samatha meditation practice, mindfulness of outbreath; a vocalization of the outbreath.

617 SANGHA: (Sanskrit) Community of Buddhist practitioners.

618 BO TREE: The ancient pipal, Ficus religiosa, or sacred fig tree, in Bodh Gaya, India, under which Buddha meditated till enlightened.

Flying Elegy

620 SKANDAS: (Sanskrit) The five “heaps” of experience or psychosomatic aggregates of individual personality, namely: form, reaction-sensation, feeling-ideation, cumulative habit pattern, and apparent consciousness, which compound the transitory energies of ego.

620 SUNYATA: Emptiness, nonmind, or awareness devoid of egocentric projection.

Jaweb and Allah Battle

622 SNAKE COCK AND PIG EAT EACH OTHER’S TAILS: Symbols of anger, vanity and ignorance at center axle of Time Wheel Mandala. See illustration, p. 588.

622 CALLER OF THE GREAT CALL: According to Barbelo-Ophitic myth of Garden of Eden, the snake (as caller of the Great Call) was Sophia’s messenger to waken awareness in Adam and Eve. Sabaot, archon of their aeon, was but seven-aeon-times-removed reflection of Sophia’s first thought. See Hans Jonas, Gnostic Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963). Refer also to “Plutonian Ode,” note to verse 16, Sabaot.

622 STERN GANG IRGUN: Terrorist groups under British mandate, fought for Zionist cause.

622 AL FATAH BLACK SEPTEMBER: Terrorist groups after Israeli sovereignty, fought for Palestinian cause.

623 MEYER LANSKY: U.S. organized-crime chief reported to’ve supplied guns to Zionist terrorist/freedom fighters. Retired to Israel for years, was deported back to U.S. after public scandal, 1972, and arrested for income tax evasion.

623 MY FATHER HAD A COFFEE SHOP IN JERUSALEM: See poem “Write It Down, Allen Said,” in Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs, Peter Orlovsky (San Francisco: City Lights Pocket Poet Series #37, 1978), pp. 118–20.

623 COMMENTARY: American highbrow crypto-Zionist right-wing ideological journal edited by ambitious early prose critic of Kerouac’s poetic prose, later hawkish proponent of military hard-line hardware equated as alternative discipline for supposed loose 1960s national morals including public acknowledgment of gaiety.

623 PALESTINE REVIEW: Pro-Palestinian journal.

624 SHEMA YISROEL ADONOI ELUHENU: End of Hebrew chant: “Rejoice, O Israel, the Lord is one, the Lord is God.”

624 LA ILAH …: Sufi chant: “There is no god but Allah.”

624 HU: Sufi mantric out-breath.

624 SHALOM! SHANTIH! SALAAM!: Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic for “Peace!”

Sad Dust Glories

627 KENJI MYAZAWA: 20th-century Japanese poet, trans. Gary Snyder among others.

628 SHOBO-AN: Japanese Soto temple reconstructed by San Francisco Zen Center in California Sierras adjacent to Kitkitdizze “Ring of Bone” Zen Practice Center.

628 ACORN PEOPLE: Sierra Indian diet staple was acorn mush.

Ego Confessions
(1974–1977)

Ego Confession

631 GYALWA KARMAPA: 16th lama head of Milarepa lineage, Kagyu order of Tibetan Buddhism.

631 WEATHERMEN GOT NO MOSCOW GOLD: Timothy Leary, held incommunicado for years, early 1970’s, by Feds, refused to testify falsely that Weathermen were directed by Moscow finance. FBI heads were later convicted of illegal wiretapping since no evidence that antiwar protesters were agents of foreign powers could be found.

631 VAJRASATTVA: Central image of Nyingma old-school Tibetan meditation practice, blue-bodied, with diamond-lightning bolt (vajra) form held in right hand at breast, bell (ghanta) of empty (open) space held at left hip. Dharmakaya Buddha.

631 OVERTHREW THE CIA WITH A SILENT THOUGHT: Refers to 1970 Georgetown dinner bet between author and then CIA chief Richard Helms: whether or not Central Intelligence Agency had working relationship with opium traffickers at “secret” CIA base, Long Cheng, Laos. Author offered his vajra, if misinformed, and requested CIA Director Helms to practice meditation an hour a day for life if his denial proved incorrect. The wager was accepted, a bet either party might profit from by losing. Note also:

The New York Times
3 rue Scribe
75 Paris 9e

Apr. 11 1978

Dear Allen,

I fear I owe you an apology. I have been reading a succession of pieces about CIA involvement in the dope trade in Southeast Asia and I remember when you first suggested I look into this I thought you were full of beans. Indeed you were right and I acknowledge the fact plus sending my best personal wishes.

C. L. Sulzberger

Who Runs America?

636 GENERAL MOTORS … STANDARD OF CALIFORNIA: The dozen corporations name-dropped herein are top twelve capital powers whose $133 billion sales represented a tenth the total gross national product one yearly trillion $. Traditionally, an oil corporation representative fills post of U.S. Secy of State and auto corporation representative fills Secretary of Defense post. This gossip’s source was conversation with Daniel Ellsberg & Gary Snyder, November 26, 1974, re: Douglas F. Dowd’s The Twisted Dream, Capitalist Development in the United States Since 1776, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Winthrop, 1977).

Thoughts on a Breath

637 FOUR YEARS AG O: Poem is sequel to “Guru Om,” October 4–6, 1970.

637 STONY BURNS: “After being arrested twice on pornography charges, then convicted for inciting riot, Stony Burns, art director and founder of Iconoclast and Dallas Notes [underground newspapers], was sentenced in Dallas to ten years and one day in prison for the possession of less than one tenth of an ounce of marijuana. The extra day in the sentence prevented eligibility for parole. Within a year, public protest freed editor Burns.”—Unamerican Activities: The Campaign Against the Underground Press, PEN American Center report, ed. Geoffrey Rips, foreword by Allen Ginsberg (San Francisco: City Lights, 1981); see pp. 102, 107–8. The poem was written when Stony Burns was first jailed, 1974.

Hospital Window

642 (MAYAGUEZ CRISIS): After U.S. withdrawal from Indochina war, the U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez, presumed to be spy ship, was taken by Cambodians near their coast in 1975. The ship was recaptured by U.S. with giant force, some loss of life, large headlines. The incident was argued at the time to symbolize U.S. resolve to “be perceived” still as “number one” in world might.

Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox

643 BIG TIME SYNDICATE TAMPA: Sam Giancana and John Roselli, associated with Tampa mob chief, engaged by CIA to assassinate Cuban Premier Castro in “turf war,” early ’60s. Both were murdered or “rubbed out” prior to scheduled testimony before Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by late Senator Frank Church, 1965, re CIA assassination attempts against Castro. Roselli was found in barrel in ocean; Giancana was shot in his kitchen.

643 LET LUCKY LUCIANO OUT OF JAIL …: The international organized crime chief was released from federal prison by wartime Office of Strategic Services to supplant influence of Communist partisan anti-Hitler underground in Sicily with Mafia political infrastructure. According to American authorities, Luciano later became Mediterranean narcotics overlord. See “I’m Glad the CIA Is Immoral,” Thomas W. Braden, Saturday Evening Post, May 20, 1967, p. 14.

644 CHILE’S RED DEMOCRACY …: Salvador Allende (1908–1973), first democratically elected Marxist-socialist head of state in the western hemisphere, was deposed by U.S.-trained generals’ junta, 1973. Subsequent Senate investigation revealed that CIA funds were used to organize destabilizing truck transport strikes, to penetrate Santiago’s daily newspaper Mercurio, and to arrange “housewife demonstrations” against the new Allende government. Well-dressed family ladies walked in the streets, and banged on pots and pans, conveying an impression of normal people spontaneously protesting Allende government’s socialist austerities. The night after the U.S.-backed generals’ assault on presidential palace and assassination of Allende, the author remembers watching the TV screen with his father while news commentator Victor Riesel energetically congratulated American viewers: “The CIA was not involved!”

644 NKVD: People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs—Soviet secret police.

644 OGPU: 1930s Russian secret police.

644 DIA: U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

644 KGB: Soviet Committee of State Security, equivalent to U.S. FBI, but worse.

Come All Ye Brave Boys

645 LIDS: Lid, a quantity of marijuana, equivalent to an ounce, originally a Prince Albert tobacco can full.

Gospel Noble Truths

649 YOU GOT TO SUFFER: First stanza refers to Buddhist doctrine of three “marks” or characteristics of existence: (1) suffering, (2) change, (3) Anatma (no permanent selfhood). Stanzas 1–3 refer to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhist philosophy: (1) Existence contains suffering; (2) Suffering is caused by ignorance; (3) Ignorance can be changed by practice of detachment, wisdom and compassion (4) and by following an eightfold path as paraphrased in song lines 13–20: (1) right views, (2) right aspiration, (3) right speech, (4) right activity, (5) right labor, (6) right energy, (7) right mindfulness, (8) right meditation. There follows brief instruction for sitting and review of six sense fields.

Rolling Thunder Stones

652 WE GIVE THANKS FOR THIS FOOD …: After Snyder/Whalen adaptation of Zen thanks offering for food.

Two Dreams

656 ACID TIDE: Nitrous waste pollution of Jersey-Manhattan waters. A 1966 Los Angeles Free Press Robert Cobb cartoon showed ocean of LSD washing away a pillared fortress-island of Law, God, Self, Good, Evil, etc., seen somewhat as Urizenic Blakean abstractions.

Don’t Grow Old

664 AUNT ROSE: See “To Aunt Rose,” Paris, 1958.

664 NAROPA: Naropa Institute, contemplative college founded 1974 by Chögyam Trungpa; named for Kagyu lineage second patriarch, once rector of eighth-century Buddhist Nalanda International University. Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, codirected by author and Anne Waldman, was founded same year.

Contest of Bards

673 ETERNAL RUNE CUT IN STONE: Rune (Old Norse), character of Old Teutonic or Scandinavian alphabets; magical cipher.

685 EIDOLON: Platonic Image. See Whitman’s poem “Eidolons.”

Punk Rock Your My Big Crybaby

691 MABUHAY GARDENS TO CBGB ’ S: Punk rock/new wave youth clubs, on San Francisco’s North Beach and New York’s Bowery.

X
PLUTONIAN ODE
(1977–1980)

Grim Skeleton

699 RICHARD HELMS: See “Ego Confession” note.

Adapted from Neruda’s “Que dispierte el leñador”

704 QUE DISPIERTE: Adapted Summer 1978-Spring 1981 by Sidney Goldfarb and Allen Ginsberg from Waldeen’s trans. of Let The Railsplitter Awake and Other Poems, by Pablo Neruda (New York: Masses and Mainstream, 1950).

Nagasaki Days

707 ELLSBERG: Daniel Ellsberg (b. 1931) Author, revealer of the “Pentagon Papers,” now-public “secret” Defense Department analysis of built-in futility of U.S. Vietnam War adventure, had also helped design nuclear-strategy practical mechanics, including the failsafe system. The author and scholar Ellsberg were arrested together in Colorado during anti-nuclear peace protest at Rockwell Corporation’s Rocky Flats plutonium-bomb-trigger factory.

708 GOLDEN COURTHOUSE: See Kerouac’s verse “I wanna go to Golden,” i.e., Golden, Colorado, Jefferson county seat, where Rocky Flats anti-nuclear-weapons-manufacture demonstrators were tried.

Plutonian Ode

710 WHITMAN: Walt Whitman.

710 DOCTOR SEABORG: Glenn Seaborg, “Discoverer of Plutonium.”

710 SEA BEYOND URANUS: Pluto, past planets Uranus and Neptune.

710 AVENGING FURIES: Pluto was father to Eumenides, the Furies who return to avenge mindless damage done in passion, aggression, ignorance, etc. Pluto was also Lord of Wealth.

710 DEMETER: Pluto’s mother-in-law, the Earth fertility goddess whose daughter Persephone was stolen for marriage by underworld lord Pluto (Greek: Hades [Aides], brother to Zeus and Poseidon) and kept in his caverns a half year at a time, released to her mother each spring. Demeter gave wheat to man at Eleusis, site of her temple, one place in ancient world where Hades also was acknowledged with ceremonies indicated above.

Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and friends of Rocky Flats Truth Force, meditating on R.R. Tracks outside Rockwell Corporation Nuclear Facility’s Plutonium bomb trigger factory, Colorado, halting trainload of waste fissile materials on the day Plutonium Ode was completed, July 14, 1978. Photo by Steve Groer, Rocky Mountain News.

710 ASPHODEL: W. C. Williams wrote of asphodel, “that greeny flower,” as the blossom of Hades.

710 FISH … RAM … BULL … TWINS … CRAB … LION: Ages of Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo—2,000 years each age.

710 GREAT YEAR: Platonic, or Babylonian, or Sidereal “Great Year”—24,000 years—half life of Plutonium radioactivity. This fact, pointed out to me by Gregory Corso, inspired this poem. Cf. W. B. Yeats, A Vision.

710 ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-SEVEN THOUSAND: The 24,000-year span of the Great Year—167,000 cycles—4 billion years, supposed age of Earth.

710 BLACK … DISILLUSION: Six senses, including mind.

710 SABAOT … IALDABAOTH: Archons of successive aeons born of Sophia’s thought, according to Ophitic and Barbelo-Gnostic myths.

710 SKY OVER SILENT MILLS AT HANFORD … MASON: Plutonium factories, whose location by state and whose function in bomb-making are here described. Plants in Pantex, Texas, and Burlington, Iowa, managed by Mason & Hanger-Silas Mason Co., Inc., assemble the finished components of the nuclear weapons.

711 TWO HUNDRED FORTY MILLENNIA: 240,000 years the supposed time till Plutonium becomes physically inert.

711 TEN POUNDS: Ten pounds of Plutonium scattered throughout the earth is calculated sufficient to kill 4 billion people.

711 SIX WORLDS: Six worlds of Gods, Warrior Demons, Humans, Hungry Ghosts, Animals, and Hell Beings held together in the delusion of time by pride, anger and ignorance: a Buddhist concept. See notes to “Thoughts Sitting Breathing,” p. 796.

711 DIVINE WIND: Kamikaze, typhoon, wind of Gods.

711 THREE HUNDRED TO NS: 300 tons of Plutonium, estimate circa 1978 of the amount produced for American bombs.

711 I SING YOUR FORM: “The Reactor hath hid himself thro envy. I behold him. But you cannot behold him till he be revealed in his System.”—Blake, Jerusalem, Chap. II, Plate 43, lines 9–10.

712 HONEY … WATER: Traditional libation to Hades poured at Temple of Eleusis, and by Odysseus at the Necromanteion at Acheron.

712 DIAMOND TRUTH: Reference to Buddhist doctrine of Sunyataa, i.e., existence as simultaneously void and solid, empty and real, all-penetrating egoless (empty void) nature symbolized by adamantine Vajra or Diamond Sceptre.

712 FIVE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLAR: Estimated world military budget; 116 billion, U.S. share, October 1978.

713 TAKE THIS INHALATION … THOUGHT-WORLDS: Four characteristics of Buddha-nature activity: to pacify, enrich, magnetize & destroy.

713 GONE OUT … AH!: Americanese approximation and paraphrase of Sanskrit Prajnaparamita (Highest Perfect Wisdom) Mantra: Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.

Blame the Thought, Cling to the Bummer

717 DUDJOM LINEAGE: Dudjom Rinpoche, contemporary head of Nyingma “old school” Tibetan teachings founded by Padmasambhava.

717 BEDROCK MORTAR …: Cottage built by author and friends in California Sierra woods adjoining Kitkitdizze, at site of original Indian inhabitants’ mortar holes. See “Sad Dust Glories” note.

“Don’t Grow Old”

718 DON’T GROW OLD: See poems on the death of Louis Ginsberg, January 12-July 11, 1976.

December 31, 1978

724 LINDY HOP: Peculiar quick dance step popular late 1920s.

Brooklyn College Brain

725 BODHICITTA: Seed of enlightenment stuff, enlightened essence of Buddha mind, or awakening aspect of mind.

Garden State

727 HARRISBURG HYDROGEN BUBBLE: In Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear accident, March 28, 1979, unit #2’s reactor core was badly damaged. A pressure relief valve in the main cooling system had jammed while the reactor was operating at full power. Thousands of gallons of water unexpectedly drained from the core. At this pass, operators mistakenly turned off pumps designed to flood the reactor in such emergency. Consequent overheating resulted in damage to the reactor, and release of radiation.

Las Vegas: Verses Improvised for El Dorado H.S. Newspaper

728 MOAPA: Original nomadic inhabitants of Nevada.

728 ROBERT MAHEU: (b. 1917) Secretary to Howard Hughes, ex-FBI, introduced Sam Giancana and John Roselli (business acquaintances of Tampa syndicate boss Santos Trafficante, co-worker with Jack Ruby, and pre-Castro vice/narcotic lord of Havana territory) to CIA official Sheffield Edwards, to arrange assassination of Cuban premier Castro. Personages of Watergate plumbers team were associated with the much-reported yet little-researched anti-Castro Cuban Mafia circle of secret operations. See “Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox” note.

(Sheffield Edwards was also CIA Chief of Security, which office oversaw early 1950s drug experiment programs, psychedelic and otherwise.)

728 MT. CHARLESTON: Sacred mountain among Moapa tribes in traditional migratory cycle.

728 ENGLEBERT: Mr. Humperdinck, popular cabaret entertainer.

728 PLATONIC YEAR: See “Plutonian Ode” note.

728 UNDER THE ASTRONOMICAL FLAGP OLE: Harold Ickes, interior secretary under FDR, commissioned various solar system designs, including the Great Year pattern of earth’s wobble on its sidereal axis, to be set in bronze on Hoover Dam’s plaza, marking the monumental size of the project, equal in scope to the Egyptian pyramids.

728 BUGSY SIEGEL: Original organized crime/vice chief of Las Vegas, assassinated by shots through window of Beverly Hills living room, 1947.

Ruhr-Gebiet

734 STAMMHEIM: Isolation prison where “terrorist” Baader-Meinhof gang members (originally armed by police double agents) were subject to continuous interrogation under 24-hour glare lighting.

735 “GUESTS” DO THE WORK: Gastarbeiter, “guest workers” of post-WWII West Germany: Turks, Italians, Slavs imported for heavy labor or menial work.

Reflections at Lake Louise

741 ORYOKI: Traditional style of formal three-bowl mindful silent eating practice in Zendoo (meditation hall).

Ode to Failure

745 MAYAKOVSKY CRIED, THEN DIE! MY VERSE: “Let glory/disconsolate widow frail/trudge after genius/in funeral anthems/Die, my verse,/die, like the rank and file/as our unknown, unnumbered, fell/in storming heaven.”—Vladimir Mayakovsky, “At the Top of My Voice,” 1930, in Mayakovsky and His Poetry, trans. Herbert Marshall (London: Pilot Press, 1943). Frank O’Hara first called author’s attention to this poem.

Birdbrain!

746 XOCHOPILI: Formerly referred to as “God of Flowers” in tourist guidebooks. Vegetable forms incised on his celebrated statue in Mexico City’s Archaeological Museum have been identified by Harvard Botanical Museum director Richard E. Schultes as peyote, morning glory, amanita mushroom, tobacco, etc. Evidence of Xochopili culture was obliterated during Spanish conquest.

746 RAN GERMANY ON AMPHETAMINES: Among other books, Inside the Third Reich, memoirs of Albert Speer (New York: Macmillan, 1970), gives evidence on Hitler’s rug-chewing speed addiction.

“Defending the Faith”

750 MAGLIC CASTLE: Castle of “mist” or “fog” (maglic) at heart of original kingdom of Serbia.

750 IVAR RIVER BANK: (12th-century “Ras”) In Ivar River Valley, “Valley of the Kings.” “Where the valley narrows to form a dramatic gorge … stand the remains of the Magli’c fortress perched like an eagle’s nest upon a separate spur of the mountains” (Fodor’s Yugoslavia, 1972, p. 277).

Notes for “Angkor Wat” from Fulcrum Press edition (London, 1968).

Epigraphs from Original Editions

‘Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!’ (Howl)

‘—Die,

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!’ (Kaddish)

‘Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy’ (Reality Sandwiches)

‘O go way man I can
     hypnotize this nation
I can shake the earth’s foundation
     with the Maple Leaf Rag.’ (Planet News)

‘To find the Western path
Right thro’ the Gates of Wrath
I urge my way;
Sweet Mercy leads me on:
With soft Repentant moan
I see the break of day’ (Gates of Wrath)

‘Thus is the heaven a vortex pass’d already, and the earth
A vortex not yet pass’d by the traveller thro’ Eternity’ (Gates of Wrath)

‘The yearning infinite recoils,
For terrible is earth!’ (Gates of Wrath)

‘… same electric lightning South
     follows this train
               Apocalypse prophesied—
     the fall of America
          signalled from Heaven—’ (The Fall of America)

     ‘Time after time for such a journey none but iron pens
Can write And adamantine leaves receive nor can the man who goes
The journey obstinate refuse to write time after time’ (Mind Breaths)

‘Meeting, the two friends laugh aloud;
In the grove, fallen leaves are many’ (Poems All Over the Place)

‘La science, la nouvelle noblesse! Le progrès. Le monde marche! Pourquoi ne tournerait-il pas?’ (Plutonian Ode)

Dedications to

Jack Kerouac, new Buddha of American prose, who spit forth intelligence into eleven books written in half the number of years (1951–1956)—On the Road, Visions of Neal, Dr Sax, Springtime Mary, The Subterraneans, San Francisco Blues, Some of the Dharma, Book of Dreams, Wake Up, Mexico City Blues, and Visions of Gerard—creating a spontaneous bop prosody and original classic literature. Several phrases and the title of Howl are taken from him.

William Seward Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, an endless novel which will drive everybody mad.

Neal Cassady, author of The First Third, an autobiography (1949) which enlightened Buddha.

All these books are published in Heaven.

HOWL

Peter Orlovsky
in
Paradise
‘Taste my mouth in your ear’

KADDISH

To Herbert E. Huncke
for his Confessions

EMPTY MIRROR

the Pure Imaginary
POET
Gregory Corso

REALITY SANDWICHES

Neal Cassady
again
Spirit to Spirit
February 8, 1925-February 4, 1968
‘the greater driver’
‘secret hero of these poems’

PLANET NEWS

dear
poet’s poet
Philip Whalen

AIRPLANE DREAMS

Miles
London’s Scholar

ANGKOR WAT

The Soul of
Leroi Jones

SCRAP LEAVES

Larry Ferlinghetti
Fellow
Poet
Editor

POEMS ALL OVER THE PLACE

Walt Whitman

“Intense and loving comradeship, the personal and passionate attachment of man to man—which, hard to define, underlies the lessons and ideals of the profound saviors of every land and age, and which seems to promise, when thoroughly develop’d, cultivated and recognised in manners and literature, the most substantial hope and safety of the future of these States, will then be fully express’d.

“It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence of that fervid comradeship, (the adhesive love, at least rivaling the amative love hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going beyond it,) that I look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar American democracy, and for the spiritualization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, and will not follow my inferences: but I confidently expect a time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audible and visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and life-long, carried to degrees hitherto unknown—not only giving tone to individual character, and making it unprecedentedly emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having the deepest relations to general politics. I say democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself.”

Democratic Vistas, 1871

THE FALL OF AMERICA

Vajracarya
Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
Poet
“Guru Death your words are true
Teacher Death I do thank you
For inspiring me to sing this Blues”

MIND BREATHS

Lucien Carr
for friendship
all these years

PLUTONIAN ODE

Acknowledgments

Author wishes to imprint thanks to poets & editors who initially published these writings. A wild gamut of literary magazines & papers rose to manifest renaissance of vernacular poetry in postwar II USA, invented by the World War I generation. W. C. Williams & Ezra Pound prophesied an American poetic mode measured to the variety of contemporary body english, speech and mind. Individuation of idiom was followed by individuation of print form. Poetic “Mimeograph Revolution” coincided (mid-1950s) with a “San Francisco Poetry Renaissance” and the names of publications improvised became a poem in itself.

A.G.

   Adventures in Poetry, A Hundred Posters, Allen Verbatim (ed. Gordon Ball, McGraw-Hill), Alternative Features Syndicate, Alternative Press, Alternative Press Broadside, American Dialogue, American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Aquarian, Ark/Moby, Ashok Shahane, A Shout in the Streets, Athanor, Auerhahn/Haselwood Press, A Year of Disobedience

Bad Breath, Bastard Angel, Beatitude, Berkeley Barb, Berkeley Tribe, Bernerzeitung, Between Worlds, Big Sky, Big Table, Birthstone, Black Mountain Review, Bombay Gin, Boulder Express, Boulder Monthly, Boulder Street Poets, Brahma, Brandeis Folio, Brown Paper, Buffalo Stamps, Bugger (Fuck You/a Magazine of the Arts supplement), Burning Bush

’C, Cambridge Review (i.e.), Capella Dublin, Caterpillar, Che Fare, Cherry Valley Editions, Chicago, Chicago Review, City Lights Anthology, City Lights Books, City Lights Journals, Clean Energy Verse, Coach House Press, Cody’s Bookshop Calendar, Coevolution Quarterly, College Press Service, Colorado North Review, Columbia Jester, Columbia Review, Combustion, Concerning Poetry, Coyote, Coyote’s Journal, Cranium Press Broadsides, Creative Arts Book Co.

Dakota Broadsides Montreal, Desert Review, Dirty, Do-it

Earth Day Folio, Earth Magazine, East Village Other, El Dorado H.S. Newspaper, Evergreen Review, Expressen, Expresso

Fervent Valley Digest, Fifth Estate, Firefly Press, Fits, Floating Bear, Folger Shakespeare Library Broadside, Folio, Four Seasons, From Here Press, Fruit Cup, Fuck You/A Magazine of the Arts, Fulcrum Press, Fuori!

Gay Sunshine Press, Gemini, Georgia Strait, Gnaoua, Gotham Book Mart, Grabhorn Press, Grecourt Review, Greenpeace, Grey Fox Books, Grist, Grove Press,

Hard & Hardly Press, Hard Times, Harvard Crimson, Harvard Magazine, Hasty Papers, High Times, Hika, House of Anansi

Ice & Frice, Il Tarocco, Ins & Outs, Intrepid, Isis, Izvestia

Jabberwock (Sidewalk), Jack Albert’s Boston Newspaper, Jargon 31, Jerusalem Post, Jonathan Cape-Golliard Press

Klacto 23, Kuksu, Kulchur

Lama Foundation: Bountiful Lord’s Delivery Service, Lampeter Muse, L.A. Staff, League for Sexual Freedom Leaflet series, Lemar Marijuana Review, Liberation, Liberation News Service, Life, Literaturnya Gazeta, Loka, London Times Literary Supplement, Look, Los Angeles Free Press, Los Angeles Times, Lowenfel’s Anthology, (lower) Eastside Review

Mag City, Mahenjodaro, Mattachine Review, Metronome, Mikrokosmos, Mojo Navigator, Mutantia, My Own Mag

Nadada, Neurotica, New Age Journal, New American Review, New Departures, New Directions Annuals, New York Free Press, New York Quarterly, New York Times, Nomad, Notes from the Garage Door, Notes from Underground, Now, Nuke Chronicles

Oyez poster

Pacific Nation, Painted Bride Quarterly, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Passaic Review, Peace News, Pearl, Peninsula Skyway, Pequod Press, Piazza, Planeta Fresca, Playboy, Poetry London/Apple, Poetry London-NY, Poetry on the Tracks, Poetry Review London, Poetry Toronto, Poets at Le Metro, Poets-and-Writers, Poet’s Press, Portents, Provincetown Review, Pull My Daisy

Quixote

Rain, Ramparts, Read Street, Red Osier Press, Residu, rhinozeros, River Run, River Styx, Rocky Flats Truth Force, Rocky Ledge, Rolling Stone, Rolling Thunder Review Phantom Newsletter

Salted Feathers, San Francisco Free Press, Saturday Morning, Schism, Scrip Magazine, Seven Days, Sing Out, Soho News, Something, Southwest Review, Spradie im Technisehen Zeitalter, Stone Press Weekly, Stupa: Naropa Student Newsletter, Sun Books Australia, Swank, Synapse

Takeover, Telephone, The American Pen International Quarterly, The American Poetry Review, The Beat Scene, The End Magazine, The Grapevine, The Marijuana Review, The Nation, The Needle, The New Yorker, The Outsider, The Paris Magazine, The Raven, The Seventies, The Stone, The Sunflower (Wichita State), The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, The Villager, The Workingman’s Press, The World, The Yale Literary Magazine, Throat, Title I, Toronto Waves, Totem/-Corinth Books, Transatlantic Review

Underdog, Unmuzzled Ox Encyclopedia, Utigeverij 261

Vajradhatu Sun, Vancouver Express, Vancouver Vajradhatu, Variegation, Venture, Vigencia, Village Voice, Voices

Walker Art Center Broadside, West Hills Review, White Dove, Wholly Communion, Wild Dog, Win, W.I.N. (Workshop in Nonviolence) Magazine, Writer’s Forum

Yugen

Zero

   Nancy Peters, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Annie Janowitz & Bob Sharrard helped prepare texts for City Lights Books.

Ted Wilentz, Amiri Baraka, Winston Leyland, Barry Gifford, Stuart Montgomery, Miles, Mary Beach, Claude Pelieu, Charles Plymell, Diane DiPrima, R’lene Dahlberg, Dave Haselwood and Marshall Clements helped edit other books of prose and poetry from which poems were drawn for this collection.

Don Allen consistently offered refined advice. Lucien Carr formulated “The Archetype Poem” and “How Come He Got Canned at the Ribbon Factory” anonymously three decades before this due acknowledgment of his wit and lifelong editorial prescience. Andrew Wylie shepherded this volume to New York.

For preparation of Collected Poems the sangha of editors at Harper & Row headed by Aaron Asher working with Carol Chen, Sidney Feinberg, Dan Harvey, Marge Horvitz, Lydia Link, William Monroe, Joe Montebello, and Dolores Simon provided essential sympathetic skills.

Kenneth A. Lohf, Director of Manuscripts and Rare Books, Bernard Crystal, Assistant Director, and Mary Bowling, librarian in charge of manuscripts at Special Collections Division, Butler Library, Columbia University, preserved author’s papers since 1968. Librarians at Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, conserved letters and notebooks useful in assembling manuscript.

Various typescripts were assembled at Naropa Institute’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics by apprentice poets Walter Fordham, Jason Shinder, Sam Kash-ner, Helen Luster, Denyse King, Gary Allen, Alice Gambrell and Randy Roark among others, 1974–83.

Gordon Ball and Miles editing notebooks, journals and bibliographic papers retrieved texts and aided relatively precise chronology of poems.

Bill Morgan’s bibliographic survey of author’s work-spaces and Columbia Special Collections made possible ordering and retrieval of many writings in early script and book forms. Raymond Foye edited appropriate images from photo archive.

Bob Rosenthal provided years of logistical support to author and fellow archive workers. Juanita Lieberman contributed many hours.

Parts of Collected Poems were written & assembled during periods of National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, N.Y. State Creative Artists Program Service, Inc., and Rockefeller Foundation grants to author.

   Collaborative Artisans

Calligraphy AH by Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche.

Wheel of Life: Block Print, source unknown.

Tag lines for Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit: Moments of Rising Mist, a Collection of Sung Landscape Poetry, Mushinsha/Grossman, 1973.

Steven Taylor: lead sheets; Walter Taylor: lyric calligraphy.

Harry Smith: Illustration to Journal Night Thoughts (p. 274), and three fish one head cover insignia designed after incision on stone footprint of Buddha, seen by author at Bodh-Gaya, India, 1963; other version (p. 328).

Robert LaVigne: Illustrations, pp. 123, 143, 363, 766.

   Diligent reader will find 22 additional poems rhymed, many with lead sheets, published as First Blues: Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs 1971–1974, Full Court Press, N.Y., 1975, to correlate with poems of that decade, supplementing the volume of musical inspiration.

Songs from Collected Poems and First Blues are vocalized solo on First Blues, Folkways Records, N.Y., 1981; and with musicians, First Blues, Double album, Hammond/C.B.S., N.Y., 1983.

Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Empty Mirror

The lines are superbly all alike. Most people, most critics would call them prose—they have an infinite variety, perfectly regular; they are all alike and yet none is like the other. It is like the monotony of our lives that is made up of the front pages of newspapers and the first (aging) 3 lines of the Inferno:

In the middle of the journey of our life I (came to)
myself in a dark wood (where) the
straight way was lost.

It is all alike, those fated lines telling of the mind of that poet and the front page of the newspaper. Look at them. You will find them the same.

This young Jewish boy, already not so young any more, has recognized something that has escaped most of the modern age, he has found that man is lost in the world of his own head. And that the rhythms of the past have become like an old field long left unploughed and fallen into disuse. In fact they are excavating there for a new industrial plant.

There the new inferno will soon be under construction.

A new sort of line, omitting memories of trees and watercourses and clouds and pleasant glades—as empty of them as Dante Alighieri’s Inferno is empty of them—exists today. It is measured by the passage of time without accent, monotonous, useless—unless you are drawn as Dante was to see the truth, undressed, and to sway to a beat that is far removed from the beat of dancing feet but rather finds in the shuffling of human beings in all the stages of their day, the trip to the bathroom, to the stairs of the subway, the steps of the office or factory routine the mystical measure of their passions.

It is indeed a human pilgrimage, like Geoffrey Chaucer’s; poets had better be aware of it and speak of it—and speak of it in plain terms, such as men will recognize. In the mystical beat of newspapers that no one recognizes, their life is given back to them in plain terms. Not one recognizes Dante there fully deployed. It is not recondite but plain.

And when the poet in his writing would scream of the crowd, like Jeremiah, that their life is beset, what can he do, in the end, but speak to them in their own language, that of the daily press?

At the same time, out of his love for them—a poet as Dante was a poet—he must use his art, as Dante used his art, to please. He must measure, he must so disguise his lines, that his style appear prosaic (so that it shall not offend) to go in a cloud.

With this, if it be possible, the hidden sweetness of the poem may alone survive and one day rouse the sleeping world.

There cannot be any facile deception about it. The writing cannot be made to be “a kind of prose,” not prose with a dirty wash of a stale poem over it. It must not set out, as poets are taught or have a tendency to do, to deceive, to sneak over a poetic way of laying down phrases. It must be prose but prose among whose words the terror of their truth has been discovered.

Here the terror of the scene has been laid bare in subtle measures, the pages are warm with it. The scene they invoke is terrifying more so than Dante’s pages, the poem is not suspect, the craft is flawless.

1952

Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Howl

When he was younger, and I was younger, I used to know Allen Ginsberg, a young poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, where he, son of a well-known poet, had been born and grew up. He was physically slight of build and mentally much disturbed by the life which he had encountered about him during those first years after the first world war as it was exhibited to him in and about New York City. He was always on the point of ‘going away’, where it didn’t seem to matter; he disturbed me, I never thought he’d live to grow up and write a book of poems. His ability to survive, travel, and go on writing astonishes me. That he has gone on developing and perfecting his art is no less amazing to me.

Now he turns up fifteen or twenty years later with an arresting poem. Literally he has, from all the evidence, been through hell. On the way he met a man named Carl Solomon with whom he shared among the teeth and excrement of this life something that cannot be described but in the words he has used to describe it. It is a howl of defeat. Not defeat at all for he has gone through defeat as if it were an ordinary experience, a trivial experience. Everyone in this life is defeated but a man, if he be a man, is not defeated.

It is the poet, Allen Ginsberg, who has gone, in his own body, through the horrifying experiences described from life in these pages. The wonder of the thing is not that he has survived but that he, from the very depths, has found a fellow whom he can love, a love he celebrates without looking aside in these poems. Say what you will, he proves to us, in spite of the most debasing experiences that life can offer a man, the spirit of love survives to ennoble our lives if we have the wit and the courage and the faith—and the art! to persist.

It is the belief in the art of poetry that has gone hand in hand with this man into his Golgotha, from that charnel house, similar in every way, to that of the Jews in the past war. But this is in our own country, our own fondest purlieus. We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness. Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels. This poet sees through and all around the horrors he partakes of in the very intimate details of his poem. He avoids nothing but experiences it to the hilt. He contains it. Claims it as his own—and, we believe, laughs at it and has the time and affrontery to love a fellow of his choice and record that love in a well-made poem.

Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell.

1955

Author’s Cover Writ

                    Hindsight for Gates of Wrath

Gates of Wrath’s first sonnets, “Woe to Thee Manhattan,” were inspired by first reading ms. of Kerouac’s triumphant record of youth family The Town and the City. All poems hermetic “The Eye Altering” thru “A Western Ballad” refer to breakthru of visionary consciousness 1948 described elsewhere prosaically: early mind-manifesting flashes catalyzed by lonely despair I felt at sudden termination of erotic spiritual marriage mutually vowed by myself and Neal Cassady The “Earlier Poems,” 1947, were love poems to N.C., though love’s gender was kept closet. “Sweet Levinsky” (counterimage to Kerouac’s tender caricature) thru “Pull My Daisy” were written Jack much in mind ear. “Pull My Daisy”’s form grew out of J.K.’s adaptation of “Smart Went Crazy” refrain: recombining images jazzier as

Pull my daisy,
Tip my cup,
All my doors are open—

from my more wooden verse.

Jack brought this verse into York Ave. coldwater flat—I remember his athletic pencil-dash’d handscript, notebooked. I replicated that form and Jack dubbed in more lines—about a third of the poem was his. One line “How’s the Hicks?” was tossed to us as we walked into Cassady’s midnite NY parkinglot 1949 asking Neal “What’s the Hex, Who’s the Hoax?”

“Sometime Jailhouse” poems to “Ode 24th Year” reflect early dope-type bust & subsequent hospital rehabilitation solitude-bench dolmen realms so characteristic of mental penology late 40s contemporary. The letter to W.C.W. enclosing poems was answered thus: “In this mode perfection is basic.” The poems were imperfect. I responded by sending Williams several speedworthy notations that form the basis of book Empty Mirror, texts written roughly same years as these imperfect lyrics.

Gates of Wrath ms. was carried to London by lady friend early fifties, it disappeared, and I had no complete copy till 1968 when old typescript was returned thru poet Bob Dylan—it passed into his hands years earlier. By coincidence, I returned to this rhymed mode with Dylan’s encouragement as fitted for musical song. Tuned to lyric guitar, composing on harmonium, chant or improvising on rhythmic chords in electric studio, I began ‘perfecting’ use of this mode two decades after W.C.W.’s wise objection, dear reader, in same weeks signatured below.

December 8, 1971

                    Jacket for Howl

Allen Ginsberg born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian émigré, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and schoolteacher, in Paterson, N.J. High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver, copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. … Carl Solomon, to whom Howl is addressed, is an intuitive Bronx dadaist and prose-poet.

1960

                    Hindsight for Kaddish

In the midst of the broken consciousness of mid twentieth century suffering anguish of separation from my own body and its natural infinity of feeling its own self one with all self, I instinctively seeking to reconstitute that blissful union which I experienced so rarely I took it to be supernatural and gave it holy Name thus made hymn laments of longing and litanies of triumphancy of Self over the mind-illusion mechano-universe of un-feeling Time in which I saw my self my own mother and my very nation trapped desolate our worlds of consciousness homeless and at war except for the original trembling of bliss in breast and belly of every body that nakedness rejected in suits of fear that familiar defenseless living hurt self which is myself same as all others abandoned scared to own our unchanging desire for each other. These poems almost un-conscious to confess the beatific human fact, the language intuitively chosen as in trance & dream, the rhythms rising on breath from belly thru breast, the hymn completed in tears, the movement of the physical poetry demanding and receiving decades of life while chanting Kaddish the names of Death in many mind-worlds the self seeking the Key to life found at last in our self.

August 28, 1963

                    Back Cover for Reality Sandwiches

“Wake-up nightmares in Lower East Side, musings in public library, across the U.S. in dream auto, drunk in old Havana, brooding in Mayan ruins, sex daydreams on the West Coast, airplane vision of Kansas, lonely in a leafy cottage, lunch hour in Berkeley, beery notations on Skid Row, slinking to Mexico, wrote this last nite in Paris, back on Times Square dreaming of Times Square, bombed in NY again, loony tunes in the dentist chair, screaming at old poets in South America, aethereal zigzag Poesy in blue hotel rooms in Peru—a wind-up book of dream notes, psalms, journal enigmas & nude minutes from 1953 to 1960 poems scattered in fugitive magazines here collected now book.”

1960

                    Back Cover for Planet News

Planet News collecting seven years’ Poesy scribed to 1967 begins with electronic politics disassociation & messianic rhapsody TV Baby in New York, continues picaresque around the world globe, élan perceptions notated at Mediterranean, Galilee & Ganges till next breakthrough, comedown Poem heart & soul last days in Asia The Change 1963; tenement doldrums & police-state paranoia in Manhattan then half year behind Socialist Curtain climaxed as Kral Majales May King Prague 1965, same year’s erotic gregariousness writ as Who Be Kind To for International Poetry Incarnation Albert Hall London; next trip West Coast U.S. & voyage back thru center America midwest Wichita Vortex Sutra which is mind-collage & keystone section of progressively longer poem on “These States”—here Self sitting in its own meat throne invokes Harekrishna as preserver of human planet & challenges all other Powers usurping State Consciousness to recognize same Identity, thus ‘I here declare the End of the War.’ Back dwelling on East Coast local psyche notes, elegy for O’Hara dead friend poet & worship for all Gods; at last across Atlantic Wales Visitation promethian text recollected in emotion revised in tranquillity continuing tradition of ancient Nature Language mediates between psychedelic inspiration and humane ecology & integrates acid classic Unitive Vision with democratic eyeball particulars— book closes on politics to exorcise Pentagon phantoms who cover Earth with dung-colored gas.

May 26, 1968

                    After Words for The Fall of America

Beginning with “long poem of these States,” The Fall of America continues Planet News chronicle taperecorded scribed by hand or sung condensed, the flux of car bus airplane dream consciousness Person during Automated Electronic War years, newspaper headline radio brain auto poesy & silent desk musings, headlights flashing on road through these States of consciousness. Texts here dedicated to Whitman Good Grey Poet complement otherwhere published Wichita Vortex Sutra and Iron Horse. The book enters Northwest border thence down California Coast Xmas 1965 and wanders East to include history epic in Kansas & Bayonne, mantra chanting in Cleveland smoke flats, Great Lake hotel room midnight soliloquies, defeatest prophetics Nebraskan, sociable kissass in Houston, sexist gay rhapsodies, elegy for love friend poet heroes threaded through American silver years, pacifist-voweled changes of self in robot city, wavecrash babbling & prayers airborne, reportage Presidentiad Chicago police-state teargas eye, car crash body consciousness, ecologue inventory over Atlantic seaboard’s iron Megalopolis & west desert’s smog-tinged Vast. Back home, Mannahatta’s garbaged loves survive, farm country without electricity falltime harvest’s the illegal Indochina bomb paranoia guilt. Guru Om meditation breaks through onto empty petrochemical wonderland, & so adieu to empty-lov’d America. Book returns to Pacific flowered seashore with antibomb call, then across ocean great suffering starvation’s visible, bony human September on Jessore Road ends as mantric lamentation rhymed for vocal chant to western chords F minor B flat E flat B flat.

October 7, 1972

                    Back Cover for Mind Breaths

Australian songsticks measure oldest known poetics, broken-leg meditations march thru Six Worlds singing Crazy Wisdom’s hopeless suffering, the First Noble Truth, inspiring quiet Sung sunlit greybeard soliloquies, English moonlit night-gleams, ambitious mid-life fantasies, Ah crossed-legged thoughts sitting straight-spine paying attention to empty breath flowing round the globe; then Dharma elegy & sharp eyed haiku, pederast rhapsody, exorcism of mid-East battlegods, workaday sad dust glories. American ego confession & mugging downfall Lower East Side, hospital sickness moan, hydrogen Jukebox Prophecy, Sex come-all-ye, mountain cabin flashes, Buddhist country western chord changes, Rolling Thunder snow balls, a Jersey shaman dream, Father Death in a graveyard near Newark, Poe bones, two hot hearted love poems: Here chronicled mid-Seventies’ half decade inward & outward Mindfulness in many Poetries: Aboriginal rhetoric, mouth-page free verse-forms, Whitmanic-miltonic periods, Chinese-american imagery, scholarly politics apostrophe, dirty blues & racy ballads rocknroll & airy numbers musicked with lead-sheets, 3 line sparks, objective tombstones, & in narrative high style Oratory a Blakean Punk Epic with nirvanic Rune music the Contest of Bards.

September 23, 1977

                    Back Cover for Plutonian Ode

Title poem combines scientific info on 24,000-year cycle of the Great Year compared with equal half-life of Plutonium waste, accounting Homeric formula for appeasing underground millionaire Pluto Lord of Death, jack in the gnostic box of Aeons, and Adamantine Truth of ordinary mind inspiration, unhexing Nuclear ministry of fear. Following poems chronologize Wyoming grass blues, a punk-rock sonnet, personal grave musing, Manhattan landscape hypertension, lovelorn heart thumps, mantric rhymes, Neruda’s tearful Lincoln ode retranslated to U.S. vernacular oratory, Nagasaki Bomb anniversary haikus, Zen Bluegrass raunch, free verse demystification of sacred fame, Reznikoffian filial epiphanies, hot pants Skeltonic doggerel, a Kerouackian New Year’s eve ditty, professorial homework, New Jersey quatrains, scarecrow haiku, improvised dice roll for high-school kids, English rock-and-roll sophistications, an old love glimpse, little German movies, old queen conclusions, a tender renaissance song, ode to hero-flop, Peace protest prophecies, Lower East Side snapshots, national flashes in the Buddhafields, Sapphic stanzas in quantitative idiom, look out the bedroom window, feverish birdbrain verses from Eastern Europe for chanting with electric bands, Beethovinean ear strophes drowned in rain, a glance at Cloud Castle, poems 1977–1980 end with International new wave hit lyric Capitol Air.

September 28, 1981

Index of Proper Names

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

Abe (Ginsberg), 664

Abraham, 623

Abraham, Israel (Irwin Allen), see Ginsberg, Allen

Acheson, Dean, 492

Acis, 72

Adam, 335, 342, 361, 368, 559

Adam Longhair, see Adam

Adams, Sherman, 202, see n.

Adonaeus, 710

Adonais, 217, 615

Adonis, 136

Agnew, Spiro, 594, 614

Ahab, Captain, 563

Aiken, George D., 406, see n.

Alan, see White, J. Alan

Alexander the Great, 745

Alexander, Holmes, 406

Alice in Wonderland, 222

Allah, 402, 404, 415, 622, 623, 624, 697

Allen, see Ginsberg, Allen

Altgeld, John P., 222, see n.

Amitendranath Tagore, 607

Amter, Israel, 155, see n.

Anacreon, 369, 600

Anderson, Senator, 386

Andy (Warhol), 654

Angelico, Beato, 236

Ann, see Buchanan, Ann

Anna (Ginsberg), 664

Anne (Murphy), 341

Ansen, Alan, 106, 186

Antinoüs, 236

Antoinette, Marie, 556

Apollinaire, Guillaume (William), 188, 528

Apollinaire de Kostrowitsky, Guillaume, see Apollinaire, Guillaume

Apollo, 34, 190, 602

Arafat, Yasir, 623

Ardinarishvara, 602, see n.

Arhat, 98, see n.

Artaud, Antonin, 177, 189

Arthur, Gavin, 443, see n.

Ashbery, John, 725

Astapheus, 710

Avalokitesvara, 316, 321, 324, see n.

Avrum, Svul (Irwin Allen), see Ginsberg,

Allen

Ayatollah, 753

Babaji, 561

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 159, 360

Baez, Joan, 381, 507

Baghavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, 461

Baldwin, Hanson, 498, 499, 500

Balabanoff, Angelica, 288, see n.

Balzac, Honoré de, 185

Bara, Theda, 385

Barbara (Rubin), 537

Bartleby, 78

Baruch, Bernard, 285

Batman, 475, 481

Baudelaire, Charles, 74, 81, 276

Baudouin, King, 478

Beach Boys, The, 476, 527

Beatles, The, 379, 382, 387, 527, 552

Beaverbrook, Lord, 179

Beckett, Samuel, 353

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 745, 748, 749

Ben-Gurion, David, 623

Bhaktivedanta Swami, 518, 600, 610, see n.

Bill, see Burroughs, William S.

Bimbisara, 306

Black, Phil, 185

Blake, William, 14, 146, 172, 196, 212, 246, 305, 309, 355, 362, 415, 434, 474, 550, 561, 600, 603, 610, 631, 685

Blitzer, Sylvia, 725

Blok, Alexander, 177

Bloor, Mother (Ella Reeve), 155, see n.

Blow, Joe, see Ginsberg, Allen

Bly, Robert, 532

Bodhidharma, 475, see n.

Boehme, Jakob, 550

Boito, Arrigo, 236

Bond, Julian, 666

Borah, Senator, 224

Bozzo, Joe, 601, see n.

Bradley, 386

Brahma, 548, 602

Brakefield, Private, 546

Branaman, 396

Bremont, Famille, 190

Bremser, Ray, 269, 290, 552, see n.

Breton, André, 189

Breughel, Pieter, 276, 356, see n.

Bronte, Emily, 192

Browder, Earl, 298

Brownstein, Michael, 707

Bryan, William Jennings, 405, see n.

Buba, see Ginsberg, Rebecca (grandmother)

Buber, Martin, 297

Buchanan, Ann, 341, 396

Budd, Billy, 537

Budd, Dan, 164

Budda, see Buddha

Buddha, 132, 138, 171, 183, 189, 198, 250, 252, 290, 306, 314, 318, 320, 322, 324, 381, 438, 475, 530, 601, 604, 622, 623, 625, 653, 669, 671, 683, 697, 728, 747

Bunker, Ambassador, 581

Burchfield, Charles, 421, see n.

Burns, Stony, 637, 639, see n.

Burroughs, Joan, 132, 157, 185

Burroughs, William S., 122, 132, 142, 154, 157, 213, 262, 269, 285, 423, 424, 433, 605

Cal, see Lowell, Robert

Calloway, Cab, 100, see n.

Campion, 600

Cannastra, William, 65, 429, see n.

Canyon, Steve, 485

Carl, see Solomon, Carl

Carlos, 621

Carolyn (Cassady), 447

Carpenter, Don, 378, 443

Carpenter, Edward, 442, 443, 445, 446, see n.

Carroll, Paul, 281, see n.

Carter, Jimmy, 753

Cassady, Neal, 33, 136, 142, 164, 186, 187, 341, 375, 385, 447, 495, 496, 498, 499, 500, 505, 513, 518, 519, 537, 542, 546, 554, 560, 566, 597, 607

Castro, Fidel, 273, 283, 331, 699, 752

Catullo, see Catullus

Catullus, 131, 553

Caty, Major, 425

Ceasar, 362, 590

Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, 213

Cendrars, Blaise, 189

Cerberus, 296

Ceres, 371

Cézanne, Paul, 61, 361

Chaitanya, 415, see n.

Chaliapin, 218

Chaney, 555, see n.

Chango, 280, 362, 415, 475, see n.

Chaplin, Charlie, 218, 284, 385

Charles, Ray, 217, 382, 458

Charon, 144, 697

Chavez, Cesar E., 665

Cherry, Don, 577

Chessman, Caryl, 285, see n.

Chiang Kai Shek, 385, 411

Chopin, Frédéric, 358

Chou En Lai, 385

Christopher (MacLaine), 341

Chronos, 357

Churchill, Winston, 423

Citaram Onkar Das Thakur, 315, 414, see n.

Claire (Gaidemack), 193

Clark, Joseph S., 410, see n.

Cleaver, Eldridge, 507, 552

Cocteau, Jean, 189

Colbert, Claudette, 289

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 211

Colorado (pseud.), 189

Columbus, 101

Connie, 269

Connors, Bruce, 396

Cornifici, see Cornificus

Cornificus, 131

Corso, Gregory, 75, 157, 171, 203, 237, 253

Costello, Frank, 643

Cousteau, J., see Cousteau, Jacques

Cousteau, Jacques, 697

Cowan, Elise, 269, 279, 341

Coyote, 475, see n.

Crane, Hart, 175, 176, 177, 425, 433, 437, 441, 444, 460, 484, see n.

Crapp (pseud.), 224

Creeley, Robert, 322, 541, 600, 671

Crevel, René, 354, see n.

Cronkite, Walter, 535

Crosby, Bing, 697

Crown, Henry, 455, see n.

Cummings, E. E., 444, see n.

Curtis, Dal, 485

D., see Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

D—(anon.), 441

Dalai Lama, 385

Daley, Mayor Richard, 593

Dali, Salvador, 429

Dante, 605, 685

David, 341

David (anon.), 232

Davis, Sammy, 728

Dayan, Moshe, 623

Dean, James (Jimmy), 299, 605, 697

Debs, Eugene, 222, 224, see n.

De Gaulle, Charles, 492

Demeter, 710, see n.

Dehorahava Baba, 414, 561, see n.

de Kock, Paul, 81

Denby, Edwin, 466, see n.

de Sade, 285

Dickens, Charles, 211

Dickinson, Emily, 219

Diem, 319

Dietrich, Marlene, 62

Dillinger, John, 455, see n.

Dimwit, Denny, 277

Dirksen, Everett, 420

Disney, Walt, 315, 485, 697

Donald Duck, 665

Dostoievski, see Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 40

Dove, 410

Dracula, Count, 722

Dressler, Marie, 218

Drum H., see Hadley, Drummond

Duchamp, Marcel, 345

Dudjom, 717, see n.

Dulles, Allen, 283, 411

Dulles, John F., 273, 409, 411, 492, see n.

Duncan, Isadora, 697

du Peru, Peter, 282

Durante, Jimmy, 284, 433

Durga-Ma, 415, see n.

Durgin, Russell, 106

Dusty, see Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Dusty, see Moreland, Dusty

Dylan, Bob, 377, 380, 398, 417, 507, 550

Earl, 311, 312

Eberhart, Richard, 667

Ed (Sanders), 355, see n.

Eddy, Nelson, 318, 390

Edie, see Leegant, Edie

Eichmann, Adolf, 325

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 188, 194, 203, 285, 286, 319, 320, 406, 409, 462, 697

Einstein, Albert, 171, 175, 368, 574, 595, 697, 707, 710, 726, 750

Elanor, Aunt, see Frohman, Elanor

Eliot, T. S., 213, 276

Elise, see Cowan, Elise

Ella Mae, 421

Ellsberg, Daniel, 707, see n.

Englebert (Humperdinck), 728

Enkidu, 280, see n.

Ephraim, Uncle, 224

Eros, 602

Eugene, see Ginsberg, Eugene

Evans, Walker, 421, see n.

Eve, 342

Evers, Medgar, 387

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, 341, 385

Fields, W. C., 211, 386

Fitzpatrick, Jim, 498, 499

Fitzgerald, F Scott, 545

Flynn, Errol, 562

Ford, Henry, 155

Forrestal, James V., 273, see n.

Franco, Francisco, 175, 229

Frank, see O’Hara, Frank

Frankenstein, 523, 697, 698

Frohman, Elanor, 218, 219, 222, 226, 228, 229, 230, 231, 234

Frohman, Max, 218, 219, 229, 230, 231

Fugs, The, 434

Fulbright, James William, 455, 457, 459, see n.

Fyodor, see Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Gaidemack, Aunt Rose, 192, 193, 224, 659, 664

Galatea, 72

Gallup, Dick, 707

Gandhi, 301

Ganga-Ma, 305, see n.

Ganipatti, 602, 666, see n.

Ganymede, 357, 611, 723

Garbo, Greta, 231

García Lorca, Federico, 144, 175, see n.

Garden, Mary, 478, 479

Garuda, 320, see n.

Garver, Bill, 196

Gary S., see Snyder, Gary

Gavin, General, 410

Gene, see Ginsberg, Eugene

Genet, Jean, 176, 188, 285

George, see Harrison, George

Gerard, 537

Gide, André, 189

Ginsberg, Allen, 33, 69, 116, 131, 142, 150, 157, 229, 231, 232, 236, 239, 253, 264, 313, 334, 346, 561, 566, 605, 667, 697, 707, 725

Ginsberg, Eugene, 219, 223, 224, 225, 228, 229, 230, 232

Ginsberg, Louis, 218, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 331, 600, 601, 699, 718

Ginsberg, Naomi, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 236, 321, 429, 601, 697, 699

Ginsberg, Rebecca (Grandmother), 220, 221, 230, 232

Glen, 341

Godunov, Boris, 218

Gold, Theodore, 546, see n.

Goldfinger (anon.), 173

Goliath, 475

Goodman, 555, see n.

Gordon, 537

Gorgeous George, 126

Gould, Joe, 433

Grady, Madame (Panna), 432, see n.

Gregory, see Corso, Gregory

G. S., see Snyder, Gary

Guevara, Che, 273, 491, 492

Guillaume, see Apollinaire, Guillaume

Gyalwa Karmapa, see Karmapa, Gyalwa

Hadley, Drummond, 530, see n.

Haines, Harry, 601, see n.

Hal (Chase), 157, 540, see n.

Hampton, Fred, 546, see n.

Handel, Georg Fredrich, 384

Hannah (pseud.), 229

Hardy, Thomas, 31

Harris, Dave, 507

Harrison, George, 373

Harry (Fainlight), 367, see n.

Harry, Uncle, see Meltzer, Harry

Harry T., see Truman, Harry

Hart, Professor, 151

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 124, 224

Hearst, William Randolph, 229, 280, 285, 298

Heck, Mike, 543

Helms, Richard, 699, see n.

Hemingway, Ernest, 76

Hereford, Lord, 490

Hermit, Ed, 552

Hermon, Dr., 534

Herod, 754

Hesiod, 553, 560

Heykal, 623

Hitler, Adolf, 192, 193, 221, 226, 229, 233, 234, 281, 289, 318, 623, 727, 749

Ho Chi Minh, 385, 406, 451

Hoffman, Abbie, 613

Hoffman, John, 269

Hohnsbean, John, 106

Holiday, Billie, 467

Holland, John P., 305, see n.

Holmes, John Clellon, 541, 542, see n.

Homer, 385

Honey (Litzky), Aunt, 192

Honig, Harry, 269

Hoover, J. Edgar, 176, 287, 288, 422, 543, 559, 564, 643

Hope, Bob, 284, 665

Horace, 106

Ho-Tei, 484

Howard, John, 528

Howard, Leslie, 393

H. P. (pseud.), 149

Hubert (Leslie, “Hube the Cube”), 341

Humphrey, Hubert, 408, 593

Huncke, Herbert E., 132, 142, 157, 184, 447, see n.

Huntley, Chet, 392

Iao, 710

Ialdabaoth, 710

Ike, see Eisenhower, Dwight D.

Indra, 602, see n.

Iris (Brodey), 269

Iroquois (pseud.), 185

Isaac, Dr., see Louria, Dr. Leon

Isaiah, 485

Jack, 558

Jack, see Kerouac, Jack

Jack (pseud.), 657

Jackson, George, 605

Jackson, Jumping Joe, 382

Jackson, Natalie, 269, 342

Jacquet, Illinois, 496

Jacob, Max, 189, 190

Jaime, 341

Jaweh, 415, 622, 623, 624

J.C. (Jesus Christ), 528

Jean-Paul, Pope, 717

J. Edgar, see Hoover, J. Edgar

J. E. Hoover, see Hoover, J. Edgar

Jehova, see Jehovah

Jehovah, 139, 710

Jenny (pseud.), 540

Jimmy (Gutierrez), 537

Joan, see Burroughs, Joan

Job, 475

Joe, 161

Joey, see Kerouac

John, Pope, 324

Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 385, 391, 406, 408, 422, 451, 452, 459, 471, 492, 498, 637

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 447

Jones, Elvin, 577

Jones, Leroi, 318, 341, 499, 507, see n.

Jordan (Belson), 341

Jordan, Louis, 496

Jose (anon.), 342

Joseph, Chief, 377, 797

Joseph K., see Kafka, Franz Joseph

Jove, 611

J. P. (anon.), 543

Jude, 78

Judy, 341

Julius, see Orlovsky, Julius

Jupiter, 602, 611

Justin, 341

Kabir, 361, 528, 561, see n.

Kafka, Franz Joseph, 361

Kali, 298, 475, 527

Kali Ma, 303, 354, see n.

Kali Pada Guha Roy, 414, see n.

Kalki, 357, see n.

Kandinsky, Professor, 183

Kangaroo, Captain, 411

Karloff, Boris, 697

Karmapa, Gyalwa, 478, 602, 631, see n.

Keaton, Buster, 352, 353, 437

Keats, John, 211, 261

Keck, William, 106

Kenji Myazawa, 627, see n.

Kennedy, John F., 341, 347, 479, 492, 605, 643, 722, 728, 752

Kennedy, Robert, 416, 451, see n.

Kenney, 132, 423, see n.

Kenyatta, Jomo, 326

Kerouac, Jack, 13, 32, 33, 131, 132, 142, 146, 147, 157, 164, 182, 199, 251, 269, 275, 285, 305, 318, 322, 343, 353, 360, 433, 458, 459, 497, 499, 518, 539, 540, 541, 542, 545, 548, 553, 560, 573, 607, 625, 697, 699

Kesey, Ken, 382, 420, 496

Khaki Baba, 414, see n.

Khrushchev, Nikita, 277, 299, 385, 754

Kierkegaard, Soren, 402

King, Bill, 157, 186

King, Martin Luther, 436, 546, 605, 722

King, M. L., see King, Martin Luther

Kingsland, 106

Kinks, The, 390

Kissinger, Henry, 623, 638, 639, 644, 699, 736

Kline, Franz, 465, see n.

Koch, Edward, 665

Koch, Kenneth, 739

Kosygin, Alexi, 385, 492

Krishna, 320, 362, 415, 475, 521, 522, 528, 536, 559, 600, 602

Krishnamurti, 605

Kuan Yin, 475, see n.

Ky, General Nyugen, 451

Lafcadio, see Orlovsky, Lafcadio

Lama Anikgarika Govinda, 600

Lamantia, Philip, 324

Lance, 341

Lansky, Meyer, 623, see n.

Lao-Tze, 176, 475

Larry, see Ferlinghetti, Lawrence

LaSalle, Governor Melvin, 498

Laurel and Hardy, 385

LaVigne, Robert, 342

Leary, Timothy, 275, 319, 507, 552, 553, 558, 559, 560, 562, 600, 613, 633, see n.

Leegant, Edie, 228, 229, 230

Lennon, John, 373, 422, 754

Leroi, see Jones, Leroi

Leroi (pseud.), 185

Levinsky, 27, see n.

Levy, D. A., 437

Lewis, Fulton, 286

Lewis, Sam, 447, see n.

Lewis and Clark, 377

Liang Kai, 10

Liliuo Kalani, Queen, 697

Lilly, Eli, 420

Lincoln, Abraham, 192, 195, 704

Lindbergh, Charles, 697

Lindsay, Vachel, 176, 177, 191, 405

Lippmann, Walter, 447, see n.

Little, Frank H., 158, see n.

Lizzie (anon.), 186

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 387

Lombardo, Guy, 722

Lorca, see García Lorca

Lou, see Ginsberg, Louis

Louis, see Ginsberg, Louis

Louria, Dr. Leon, 226, 447, see n.

Lowell, Robert, 275, 280

Loy, Myrna, 280, 385

Lubovitcher Rebbe, 385, 622

Luciano, Lucky, 643, 747, see n.

Lucien (Carr), 142

Lucille, 341

Lumumba, Patrice, 299

MacArthur, Douglas, 697

MacDonald, Jeanette, 280, 318, 445

MacNamara, Robert S., 385, 406, see n.

Maheu, Robert, 728, see n.

Mahler, Dr., 669

Maitreya, 357, 600, see n.

Mansfield, Jayne, 605

Mansfield, Mike, 384, 476

Manson, Charles, 563

Mao-Mao, see Mao Tze Tung

Mao Tze Tung, 324, 385, 475, 484, 486, 528, 550

Maretta (Greer), 537

Marko, 341

Marpa, 602, see n.

Martinelli, Sheri, 458

Marx, Chico, 152

Marx, Groucho, 697

Marx, Harpo, 211, 385

Marx, Karl, 154

Mary, 297, 475, 539, 697

Mary (pseud.), 69

Max, see Frohman, Max

Max (Levy), Uncle, 154, 228, 390

Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 175, 176, 180, 190, 472, 745, see n.

McCarthy, Eugene, 594

McCarthy, Joe, 269

McCartney, Paul, 373, 422

McClure, Michael, 396, 414, see n.

McFate, Judge Yale, 273, see n.

McGovern, George, 590, 594

McGuire, Barry, 398

McLuhan, Marshall, 526

McNeil, Don, 499

Meany, George, 593

Meeropol, Michael and Robert, 665

Meir, Golda, 623

Melville, Herman, 402

Meltzer, Harry, 193, 664

Meyer, Cord, 597, see n.

Michaelson, Dr., 399

Mickey Mouse, 199, 697

Mila, see Mila-Repa

Mila-Repa, 378, 602, see n.

Miller, Henry, 285, 353

Miller, Pat, 543

Milton, John, 172, 610

Minerva, 194, 475

Mira Bai, 528

Mohammed, 171, 623

Moloch, 139, 140, 610, see n.

Monet, Claude, 642, 745

Monk, Thelonius, 298

Mooney, Tom, 155, see n.

Moore, Brian, 617

Moore, Henry, 500

Moreland, Dusty, 106, 429

Morgan, J. P., 354

Morgan, M.D., Rex, 485

Morphy (pseud.), 157, 184, 423, see n.

Morse, Wayne, 410, see n.

Mosca, 224

Moses, 622, 697

Mossadegh, 753

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 280

Murchison, Clint, 273, 397, see n.

Mussolini, 223, 229, 698

Myron, 605

Naomi, see Ginsberg, Naomi

Napoleon, 697, 748, 749

Nasser, 623

Natalie, see Jackson, Natalie

Nation, Carry, 418, see n.

Nazimova, Alla, 697

N.C., see Cassady, Neal

Neal, see Cassady, Neal

Nearing, Scott, 155, see n.

Nemmie (Frost), 341

Neruda, Pablo, 704

Nick, 564

Nirmanakaya, 600

Nityananda, 561, see n.

Nixon, Richard M., 527, 537, 549, 550, 558, 559, 590, 594, 599, 614, 623, 637, 644

Norman, Dorothy, 276

Norris, Frank, 493

O’Hara, Frank, 209, 465

Olson, Charles, 323, 560

Orlovsky, Lafcadio, 278, 280, 356, see n.

Orlovsky, Julius, 345, 394, 458, 478, see n.

Orlovsky, Peter, 142, 153, 188, 232, 253, 260, 282, 301, 305, 312, 342, 380, 383, 386, 399, 448, 457, 461, 464, 465, 466, 480, 495, 496, 518, 535, 537, 541, 559, 600, 611, 614, 665, 699, 718

Orwell, George, 605

Oswald, Lee Harvey, 347, 479, 637

Ouroboros, 475

Padmasambhava, 600, 602, 605, 717, see n.

Paley, William S., 723

Pantonucci, Mr., 665

Parcae, 65, 222, see n.

Parker, Helen, 106

Parvati, 475

Patterson, Roy, 666

Paul, 537

Paul, see McCartney, Paul

Paul R—, 330

Péret, Benjamin, 354, see n.

Persephone, 710

Peter, see Orlovsky, Peter

Peter O., see Orlovsky, Peter

Peter, St., 297

Phaëthon, 46

Piaf, Edith, 160

Picasso, Pablo, 189, 190

Plotinus, 135

Plato, 183, 353

Plymell, Charlie, 396, 421, see n.

Poe, Edgar Allan, 135, 176, 222, 228, 276, 298, 474, 522, 523, 672

Pound, Ezra, 177, 325, 408, 494, 601, 632

Presley, Elvis, 697

Prospero, 745

Purvis, Melvin, 455

Pushkin, 309

R—, 222

Ra, 378

Radha, 602, see n.

Radiguet, Raymond, 189

Rainey, Ma, 235

Ram, 303, 362, 602

Ramana Maharshi, 463

Ramakrishna, 301, 475

Raquel (Jodorofsky), 262

Ranger, Lone, 237

Rasputin, 423

Read, Herbert, 466

Reagan, Ronald, 446, 746, 753

Rebecca, see Ginsberg, Rebecca

Redford, Robert, 666

Rembrandt, 224, 479

Rexroth, Kenneth, 160

Reznikoff, 740

Rigaut, Jacques, 189

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 309

Rimbaud, Jean Arthur, 211, 423, 509, 518, 540, 625

Ringo, see Starr, Ringo

Rivers, Larry, 744

Robbins, Jonathan, 673

Robert, see LaVigne, Robert

Robertson (pseud.), 657

Robespierre, 556

Rochester, John Wilmot, 285, see n.

Rockefeller, David, 393, 491, 698, 700

Rockefeller, Nelson, 347, 613, 637, 638, 644, 698, 699, 700

Rogers, Buck, 194, 697

Rolling Stones, 382, 604

Romero, Bishop, 753

Romney, George, 499

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 221, 226, 298, 562, 728, 746

Roosevelt, Kermit, 753

Roosevelt, Theodore, 177

Rosario, 705

Rose, Aunt, see Gaidemack, Aunt Rose

Rose, Billy, 433

Rose in Thrall, irving (Irving Rosenthal), 281, see n.

Rose (Savage), 226

Rosebud (Filieu), 537

Roselle, see Cowan, Elise

Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel, 286, 299, 605, 665

Rousseau, Henri, 189, 509

Rubin, Jerry, 507

Ruby, Jack, 347, 478, 479

Rusk, Dean, 385, 407, 492

Russell, Bertrand, 175

Ruth, 232

Sabaot, 710

Sacco, Nicola, 155, 176, 222, 605, see n.

Sadat, Anwar, 623

St. Germain, 190

St. John of the Cross, 135

St. John Perse, 289

Sainte-Marie, Buffy, 398

Sakajawea, 526

Sakyamuni, 98, 600, see n.

Sam, 161

Sam, Uncle, 192, 225, 287, 299

Samedi, Dr., 600, see n.

Sampas, Sebastian, 360, see n.

Sandburg, Carl, 222

Santa Claus, 198

Saraswati, 602

Satan, 198

Satyananda, 414, see n.

Schacter, Zalmon, 622

Scholem, Gershom, 297

Schwerner, 555, see n.

Scottsboro boys, 155, see n.

Seaborg, Doctor, 710

Seale, Bobby, 563

sGam.po.pa, 602, see n.

Shah,753

Shakespeare, William, 76, 309, 395, 605, 625, 697

Shambu Bharti Baba, 414, see n.

Shankar, 304, see n.

Shapiro, David, 725

Sheila, 269

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 172, 211, 369, 523, 625

Shields, Karena, 105

Siegel, Bugsy, 728, see n.

Shiva, 316, 380, 475, 602, 618

Shivaye, see Shiva

Sigmund III, 358

Sihanouk, Norodom, 319

Silverman, Hersh, 285

Sinatra, Frank, 203, 379, 476, 728

Sinatra, Nancy, 476

Sinclair, John, 552, 559, see n.

Sirhan, Sirhan, 527, 528

Smith, Al, 433

Smith, Harry, 275, 565, see n.

Smith, Mr., 68

Snowflower, Princess, 485

Snow White, 389

Snyder, Gary, 158, 197, 199, 306, 322, 377, 530, 545, 617, 628, 742, see n.

Socrates, 605

Solomon, 297

Solomon, Carl, 76, 134, 138, 140, 142

Sophia, 601, 710

Sophocles, 697

Spade, 161

Spellman, Cardinal, 284

Spengler, Oswald, 605

Spinoza, 171

Sri Chinmoi, 666

Sri Ganeshaya, see Ganapatti

Srimata Krishnaji, 415, see n.

Sri Ramakrishna, 415

Staggerflup, C. O., 485

Stalin, Josef, 623, 752

Starr, Ringo, 373

Stein, Gertrude, 298, 355, 474

Steinbeck, John, 451, 452

Stennis, John C, 392, 406, 410, see n.

Steven, 537

Stevens, Wallace, 194

Stevenson, Adlai, 299

Stravinsky, Igor, 385

Sukarno, 392

Superman, 475

Surabaya Johnnie, 325

Surya, 602, see n.

Su Tung-p’o, 607

Swami Bhaktivedanta, see Bhaktivedanta Swami

Swami Shivananda, 353, 414, see n.

Symington, 410, see n.

Tamburlane, 192

Tara, 601, 611, see n.

Tathagata, 415, see n.

Taylor, Cecil, 631

Taylor, Maxwell, 397, 407, 410

Temple, Shirley, 385

Tennessee (Williams), 654

Thakur, Das, see Citaram Onkar Das Thakur

Thakur, Dr., 666

Thant, U, 476

Thatcher, Margaret, 729

Thespis, 371

Thomas, Norman, 222, 727

Thoreau, Henry David, 394, 448

Tom (Pickard), 368

Trafficante, Santos, 728

Trotsky, Leon, 224, 234

Trotskyites, 154

Truman, Harry, 421, 492

Trungpa, Chögyam, 591, 600, 602, 699, see n.

Trungpaye, see Trungpa, Chögyam

Tulku Tarthang, 530

Turner, George E., 450

Tzara, Tristan, 189

Vaché, Jacques, 189

Van Gogh, Vincent, 175, 177, 189, 229

Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 155, 176, 222, 605, see n.

Veitch, Tom, 601, see n.

Veronica, 485

Versilov, 72, see n.

Vico, Giambattista, 605

Vinal, Harold, 444, see n.

Virgil, 553, 685

Vishnu, 324

Voznesensky, Andrei, 588, 589

Wagner, 276, 281

Waldman, Anne, 658

Walker, Jimmy, 433

Wallace, George, 594

Walt, see Whitman, Walt

Walter, see Whitman

Walter (Curanosy), 262

Washington, George, 194, 298, 421

Watts, Alan, 620

Wayne, John, 543

W. C. Williams, see Williams, William Carlos

Weizmann, 623

West, Nathanael, 390

Westmoreland, 491

Whalen, Philip, 232, 257, 553, 600, see n.

White, Ambassador, 753

White, J. Alan, 341, 396

Whitman, Walt, 118, 123, 144, 164, 172, 175, 189, 211, 402, 443, 460, 638, 710, 713, 740, 745

William, see Burroughs, William S.

Williams, Godfather, 601

Williams, Hank, 527

Williams, William Carlos, 213, 237, 305, 640

Winslow, Don, 553

Wisdom, Ignaz (pseud.), 182

Woodford, Jack, 81

Woodpecker, Woody, 198

W. S. B., see Burroughs, William S.

X, Malcolm, 590, 605

Xerxes, 697

Xochopili, 746, see n.

Yamantaka, 335

Yeats, William Butler, 351

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 451, see n.

Zarathustra, 475

Zeus, 389, 475, 602, 611

Zhdanov, Andrei Aleksandrovich, 224, see n.

Zwingli, 605

WHITE SHROUD POEMS 1980–1985

“Old lovers yet may have
All that Time denied—
Grave is heaped on grave,
That they be satisfied—”

Thanks to hospitable editors, variants of these writings were printed first in: Action, American Poetry Review, Apartment, Art contre/against Apartheid, The Atlantic, Big Scream, Bombay Gin, Christopher Street, Folger Library Broadside, Full Circle, Here Now, Hidrogenski Dzuboke, L. A. Weekly, Long Shot, Mag City, Nagyvilag, NAMBLA Journal, Naropa Institute Bulletin, National Lampoon, New Age, New Blood, Northern Literary Quarterly, Open, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Peace or Perish, Poesi 1 (Oslo), Poetry, Poetry East, Portable Lower East Side, riverrun, Spao Spassiba, Sulfur, The New York Times Magazine, Tribu, United Press International, Vajradhatu Sun, Vanity Fair, White Shroud (Kunsthalle, Basle).

To
Edith Ginsberg

Acknowledgments

Steven Taylor: Lead sheets; Walter Taylor: Lyric calligraphy.

Harry Smith: Archetype design for cover, executed by Julie Metz.

Bill Morgan, Bob Rosenthal, Juanita Lieberman, Gary Allen and Vicki Stanbury helped assemble typescript texts.

Aaron Asher & Terry Karten, Editors; Marge Horvitz, Copy Editor; Bill Monroe, Surveyor of Detail.

Porch Scribbles

Balmy, hotter outside than in the living room—
          Wind rustles the rattlesnake reeds.
Didja see the Perseus star shower last night?

*   *   *

Bright on Flatirons, sunshine gleams
          on clouds, on brown shake shingles,
                    tree limbs rock,
So bright on the car roof, I gotta sleep—

*   *   *

I want that brick house on Mapleton,
it’s for sale “Moore Real Estate”—
               But price too high,
I’m too drowsy to go to the telephone.

*   *   *

Clouds float up from the end of the world—
          Have we enough room for population explosion?
Call up Gary, let’s find out what he thinks.

July 11, 1980

That tree stands higher than a house
          like a dog with hair drooping over its mouth—
green long beanpods hang from its branches

*   *   *

It’s a whale that big gray-bottom cloud floating
over the Flatirons, it’s a mushroom, a shipcastle, a
               mountain with sunshine and Coasts—
                                   It’s a pile of mist.

*   *   *

Look up, clouds in the sky,
          suddenly their shadows fall where Mrs. Hurst
               on Mapleton Street sprays her front lawn.

*   *   *

Midsummer, green leaves thick on maples
          The front yard, white flowers—
               Cause it’s just so beautiful now!
How sad, to be alive watching the season at its height—

*   *   *

          Spray the lawn, it’s too hot—
Street children call, car radios play muted disco
               Gray clouds umbrella brilliant sun
I used to be young once, bewildered
                         like that barechested little
                              girl across the street.

*   *   *

Where I sit, leg over my knee
listening to the whippoorwill call of a distant ambulance,
the thin tree’s little leaves startle and jump,
raindrops fall thicker & the smell of ozone
               wafts across the porch.

*   *   *

Everyone loves the rain, except those caught in their
                                        business suits,
birds whistle, tree leaves shake excited, electric smells
rise across the City to the watchers on the balcony—

August 2, 1980

Did the Ecologist chop his girl with an ax in Philadelphia
          & hide her corpse a year in the trunk?
What does that red-haired boy half-naked on the sidewalk
                         with his Frisbee think of that?

Boulder, August 3, 1980

Industrial Waves

Tune: Capitol Air

The New Right’s a creepy pre-Fascist fad
Salute the flag & call on Mom & Dad
Shit on the niggers it’s their fault they were slaves
In a free market you can get rich filling graves.

Freedom for the rich to suck off the Work of the Poor
Freedom for Monopoly to corner the market in horse manure
Freedom for the secret police and guys with guns
Freedom for bully buys! Death to the Radical Nuns!

Freedom to buy Judges! Freedom for organized crime!
Freedom for the Military! “I got mine.”
Hundred millions free to starve, isn’t that great?
Freedom for the Neutron bomb to radiate!

Freedom for War! Fight for Peace! Whoopee!
“Government off our backs”—except the Military!
Freedom for Narcs to put junkies in jail!
Freedom to punish sick addicts, all hail!

Freedom to bust you for grass if you please
Freedom to beat you up when you’re down on your knees
Freedom for Capital Punishment, without fail!
Freedom to wiretap your phone & open up your mail.

Freedom for Cosa Nostra’s pornography
Freedom to ban your verse in the high school library
Freedom to stop deaf widows’ food stamps
Freedom to draft-register everyone wearing pants.

Free computerized National Police!
Everybody got identity cards? At Ease!
Freedom for Big Business to eat up the sea
Freedom for Exxon to examine your pee!

Freedom of the air for William Buckley
Freedom for Mobil to buy up TV
Freedom to influence Network News
Freedom for money to make you wear shoes.

Freedom to fink out Nicaraguan liberty
Freedom to shove them into Soviet economy!
Freedom for Costa Rica to eat our military scenes
Freedom in Honduras for Contras & Marines!

Freedom for Indonesia to murder half million
Freedom for South Africa to stabilize the Bullion
Freedom for South Africa to slave her Blacks
Freedom for Korea’s corrupt party hacks.

Freedom for America to kick plenty Ass
Allende Lumumba yass yass yass!
Freedom for Martin Luther King it’s a gas
Freedom to forget our bloody Indochinese past!

Freedom to be Macho to be Number One
Freedom to boast the heaviest nuclear gun!
Freedom to kill for KKK
If you got a White Jury you might get away.

Freedom to work if you don’t Unionize
Freedom to listen to Presidential lies
Freedom to have your name in Secret Service file
Freedom to run with the Mob for a while.

Freedom from government regulation!
Freedom to not be allowed an abortion!
Freedom for old folks to enjoy inflation
Freedom to destabilize the Chilean Nation!

Freedom to abandon Latin Human Rights
To deport John Lennon for his Political delights
Freedom to ban Genius entering the Land
& slap Nobel Prize novelists on the hand.

Freedom for overt Covert War sleaze
Freedom for Death Squads to chop off your knees
Freedom to put pederasts in Prison
Freedom to stop Fairies from eating Gyzym.

Freedom to assemble & get gassed or shot
Freedom to not be allowed to smoke pot
Freedom to drink till you got the DT’s
Freedom to never take LSD.

Freedom to smoke & have your Utah Cancer
Freedom to shake down a bottomless Dancer
Freedom to be forbidden Peyote Vision
Freedom to censor Howl on Television.

Freedom to farm if you’re a big bank
Freedom to go bankrupt or land in the tank
If you’re a small farmer who grows a little grass
Freedom to be arrested & kicked in the ass.

Freedom to cut down world’s oldest trees
Freedom to make Indians get down on their knees
And pray to your God and obey your FBI
And freedom to protest if you’re not too scared to die.

Freedom to persecute the Underground Press
& Murder Malcolm X if that’s what you think’s best
Freedom to Assassinate, & never go to jail
If the CIA Protects you, and they hardly ever fail.

Freedom to squirt Mace in a little boy’s face
If you’re on the TAC Squad & you don’t like his race
Freedom to shoot him if he makes you nervous
And he’s 12 years old and you’ve just joined the service.

Freedom to bribe Japan if you’re Lockheed
You won’t go to jail unless you’re smoking weed
Freedom to buy Iran if you want
At least we used to, right now we can’t.

Freedom to foment a Strike in Chile
And lie to Congress if you’re Pres. of ITT
Freedom to kill an elected President
If you’re a CIA stringer, that’s how it went.

Freedom to commit a little perjury—
If your name is Richard Helms, you pay a little fee
Then get yourself appointed Ambassador to Iran
They keep calling you Ambassador as long as they can.

Freedom to sell dope if you’re CIA
Or a Narc on the Street you can do it anyway
Or the sister of the Shah or informer for the law—
If your name is Abbie Hoffman you might take a fall.

Freedom to announce what you want to the Press
They print what they hear, it’s anybody’s guess
The public is free not to hear what you meant
But there’s freedom for full-page advertisement

If you’re Mobil, if you’re Dow, or a millionaire Jerk
Buy a column on the Op Ed page for your work
If you’re rich as Rockefeller you can die without your pants
Sniffing poppers and the papers won’t give yr corpse another glance.

If you’re AT&T you have plenty Liberty
To wave your flag all over the land of the free
You can take the back page of The News in Review
To say what’s good for America’s nothing else but you.

If you got a million from a Texas millionaire
You can buy television time, get yrself on the air
Freedom to shut up if you’re Powerful Poor
Freedom to wait outside the Police Station door.

You’re free to denounce any Pinko that you please!
You can ask for Moral Money, give your God’s heart ease!
Free to attack the producers in a rage
Free to land in Jail, get beat up on the back page.

Freedom to be one of the few that count
Freedom to be “Serious,” that freedom’ll amount
To the fact that you’re free to agree to more Cold War—
Flakes & Losers are free to go ’way sore.

March 1981

Those Two

That tree said
     I don’t like that white car under me,
                         it smells gasoline
That other tree next to it said
          O you’re always complaining
                    you’re a neurotic
               you can see by the way you’re bent over.

July 6, 1981, 8 P.M.

Homage Vajracarya

Now that Samurai bow & arrow, Sumi brush, teacup
& Emperor’s fan are balanced in the hand
—What about a glass of water?
Holding my cock to pee, the Atlantic gushes out.
Sitting to eat, the Sun & the Moon fill my plate.

July 8, 1981

Why I Meditate

I sit because the Dadaists screamed on Mirror Street

I sit because the Surrealists ate angry pillows

I sit because the Imagists breathed calmly in Rutherford and Manhattan

I sit because 2400 years

I sit in America because Buddha saw a Corpse in Lumbini

I sit because the Yippies whooped up Chicago’s teargas skies once

I sit because No because

I sit because I was unable to trace the Unborn back to the womb

I sit because it’s easy

I sit because I get angry if I don’t

I sit because they told me to

I sit because I read about it in the Funny Papers

I sit because I had a vision also dropped LSD

I sit because I don’t know what else to do like Peter Orlovsky

I sit because after Lunacharsky got fired & Stalin gave Zhdanov a special tennis court I became a rootless cosmopolitan

I sit inside the shell of the old Me

I sit for world revolution

July 19, 1981

Love Comes

I lay down to rest
weary at best
of party life
& dancing nights
Alone, Prepared
all I dared
bed & oil
bath, small toil
to clean my feet
place my slippers neat.

Alone, despair—
lighthearted, bare-
bottom trudged about,
listening the shout
of students down below
rock rolling fast and slow
shaking ash for show,
or love, or joy
hairless girl and boy
goldenhaired goy

The door creaked loud
far from the crowd
Upstairs he trod
Eros or some god
come to visit,
Washed in the bath
calm as death
patient took a shit
approached me clean
naked serene

I sat on his thighs
looked in his eyes
I touched his hair
Bare body there
head to foot
big man root
I kissed his chest
Came down from above
I took in his rod
he pushed and shoved
That felt best

My behind in his groin
his big boyish loin
stuck all the way in
That’s how we began
Both knees on the bed
his head to my head
he shoved in again
I loved him then

I pushed back deep
Soon he wanted to sleep
He wanted to rest
my back to his chest
My rear went down
I rolled it around
He pushed to the bottom
Now I’ve got ’em
He took control
made the bed roll

I relaxed my inside
loosed the ring in my hide
Surrendered in time
whole body and mind
and heart at the sheet
He continued to beat
his meat in my meat,
held me around
my chest love-bound
sighed without sound

My breast relaxed
my belly a sack
my sphincter loosed
to his hard deep thrust
I clenched my gut tight
in full moon light
thru curtained window
for an hour or so
thin clouds in the sky
I watched pass by
sigh after sigh

He fucked me in the East
he fucked me in the West
he fucked me South
my cock in his mouth
he fucked me North
No sperm shot forth

He continued to love
I spread my knees
pushed apart by his
so that he could move
in and out at ease,
Knelt on the bed
pillow against my head
I wanted release

Tho’ it hurt not much
a punishment such
as I asked to feel
back arched for the real
solid prick of control
a youth 19 years old
gave with deep grace,
body fair, curly gold
hair, angelic face

I’d waited a week
the promise he’d keep
if I trusted the truth
of his love in his youth
and I do love him—
tall body, pale skin
Hot heart within
open blue eyes—
a hard cock never lies.

July 4-October 11, 1981

Old Love Story

Some think the love of boys is wicked in the world, forlorn,
Character corrupting, worthy mankind’s scorn
Or eyes that weep and breasts that ache for lovely youth
Have no mouth to speak for mankind’s general truth
Nor hands to work manhood’s fullest delight
Nor hearts to make old women smile day and night
Nor arms to warm young girls to dream of love
Nor thighs to satisfy thighs, nor breath men can approve—
Yet think back to the time our epic world was new
When Gilgamesh followed the shade of his friend Enkidu
Into Limbo’s dust to talk love man to man
So younger David enamored of young Jonathan
Wrote songs that women and men still chant for calm
Century after century under evergreen or palm
A love writ so sacred on our Bible leaf
That heart-fire warms cold millennial grief.
Same time Akilleos won the war at Troy
Grieving Patroklos’ body, his dead warrior boy
(One nation won the world by reading Greek for this
And fell when Wilde was gaoled for his Bellboy’s kiss)
Marvelous Zeus himself took lightning eagle shape
Down-cheeked Ganymede enjoyed God’s thick-winged rape
And lived a youth forever, forever as can be,
Serving his nectar to the bearded deity
The whole world knew the story, the world laughed in awe
That such Love could be the Thunder of immortal Law.
When Socrates climbed his ladder of love’s degrees
He put his foot in silence on rough Alcibiades
Wise men still read Plato, whoever they are,
Plato whose love-lad Aster was his morning star
Plato whose love-lad was in death his star of Night
Which Shelley once witnessed as Eternal Light.
Catullus and tough Horace were slaves to glad young men
Loved them cursed them, always fell in love again
Caesar conquered the world, top Emperor Power
Lay soft on the breast of his soldier of the hour
Even Jesus Christ loved his young John most
Later he showed him the whole Heavenly Host
Old Rome approved a beautiful bodied youth
Antinöus Hadrian worshipped with Imperial Truth
Told in the calm gaze of his hundred stone
Statues standing figleafed in the Vatican.
Michelangelo lifted his young hand to smooth
The belly of his Bacchus a sixteen-year youth
Whose prick stands up he’s drunk, his eyes gaze side-
Ways to his right hand held up shoulder high
Waving a cup of grape, smart kid, his nose is sharp,
His lips are new, slightly opened as if part-
Ed to take a sip of purple nakedness,
Taste Michelangelo’s mortal-bearded kiss,
Or if a hair-hooved horny Satyr happens to pass
Fall to the ground on his strong little marble ass.
Michelangelo loved him! What young stud
Stood without trousers or shirt, maybe even did
What the creator wanted him to in bed
Lay still with the sculptor’s hand cupped on his head
Feeling up his muscles, feeling down his bones
Palm down his back and thighs, touching his soft stones—
What kind of men were the Slaves he tied to his bed?
And who stood still for David naked foot to head?
But men love the muscles of David’s abdomen
And come with their women to see him again and again.

Enough, I’ve stayed up all night with these boys
And all my life enjoyed their handsome joys
I came with many companions to this Dawn
Now I’m tired and must set my pen down
Reader, Hearer, this time Understand
How kind it is for man to love a man,
Old love and Present, future love the same
Hear and Read what love is without shame.

I want people to understand! They can! They can! They can!
So open your ears and hear the voice of the classical Band.

October 26, 1981

AIRPLANE BLUES

Copyright © 1986 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg

Airplane Blues

I drove out to the airport
                         on a blue sunny day
Smog brown over Denver
                         Horizon dung gray
Look down on Missouri
                         vast river bend south
Dakota sky brilliant
                         Cigarette in my mouth

I’ve had many lovers
                         over half century
I have a new boyfriend
                         Nineteen years, he loves me
But I can’t get it up
                         too timid and shy
Growing old in my heaven
                         Singing blues in the sky

Nothing here to complain of
                         White clouds in the sun
Peace in my heart
                         Empty sky Everyone
But earth I look down on
                         Turns round misery
Green dollars fat
                         with the war industry

Mankind’s great delusions
                         Scrape sky with red rage
Build bombs out of Atoms
                         to blast out the words on this page
Majestical jailhouse
                         our Joy’s in the Cage
Hearts full of hatred
                         will outlast my old age

*   *   *

My mother has perished
                         my father’s long dead
I have a sweet brother
                         healed the pain in his head
I’m going to the Apple
                         to eat with my friends
While the radio chatters
                         what the President intends

Down there Mississippi
                         Minneapolis near
Farms and green comforts
                         of the Northern Hemisphere
While Earth’s hundred millions
                         Chew miserable clay
Old African kingdoms
                         Starve this century

I’ll read in the papers
                         more deaths in Iran
Jahweh rules Israel
                         Tanks in Afghanistan
Martial Law rules Gdansk
                         and the old Viet-Nam War
Murders Indians in Guatemala
                         and burns down El Salvador

London and Belfast
                         Los Angeles and Prague
Tel Aviv & Moscow
                         sit in their smog
Phnom Penh’s red ruin
                         was Washington’s pride
Hanoi hates Peking
                         where the God Mao has died

I’m alone in the sky
                         where there’s nothing to lose
The Sun’s not eternal
                         That’s why there’s the blues
Majestical jailhouse
                         our Joy’s in the Cage
Hearts full of hatred
                         will outlast my old age

*   *   *

Turn round in the sunset
                         over Manhattan isle
Newark was my birthplace
                         under the wing for a while
Green gastanks of Kearny
                         Smog brown in the sky
Seven million black men and white
                         live here and die

Come down over Harlem
                         red buildings stand still
Dusk light gleams their windows
                         wheels bound on the landfill
Sky streaked with jet streams
                         black clouds in the west
In the Lower East Side
                         I’ll go take my rest.

October 30, 1981

DO THE MEDITATION ROCK

Copyright © 1986 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg

Do the Meditation Rock*

Tune: I fought the Dharma, and the Dharma won

If you want to learn
I’ll tell you now
I’ll tell you how
it’s just that great
If you are an old
or a lama who lives
The first thing you do
is keep your spine
Sit yourself down
or sit in a chair
how to meditate
’cause it’s never too late
’cause I can’t wait
that it’s never too late
fraud like me
in Eternity
when you meditate
your backbone straight
on a pillow on the ground
if the ground isn’t there

Do the meditation          Do the meditation

     Learn a little Patience and Generosity

Follow your breath out
and sit there steady
Follow your breath right
follow it out
Follow your breath
to the thought of yr death
Follow your breath
whatever you think
open your eyes
& sit there wise
outta your nose
as far as it goes
but don’t hang on
in old Saigon
when thought forms rise
it’s a big surprise

Do the meditation          Do the meditation

Learn a little Patience and Generosity

Generosity     Generosity     Generosity & Generosity

All you got to do
you’re sitting meditating
when thoughts catch up
forget what you thought
Laurel Hardy Uncle Don
you don’t have to drop
If you see a vision come
play it dumb
if you want a holocaust
it just went past
is to imitate
and you’re never too late
but your breath goes on
about Uncle Don
Charlie Chaplin Uncle Don
your nuclear bomb
say Hello Goodbye
with an empty eye
you can recall your mind
with the Western wind

Do the meditation          Do the meditation

Learn a little Patience          & Generosity

If you see Apocalypse
or a flying saucer
If you feel a little bliss
give your wife a kiss
If you can’t think straight
it’s never too late
Do the meditation
so your body & mind
in a long red car
sit where you are
don’t worry about that
when your tire goes flat
& you don’t know who to call
to do nothing at all
follow your breath
get together for a rest

Do the meditation          Do the meditation

Learn a little Patience          and Generosity

If you sit for an hour
you can tell the Superpower
you can tell the Superpower
& to stop & meditate
or a minute every day
to sit the same way
to watch and wait
’cause it’s never too late

Do the meditation          Do the meditation

Get yourself together          lots of Energy

& Generosity Generosity Generosity & Generosity!

St. Mark’s Place, Xmas 1981

THE LITTLE FISH DEVOURS THE BIG FISH

Copyright © 1986 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg

The Little Fish Devours the Big Fish

When the troops
get their poop
at Fort Bragg
how to frag
Sandinistas
Leftist Nicas
or go bomb
Guatemalan
Indians
Make a tomb
for men & boys
ending joys
of villages
and pillage
or burn down
to the ground
little huts
where pigs rut
This costs much
tax money as such
for an error
of red terror

Hypocrisy
is the key
to self defeating
prophecy

Genia Yevtushenko
Ernesto Cardenal
Allen Ginsberg
Rocknroll
sentimental
& reliable
& poetical
& prophetical
Therefore urge
Washington
& Havana men
to relax
& reflect
that the ax
on the neck
of Nicaragua’s
a big error
of war fever

Double bind
makes us blind
to self fulfilling
prophecy—
If you’re willing,
lose your eye
& your ear
mad with fear

Hypocrisy
is the key
to self fulfilling
prophecy

You can bet
Marxist threat
starts with that
self fulfilling
prophecy
if you’re willing
to admit
that the threat
of invasion
of a nation
might cause them
great alarm,
Make them arm
to resist,
mobilize
to insist
they will fight
back all right—
Then to condemn
their armed men
and not molli
fy their fears
is sheer folly
O my dears!

Hypocrisy
is the key
to self fulfilling
prophecy

United States
you’re the greatest
Superdick
your big stick
& big mouth
North & South
causes fear—
Armies near
and armies far
or army talk
wherever you are
makes folks here
think you’re queer
Big gun boats
that you float,
big rumors
that you dote
on will be quoted
in Managua
Santiago
Buenos Aires
& Havana
as more dread
threat of war
and Central
America will
Mobilize
militarize
and devise
a defense,
it’s common sense.
Then to complain
that their plan
to fight back
is a pain in the neck
of the Pentagon—
Washington
is crazy, Man.

Hypocrisy
is the key
to self fulfilling
prophecy—
If you’re willing—
costs an eye
and an ear
mad with fear.

Intercontinental Hotel Bar, Managua
January 25, 1982, 11 P.M.

Happening Now?

Happening now? End of Earth? Apocalypse days?
President says “Armageddon!” $254 Billion Military Budget!
The 5 A.M. subway train leaves Times Square
Crowded with murderers & corpses sitting in dress suits,
Earphones listening to mechanical disco, infinite
Deaf universe of Walkman Happening now
While I drink Perrier at parties in Bel Air
Neutron bomb Nerve Bacteria gas, fruit fly recombinant
Germ plasm, Stratospheric X-ray laser
Anti-rocket beams, MX Cruise Stealth & Pershing missiles
In dream ten years ago I stood on a South Texas crossroad
Walked out alone from what City I couldn’t remember
Half the sky was covered with ink-black cloud
Tanks and bombers moved toward the distant horizon

February 7, 1982

A Public Poetry

The fact is, the Russians are sissies
And Chinese big yellow sissies too
Americans by their nature sissies
Ran away to the New World & beat up Indians,
Now we’re gonna let Peabody Coal take their Four Corners away!
So sissy we exploded Atom Bombs on Japs!

I myself a famous sissy, it takes one to know one

and know State Secretary XYZ a prissy sissy

Gave his nickels to Indian killer Juntas in Guatemala

Too freaked out to look El Salvador Deathsquads in the eye

Yelling tiny Nicaragua’s a big threat to undernourished Mexico!

President ABC’s the biggest sissy

Hollywood sissy

Bechtel Corporation sissy

Such a sissy he gave 200 Billion Dollars to Pentagon Bullies

frightened they’ll beat him up if he don’t let the Generals grab all his money

And the American public’s sissy too

Scared if they don’t give everything in their pockets to Defense Department

the muscle men at the Pentagon and tough guys at CIA’ll

beat up Congress and Supreme Court

and take over the whole Western Block.

April 6, 1982, 2:00 P.M.

“What You Up To?”

“Oh just hanging around
     picking my nose …”
I replied, embarrassed
     in Naropa’s corridor,
the Sanskrit professor’d saluted me
as Americans are wont to do—
What must he think my genius,
     a large red blob on my
     index finger tip—
But I suffer from Bell’s palsy
my lower eyelid slightly paralyzed
no longer conducts tears thru
     my nostril
thus my nose corridors dry up
     & crack, for five years
whenever I lift the handkerchief
     from my face
a spot of red stains the pure
     cotton & shames me.
When I walk with bent spine & cane
     will my nose be caked with
blood black & ulcerous? tears
     running down my cheeks
a bony pinkie picking at the
     scarlet scab that got thick
overnight, I forgot to grease my
     wrinkled snout the nite
     of my eightieth birthday

and dreamed all the red
     mountain of mucus accumulated
     round me
Himalaya of suffering gelatinous
     slop my lifetime since 1976
when the right side my face
     drooped dead muscles
’cause an O.D. on Doctor’s Antibiotic
     inflamed my seventh cranial nerve inside
     its cheekbone
& left me dry-nosed with crooked
     smile & sneaky finger
Probing the irritation in the
     middle of my face
walking daydreaming in the school hall—
That White boy in a two-piece suit
     Hotel Astor bar on Times Square
I took home one night in 1946
     he fucked me naked in the ass
till I smelled brown excrement
     staining his cock
& tried to get up from bed to go to the
     toilet a minute
but he held me down & kept pumping
     at me, serious & said
“No I don’t want to stop I like it dirty
     like this.”

April 30, 1982

Maturity

Young I drank beer & vomited green bile
Older drank wine vomited blood red
Now I vomit air

July 1982

“Throw Out the Yellow Journalists of Bad Grammar & Terrible Manner”

for Anne Waldman

who report Ten Commandments & Golden Rule forgetting Thou shalt not bear false witness Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you

and say the Man got crucified for insulting the Sanhedrin at a Victory Dance in the bombed out madhouse in Beirut

Out! Out! The Mad Correspondent who headlined “Madman or Messiah? He Died of Bad Pork” the night of Tathagata’s Parinirvana

or the snide reporter with yellow teeth who asked the Big Question, “Kerouac couldn’t write, so what’d he do it for, money?”

or the Time stringer who asks “You could say it was a nostalgia Trip, wouldn’t you?”

as you fly off to the moon on your translucent sexual wings forever

and the wire-service fellow ex-Harvard, “This business about Secret Police, why would you care, successful Abstract Expressionist painter, got a grudge to work out on your parents?”

Out! Out! into the Buddhafields, among stars to wander forever, weightless without a headline, without thought, without newspapers to read by the light of the Galaxies.

August 10, 1982

GOING TO THE WORLD OF THE DEAD

Going to the World of the Dead

Going to the World of the Dead
Stalin & Hitler in Bed
Gone inside of your head
Anybody got any bread?
FBI papers to shred?
Eisenhower’s ghost on a sled
Going to the world of the dead
Everybody gives you good head

Millionaires of Detroit
Millionaires of Chicago
Millionaires of New York
Millionaires of Hollywood
Let go of your money Ho Ho Ho
Let go your Big Poetry Let go Let go

Let go of your cars  Ho Ho Ho
Let go your Cocaine  Ho Ho Ho
Let go your meat Let go Let go
Let go Movie Picture Ho Ho Ho
Let go your Diamonds  Ho Ho Ho
Let go your Dollars Let go yr Gold

Let go your Houses Your Bodies Let go
Let go your Souls  Ho Ho Ho
Let go God  Buddha Let go
Let go Allah  Let go Let go
Let go your Armies  Ho Ho Ho
Let go your war  Ho Ho Ho

Let go your Holy  Land Let go
Let go Palestine  P.L.O.
Jews Let go Let go Let go
Let go Israel  Ho Ho Ho
Let go Apocalypse Let go Let go
Let go Yr Bomb  Ho Ho Ho

Your Nuclear Bomb  Ho Ho Ho
Let go your Disaster your Death Let go
Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho
Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho
Millionaires of Mexico  Ho Ho Ho
Millionaires of Nicaragua Let go Let go

August 22, 1982, 6:30 P.M.

   Guasave-Las Mochis bus past soya & cotton fields where red flags flew over plastic huts squatting by highway side

Irritable Vegetable

Don’t send me letters  Don’t send me poems
Too busy sick to write poetry  Sky’s covered with gray clouds
Perfect for photography
I have brain metal fatigue  Knee jerk aesthetic tears
So you got a junk habit
So you need a recommendation to Purgatory U.
So you’re working with Fort Collins’ Nuclear Freeze Campaign
So you got hi blood pressure  Your big toe hurts
Someday you’ll die
So you sing Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
          Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
So you work on the top floor of the Empire State Building
You’re a jerk
You’re a hypocrite who eats hot dogs.

October 28, 1982

Thoughts Sitting Breathing II

When I sat in my bedroom for devotions, meditations & prayers

my Gomden on a sheepskin rug beside the mirrored closet,

white curtains morning sunlit, Friday Rocky Mountain News “Market Retreats in Busiest Day”

lying on the table by Nuclear Nightmare issue of Newsweek,

Katherine Mansfield’s thick bio & Addington Symonds’ The Greek Poets

lifting a white lamp above my headboard pillow illuminating Living Country Blues’ small print 1 A.M. last night,

with B complex bottled, green mint massage oil, High Blood Pressure nightly Clonadine Hydrochloric pills,

athlete’s foot Tolnaftate cream, newsclip scissors and a rusty shoe-last bookweight standing on xeroxed Flying Saucer papers,

new ballpoint pens, watch, wallet, loose coins keys Swiss army knife

toothpicks, pencil sharpener & filefolder of Buddhist Analytic Psyche papers

scattered random across this bedstead desk—

As I breathed between white walls, Front Range cliffs resting in the sky outside south windows

I remembered last night’s television suitcoat tie debate, the neat Jewish right wing student outwitted a nervous Dartmouth pimply liberal editor

knowing that boy who swears to “get the Government off our backs” would give my tax money to Army brass bands FBI rather than St. Mark’s Poetry Project—

He can’t read verse with any sense of humor sharp eyed

but then some poets can’t either, did Ed Dorn find me fatuous, can I breathe in hot black anger & breathe out white cool bliss?

Doomed guilty layman all my life! these pills causing impotency?

Could I move bookcases & clothes out of my bedroom, 8 foot desk file cabinets & typewriter

to the small apartment next door N.Y., would that end my hideous Public Karma,

Telephones tingling down my spine, pederast paranoid hypnotic burnt out teenage fruitcake poets

banging the door for protection from Brain Damaged Electric Guitar Police in New Wave Blue Vibration Uniforms?

Be that as it may as blue empty Buddha floats through blue bodied sky,

should I settle down & practice meditation, care for my nervous Self, do nothing,

arrange paper manuscripts, die in Lower East Side peace instead of heart attack in Ethiopia,

What way out of this Ego? let it appear disappear, mental images

Nothing but thoughts, how solve World Problems by worrying in my bedroom?—

Still one clear word-mighty poem might reveal what Duncan named Grief in America

that one hundred million folk malnourish the globe while Civic Powers inflate $200 billion War Machines this year—

and who gets rich on that, don’t all of us get poor heart?—but what do I know of Military Worlds?

Airfields and Aircraft Carriers, bugle Corps, ice cream concessions,

million dollar Computer rockets—yes I glimpse CIAs spooky dope deal vanity—but nothing of Camp Pendleton’s brainy Thoughts

Norfolk officers’ vast housing tracts, messes and helicopters, food resource

logistics Pentagon committees’ve amassed—NORAD’s Rapture Mountain

Maybe get rid of Cold War, give Russian Empire warm weather access,

inaugurate trillion dollar Solar Power factories on every Continent—

Yes access to sunny blue ocean, not Cold Murmansk & Vladivostok Ports they need a vast hot harbor

International Agreement big warships forbidden, no battleships from Russia or America in the azure Greek pond—

What about pirates, storms at sea or kamikaze Hell’s Angel North Africans shooting Jews?

Well a few small Police boats, no Cruisers or Nuclear Subs—

Yes a warm weather port for Russian access South I thought

sitting on my bedroom floor cushion 10:30 A.M. getting hungry breathing thru shades & curtains on transparent windows, morning sun shining on white painted walls and gray rug—

So remembering the old story of Russia’s claim to a warm weather harbor I came back to myself, blue clouded Colorado sky adrift above the Bluff Street Boulder house.

November 8, 1982

What the Sea Throws Up at Vlissingen

for Simon Vinkenoog

Plastic & cellophane, milk cartons & yogurt containers, blue & orange shopping bag nets

Clementine peels, paper sacks, feathers & kelp, bricks & sticks,

succulent green leaves & pine tips, waterbottles, plywood and tobacco pouches

Coffee jartops, milkbottle caps, rice bags, blue rope, an old brown shoe, an onion skin

Concrete chunks white pebbled, sea biscuits, detergent squeezers, bark and boards, a whisk-brush, a box top

Formula A Dismantling Spray-can, a whole small brown onion, a yellow cup

A boy with two canes walking the shore, a dead gull, a blue running shoe,

a shopping bag handle, lemon half, celery bunch, a cloth net—

Cork bottletop, grapefruit, rubber glove, wet firework tubes,

masses of iron-brown-tinted seaweed along the high water mark near the sea wall,

a plastic car fender, green helmet broken in half, giant hemp rope knot, tree trunk stripped of bark,

a wooden stake, a bucket, myriad plastic bottles, pasta Zara pack,

a long gray plastic oildrum, bandage roll, glass bottle, tin can, Christmas pine tree

a rusty iron pipe, me and my peepee.

January 3, 1983

I Am Not

I’m not a lesbian screaming in the basement strapped to a leather spiderweb

I’m not a Rockefeller heart attacked in the paramour bed with pants off

I’m not a radical Stalinist intellectual fairy

not an antisemitic Rabbi with black hat white beard & dirty fingernails

not the San Francisco jail cell poet beaten by minions of yellow police New Year’s eve

not Gregory Corso Orpheus Maudit of these States

nor yet a schoolteacher with marvelous salary

I’m not anyone I know

in fact I’m only here for 80 years

St. Clement’s Church, March 7, 1983

I’m a Prisoner of Allen Ginsberg

Who is this Slave Master makes
     me answer letters in his name
Write poetry year after year, keep up
     appearances
This egotist whose file cabinets
     leave no room for more
     pictures of Me?
How escape his clutches, his public sound,
     bank accounts, Master Charge
     interest
Who’s this politician hypnotized my life
     with his favors
Petty friends & covert Nemesis, dead heroes and
     living ghosts hanging around
waiting Genius handout?
Why’s this guy oblige me to sit
     meditating,
shine rocknroll Moon on Midwest Collegetown
     stages blind in overhead
     spotlights
bawling out of tune into giant microphones
makes me go down suck teenage boys
I declare a new life, how can I pay all
     his debts
next month’s rent on his body,
     bald & panicky, with Pyronie’s disease
Cartilage stuff grown an inch inside
     his cock root,
non-malignant.

Karme-Choling, April 4, 1983, 12:15 A.M.

221 Syllables at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center

Headless husk legs wrapped round a grass spear, an old bee trembles in sunlight.

Since yesterday noon two Brown-eyed Susans stand before the outhouse door.

Tail turned to red sunset high on a spruce crown one lone chickadee tweets.

Moonless thunder—yellow dandelions flash in fields of rainy grass.

Mad at Oryoki in the shrine-room—Thistles blossomed late afternoon.

Put on my shirt and took it off in the sun walking the path to lunch.

A dandelion seed floats above the marsh grass with the mosquitos.

Empty clouds drift above me, birds chirp, a plane roar falls down through blue sky.

Electric noon—pine bough cicadas buzz outside the machineshop door.

At 4 A.M. the two middleaged men sleeping together hold hands.

In the half-light of dawn a few birds warble under the Pleiades.

Sky reddens behind fir trees as larks twitter and sparrows cheep cheep cheep.

July 1983

Caught shoplifting ran out the department store at sunrise and woke up.

August 1983

Fighting Phantoms Fighting Phantoms

Fighting phantoms we have car wrecks on Hollywood Freeway

Fighting phantoms th’Egyptians mummified Pharaohs & rich businessmen

Fighting phantoms a young Scotsman wore tennis shoes on the battleship deck

Fighting phantoms William S. Burroughs wrote umpteen novels

Fighting giant phantoms David picked up his sling

Fighting phantoms Chögyam Trungpa Vidyadara founded Shambhala Kingdom

Fighting phantoms pay federal taxes few write tax refusal forms

Fighting phantoms a Son of God ascended his wooden cross

Fighting summer phantoms muscular young musicians jumped up screaming in the twilit movie theater

Fighting phantoms Siddhartha meditated under a Bo tree

Fighting phantoms mysticism entered into the Catholic Church of Hollywood

Fighting phantoms a hundred thousand kids ordered purple Mohawks

Fighting phantoms various fairies chased adolescent athletes through steam bath locker rooms

Fighting phantoms the ruling class blew up the military budget, 244 Billion dollars 1985—of the tax pie 63% if past military debt interest & pensions’re added in

Fighting phantoms Ronald Reagan sent cocaine armadas to Central America

Fighting phantoms poets who smoked cigarettes denounced cigarettes—

Fighting phantoms New York Times printed thousands of editorial pages

Fighting phantoms Adolf Hitler shot more Methamphetamine & chewed the Bunker rug

Fighting phantoms thousands of poets become rather good at acid satire

Fighting phantoms Jimmy Dean stepped on the gas, Orson Welles ordered another cheesecake

Fighting phantoms Ernest Hemingway shotgunned his brain

Fighting phantoms Ezra Pound hated some Jews some hated Pound

Fighting phantoms Truman dropped two Atom Bombs

Fighting phantoms Einstein invented the theory of relativity

Mid-August 1983

Arguments

I’m sick of arguments
“You threw the butter in the pan”
“I did not you let it melt on the stove”
“You invaded Turkey and killed all the Armenians!”
“I did not! You invaded China got them addicted to Opium!”
“You built a bigger H Bomb than I did”
“You used poison gas in Indochina”
“Your agent orange defoliated ¼ the landmass It isn’t fair”
“You sprayed Paraquat”
“You smoke pot”
“You’re under arrest”
“I declare war!”
Why don’t we turn off the loudspeakers?

September 5, 1983

Sunday Prayer

An itch in the auditory canal scratches for years, use unguent,
Back pain a little, turn my head neck hurts
Balding long ago, gray whiskery hair inside ears
Eyes closed lying in bed, smart on my tongue, delicate
raw gums sore round some tooth roots—
From nineteenth year College chronic active Hepatitis
affects my kidney stones & high-blood pressure
Right cheek paralyzed slightly, eye squints tired,
lethargy dumps, no one’s abdomen to kiss,
cock skewed and lumpy erection aches—
Why show myself these sicknesses? Show anyone?
Wisdom & senescence, sickness and Death come
legended from Buddha to Kerouac—Myself
suddenly older—I made a mistake long ago.

September 25, 1983

Brown Rice Quatrains

Those high lunches needn’t matter
If you’re of businessman’s age
Anyway he enjoyed creating food
drifting across the Fragrant Nation

Who was it that began mouth talk
Gave the citizens thoughtful Saliva
Nature boy came close to Government
but secret police maintained ham & eggs

What tragedy for multiple Chickens
Think how pigs dream butcher night!
Sheep squawked nightmare, goat
fish sent regrets from meadow and sea

If he only could’ve made new Congress
We wouldn’t breathe so much sulfur smog
Sugar dances at the movies, coffee tells you on TV
and Sodium Nitrate & Nicotine Cholesterol

have nothing to do with Foreign policy.
Nature boy drifts into Central American oblivion
with Seminole Patchwork and Albert Einstein,
nobody thought heat rays would end the world.

September 25, 1983

They’re All Phantoms of My Imagining

I needed a young musician take off his pants sit down on the bed and sing me the blues

I needed a teacher could nail me to the Unborn

needed a stepmother’d accomplish my natural mother’s tears

a scared friend of fame wearing locks and T’fillin by the Wall of Tears

I needed a brother was gentle, suffered to protect me from anger

needed a nephew lost, left his rice in the refrigerator with a cold spoon

Comrade farmer cook with me & study Banjo Dharma

Needed Presidents mad so I could write the Nation sane

I needed a father a poet would die

Needed the great companion dark eyes wearied brow tender heart in the grave

needed an intelligent junkie rebuke my shallow thought with dirty wit

an old girlfriend take my picture, give me a bed—

A college to be kicked out Columbia

scandal jail the clang of Iron madhouse to wake my 22’d year

Invented all these companions, wept & prayed them into flesh

needed these Creatures to be Allen Ginsberg this my self

crying the world awake mid oceans of suffering blood

needed to be the liar of Existence in America

Manslaughter showed me the True Falsehood of Law

Needed a Buddha enlightened I be enlightened

a bed to sleep in, a grave to cover my ashes.

October 1, 1983

White Shroud

I am summoned from my bed
To the Great City of the Dead
Where I have no house or home
But in dreams may sometime roam
Looking for my ancient room
A feeling in my heart of doom,
Where Grandmother aged lies
In her couch of later days
And my mother saner than I
Laughs and cries She’s still alive.

I found myself again in the Great Eastern Metropolis,
wandering under Elevated Transport’s iron struts—
many-windowed apartments walled the crowded Bronx road-way
under old theater roofs, masses of poor women shopping
in black shawls past candy store news stands, children skipped beside
grandfathers bent tottering on their canes. I’d descended
to this same street from blackened subways Sundays long ago,
tea and lox with my aunt and dentist cousin when I was ten.
The living pacifist David Dellinger walked at my right side,
he’d driven from Vermont to visit Catholic Worker
Tivoli Farm, we rode up North Manhattan in his car,
relieved the U.S. wars were over in the newspaper,
Television’s frenzied dance of dots & shadows calmed—Now
older than our shouts and banners, we explored brick avenues
we lived in to find new residences, rent loft offices
or roomy apartments, retire our eyes & ears & thoughts.
Surprised, I passed the open Chamber where my Russian Jewish
Grandmother lay in her bed and sighed eating a little Chicken
soup or borscht, potato latkes, crumbs on her blankets, talking
Yiddish, complaining solitude abandoned in Old Folks House.
I realized I could find a place to sleep in the neighborhood, what
relief, the family together again, first time in decades!—
Now vigorous Middle aged I climbed hillside streets in West Bronx
looking for my own hot-water furnished flat to settle in,
close to visit my grandmother, read Sunday newspapers
in vast glassy Cafeterias, smoke over pencils & paper,
poetry desk, happy with books father’d left in the attic,
peaceful encyclopedia and a radio in the kitchen.
An old black janitor swept the gutter, street dogs sniffed red hydrants,
nurses pushed baby carriages past silent house fronts.
Anxious I be settled with money in my own place before
nightfall, I wandered tenement embankments overlooking
the pillared subway trestles by the bridge crossing Bronx River.
How like Paris or Budapest suburbs, far from Centrum
Left Bank junky doorstep tragedy intellectual fights
in restaurant bars, where a spry old lady carried her
Century Universal View camera to record Works
Progress Administration newspaper metropolis
double-decker buses in September sun near Broadway El,
skyscraper roofs upreared ten thousand office windows shining
electric-lit above tiny taxis street lamp’d in Mid-town
avenues’ late-afternoon darkness the day before Christmas,
Herald Square crowds thronged past traffic lights July noon to lunch
Shop under Macy’s department store awnings for dry goods
pause with satchels at Frankfurter counters wearing stylish straw
hats of the decade, mankind thriving in their solitudes in shoes.
But I’d strayed too long amused in the picture cavalcade,
Where was I living? I remembered looking for a house
& eating in apartment kitchens, bookshelf decades ago, Aunt
Rose’s illness, an appendix operation, teeth braces,
one afternoon fitting eyeglasses first time, combing wet hair
back on my skull, young awkward looking in the high school mirror
photograph. The Dead look for a home, but here I was still alive.
     I walked past a niche between buildings with tin canopy
shelter from cold rain warmed by hot exhaust from subway gratings,
beneath which engines throbbed with pleasant quiet drone.
A shopping-bag lady lived in the side alley on a mattress,
her wooden bed above the pavement, many blankets and sheets,
Pots, pans, and plates beside her, fan, electric stove by the wall.
She looked desolate, white haired, but strong enough to cook and stare.
Passersby ignored her buildingside hovel many years,
a few businessmen stopped to speak, or give her bread or yogurt.
Sometimes she disappeared into state hospital back wards,
but now’d returned to her homely alleyway, sharp eyed, old
Cranky hair, half paralyzed, complaining angry as I passed.
I was horrified a little, who’d take care of such a woman,
familiar, half-neglected on her street except she’d weathered
many snows stubborn alone in her motheaten rabbit-fur hat.
She had tooth troubles, teeth too old, ground down like horse molars—
she opened her mouth to display her gorge—how can she live
with that, how eat I thought, mushroom-like gray-white horseshoe of
incisors she chomped with, hard flat flowers ranged around her gums.
Then I recognized she was my mother, Naomi, habiting
this old city-edge corner, older than I knew her before
her life diappeared. What are you doing here? I asked, amazed
she recognized me still, astounded to see her sitting up
on her own, chin raised to greet me mocking “I’m living alone,
you all abandoned me, I’m a great woman, I came here
by myself, I wanted to live, now I’m too old to take care
of myself, I don’t care, what are you doing here?” I
was looking for a house, I thought, she has one, in poor
Bronx, needs someone to help her shop and cook, needs her children now,
I’m her younger son, walked past her alleyway by accident,
but here she is survived, sleeping at night awake on that
wooden platform. Has she an extra room? I noticed her cave
adjoined an apartment door, unpainted basement storeroom
facing her shelter in the building side. I could live here,
worst comes to worst, best place I’ll find, near my mother in
our mortal life. My years of haunting continental city streets,
apartment dreams, old rooms I used to live in, still paid rent for,
key didn’t work, locks changed, immigrant families occupied
my familiar hallway lodgings—I’d wandered downhill homeless
avenues, money lost, or’d come back to the flat—But couldn’t
recognize my house in London, Paris, Bronx, by Columbia
library, downtown 8th Avenue near Chelsea Subway—
Those years unsettled—were over now, here I could live
forever, here have a home, with Naomi, at long last,
at long long last, my search was ended in this pleasant way,
time to care for her before death, long way to go yet,
lots of trouble her cantankerous habits, shameful blankets
near the street, tooth pots, dirty pans, half paralyzed irritable,
she needed my middle aged strength and worldly money knowledge,
housekeeping art. I can cook and write books for a living,
she’ll not have to beg her medicine food, a new set of teeth
for company, won’t yell at the world, I can afford a telephone,
after twenty-five years we could call up Aunt Edie in California,
I’ll have a place to stay. “Best of all,” I told Naomi
“Now don’t get mad, you realize your old enemy Grandma’s
still alive! She lives a couple blocks down hill, I just saw her,
like you!” My breast rejoiced, all my troubles over, she was
content, too old to care or yell her grudge, only complaining
her bad teeth. What long-sought peace!
                         Then glad of life I woke
in Boulder before dawn, my second story bedroom windows
Bluff Street facing East over town rooftops, I returned
from the Land of the Dead to living Poesy, and wrote
this tale of long lost joy, to have seen my mother again!
And when the ink ran out of my pen, and rosy violet
illumined city treetop skies above the Flatiron Front Range,
I went downstairs to the shady living room, where Peter Orlovsky
sat with long hair lit by television glow to watch
the sunrise weather news, I kissed him & filled my pen and wept.

October 5, 1983, 6:35 A.M.

Empire Air

Flying to Rochester Institute of Technology

Rising above the used car lots & colored dumps of Long Island

stubby white smokestreams drift North above th’ Egyptic Factory roof’d monolith

into gray clouds, Conquer the world!

World Health restored with organic orange juice & Tibetan mule-dung-smelling Pills—Conquer the World Conquer the World

Conquer the World of Ego, Conquer World Anger

Conquer brick Worlds, Mortal Factories!

Conquer the Dewdrop? Conquer white clouded Sky we pass through?—

O ever-rising intelligent Sun conquer the night of Mind

Conquer War O Technologic Warrior

1 ride above the Sun

               I look down into the Sun

I’m equal to Sun, Sun & I on the level

I’ve no appendicitis, I hang a Brooks Brothers tie

My clothes are Salvation Army! Conquer America! Conquer Greed! Conquer warmonger Hands!

Conquer yourself! Conquer your gluttony Ginsberg! Conquer lust for Conquest!

Conquer Conquest at last! All right Jack Number One! Creon wrecks Imperial City!

Conquer by Calm! Conquer by not getting laid, growing younger & older same time!

Conquer by having a hard on! Conquer all space by giving it away! Conquer the Universe by inhabiting it!

Conquer by Dying! By eating decently! Wash yr behind after you move your bowels!

Pronounce your mother American language marvelously, mouth every syllable, savor every vowel, appreciate each consonant!

above the clouds! Conquer Karma, the chain of Cause and Effect

Conquer Cause & Effect, see it work the Cold War!

See it work in your heart!

Insult your girlfriend you’ll feel hurt!

Insult Nicaragua you feel lousy

Insult the President you insult yourself

Conquer the President by not insulting him!

Don’t insult yourself! stop insulting the Russians! stop insulting the enemy!

It costs $220800000000 a year to insult the enemy!

Conquer Underdeveloped Nation Hunger Debt! Conquer World Grief Bank default! Go Conquer mortal Nuclear Waste!

Then go back Conquer your own heart!

January 30, 1984

Surprise Mind

How lucky we are to have windows!
          Glass is transparent!
I saw that boy in red bathingsuit
               walk down the street.

July 7, 1984, 8:30 A.M.

Student Love

The boy’s fresh faced, 18, big smile
underwear hangs below his shorts, he’s a kid
                         still growing
legs strong, he hugs me, steps away—
In twenty years thick bellied,
               bright eyes dulled with office work,
     his children’ll pout in the
bathroom—
Better get in bed with him on top of me now
               laughing at my pot belly
before decades pass, bring our bony skulls whispering
                    to the hospital bedside.

July 31, 1984

The Question

When that dress-gray, gray haired and gray-faced
goblin took charge of me then inside the gate,
which closed behind me for a couple years,
I was still cheerful exceedingly
cheerful nodding out (hadn’t slept for days),
cheerful because taking part in real life
action again, two serious gentlemen
at my shoulders in a night-colored car which
special for me rolled across December’s bridge,
cheerful because I’d yelled out in the street
that this one and that one should be notified,
cheerful because I thought the adventure
a minor excursion, but cheerful also,
because such a gray such a small Uncle
I’d never seen yet, he however
wasn’t cheerful, was reassuringly
bored bananas, boringly signed for
my delivery and boringly
turned my seven pockets inside out,
then with a wooden face confiscated
handkerchief, pocketknife, bunch of keys,
next indifferently requested my belt
and examined personally whether
my underpants operated with string,
yawned apathetic patting me down,
last nearly napping asked for the laces
that wagged lighthearted from my shoetops—
“I can’t walk like this”—he shrugged a shoulder.
Left hand holding my pants up, spellbound by
this unprecedented situation, yet
still cavalier I bowed deep presenting
him with the shoelaces in my right hand.
“What’s the point anyhow? I really don’t
intend to hang myself”—I assured him
lighthearted. “You don’t?” he questioned. … “Why not?”
On his sallow face neither mockery nor hate.
That was when the fear caught up with me.

István Eörsi
Translated with author by A. G. September 5, 1984

In My Kitchen in New York

for Bataan Faigao

Bend knees, shift weight—
Picasso’s blue deathhead self portrait
     tacked on refrigerator door—
This is the only space in the apartment
     big enough to do T’ai chi—
Straighten right foot & rise—I wonder
     if I should have set aside that garbage
     pail—
Raise up my hands & bring them back to
     shoulders—The towels and pajama
     laundry’s hanging on a rope in the hall—
Push down & grasp the sparrow’s tail—
     Those paper boxes of grocery bags are
     blocking the closed door—
Turn north—I should hang up all
     those pots on the stovetop—
Am I holding the world right?—That
     Hopi picture on the wall shows
     rain & lightning bolt—
Turn right again—thru the door, God
     my office space, a mess of
     pictures & unanswered letters—
Left on my hips—Thank God Arthur Rimbaud’s
     watching me from over the sink—
Single whip—piano’s in the room, well
     Steven & Maria finally’ll move to their
     own apartment next week! His pants’re
     still here & Julius in his bed—
This gesture’s the opposite of St. Francis
     in Ecstasy by Bellini—hands
     down for me—
I better concentrate on what I’m doing—
     weight in belly, move from hips—
No, that was the single whip—that apron’s
     hanging on the North wall a year
     I haven’t used it once
Except to wipe my hands—the Crane
     spreads its wings—have I paid
     the electric bill?
Playing the guitar—do I have enough $
     to leave the rent paid while I’m
     in China?
Brush knee—that was good
     halvah, pounded sesame seed,
     in the icebox a week—
Withdraw & push—I should
     get a loft or giant living room—
The land speculators bought up all
     the square feet in Manhattan,
     beginning with the Indians—
Cross hands—I should write
     a letter to the Times saying
     it’s unethical.

Come to rest hands down knees
     straight—I wonder how
     my liver’s doing. O.K. I guess
     tonite, I quit smoking last
     week. I wonder if they’ll blow
     up an H Bomb? Probably not.

Manhattan Midnight, September 5, 1984

It’s All So Brief

I’ve got to give up
Books, checks, letters
File cabinets, apartment
pillows, bodies and skin
even the ache in my teeth.

September 14, 1984

I Love Old Whitman So

Youthful, caressing, boisterous, tender

Middle aged thoughtful, ten thousand noticings of shore ship or street,

workbench, forest, household or office, opera—

that conning his paper book again to read aloud to those few Chinese boys & girls

who know enough American tongue to ear his hand—

loath to select one leaf from another, loath to reject a sympathetic page

—the tavern boy’s look, a stone prisoner’s mustache-sweat, prostitute in the sun, garrulous old man waving goodbye on the stoop—

I skim Leaves beginning to end, this year in the Middle Kingdom

marvel his swimmers huffing naked on the wave

and touched by his desperado farewell, “Who touches this book touches a man”

tip the hat on my skull

to the old soldier, old sailor, old writer, old homosexual, old Christ poet journeyman,

inspired in middle age to chaunt Eternity in Manhattan,

and see the speckled snake & swelling orb earth vanish

after green seasons Civil War and years of snow

white hair.

Baoding, China, November 20, 1984

Written in My Dream by W. C. Williams

“As Is
you’re bearing

a common
Truth

Commonly known
as desire

No need
to dress

it up
as beauty

No need
to distort

what’s not
standard

to be
understandable.

Pick your
nose

eyes ears
tongue

sex and
brain

to show
the populace

Take your
chances

on
your accuracy

Listen to
yourself

talk to
yourself

and others
will also

gladly
relieved

of the burden—
their own

thought
and grief.

What began
as desire

will end
wiser.”

Baoding, November 23, 1984

One Morning I Took a Walk in China

Students danced with wooden silvered swords, twirling on hard packed muddy earth

as I walked out Hebei University’s concrete North Gate,

across the road a blue capped man sold fried sweet dough-sticks, brown as new boiled doughnuts

in the gray light of sky, past poplar tree trunks, white washed cylinders topped

with red band the height of a boy—Children with school satchels sang & walked past me

Donkeys in the road, one big one dwarf pulling ahead of his brother, hauled a cart of white stones

another donkey dragged a load of bricks, other baskets of dirt—

Under trees at the crossing, vendors set out carts and tables of cigarettes,

mandarin Tangerines, yellow round pears taste crunchy lemony strange,

apples yellow red-pinked, short bananas half black’d green,

few bunches of red grapes—and trays of peanuts, glazed thumbsized crab-apples 6 on a stick,

soft wrinkled yellow persimmons sat dozens spread on a cloth in wet mud by the curb—

cookpots on charcoal near cornerside tables, noodle broth vegetables sprinkled on top

A white headed barber shook out his ragged towel, mirror hung on red nail in the brick wall

where a student sat, black hair clipped at ears straight across the back of his neck

Soft-formed gritty coal pellets lay drying on the sidewalk and down the factory alley, more black mats spread,

Long green cabbages heaped by the buildingside waiting for home pot, or stacked on hand-tractor carts the market verandah a few yards away—

Leeks in a pile, bright orange carrots thick & rare, green unripe tomatoes, parsley, thin celery stalks awful cheap, potatoes & fish—

little & big heads chopped or alive in a tub, tiny fresh babies or aged carp in baskets—

a half pig on a slab, two trotters stick out, a white burlap shroud covered his body cleaved in half—

meat of the ox going thru a grinder, white fat red muscle & sinew together squeezed into human spaghetti—

Bicycles lined up along the concrete walk, trucks pull in & move out delivering cows dead and fresh green-stalked salad—

Downstreet, the dry-goods door—soap, pencils, notebooks, tea, fur coats lying on a counter—

Strawberry jam in rusty-iron topped jars, milk powder, dry cookies with sweetmeats

inside dissolve on the tongue to wash down fragrant black tea—

Ah, the machine shop gateway, brick walled latrine inside the truck yard —enter, squat on a brick & discharge your earth

or stand & pee in the big hole filled with pale brown squishy droppings an hour before—

Out, down the alleyway across the street a factory’s giant smokestack, black cloud-fumes boiling into sky

gray white with mist I couldn’t see that chimney a block away, coming home

past women on bicycles heading downtown their noses & mouths covered with white cotton masks.

Baoding, November 23, 1984, 9:30 P.M.

Reading Bai Juyi

I

I’m a traveler in a strange country
China and I’ve been to many cities
Now I’m back in Shanghai, days
under warm covers in a room with electric heat—
a rare commodity in this country—
hundreds of millions shiver in the north
students rise at dawn and run around the soccerfield
Workmen sing songs in the dark to keep themselves warm
while I sleep late, smoke too much cough,
turn over in bed on my right side
pull the heavy quilt over my nose and go back
to visit the dead my father, mother and immortal
friends in dreams. Supper’s served me,
I can go out and banquet, but prefer
this week to stay in my room, recovering
a cough. I don’t have to sell persimmons on the streetcurb
in Baoding like the lady with white bandanna’d head
Don’t have to push my boat oars around a rocky corner
in the Yangtze gorges, or pole my way downstream
from Yichang through yellow industrial scum, or carry water
buckets on a bamboo pole over my shoulder
to a cabbage field near Wuxi—I’m famous,
my poems have done some men good
and a few women ill, perhaps the good
outweighs the bad, I’ll never know.
Still I feel guilty I haven’t done more;
True I praised the dharma from nation to nation
But my own practice has been amateur, seedy
—even I dream how bad a student I am—
My teacher’s tried to help me, but I seem
to be lazy and have taken advantage of money
and clothes my work’s brought me, today
I’ll stay in bed again & read old Chinese poets—
I don’t believe in an afterworld of god or even
another life separate from this incarnation
Still I worry I’ll be punished for my carelessness
after I’m dead—my poems scattered and my name
forgotten and my self reborn a foolish workman
freezing and breaking rocks on a roadside in Hebei.

Shanghai, December 5, 1984, 10 A.M.

II

“Ignorant and contentious” I spent lunch
arguing about boys making love with a student.
Still coughing, reclusive, I went back to bed
with a headache, despite afternoon sun
streaming through the French windows
weakly, to write down these thoughts.
Why’ve I wanted to appear heroic, why
strain to accomplish what no mortal could—
Heaven on earth, self perfection, household
security, & the accomplishment of changing the World.
A noble ambition, but that of a pathetic dreamer.
Tomorrow if I recover from bronchitis
I’ll put on a serious face and go down to the Market.

2:30 P.M.

III

Lying head on pillow aching
still reading poems of Tang roads
Something Bai said made me press my finger
to my eyes and weep—maybe his love
for an old poet friend, for I also
have gray on my cheek and bald head
and the Agricultural poet’s in the madhouse this week
a telegram told me, more historical
jackanapes maybe tragic maybe comic
I’ll know when I come home around the world.
Still with heavy heart and aching head I read on
till suddenly a cry from the garden reminded me
of a chicken, head chopped off running circles spurting blood
from its neck on farm yard dirt, I was eleven years old,
or the raptured scream of a rabbit—I put down my book
and listened carefully to the cry almost drowned
by the metal sound of cars and horns—It was a bird
repeating its ascending whistle, pipe notes burst
into a burble of joyful tones ending wildly
with variable trills in swift succession high and low
and high again. At least it wasn’t me, not my song,
a sound outside my mind, nothing to do with my aching brow.

3:30 P.M.

IV

I lay my cheek on the pillow to nap
and my thoughts floated against the stream
up to Zhong Xian west of the Three Gorges
where Bai Juyi was Governor.
“Two streams float together and meet further on
and mingle their water. Two birds fly upward
beneath the ninth month’s cold white cloud.
Two trees stand together bare branched
rooted in the same soil secretly touching.
Two apples hung from the same bough last
month and disappeared into the Market.”
So flowed my mind like the river, like the wind.
“Two thoughts have risen together in dream therefore
Two worlds will be one if I wake and write.”
So I lifted my head from my pillow and Woke
to find I was a sick guest in a vast poor kingdom
A famous visitor honored with a heated room,
medicines, special foods and learned visitors
inquiring when I’d be well enough to lecture my hosts
on the musics and poetics of the wealthy
Nation I had come from half way round the world

8:15 P.M.

V  China Bronchitis

I sat up in bed and pondered what I’d learned
while I lay sick almost a month:
That monks who could convert Waste to Treasure
were no longer to be found among the millions
in the province of Hebei. That The Secret of the Golden Lotus
has been replaced by the Literature of the Scar, nor’s hardly
anybody heard of the Meditation Cushion of the Flesh
That smoking Chinese or American cigarettes makes me cough;
Old men had got white haired and bald before
my beard showed the signs of its fifty-eight snows.
That of Three Gorges on the Yangtze the last one downstream
is a hairpin turn between thousand-foot-high rock mountain gates.
I learned that the Great Leap Forward caused millions
of families to starve, that the Anti-Rightist Campaign
against bourgeois “Stinkers” sent revolutionary poets
to shovel shit in Xinjiang Province a decade before
the Cultural Revolution drove countless millions of readers
to cold huts and starvation in the countryside Northwest.
That sensitive poetry girls in Shanghai dream
of aged stars from Los Angeles movies. That down the alley
from the stone bridge at Suzhou were Jiang Ji spent
a sleepless night wakened by the bell of Cold Mountain Temple,
water lapping against his boat a thousand years ago,
a teahouse stands with two-stringed violin and flutes
and wooden stage. That the gold in the Sun setting
at West Lake Hangzhou is manufactured from black Soft Coal.
That roast red-skinned juicy entire dogs with eyes
bulging from their foreheads hang in the market at Canton
That So-Chan meditation’s frowned on and martial health
Qi-Gong’s approved by Marxist theoreticians. That men in
deep-blue suits might be kind enough to file a report
to your Unit on gossip they’ve heard about your secret loves.
That “Hang yu hang yu!” song is heard when workmen labor
yodeling on bamboo scaffolds over the street outside all night.
That most people have thought “We’re just little men,
what can we count” since the time of Qin Shi Huang.

VI

Tho the body’s heavy meat’s sustained
on our impalpable breath, materialists
argue that Means of Production cause History:
once in power, materialists argue what
the right material is, quarrel with each other,
jail each other and exile tens of millions
of people with 10,000 thoughts apiece.
They’re worse than Daoists who quibbled about immortality.
Their saving grace this year’s that all the peasants are fed.

VII Transformation of Bai’s “A Night in Xingyang”

I grew up in Paterson New Jersey and was
just a virginal kid when I left
forty years ago. Now I’m around the world,
but I did go back recently to visit my stepmother.
Then I was 16 years old, now I’m fifty eight—
All the fears I had in those days—I can still see myself
daydreaming reading N.Y. Times on the Chinese rug on the living room
floor on Graham avenue. My childhood houses are torn down,
none of my old family lives here any more,
mother under the ground in Long Island, father underground
near the border of Newark where he was born.
A highway cuts thru the Fair Street lot where I remember our earliest
apartment, & a little girl’s first kiss. New buildings rise on that street,
all the old stores along Broadway have disappeared.
Only the Great Falls and the Passaic river flow
noisy with mist then quietly along brick factory sides
as they did before.

10:15 P.M.

After Rewi Alley’s Bai Juyi, 200 Selected Poems (Beijing: New World Press, 1983), p. 303.

Black Shroud

Kunming Hotel, I vomited greasy chicken sandwiched
in moldy bread, on my knees before the white toilet
retching, a wave of nausea, bowels and bladder loose
black on the bathroom floor like my mother groaning
in Paterson 1937. I went back to bed
on the twelfth floor, city lights twinkling north,
Orion in his belt bright in the sky, I slept again.

She had come into the bathroom her face hidden
in her breast, hair overhanging her figure bent in front
of me, stiff in hypertension, rigor mortis
convulsed her living body while she screamed
at the doctor and apartment house we inhabited.
Some electric current flowing up her spine tortured her,
foot to scalp unbearable, some professional advice
required quick action, I took her wrists, and held her
bound to the sink, beheading her silently with swift
dispatch, one gesture, a stroke of the knife-like ax
that cut thru her neck like soft thick gum, dead quick.

What had I done, and why? Certainly her visage
showed the reason, strain and fright lasting thru death.
But couldn’t leave her body hidden in the toilet, someone
finding her bent over might wait, then push, then
horrified find her headless, skull fallen to the floor.
I picked her up by the shoulders, afraid to look at
the Medusa head

               which I lifted by long hair & set
on the sink before the mirror, but beheld no mad
drawn-cheek wild-eyed or blood-splotched wrinkled forehead—
Calm, beautiful face, tranquil in life’s last moments
as if in prayer, eyes clear and modest, face content
with neither smile or frown but even-browed, eyebrows
in repose, cheeks colored healthy still as when alive.
“I made a mistake” I thought, in following the doctors’ rules,
or where’d I get th’ idea she was screaming and banging
her head on the wall in neural agony? Was that just my thought
or hadn’t others told me so? Why’d I do it so abrupt
without consulting the World or the rest of the family—
Her look at last so tranquil and true made me wonder
why I’d covered her so early with black shroud.
Had I been insane myself and hasty? I left the room.

At Joel the doctor’s wedding party the family’d gathered
whoever was left alive. Yes of course they found her corpse,
they knew she was crazy, but didn’t announce a murder,
just whispered among themselves she was dead in the bathroom
causes unknown, tho headless, hard for her to suicide herself,
a further investigation would clarify this big mistake.
In fact my cousin my publisher with troubled frown
put the matter to rest, saying he’d call on the police
after the wedding guests go home. I said—
“I might be able to clear up the mystery. You saw
her head?” He looked at me surprised, how did I know
she was dead with her head cut off? I realized
I’d given myself away, but risked it, why lie more,
build up Karma nightmare another year & then get caught?
Police find my fingerprints on Naomi’s dead neck? or my blade
be found under my bed, in the dust behind the refrigerator
on East 12th Street Lower East Side, I be arrested
in newspaper scandal? “You saw the head?” I asked
again, giving my knowledge away. “But are you sure?”
he asked. Dressed in his Harvard suit and silken tie
striped red and gold, “We have our legal staff, perhaps you should
consult with them, no fee, fortunate contract,
our clients we value, you for your Collected Works we do
protect without question.” Helpful, alas, too late for me
to undo the murder of my mother, I must confess, I had
confessed, too late to undo confession and truth, I woke.

December 21, 1984, 5:12 A.M.

World Karma

China be China, B.C. Clay armies underground the First Han Emperor’s improvement

on burying his armies alive

Later Ming tombs buried excavator architects

& Mao officially buried 20,000,000 in Shit Freeze & Exile, much Suicide

especially bilingual sophisticates in the molecular structure of surfaces, machine-tool engineers

and Poetic intelligentsia questioned his Imperial vision of Pure Land

future communist afterworld

Russia had Czars & Stalin, all Yiddish Poets shot August 12, 1952 in Lubyanka basement, everybody got drunk afterward,

everyone still whispers on streetcorners

America forever democratic, lawless sheriffs shot Indians, bad men, good men, chinks kikes niggers and each other

Spain always killed bulls & loved blood, matadors & crucifixion, reds & fascists assassinated anarchists—

The Jews always complained, kvetching about false gods, and erected the biggest false God, Jehovah, in middle of western civilization—

For creating the Judge the Jews are judged that’s their world Karma continuing, the Atom bomb

British always had sense of superiority, class, stiff upperlip, the Queen and fuck you ducky up your bloody ’ole

The French, advanced sense of superiority, stiff back, Algérie is always indissolubly a part of La France,

We will not regret the necessity to kill you or anyone who disagrees

They appreciate everything wine women song modern art

O la la they’re so smart, introduced opium cultivation

Indochina will always be an indissoluble addiction to France, the Bourse

Germans had Kaisers Hitlers, orderly meticulous and rational a bunch of beasts

now want Nuclear arms They’re also intelligent Pride themselves on Science

romantic Poetry, their Black Forest mysterious full of Solitude acid rain

hi tech civilization First the ovens of Auschwitz now goodbye ancient trees

we have to keep up with the vulgar Americans

Italy the trains never ran on time, they got good shoes & Pope & Mafia

also good tomatoes and Angelico Beato, who’d want to complain in Naples or Uffizi?

In 200 years America’ll have a billion people like neon China

Computerized students’ll sleep six abed and hawk their mucus on the morning floor

before fighting to get into the shower—much less a piece of soap

and half stick of bacon with their petrochemical Wheaties & eggs— That’s because

we had to Get Back to America, let’s Stand Up Tall

so we can insult the rest of the world.

More!—The Moslems expansionist monotheists will go Jihad whenever able

Always their god best god only god only name Allah and

die like a dog if you don’t believe me! From Morocco to Java

heathen dogs and cats go barking and meow after terrific Nobodaddy

in Paradise the Western lands Heaven Pure Land Garden of Sky,

other side of Eternal Dreamtime I vote for Australian Aborigines!

Let them run the world after Hi Tech’s annihilated all other species & genetic strains

from whale to donkey sperm.

Kunming, December 24, 1984, Midnight-12:49

Prophecy

As I’m no longer young in life
and there seem to me not
so many pleasures to look forward to
How fortunate to be free
to write of cars and wars, truths of eras,
throw away old useless
ties and pants that don’t fit.

January 9, 1985

Memory Cousins

After Long Absence, I returned from the land of the dead
to visit my stepmother in her suburban apartment.
I looked from a distance, was it a mental hospital
standing on a grass plain far from Manhattan’s skyscrapers
after crossing Washington Bridge, or Jersey’s tract houses
risen gigantic during my exile in China? I’d
been gone so long my relatives’d grown old at their doors—
a neighbor widow come out to empty the black plastic
garbagebag, I’d known her middle age, now with white hair
she gazed at me nodding absently, I’d not been gone long
while her husband’d died, children married with children now—
How dear to see me, where’d I been? I looked down the long hall,
door after door of Aunts and Uncles retired alive
white haired, television bound seeing the doctor, eating
delicatessen salad Sundays, reading best seller
books, dusting furniture, cleaning kitchen floors, happily
visiting Doctors for minor blood pressure, depression
or hernias. Years ahead, they should live so long, they’d die,
I’d never see them again, best settle down while childhood
memory cousins and brothers were old, but still alive,
enjoy each other’s tables and coffee, business gossip.
Where else go off to, unhappy Russia warring Israel?
Here in America, peace, a place to live together.
They were bombing Nicaragua, factories exploding
in India, Cities crowded with Animal muggers
newspapers said, TV had pictures of them every nite—
Peter in fact just came back from Nuclear Buddhaland,
His belly exposed to Radiation a soft yellow
spot near his navel, he smiled rueful pulling his shirt
above his belt to show his mortal sore, what could cure him?
If go away now I’ll be gone forever, Peter,
Stepmother Edith, Aunt Honey & Leo, Aunt Clara
and Uncle Abe, my brother Gene & Connie & the kids,
I may never see them again. Here are their living eyes,
here’s the end of the Immortal Dream.

March 2, 1985, 7:56 A.M.

Moral Majority

Something evil about you Mr. Viguerie Mr. Falwell Robertson Swaggert.

Not evil but ignorance of the delights of the Boy

The 1920s have passed, corsets chastity belts whips

the stake, Lesbian cities aflame in your fiery eyes

—Some old Demon the Satan in possession of your body

a thousand years old, two thousand that burned the parchments of Black Sappho

I’ve seen God as much as any, he doesn’t look like you alone

He looks like me too, all the homosexuals on earth,

in Congo, Cities of North America, Rio Barrios—

He looks like a lavender fairy, Paris salons 1890 the birds & bees,

Like an ambidextrous worm, male dogs coupling in the Alabama parking-lot.

Nothing wrong with Family, Mother Father & Buba.

Nothing wrong with the Babe.

Nothing wrong with Mr. Falwell except a little mean streak

that isn’t god, just a jerk, talks too big for his britches,

inexperienced Bible Salesman

interprets words & letters, not Holy Spirit

ambitious politically, at the expense of the poor,

the thwarted, & happy ruddy kids—

Find out Buddha, enter the great silence

& pass thru the needle’s eye,

then come back happy, laughing, generous

big mouth full of good cheer, not money,

honey.

March 19, 1985

The Guest

I’ve a pain in my back
Fifth lumbar & sacrum
Kidneystones alas alack
can’t drink milk calcium
High blood pressure about
salt I can’t eat
at my age no red meat
sometimes I get gout

My age fifty eight
My friend Peter’s away
I should lose ten pounds weight
Prostrate every day
to my guru who’s Crazy
Prepare for grim death
Exercise for good health
All my life I’ve been lazy

Little gold, lots of fame
Small flat in Manhattan
tho I bank on my name
my wallet won’t fatten
But the thing I want most
to embody my joy
is the belly of a boy
and there I get lost

I met David he undressed
Came naked on my bed
He climbed on my chest
“I love you Allen” he said
He touched and caressed
my stomach, heart and thigh
appreciated my sigh
I slept chaste & blessed.

He visited New York
to sleep a week in my room
watch me at work,
enlighten my gloom—
Body young & strong
shapely from Basketball
Skin muscular stomach small
“I can’t be your lover long.”

Mind tender, he loves girls
Sees me as poetry master
His pubic hair’s soft curls
press my breast to rapture
His smooth cock grows thick
my heart beats at his loin
He presses with his groin
His hands caress my neck

I touch around his buttocks
smooth, firm and warm.
“I’ve never been fucked”
he encourages, as my arm
reaches up his spine
passes down his back
presses into his open crack
He turns on his belly to try.

I enter slow, he’s soft
no pain, he raises his behind
no hard on, hips aloft
I push, he doesn’t mind.
My trouble is, I’m old
and tho this young kind boy
gives me a chance for joy
I’m not hard enough to be bold.

Yet I’m in, “How does it feel now?”
“It’s O.K., it’s kind of different.”
Ruddy face, eyes open on the pillow,
he lies before me prone, no effort—
I’m afraid to move, what’ll he say?
But he humps his rear up more
to take what’s in store,
I stick it in all the way.

Something is missing my hard on
But it’s what I have, it works
I pump him slowly, then start on
moving faster while he jerks
his buttocks up to help me come,
I ask permission, he says “yes,”
I pull his hips up, hold his breast,
spurt my loves deep in his bum

Next night we hugged and slept
Chaste again and affectionate
I answered the phone all day but kept
winding him in my mental net—
He wasn’t excited by my body
I couldn’t expect his sexual love
After this week would I approve
his visiting, if I had to sleep lonely?

March 24, 1985

After Antipater

I’ve climbed the Great Wall’s stone steep out of breath

sat on gray columns broken at Acropolis’ marble sill

brushed past morbid scented insect eating plants in Petén Rainforest

Eaten roastbeef with my mother’s cousins atop a World Trade Tower overhanging Hudson River

Slept under the dome echoing lament for Mumtaz Mahal’s white skull

Stood in Red Square snow across from the Kremlin wall-tomb of th’- assassin of millions

Climbed Seville’s gypsy balconies, Sagrada Familia’s crannied spires, gazed through my father’s eyes from San Marco’s high porch

tarried on Brooklyn bridge facing Manhattan dusk’s sparkling Towers, walked Golden Gate’s Pacific promenade

But when you lay on my bed, white sheet covering your loins, your eyes on mine

I forgot these marvels, my heart breathed open, I saw life’s glory look back at me naked.

March 26, 1985
Greek Anthology III, Book IX, Epigram 58, Loeb, p. 31.

Jumping the Gun on the Sun

Sincerity
is the key
to living
in Eternity

If you love
Heav’n above
Hold your ground,
Look around
Hear the sound
of television,
No derision,
Smell your blood
taste your good
bagels & lox
Wash your sox
& touch wood,
It’s understood
This is it
wild wit
Make your love
on earth above,
home of the brave,
Save yr grave
for future days
Present here
nothing to fear
No need to sigh
no need to die
before your time
mentally whine
stupidly dine
on your own meat
That’s what’s neat
Mortally great
Immortally sweet
Incredibly deep
makes you weep
Just this once
Don’t be a dunce
Take your cap
off Hear my rap

Sincerity
is the key
to living in
Eternity

Makes you wise
in your own eyes
makes the body
not seem shoddy
Makes your soul
completely whole
empty, final
indefinable
Mobile, totally
undeniable
Affirmative action
for no faction
for all men
women too,
mother brother,
even for you
Dead soul’d, sick
but really quick
with breath & thick
with blood in yr prick
Walking alive
on Riverside Drive
up on Broadway
shining gay
in New York
waving you dork
waving your mind
or living behind
your meaty masque
magnificent task
all you could ask
as if pure space
gave you a place
in Eternity—
To see the City
Stand all day
Shine all night
Bright starlight
streaming the height
Watery lawn
misty at dawn
warmed by the sun
Bathed in the moon
green grasses of June
80 times only
Don’t be lonely
Roses are live
Cockroaches thrive
in plastic garbage
maggots salvage
your dead meat
Horses eat
golden Hay
in golden day
Young kids jump
in the City dump
Take the lump
in your throat
and sing out
yr holy note
of heart’s delight
in living light
Day & Night

Sincerity
is the key
to Bliss in this
Eternity

April 5, 1985

Cadillac Squawk

Sitting on the twelfth floor Gomden I heard a wild siren in the garment district

Heard dog scream at dog on park avenue

my head rumbled the Bronx 242’d street Lexington Avenue Express

lonesome sparrows chirped weathered coppergreen cornice 1860

Footstep crash, pocket change jangled the shrine room’s polished floor

traffic waves rushed the shore 1985

Adolf Hitler’s voice in the taxi horn

squeak soprano steely cheep Chevrolet brakeshafts

subway breath rising to Empire State Observation Roof

iron doors slam refrigerators shut

bones creak in my knees’ antechambers

Heard the long Cadillac horn squawk up sidestreet brick buildingsides

elevators ascended and descended a thousand skyscrapers

wheels within wheels rubber and steel revolve on asphalt corridors

Exhaust puffs out monoxide Broadway Manhattan

Heard the sky shut up

Heard conversation in the trees in leafy Bronx

Heard Africa sigh

Asia turned over in its sleepy bunk

blood ran down rocks in South America

Heard Central America squeeze its ribs through iron gates

the Middle East rumbled plates & spoons in wartime bomb rubble

Polynesians danced with bacteria

Heard Japonesia eat with chopsticks chewing rice & peapods

Heard Australia rattle song sticks singing in Simpson Desert at the end of the world

New York Dharmadatu, June 16, 1985, 3:33 P.M.

Things I Don’t Know

Dawn, a mastiff howls on the porch across the street behind the For Sale signed tree

Chatter Chirp Chirp Chatter Chirp Chir Chir Chic Chir chance birdie twitters in a maple tree branch, Twirp!

I wake, what bird’s that, what kind of dog moans so?

Is that a maple or an oak, on Mapleton Street? What flowers weeds & ferns, those in the backyard? What car goes by awhoosh? A Pontiac, swash up the street,

A Chevy, Ford, a Pinto, a Grammarian, a 4 wheel drive GM?

What star I saw last night when clouds lifted & Orion’s belt

Glittered gold on blue? or was that amber on azure? As my eye

followed his arrow past the North Star thru the void, was that a tiny galaxy shimmering?

Where’s Sagittarius, which way is the black hole at center of the Spiral Nebula?

Where’s Sahel where a million children starve? Where’s Libya where Wilson of the CIA trained terrorists?

How many times this century’d the Marines land on Nicaragua’s dirty flag?

Who killed Roque Dalton? What’s the size of U.S. national Debt?

& how much interest we pay each year till the Eighties end?

Now the bird’s quiet & the dog bark’s down, what’s differential calculus? How do you fix electric socket wires?

I used to know the names of all the minerals. I do remember Pectolite gave you like asbestos splinters.

How do people overcome panic driving cars? Are bird bones hollow? didn’t I once know the look of grackle & scarlet tanager?

Cirrus or cumulus, what cloud produces thunder, lightning, rain?

What makes electricity in a battery? How does my wind charger friction become electric?

When water pours into hydraulic ram, what makes it squirt uphill when the valve closes in the Pressure Chamber? Is that it? Something like that?

What’re the 12 pix in Conditioned Co-existent Emergence’s Chain?

Blind man, potter, monkey tree, boat world, house with seven windows, what comes next before the man with arrow in his eye?

What about banks? What’s common stock & preferred? What’s a futures?

How do you hang a door, frame a window? Hold a light chainsaw?

How fix a broken leg? Ease a heart attack, deliver a baby? Breathe in the mouth of a man dying at oceanside?

What kind of government ever worked? Who wrote English Choriambics?

This isn’t Trivia (how play that?) this is my life, I can’t remember

the name of the lawyer my fellow student, friends with me in college 40 years ago—

How make a living, if I couldn’t write poetry?

Would I know how to plant peas, tie up tomato stalks?

July 21, 1985

*Buddhist Samatha-Vipassana Sitting Practice of Meditation

Notes

The following notes to the poems in White Shroud originally appeared in Selected Poems 1947–1995. (HarperCollins Publishers, 1996). More exten sive notes to this section can be found online at www.allenginsberg.org.

Homage Vajracarya

850 Ven. Chögyam Trungpa, Vajracarya’s Shambhala Arts included mind training with Archery (Kyudo), Calligraphy, Tea Ceremony, etc.

Why I Meditate

851 MIRROR STREET: Dadaist original Cabaret Voltaire was on Zürich’s Spiegelgasse Strasse.

851 RUTHERFORD: William Carlos Williams. Manhattan: Charles Reznikoff.

851 CHICAGO’S TEARGAS SKIES: 1968 Democratic convention police riot.

851 UNBORN: Buddhist metaphor, universe & consciousness are “unborn,” i.e. not traceable back to any ultimate birthplace, source, cause.

851 ROOTLESS COSMOPOLITAN: Aesopean Stalinist word for Jew.

Do the Meditation Rock

863 Buddhist Samatha-Vipassana Sitting Practice of Meditation instructions according to the Ven. Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche. See his Meditation in Action (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1991).

863 UNCLE DON: 1930s U.S. radio father-figure tale-teller.

Arguments

885 PARAQUAT: Agricultural poison dust sprayed by U.S. on Sonora, Mexico, cannabis fields.

White Shroud

889 TIVOLI FARM: Catholic Worker. Contemplative rural commune founded 1930s by Dorothy Day, celebrated saint-like bohemian Catholic Pacifist.

890 SPRY OLD LADY: Here several of Berenice Abbott Changing New York Depression era photographs are described, from “buses” to “shoes.”

Reading Bai Juyi

908 After Rewi Alley’s Bai Juyi: 200 Selected Poems (Beijing: New World Press, 1983), p. 303.

909 The Secret of the Golden Lotus and Meditation Cushion of the Flesh, Chinese classic erotic handbooks.

909 JIANG JI: See latter’s text & Gary Snyder’s reply poem 1984.

909 QIN SHI HUANG: Emperor 2nd century BC, burned all Buddhist & Classic books.

COSMOPOLITAN GREETINGS OEMS 1986–1992

“I’m going to try speaking some reckless words,
and I want you to try to listen recklessly.”

Thanks to the hospitable editors, variants of these writings were printed first in: After the Storm; Allen in Vision; Alpha Beat Soup; The Alternative Press; American Poetry Review; Be Released in Los Angeles; Big Scream; Big Sky; Black Box; Bombay Gin; Boulevard; Break the Mirror; Broadway 2; [Brooklyn College] English Majors Newsletter; Brooklyn Review; Casse Le Mirroir; City Lights Review; Collateral Damage; Collected Poems; Core; Cottonwood Commemorative; River City Portfolio 1987; Cover; Culturas; Entretien; Ergo; Esquire; Exit Zero; Exquisite Corps; Fall of America; Fear, Power, God (recording); First Blues; First Line; Flower Thief; Gandhabba; A Garden of Earthly Delight; Gathering of Poets; The Ginsberg Gallimaufry (John Hammond Records); Gown Literary Supplement; Grand Rapids College Review; Harper’s; Holunderground; Howling Mantra; Hum Bom! (broadside); Hydrogen Jukebox (libretto); Inquiring Mind; Journal of the Gulf War; Karel Appel; Recent Work; Long Shot; Lovely Jobly; Man Alive!; Mill Street Forward; Moment; Moorish Science Monitor; Napalm Health Spa; Naropa Institute Summer Writing Program (1991); Nation; National Poetry Magazine of the Lower East Side; New Age Journal; New Censorship; A New Geography of Poets; New Letters; New Observations; New York Newsday; New York Planet; New York Times; Nigen Kazoku; Nightmares of Reason; Nola Express; La Nouvelle Chute de l’Amerique; Off the Wall; Organica; Paria; Pearl; Peckerwood; Personals Ad (broadside); Poem in the Form of a Snake (broadside); Poets for Life; Portable Lower East Side; Qualità di Tempo; Reality Sandwich; Riverrun; RuhRoh!; Sekai; Semio-text[e]; Shambhala Sun; Sixpack; Steaua; Struga; Sugar, Alcohol & Meat (recording); Sulfur; Supplication for the Rebirth of the Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche (broadside); Talus; Thinker Review (broadside); This Is Important; Threepenny Review; Tikkun; Underground Forest; Vagabond; Vajradhatu Sun; Venue; The Verdict Is In; Village Voice; Vinduet; Visiting Father & Friends (pamphlet); Vylizanej Mozek!; Washington Square News; Wiersze; World; WPFW 89.3 FM Poetry Anthology.

To
Steven Taylor

If music be the food of love, play on.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Author wishes to inscribe grateful thanks to friends who’ve collaborated to type, track, edit, and critique Cosmopolitan Greetings thru a decade:

Harry Smith: Archetype cover design, typeface choice & logo.

Bill Morgan: Bibliographic lucidity.

Mark Ewert: Comix inspiration.

Bob Rosenthal: Holistic project supervision.

Steve Taylor: Musical guidance, lead sheets.

Regina Pellicano, Jacqueline Gens, Peter Hale, Steven Finbow, Victoria Smart, and Vicki Stanbury: Sympathetic meticulous assembly typescript text.

Andrew Wylie & Sarah Chalfant: Wise deadline protection.

Terry Karten and HarperCollins: Trustful & patient fidelity.

PREFACE

Improvisation in Beijing

I write poetry because the English word Inspiration comes from Latin Spiritus, breath, I want to breathe freely.

I write poetry because Walt Whitman gave world permission to speak with candor.

I write poetry because Walt Whitman opened up poetry’s verse-line for unobstructed breath.

I write poetry because Ezra Pound saw an ivory tower, bet on one wrong horse, gave poets permission to write spoken vernacular idiom.

I write poetry because Pound pointed young Western poets to look at Chinese writing word pictures.

I write poetry because W. C. Williams living in Rutherford wrote New Jerseyesque “I kick yuh eye,” asking, how measure that in iambic pentameter?

I write poetry because my father was poet my mother from Russia spoke Communist, died in a mad house.

I write poetry because young friend Gary Snyder sat to look at his thoughts as part of external phenomenal world just like a 1984 conference table.

I write poetry because I suffer, born to die, kidneystones and high blood pressure, everybody suffers.

I write poetry because I suffer confusion not knowing what other people think.

I write because poetry can reveal my thoughts, cure my paranoia also other people’s paranoia.

I write poetry because my mind wanders subject to sex politics Buddhadharma meditation.

I write poetry to make accurate picture my own mind.

I write poetry because I took Bodhisattva’s Four Vows: Sentient creatures to liberate are numberless in the universe, my own greed anger ignorance to cut thru’s infinite, situations I find myself in are countless as the sky okay, while awakened mind path’s endless.

I write poetry because this morning I woke trembling with fear what could I say in China?

I write poetry because Russian poets Mayakovsky and Yesenin committed suicide, somebody else has to talk.

I write poetry because my father reciting Shelley English poet & Vachel Lindsay American poet out loud gave example—big wind inspiration breath.

I write poetry because writing sexual matters was censored in United States.

I write poetry because millionaires East and West ride Rolls-Royce limousines, poor people don’t have enough money to fix their teeth.

I write poetry because my genes and chromosomes fall in love with young men not young women.

I write poetry because I have no dogmatic responsibility one day to the next.

I write poetry because I want to be alone and want to talk to people.

I write poetry to talk back to Whitman, young people in ten years, talk to old aunts and uncles still living near Newark, New Jersey.

I write poetry because I listened to black Blues on 1939 radio, Leadbelly and Ma Rainey

I write poetry inspired by youthful cheerful Beatles’ songs grown old.

I write poetry because Chuang-tzu couldn’t tell whether he was butterfly or man, Lao-tzu said water flows downhill, Confucius said honor elders, I wanted to honor Whitman.

I write poetry because overgrazing sheep and cattle Mongolia to U.S. Wild West destroys new grass & erosion creates deserts.

I write poetry wearing animal shoes.

I write poetry “First thought, best thought” always.

I write poetry because no ideas are comprehensible except as manifested in minute particulars: “No ideas but in things.”

I write poetry because the Tibetan Lama guru says, “Things are symbols of themselves.”

I write poetry because newspapers headline a black hole at our galaxy-center, we’re free to notice it.

I write poetry because World War I, World War II, nuclear bomb, and World War III if we want it, I don’t need it.

I write poetry because first poem Howl not meant to be published was prosecuted by the police.

I write poetry because my second long poem Kaddish honored my mother’s parinirvana in a mental hospital.

I write poetry because Hitler killed six million Jews, I’m Jewish.

I write poetry because Moscow said Stalin exiled 20 million Jews and intellectuals to Siberia, 15 million never came back to the Stray Dog Café, St. Petersburg.

I write poetry because I sing when I’m lonesome.

I write poetry because Walt Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

I write poetry because my mind contradicts itself, one minute in New York, next minute the Dinaric Alps.

I write poetry because my head contains 10,000 thoughts.

I write poetry because no reason no because.

I write poetry because it’s the best way to say everything in mind within 6 minutes or a lifetime.

October 21, 1984

PROLOGUE

Visiting Father & Friends

I climbed the hillside to the lady’s house.
There was Gregory, dressed as a velvet ape,
japing and laughing, elegant-handed, tumbling
somersaults and consulting with the hostess,
girls and wives familiar, feeding him like a baby.
He looked healthy, remarkable energy, up all night
talking jewelry, winding his watches, hair over his eyes,
jumping from one apartment to another.

Neal Cassady rosy-faced indifferent and affectionate
entertaining himself in company far from China
back in the USA old 1950s–1980s still kicking
his way thru the city, up Riverside Drive without a car.
He hugged me & turned attention to the night ladies
appearing disappearing in the bar, in apartments
and the street, his continued jackanapes wasting his time
& everyone else’s but mysterious, maybe up to something
good—keep us all from committing more crimes,
political wars, or peace protests angrier than wars’
cannonball noises. He needed a place to sleep.

Then my father appeared, lone forlorn & healthy
still living by himself in an apartment a block up
the hill from Peter’s ancient habitual pad, I hadn’t
noticed where Louis lived these days, somehow obliterated
his home condition from my mind, took it for granted
tho never’d been curious enough to visit—but as I’d no place
to go tonight, & wonder’d why I’d not visited him recently,
I asked could I spend the night & bed down

there with him, his place had bedroom and bath
a giant Jewish residence apartment on Riverside Drive
refugees inhabited, driven away from Europe by Hitler,
where now my father lived—I entered, he showed me his couch
& told me get comfortable, I slept the night, but woke
when he shifted his sleeping pad closer to mine I got up
—he’d slept badly on a green inch-thick dusty
foam rubber plastic mattress I’d thrown out years ago,
poor cold mat upon the concrete cellar warehouse floor—
so that was it! He’d given his bed for my comfort!

No no I said, take back your bed, sleep comfortable
weary you deserve it, amazing you still get around,
I’m sorry I hadn’t visited before, just didn’t know
where you lived, here you are a block upstreet
from Peter, hospitable to me Neal & Gregory &
girlfriends of the night, old sweet Bohemian heart
don’t sleep in the floor like that I’ll take your place
on the mat & pass the night ok.

                         I went upstairs, happy to see
he had a place to lay his head for good, and woke in China.
Peter alive, though drinking a problem, Neal was dead
more years than my father Louis no longer
smiling alive, no wonder I’d not visited this place
he’d retired to a decade ago, How good to see him home, and take
his fatherly hospitality for granted among the living
and dead. Now wash my face, dress in my suit
on time for teaching classroom poetry at 8am Beijing,
far round the world away from Louis’ grave in Jersey.

November 16, 1984, 6:52 A.M.
Baoding, P.R.C.

You Don’t Know It

In Russia the tyrant cockroach mustache ate 20 million souls

and you don’t know it, you don’t know it

In Czechoslovakia the police ate the feet of a generation that can’t walk

and you don’t know it, you don’t know it

In Poland police state double agent cancer grew large as Catholic

Church Frankenstein the state itself a Gulag Ship

and you don’t know it, you don’t know it

In Hungary tanks rolled over words of Politician Poets

and you don’t know it

In Yugoslavia underground partisans of the Great Patriotic War

fought off the Great Patriotic Army of USSR

and you don’t know it,

you know Tito but you don’t know it

you say you don’t know it these exiles from East Europe complaining about someday Nicaragua Gulag

’cause you don’t know it was the Writers Union intellectuals of Moscow Vilnius Minsk Leningrad and Tbilisi

saying “Invade Immediately” their Curse on your Revolution

No you don’t know it’s not N.Y. Review of Books it’s bohemian Krakow Prague Budapest Belgrade E. Berlin

saying you don’t know it you don’t know it

Bella Akhmadulina in candlelight: “American poet you can never know the tragedy of Russia”

Nor you General Borge Father Cardenal Vice President Rodríguez you say you don’t know it

Can’t know it too busy with Yankee war Worse than memory of Stalin

That you know, yes you do know it

But you don’t know it but you will know it

yes you will know it Lenin said

the first time History’s Tragedy Second repeat it’s Comedy

or was it Trotsky? Marx?

Non pasaran whispers from the Elbe, intellectual teeth chattering on Danube & Vistula

Village churchbells drowned in Volga waters dammed by Commissar engineers, riverwater evaporating faster than it reaches the sea

the Taiga woodsman weeping over “boring pamphlets” his forests provided

Kulaks rattling skulls & bones to seed a new millennial agriculture by 1980 ’90 2000

with Lysenko’s ectoplasm providing ammonia to grow Kasha

You don’t know it intellectual Castro fat ass Power Chair a quarter century

biting fairies’ nuts off, sneaking into Manolo’s desk to read my love letters

making Heberto Padilla eat your speeches You don’t know it’s a froufrou among French intellectual magazines you glance at as vice president of Nicaragua

between wars from North Yanquis and banquets with Pork & Rum after

TV evening news—

You don’t know it

Madame Mandelstam’s thick book’s gossip, Mrs. Evgenia Ginzburg’s

grey prisoners shitting on each other in the hull of the boat

on frozen sea out of Vladivostok going with the million

Card-carrying Party members old Bolshevik friends of Lenin

to the frozen puddles and hungry banks of Kolyma

where skeletons hit each other to keep alive you don’t know it

And they don’t know it, Aksionov Škvorecky Romain Rolland Ehrenburg Fedorenko Markov Yevtushenko—

don’t know midnight Death Squad clubs on cobblestone no

the ears cut off, heads chopped open in Salvador don’t know the million

Guatemala Indians in Model Villages—

Don’t know 40,000 bellies ripped open by the d’Aubuisson hit-men for Born Again neoconservative Texans,

don’t know Yanquis taking tea & 1916 money from the Douane, ex

change for Chinese opium

trading bananas to Europe for Tax Control in Managua & Shanghai—

don’t know the holocaust in Salvador 25 years ago 30,000 shot one week for thinking Left-Pink-triangle yellow-red headband high on peyote

& you don’t know Imagination that leaps like a frog in Communist Monastery Ponds—

Don’t know you confess like a worm turning in a matchbox full of salt

Don’t know Solitary, Lesbian Capo ordering Movie Star Princess to expose her ———

and her delicate pink ——— and her firm round ——— to the false dogs of Ideology Fart Yowp with big pricks Whip Blip Blip Blip—

Bugger it up in Dynamite Don’t know the Marines in your mother’s toilet

No you don’t know it we don’t know it only stupid American minstrels know intolerant gasbags ascending

with millions of Readers’ Digest copies

and photo enlargements of a thumbnail translation of the Moravian Bible

Put in my shirt-pocket in a sweat eyes closing as the enemy approaches

to fall asleep & snore Don’t I know it

January 25, 1986, 2:00–2:12 A.M.
Managua

On the Conduct of the World Seeking Beauty Against Government

Is that the only way we can become like Indians, like Rhinoceri,

like Quartz Crystals, like organic farmers, live what we imagine

Adam & Eve to’ve been, caressing each other with trembling limbs

before the Snake of Revolutionary Sex wrapped itself round

the Tree of Knowledge? What would Roque Dalton joke about lately

teeth chattering like a machine gun as he debated mass tactics

with his Compañeros? Necessary to kill the Yanquis with big bomb

Yes but don’t do it by yourself, better consult your mother

to get the Correct Line of Thought, if not consult Rimbaud once he got his leg cut off

or Lenin after his second stroke sending a message thru Mrs. Krupskaya to the rude Georgian, & just before his deathly fit when the

Cheka aides outside

his door looked in coldly assuring him his affairs were in good hands

no need to move—What sickness at the pit of his stomach moved up to his brain?

What thought Khlebnikov on the hungry train exposing his stomach to the sun?

Or Mayakovsky before the bullet hit his brain, what sharp propaganda for action

on the Bureaucratic Battlefield in the Ministry of Collective Agriculture in Ukraine?

What Slogan for Futurist architects or epic hymn for masses of Communist Party Card holders in Futurity

on the conduct of the world seeking beauty against Government?

January 27, 1986

Hard Labor

After midnite, Second Avenue horseradish Beef
     at Kiev’s wood tables—
The Kasha Mushrooms tastes good
     as Byelorussia usta when my momma
     ran away from Cossacks 1905
Did the 5 year plan work? How bad Stalin?
Am I a Stalinist? A Capitalist? A
     Bourgeois Stinker? A rotten Red?
No I’m a fairy with purple wings and white halo
     translucent as an onion ring in
the transsexual fluorescent light of Kiev
     Restaurant after a hard day’s work

February 17, 1986, 12:35 A.M.

Velocity of Money

For Lee Berton

I’m delighted by the velocity of money as it whistles through windows of Lower East Side

Delighted skyscrapers rise grungy apartments fall on 84th Street’s pavement

Delighted this year inflation drives me out on the street

with double digit interest rates in Capitalist worlds

I always was a communist, now we’ll win

as usury makes walls thinner, books thicker & dumber

Usury makes my poetry more valuable

Manuscripts worth their weight in useless gold—

The velocity’s what counts as the National Debt gets trillions higher

Everybody running after the rising dollar

Crowds of joggers down Broadway past City Hall on the way to the Fed

Nobody reads Dostoyevsky books anymore so they’ll have to give passing ear

to my fragmented ravings in between President’s speeches

Nothing’s happening but the collapse of the Economy

so I can go back to sleep till the landlord wins his eviction suit in court

February 18, 1986, 10:00 A.M.

Sphincter

I hope my good old asshole holds out
60 years it’s been mostly OK
Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation
     survived the altiplano hospital—
a little blood, no polyps, occasionally
     a small hemorrhoid
active, eager, receptive to phallus
     coke bottle, candle, carrot
     banana & fingers—
Now AIDS makes it shy, but still
     eager to serve—
out with the dumps, in with the condom’d
     orgasmic friend—
still rubbery muscular,
     unashamed wide open for joy
But another 20 years who knows,
     old folks got troubles everywhere—
necks, prostates, stomachs, joints—
     Hope the old hole stays young
     till death, relax

March 15, 1986, 1:00 P.M.

Spot Anger

“Drive all blames into one”

Allen when you get angry you got two choices—
Konk your head on the floor with words
Bang the kitchen table, slap taxicab doors,
          insult hotel toilets
Snarl into National microphones, sneer at the
          speedfreak closet girl syringiste—
Why not more subtle, grab your anger by the wings
and bag it in the garbage pail
Look around by the venetian blind
It’s only you in the universe’s kitchen—
A subtler wave of the hand, patience—
Say, I don’t want this Saturn trip, no thanks,
Domo arigato how nice but I’ll not entertain
          Dr. Frankenstein till Monday
These pants don’t fit, may I borrow your library card—
Breathe your typhoonic tantrum in, exhale a gentle
          breath of Ginsberg out the kitchen window
wafting a Springtime Fairy feather-slight
          raising a big iron pipe
to konk Mr. Temper Tantrum on his green bull noodle & fly off
over Manhattan weaving silver laughter
          round skyscraper spires.

April 24, 1986, 6:00 A.M.

London Dream Doors

On London’s Tavern’s wooden table, been reading Kit Smart—
God sent him to sea for pearls—till eyes heavy must sleep—
So went upstairs to my boardinghouse room yet the tall dark
boy that lived across the hall’d just got under covers
in a high Captain’s bed, but left his door wide open,
his room furnished mahogany, oak crowded to the closets—
I gazed alas he was handsome, older than my choice of flesh
smooth boyhood, the lad had dark eyes, long limbs
a little hair on legs and chest, a little beard and smile—
I dozed, woke and returned from the bog, again passing
his room at stairtop— He lay in bed eyes open, I paused—
then turned aside thru his door, an embrace before going
to sleep in my own solid room I’d rented, first night
in this odd town, I’d come to teach a few strangers Love
& Poetry— So cast myself on his chest for a hug goodnight,
a second’s surprise like father-son sweet dreams—
He clasped arms around me, held tight, I stopped a second—
More than I’d hoped for! Refreshing friendliness!—
lay there a minute, his warmth remained, spontaneous—
Grateful hugged his chest & quickly kissed his neck
& face, haste before I must rise— Yet no need to go
so with right leg I pushed the door in, closed,
we were alone. He pulled me on top of him, held each other,
I passed my hand along his side down to his thigh
he shivered, hands on my back, we began to sweat
under covers, his skin like slippery meat, the heat
of our embrace familiar, companionable surprise, I was
to be loved by his strong form, how soon hug his middle?
touch his flaccid glans? My own already thick with pleasure—
chest to his chest, legs intertwined, hard hair felt
uncomfortable under my hand—moved my palm across
his slimy stomach, sweat not unpleasant, close heat
amazed us both, secret freedom in his antique room,
invitation to explore night’s pleasure, fresh conscience,
muscled thoughts, hearts glowing astounded happiness a brief
8 hours in the dark— What to do? I kissed his solar plexus
& belly above loins, he sighed and breathed on my neck in back,
affectionate clasped to his breast, arm round my waist— eyes
closed I lay still, head under white muslin in dim light,
quilt set aside for the heat—
                         The door opened suddenly!
“You’ll have to pay for the night’s furniture” announced
the landlord. “You’ll have to pay for the sink water and extra
covers! We rent or sell!” He fell silent. Hadn’t he noticed
my bulk under thin sheet-cloth? But next instant he was
gone downstairs to write up the bill, door left ajar.
“Into my closet!” my new friend whispered urgent, “the first door!”—
The knob on his mirrored armoire stuck, wouldn’t open,
same horrific closet of old play-movie nightmare blackouts—I saw
my own room entrance across the hall—“I’ll go in there, seconds
to hide,” fast before the old fellow returns! Naked trailing
sheet & blanket I crossed the hall stealthy, closed my bedroom
door behind, just time enough? Alas bed sheets blocked
the door jamb, clogged the landing, pull them through, I strained,
dragged awkward blankets inside in a trice and woke under
springtime sheets and linen cover alone, East Twelfth Street,
last night with Bengali Marathi Urdu poets, Museum of Modern Art.

May 6, 1986, 3:10 A.M.

Cosmopolitan Greetings

To Struga Festival Golden Wreath Laureates
& International Bards 1986

Stand up against governments, against God.

Stay irresponsible.

Say only what we know & imagine.

Absolutes are coercion.

Change is absolute.

Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.

Observe what’s vivid.

Notice what you notice.

Catch yourself thinking.

Vividness is self-selecting.

If we don’t show anyone, we’re free to write anything.

Remember the future.

Advise only yourself.

Don’t drink yourself to death.

Two molecules clanking against each other require an observer to become scientific data.

The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal world after Einstein.

The universe is subjective.

Walt Whitman celebrated Person.

We are observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person.

Universe is Person.

Inside skull vast as outside skull.

Mind is outer space.

“Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound.”

“First thought, best thought.”

Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.

Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.

Syntax condensed, sound is solid.

Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.

Consonants around vowels make sense.

Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.

Subject is known by what she sees.

Others can measure their vision by what we see.

Candor ends paranoia.

Kral Majales
June 25, 1986
Boulder, Colorado

FIFTH INTERNATIONALE

Fifth Internationale

To Billy MacKeever

Arise ye prisoners of your mind-set
Arise Neurotics of the Earth
For Insight thunders Liberation
A sacred world’s in birth

No more Attachment’s chains shall bind us
Mind’s Aggression no more rules
The Earth shall rise on new foundations
We have been jerks we shall be Fools

’Tis the Path of Accumulation
Let each sit on his place
The International Crazy Wisdom School
Could save the Human Race

July 1986
Naropa

EUROPE, WHO KNOWS?

Europe, Who Knows?

All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”
Asphodel’s fine but next year what comes with the rose?
Cabbage smells good but depends which way the wind blows
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Wormwood skies’ll poison the sea: Revelation
Oslo to Athens black clouds’ve enlightened the nations
Cesium mushrooms & milk may mutate the Creation
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Crossing the park in Munich Max Planck Institute
On my forearm and brow a film of invisible soot
Fell on my skin out of heaven, a new set of clothes
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Woke up in Poland, maple leaves just wilted down
Not a cloud in the sky inexplicably cold on the ground
Kids in the yard were playing without any clothes
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Phoned up the doctor, official reply: “Never mind”
Same afternoon suggested we take iodine
Three days later Chernobyl’s error disclosed
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Slaughtered the reindeer in Lapland, Lapps on the dole
Camembert radioactive, in Zurich, the gold
In the Cotswolds of England all the sheep markets were closed
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

If a liter of water’s one x-ray in Washington State
So in milk bars of Minsk what does it cost a milkshake?
Big apples this year, we still have to eat up what grows
If we didn’t eat poison we’d starve, Brother, everyone knows.

September 12, 1986 (with Steven Taylor)
Warsaw Airport

Graphic Winces

In highschool when you crack your front tooth bending down too fast over the porcelain water fountain

or raise the tuna sandwich to your open mouth and a cockroach tickles your knuckle

or step off the kitchen cabinet ladder on the ball of your foot hear the piercing meow of a soft kitten

or sit on a rattling subway next the woman scratching sores on her legs, thick pus on her fingers

or put your tongue to a winter-frozen porch door, a layer of frightening white flesh sticks to the wooden frame—

or pinch your little baby boy’s fat neck skin in the last teeth of his snowsuit zipper

or when you cross Route 85 the double yellow line’s painted over a dead possum

or tip your stale party Budweiser on the windowsill to your lips, taste Marlboro butts floating top of the can—

or fighting on the second flight of the tenement push your younger sister down the marble stairs she bites her tongue in half, they have to sew it back in the hospital—

or at icebox grabbing the half-eaten Nestlé’s Crunch a sliver of foil sparks on your back molar’s silver filling

or playing dare in High School you fall legs split on opposite sides of a high iron spiked fence

or kicked in the Karate Dojo hear the sound like a cracked twig then feel a slow dull throb in your left forearm,

or tripping fall on the sidewalk & rip last week’s scab off your left knee

You might grimace, a sharp breath from the solar plexus, chill spreading from shoulderblades and down the arms,

or you may wince, tingling twixt sphincter and scrotum a subtle electric discharge.

December 8, 1986

Imitation of K.S.

The young kid, horror buff, monster Commissar, ghoul connoisseur, attic bedroom postered with violet skulls, cigarette butts on the floor, thinks he’d strangle girls after orgasm—pumping iron 13 years old, 175-pound muscleman, his father shot at him, missed, hit the door, he saw his mother’s tiny apron, father clutched his throat, six foot four drunk, today’s in Alcohol Anonymous. Even eyes, symmetric face, aged twenty, acid-free-plastic packages of Ghoul Ghosts, Monsters Nowhere, Evil Demons of the Dead, Frenzy Reanimator, Psycho Nightmare on Elm Street stacked by his mattress; he followed me around, carried my harmonium box, protected me from the drunk Tibetan, came to my bed; head on his shoulder, I felt his naked heart, “my Cock’s half dead,” he thinks he’ll cut it off, can’t stand to be touched, never touches himself, iron legs, “skinny dynamite,” thick biceps, a six-day black fuzz on his even jaw, shining eyes, “I love you too.”

March 22, 1987

I Went to the Movie of Life

In the mud, in the night, in Mississippi Delta roads
outside Clarksdale I slogged along Lights flashed
under trees, my black companion motioned “Here they are,
your company.”—Like giant rhinoceri with painted faces
splashed all over side and snout, headlights glaring in rain,
one after another buses rolled past us toward Book Hotel
Boarding House, up the hill, town ahead.

                              Accompanying me, two girls
pitched in the dark slush garbaged road, slipping in deep ruts
wheels’d left behind sucking at their high heels, staining granny
dresses sequined magic marked with astral signs, Head groupies
who knew the way to this Grateful Dead half-century heroes’
caravan pit stop for the night. I climbed mid-road, a toad
hopped before my foot, I shrank aside, unthinking’d kicked it off
with leather shoe, animal feet scurried back at my sight—
a little monster on his back bled red, nearby this prey a lizard
with large eyes retreated, and a rat curled tail and slithered
in mud wet to the dirt gutter, repelled. A long climb ahead, the girls’d
make it or not, I moved on, eager to rejoin old company.
Merry Pranksters with aged pride in peacock-feathered beds,
shining mylar mirror-paper walls, acid mothers with strobe-lit radios,
long-haired men, gaunt 60s’ Diggers emerged from the night
to rest, bathe, cook spaghetti, nurse their kids,
smoke pipes and squat with Indian sages round charcoal
braziers in their cars; profound American dreamers,
I was in their company again after long years, byways
alone looking for lovers in bar street country towns
and sunlit cities, rain & shine, snow & spring-bud backyard
brick walls, ominous adventures behind the Iron Curtain.
Were we all grown old? I looked for my late boyfriends,
dancing to Electric Blues with their guns and smoke round jukebox walls
the smell of hash and country ham, old newspaper media stars
wandering room after room: Pentagon refugee Ellsberg, old dove
Dellinger bathing in an iron tub with a patch in his stomach wall
Abbie Hoffman explaining the natural strategy of city political saint
works, Quicksilver Messenger musicians, Berkeley orators
with half-grown children in their sox & dirty faces, alcohol
uncles who played chess & strummed banjos frayed by broken fingernails.

     Where’s Ken Kesey, away tonite in another megalopolis hosting
hypnosis parties for Hell’s Angels, maybe nail them down on stage
or radio, Neal must be tending his daughters in Los Gatos,
pacifying his wife, coming down amphetamines in his bedroom,
or downers to sleep this night away & wake for work
in the great Bay Carnival tented among smokestacks, railroad
tracks and freeways under box-house urban hills.
Young movie stars with grizzled beards passed thru bus corridors
looking for Dylan in the movie office, re-swaggering old roles,
recorded words now sung in Leningrad and Shanghai, their wives
in tortoise shell glasses & paisley shawls & towels tending
cauldrons bubbling with spaghetti sauce & racks of venison,
squirrel or lamb; ovens open with hot rhubarb pies—
Who should I love? Here one with leather hat, blond hair
strong body middle age, face frowned in awful thought,
beer in hand by the bathroom wall? That Digger boy I knew
with giant phallos, bald head studying medicine walked by,
preoccupied with anatomy homework, rolling a joint, his
thick fingers at his chest, eyes downcast on paper & tobacco.
One by one I checked out love companions, none whose beauty
stayed my heart, this place was tired of my adoration,
they knew my eyes too well. No one I could find to give me
bed tonite and wake me grinning naked, with eggs scrambled
for breakfast ready, oatmeal, grits, or hot spicy sausages
at noon assembly when I opened my eyelids out of dream. I
wandered, walking room to room thru psychedelic buses
wanting to meet someone new, younger than this crowd of wily
wrinkled wanderers with their booze and families, Electronic
Arts & Crafts, woe lined brows of chemical genius music
producers, adventurous politicians, singing ladies & earthy paramours
playing rare parts in the final movie of a generation.

                                        The cameras
rolled and followed me, was I the central figure in this film?
I’d known most faces and guided the inevitable cameras room to room,
pausing at candle lit bus windows to view this ghostly caravan of gypsy
intellects passing thru USA, aged rock stars whispering by coal stoves,
public headline artists known from Rolling Stone & N.Y. Times,
actors & actresses from Living Theater, gaunt-faced and eloquent
with lifted hands & bony fingers greeting me on my way
to the bus driver’s wheel, tattered dirty gloves on Neal’s seat
waiting his return from working the National Railroad, young kids
I’d taught saluting me wearily from worn couches as I passed
bus to bus, cameras moving behind me. What was my role?
I hardly knew these faded heroes, friendly strangers
so long on the road, I’d been out teaching in Boulder, Manhattan,
Budapest, London, Brooklyn so long, why follow me thru
these amazing Further bus party reunion corridors tonite?
or is this movie, or real, if I turn to face the camera I’d break
the scene, dissolve the plot illusion, or is’t illusion
art, or just my life? Were cameras ever there, the picture
flowed so evenly before my eyes, how could a crew follow
me invisible still and smoothly noiseless bus to bus
from room to room along the caravan’s painted labyrinth?
This wasn’t cinema, and I no hero spokesman documenting friendship
scenes, only myself alone lost in bus cabins with familiar
strangers still looking for some sexual angel for mortal delights
no different from haunting St. Mark’s Boys Bar again solitary
in tie jacket and grey beard, wallet in my pocket full of
cash and cards, useless.

                                   A glimmer of lights
in the curtained doorway before me! my heart leapt
forward to the Orgy Room, all youths! Lithe and
hairless, smooth skinned, white buttocks ankles, young men’s
nippled chests lit behind the curtain, thighs entwined
in the male area, place I was looking for behind
my closed eyelids all this night—I pushed my hand
into the room, moving aside the curtain that shimmered
within bright with naked knees and shoulders pale
in candlelight—entered the pleasure chamber’s empty door
glimmering silver shadows reflected on the silver curtained veil,
eyelids still dazzling as their adolescent limbs
intangible dissolved where I put my hand into a vacant room,
lay down on its dark floor to watch the lights of phantom arms
pulsing across closed eyelids conscious as I woke in bed
returned at dawn New York wood-slatted venetian blinds over
the windows on E. 12th St. in my white painted room

April 30, 1987, 4:30–6:25 A.M.

When the Light Appears

Lento

You’ll bare your bones you’ll grow you’ll pray you’ll only know
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You’ll sing & you’ll love you’ll praise blue heavens above
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You’ll whimper & you’ll cry you’ll get yourself sick and sigh
You’ll sleep & you’ll dream you’ll only know what you mean
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You’ll come & you’ll go, you’ll wander to and fro
You’ll go home in despair you’ll wonder why’d you care
You’ll stammer & you’ll lie you’ll ask everybody why
You’ll cough and you’ll pout you’ll kick your toe with gout
You’ll jump you’ll shout you’ll knock your friends about
You’ll bawl and you’ll deny & announce your eyes are dry
You’ll roll and you’ll rock you’ll show your big hard cock
You’ll love & you’ll grieve & one day you’ll come believe
As you whistle & you smile the lord made you worthwhile
You’ll preach and you’ll glide on the pulpit in your pride
Sneak & slide across the stage like a river in high tide
You’ll come fast or come on slow just the same you’ll never know
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears

May 3, 1987, 2:30 A.M.

On Cremation of Chögyam Trungpa, Vidyadhara

I noticed the grass, I noticed the hills, I noticed the highways,

I noticed the dirt road, I noticed car rows in the parking lot

I noticed ticket takers, I noticed the cash and checks & credit cards,

I noticed buses, noticed mourners, I noticed their children in red dresses,

I noticed the entrance sign, noticed retreat houses, noticed blue & yellow Flags—

noticed the devotees, their trucks & buses, guards in Khaki uniforms

I noticed crowds, noticed misty skies, noticed the all-pervading smiles & empty eyes—

I noticed pillows, colored red & yellow, square pillows and round—

I noticed the Tori Gate, passers-through bowing, a parade of men & women in formal dress—

noticed the procession, noticed the bagpipe, drum, horns, noticed high silk head crowns & saffron robes, noticed the three piece suits,

I noticed the palanquin, an umbrella, the stupa painted with jewels the colors of the four directions—

amber for generosity, green for karmic works, noticed the white for Buddha, red for the heart—

thirteen worlds on the stupa hat, noticed the bell handle and umbrella, the empty head of the white clay bell—

noticed the corpse to be set in the head of the bell—

noticed the monks chanting, horn plaint in our ears, smoke rising from atop the firebrick empty bell—

noticed the crowds quiet, noticed the Chilean poet, noticed a Rainbow,

I noticed the Guru was dead, I noticed his teacher bare breasted watching the corpse burn in the stupa,

noticed mourning students sat crosslegged before their books, chanting devotional mantras,

gesturing mysterious fingers, bells & brass thunderbolts in their hands

I noticed flame rising above flags & wires & umbrellas & painted orange poles

I noticed the sky, noticed the sun, a rainbow round the sun, light misty clouds drifting over the Sun—

I noticed my own heart beating, breath passing thru my nostrils

my feet walking, eyes seeing, noticing smoke above the corpse-fir’d monument

I noticed the path downhill, noticed the crowd moving toward buses

I noticed food, lettuce salad, I noticed the Teacher was absent,

I noticed my friends, noticed our car the blue Volvo, a young boy held my hand

our key in the motel door, noticed a dark room, noticed a dream

and forgot, noticed oranges lemons & caviar at breakfast,

I noticed the highway, sleepiness, homework thoughts, the boy’s nippled chest in the breeze

as the car rolled down hillsides past green woods to the water,

I noticed the houses, balconies overlooking a misted horizon, shore & old worn rocks in the sand

I noticed the sea, I noticed the music, I wanted to dance.

May 28, 1987, 2:30–3:15 A.M.

Nanao

Brain washed by numerous mountain streams
Legs clean after walking four continents
Eyes cloudless as Kagoshima sky
Fresh raw surprisingly cooked heart
Tongue live as a Spring salmon
Nanao’s hands are steady, pen & ax sharp as stars.

With Peter Orlovsky
June 1987

Personals Ad

“I will send a picture too if you will send me one of you”

—R. CREELEY

Poet professor in autumn years
seeks helpmate companion protector friend
young lover w/empty compassionate soul
exuberant spirit, straightforward handsome
athletic physique & boundless mind, courageous
warrior who may also like women & girls, no problem,
to share bed meditation apartment Lower East Side,
help inspire mankind conquer world anger & guilt,
empowered by Whitman Blake Rimbaud Ma Rainey & Vivaldi,
familiar respecting Art’s primordial majesty, priapic carefree
playful harmless slave or master, mortally tender passing swift time,
photographer, musician, painter, poet, yuppie or scholar—
Find me here in New York alone with the Alone
going to lady psychiatrist who says Make time in your life
for someone you can call darling, honey, who holds you dear
can get excited & lay his head on your heart in peace.

October 8, 1987

Proclamation

For Carlos Edmondo de Ory

I am the King of the Universe
I am the Messiah with a new dispensation
Excuse me I stepped on a nail.
A mistake
Perhaps I am not the Capitalist of Heaven.
Perhaps I’m a gate keeper snoring
          beside the Pearl Columns—
No this isn’t true, I really am God himself.
Not at all human. Don’t associate me
          w/that Crowd.
In any case you can believe every word
          I say.

October 31, 1987
Gas Station, N.Y.

To Jacob Rabinowitz

Dear Jacob I received your translation, what kind
favor you paid to have it printed up,
lighthearted the most readable I know—
Glad to be your friend, 2000 years after Catullus,
nothing’s changed poets or poetics, lovers or love
familiar conversation between the three of us,
familiar tears—Remember you leaped in bed naked
and wouldn’t sleep on my floor, decade ago? I was
half century old, you hardly out of puberty gave me
your ass bright eyes and virgin body a whole month
What a little liar you were, how’d I know you were cherry?
Put me down now for not hearing your teenage heartbeat,
think back were you serious offering to kidnap me
to Philadelphia, Cleveland, Baltimore, Miami, God
knows, rescued from boring fame & Academic fortune,
Rimbaud Verlaine lovers starved together in boondock houseflat
stockyard furnished rooms eating pea soup reading E. A. Poe?
First night in each other’s arms you chilled my spine whispering
lies till dawn—pubescent lovelife with a tiny monkey you claim’d
you’d tortured to death—how trust you take me to the moon?
Tho you gave your butt to others in St. Mark’s Baths’ steam room
that year I followed you to Chelsea Hotel kissing your boots
& still lust for your body tho now you’ve grown a red beard.
At thirty still cute, lost interest in my potbelly years ago,
useless to jack off to your youthful shadow anymore.
And I your genius poet first love ignored hypoglycemic,
impotent, gouty, squint-eyed, halfway bald—
Reading this book gives me youth back again, not old
in vain, at last you bring love to Catullus & Poetry
humble enough to print these translations by yourself.

December 2, 1987, 4:30 A.M.

Grandma Earth’s Song

I started down Capitol Hill side along unfamiliar black central avenues warily uncertain which streets thru Fillmore district to City Hall valley center,

and as I passed a block or two I saw a fragile crone marching toward me up hill, Grandma Bag-lady ragged dressed with firm ancient steps Old Ma Earth

dragging a shopping cart filled with cans bottles & plastic newspapers tied

with silk stockings wandering alone singing out loud on way to Civic Center

When dull roots write Laws
Jerusalem to New York
Poor Jews break Arab Jaws
Blacks eat greasy pork

What’s the Planet News?
Wall Street’s poison pill
Palestinians stone Jews
Water runs downhill

Young soldiers gonna die
Old presidents get AIDS
They bankrupted the sky
The ozone layer fades

Crazy people got money
I own State Capitols
Sheriff calls me honey
The army’s a bunch of fools

I want my welfare stamps
I want my movie show
I got ten kerosene lamps
I’m 99 years old

This town’s already dead
This country’s on the skids
This state’s made out of lead
I can’t feed my kids

My name is Gaia ah ha ha
Put me in jail I screw the sky
Nothing to win or lose Poppa
Born your gonna die

Adam bombs & newsboy hoaxes
Fakers yak the Oval Room
I live in cardboard boxes
They killed the ocean’s womb

Tear up your welfare check
I’ll eat my way to Heaven
Throw me in Walnut Creek
I’ll vomit Pacific Ocean

Wakening as she passed by I thought, she’s improvising street doggerel epic popular song cackling in everyone’s Immortal brain Anything comes to mind’s the right politics to ruin Police State.

February 13, 1988, 7:30–9:00 A.M.

Salutations to Fernando Pessoa

Every time I read Pessoa I think
I’m better than he is I do the same thing
more extravagantly—he’s only from Portugal,
I’m American greatest Country in the world
right now End of XX Century tho Portugal
had a big empire in the 15th century never mind
now shrunk to a Corner of Iberian peninsula
whereas New York take New York for instance
tho Mexico City’s bigger N.Y.’s richer think of Empire State
Building not long ago world empire’s biggest skyscraper—
be that as’t may I’ve experienced 61 years’ XX Century
Pessoa walked down Rua do Ouro only till 1936
He entered Whitman so I enter Pessoa no
matter what they say besides dead he wouldn’t object.

What way’m I better than Pessoa?
Known on 4 Continents I have 25 English books he only 3
his mostly Portuguese, but that’s not his fault—
U.S.A.’s a bigger country
merely 2 Trillion in debt a passing freakout,
Reagan’s dirty work an American Century aberration
unrepresenting our Nation Whitman sang in Epic manner
tho worried about in Democratic Vistas
As a Buddhist not proud my superiority to Pessoa
I’m humble Pessoa was nuts big difference,
tho apparently gay—same as Socrates,
consider Michelangelo da Vinci Shakespeare
inestimable comerado Walt
True I was tainted Pinko at an early age a mere trifle
science itself destroys ozone layers this era antiStalinists
poison entire earth with radioactive anticommunism.
Maybe I lied somewhat
rarely in verse, only protecting others’ reputations.
Frankly too Candid about my mother tho meant well
Did Pessoa mention his mother? she’s interesting,
powerful to birth sextuplets
Alberto Cairo Alvaro de Campos Ricardo Reis Bernardo Soares &
          Alexander Search simultaneously
with Fernando Pessoa himself a classic sexophrenic
Confusing personae not so popular
outside Portugal’s tiny kingdom (till recently a second-rate police state)
Let me get to the point er I forget what it was
but certainly enjoy making comparisons between this Ginsberg &
          Pessoa
people talk about in Iberia hardly any books in English
presently the world’s major diplomatic language extended throughout
          China.
Besides he was a shrimp, himself admits in interminable “Salutations to
          Walt Whitman”
whereas 5′7½″ height
somewhat above world average, no immodesty,
I’m speaking seriously about me & Pessoa.
Anyway he never influenced me, never read Pessoa
before I wrote my celebrated Howl already translated into 24 languages,
not to this day’s Pessoa influence an anxiety
Midnight April 12 ’88 merely glancing his book
certainly influences me in passing, only reasonable
but reading a page in translation hardly proves “Influence.”
Turning to Pessoa, what’d he write about? Whitman
(Lisbon, the sea etc.) method peculiarly longwinded,
diarrhea mouth some people say—Pessoa Schmessoa.

April 12, 1988

May Days 1988

I

As I cross my kitchen floor the thought of Death returns,

day after day, as I wake & drink lemon juice & hot water,

brush my teeth & blow my nose, stand at toilet a yellow stream

issuing from my body, look out curtained windows, across the street

Mary Help of Christians R.C. Church, how many years

empty the garbage pail, carry black plastic bags to the sidewalk,

before I boil the last soft egg,

day after day glance my altar sitting pillow a sidelong look & sigh,

pass bookcases’ Greek lyrics & volumes of Military Industrial Secrecy?

How many mornings out the window Springtime’s grey clouds drift over a wooden owl

on the Rectory roof, pigeons flutter off the street lamp to an iron fence, I return to kitchen

oatmeal cooking in an iron pot, sit in a wooden chair, choose a soupspoon, dreaming out the window eat my gruel

as ailanthus trees bud & grow thick green, seaweed in rainy Atlantis,

lose leaves after snowfall, sit bare-branched in January’s rusty winds?

Snap photographs focus’d on the clothesline, courtyard chimneypots a block away?

How many years lie alone in bed and stroke my cock

or read the Times on a pillow midnite, answer telephone talk, my Stepmother

or Joe in Washington, wait for a knock on the door it’s portly Peter sober hesitant

inquiring supper, rarely visiting, rueful a life gone by—you got the monthly rent?

armfuls of mid-morn mail arriving with despairing Secretaries—

rise and tuck my shirt in, turn the doorlock key, go down hallway stairs,

enter New York City, Christine’s Polish restaurant around East 12th Street corner on 1st Avenue

taxi uptown to art museums or visit Dr. Brown, chest x-rays, smoking cough or flu

Turn on the News from Palestine, Listen to Leadbelly’s tape lament, Black Girl, Jim Crow, Irene—and

Sunday Puerto Ricans climb concrete steps week after week to church.

II

Sox in the laundry, snap on the kitchen light midnite icebox

raid, sun-dried tomatoes, soft swiss cheese & ham, Pineapple juice,

low rent control $260 per mo, clear sanded gymseal’d floors, white walls,

Blake’s Tyger on the bedroom bookcase, cabs rattling on dark asphalt below,

Silence, a solitary house, Charles Fourier on bedside table waiting inspection, switch light off—

Pajamas in drawer for sleep, 80 volumes behind the headboard for browsing—

Irving Howe’s Yiddish Poetry, Atilla József, Sashibusan Das Gupta’s Obscure Religious Cults, Céline, De Vulgari Eloquentia—

What riches for old age? What cozy naps and long nights’ dreams? Browsing in Persepolis and Lhasa!

What more ask existence? Except time, more time, ripe time & calm

& Warless time to contemplate collapsing years, tho body teeth brain elbow ache,

a crooked creak at backbone bottom, dry nostrils, mottled ankle

& smart tongue, how many years to talk, snap photos, sing in theaters

improvise in classroom street church radio, far from Congress?

How many more years eyes closed 9 A.M. wake worrying

the ulcer in my cheek is’t cancer? Should I have charged Burroughs’ biographer for photos

reprinted from 40 years ago? Miles the editor’s stylistic competence OK

for Lit Hist Beat Generation? Should I rise & meditate

or sleep in daylight recuperate flu? phone ringing half an hour ago

What’s on the Answer Machine? Give back Advances to Harper’s?

Who promised deadlines for this photo book? Wasn’t I up 2 A.M. revising Poems?

Spontaneous verse?!? Take a plane to Greenland, visit Dublin?

PEN Club meet May 17, decision Israeli Censorship Arabic Press?

Call C—— O—— Yiddish translator poetress Zionist yenta?

Write concentration camp expert moralist Elie Wiesel, what’s his word

“Arabs shd throw words not stones?”—that quote accurate from the Times?

Should I get up right now, crosslegged scribbling Journals

with motor roar in street downstairs, stolen autos doctor’d at the curb

or pull the covers over achy bones? How many years awake or sleepy

How many mornings to be or not to be?

How many morning Mays to come, birds chirp insistent on six-story roofs?

buds rise in backyard cities? Forsythia yellow by brick walls & rusty bedsprings near the fence?

III

How many Sundays wake and lie immobile eyes closed remembering Death,

7 A.M. Spring Sunlight out the window the noise a Nuyorican drunkard on the corner

reminds me of Peter, Naomi, my nephew Alan, am I mad myself, have always been so

waking in N.Y. 61st year to realize childless I am a motherless freak

like so many millions, worlds from Paterson Los Angeles to Amazon

Humans & Whales screaming in despair from Empire State Building top to Arctic Ocean bottom—?

May 1–3, 1988

Numbers in U.S. File Cabinet (Death Waits to Be Executed)

100,000,000 buffalo 17th century on North American Plains

$136,000,000,000 Farm Program costs encouraged chemical overuse 1980s decade

$4,500,000 Agriculture Department research on Natural farm methods 1980s

300,000 National junkies

100,000 alcohol deaths yearly

385,000 tobacco deaths heart attack cancer a year

30,000 deaths “illicit substances” yearly

$11,000,000,000 budget war on drugs 1990

1,000,000,000 people on world malnourished diseased

3,600,000 estimated American Homeless

300,000 mental patients dumped on streets 1970s–1980s

300 homeless slept outdoors Tompkins Park N.Y.C. July 29, 1989

17,000 meals served St. Peter’s soup kitchen Morristown N.J.

110,000,000 man-made deaths Wars holocausts fatality camps XX Century

3°–8° Fahrenheit increase earth temperature next century computers project

Lambert 3-6606 Louis Ginsberg’s phone for 20 years in Paterson N.J.

65 Decibels sound level ordinary speech

100 Decibels rock concert sound level

28,000,000 current cases hearing loss U.S.A.

6,000 workers, Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant

$300,000,000 yearly pay & benefits Rocky Flats Colorado

1% Colorado manufacturing activity’s at Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility

70 FBI agents raided Rocky Flats investigating 10,000 gallon toxic waste tanks 1989

$100,000,000,000 to 200,000,000,000 estimate nuclear weapons complex cleanup costs

Savings & Loan Association bankruptcy taxpayers’ costs it says here $500,000,000,000

70,000 Salvadorians killed in Civil War majority by Government Paramilitary Death Squads funded by U.S.A.

40,000 names Doris Lessing too on National Automated Immigration Lookout System barred entering U.S.A.

3,000 citizens killed by Shining Path, Peru 1972–1979

3,000 citizens disappeared in Government custody Peru 1972–1979

U.S. produces 24% planetary Greenhouse gas, consumes 40% world’s gasoline

$2,000,000,000,000-plus U.S. National debt 1990 ante Iraq War

$65 cost of Harry Smith’s eyeglasses

20 largest World Cities by year 2000 none U.S.-European none speak English

1 in 10 Salvadorians displaced in decade’s counterinsurgency war

1 sun per known solar system

1 set Wisdom teeth

1 mother of all

1 wrong move

1 bad apple

1 way street

1 anus each

1 non-God

1 down 2 to go

March 1990

Return of Kral Majales

This silver anniversary much hair’s gone from my head and I am the King of May

And tho I am King of May my howls & proclamations present are banned by FCC on America’s electric airwaves 6 A.M. to midnight

So King of May I return through Heaven flying to reclaim my paper crown

And I am King of May with high blood pressure, diabetes, gout, Bell’s palsy, kidneystones & calm eyeglasses

And wear the foolish crown of no ignorance no wisdom anymore no fear no hope in capitalist striped tie & Communist dungarees

No laughing matter the loss of the planet next hundred years

And I am the King of May returned with a diamond big as the universe an empty mind

And I am the King of May lacklove bouzerant in Springtime with a feeble practice of meditation

And I am King of May Distinguished Brooklyn English Professor singing

All gone all gone all overgone all gone sky-high now old mind so Ah!

April 25, 1990

Elephant in the Meditation Hall

Yes all spiritual groups scandal the shrine room

What about San Francisco Roshi & the board director’s wife

What about high living limousine expense accounts in Moscow?

What about the late Rajneesh & poisoned gefilte fish in Oregon?

What’s hiding under Rajneeshis’ Orange skullcaps? Brains?

Then old L.A. Mountain Roshi even tap’d his young girls

and East Coast Roshi’s semen dribbled from Hawaii to the broom closets of the Catskills

Maezumi Roshi caused grief his senseis’ hearts wrung out with midnight sake & beer

Later he thanked them for A.A.

Veteran Zenmaster with motorcycle & community farm chorale felt up little boys

& a big guy too, tough as nails

Remember a strange Mongolian Russian fruitcake Lama in Polk Gulch Bay Area?

Vajracharya Trungpa! Dont mention the naked poet at the Halloween Party!

And the whispered transmission regent died of AIDS (disciple a straight guy sick they say)

Marxists were right, religion the people’s opium!

But who’re they to talk lookit Mao a Marxist his picture on every Chinese wall & Little Red Book

wherefore everyone stood up bedtime nites reciting his dread slogans?

They still had pictures of Stalin on truckcab windows in Gori 1985 a scandal!

And New Left carried psychedelic pictures of Mao, Che Guevara & Castro up and down Empire State’s stairways

A scandal of the sixties! And marvelous atheist Khmer Rouge read Marx Sartre & Erich Fromm,

how many’d they murder with religious good intentions?

What US President hasn’t sponsored war, Lumumba’s assassination, an H-bomb,

trillion dollar Savings & Loan mistakes? Scandals! taxpayers gotta subsi dize Banks!

Now we gotta digest Plutonium? how evacuate CIA?

Scandal hundreds homeless under Brooklyn Bridge freezing Xmas &

New Year’s Eve! Millions homeless in America!

Who’ll gotta pay for 500,000 U.S. boys & girls visiting Arabian Deserts?

Who’ll cough up billions for Iraq War to save a President’s face?

Twelve Billion dollars mickeymouse the year’s drug wars?

El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala we paid death squads for decades

Nobody does anything right! Gods, Popes, Mullahs, Communists, Poets, Financiers!

My own life, scandal! lazy bum! secondhand royal scarlet ties & Yves St. Laurent Salvation Army blazers

How many boys let me caress their thighs!

How many girls cursed my cold beard? I better commit suicide!

That wouldn’t work either, it’ll be a beatnik scandal

after Cassady’s railroad track death, Joan Burroughs’ bullet in head,

Orlovsky sane in Bellevue 1st Ave., Kerouac’s liver collapse & ruptured esophagus!

Trapped in living nightmare, I made a big mistake I got born,

The world came out of a black hole, whole universe

a scandal, illusion, everyone deluded, a cosmic elephant in the meditation planet,

George the IIIrd, Rasputin, Stalin, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, Hitler, the 13th Dalai Lama’s Regent, Vice President Agnew,

Ronald Reagan delayed hostage release till the Elephant party’s Inauguration Day

George Bush peddled coke for the contras in streetcorner banks downtown Panama City!

Scandals in Buddhafields? big mistakes in Hemispheres, on moons, Black Holes everywhere!

Anyway, the national debt’ll approach 4 trillion any day say the homeless on Tompkins Square.

July 12, 1990

Poem in the Form of a Snake That Bites Its Tail

          Oleta (Snake) River!
          Heron, Manatee, Osprey
Canopy of white red &
          black Mangroves
fighting for survival against
          exotics introduced
                    by Europeans
Swamp fern covers the ground
               by this Primordial Tidal
                         Zone,
Brown detritus under the
                    clear water
     feeds animals and trees in
                    high and low tides
          pulled by the moon,
     cycles of lunar
          reproduction following
                    waters flowing
          in and out the
          Intracoastal Waterway—
     Barracuda come
          in with the tides
               Heron we’ll see
Brazilian pepper
          & Malalluca
                    from Australia
brought in by Mr. Gifford
               first Doctor
          of Tropical Agriculture
Malalluca
     to dry out the swamps
          & make truck farms
          to feed the Northeast 1900—
                    Dade County
               tomatoes & cabbage today—

Then real estate won
     out, that saved the
          swamp
          water
          supply
This forest by Oleta River a tiny
     area untouched
          half a million
               years—
Interconnected to the
     coral reefs
     (as nutrient-rich protective
     soup for fish
               spawning)
          with a rubber tire, mucus—
               soaked in the ooze
     Red mangrove
          seedlings growing on inland skirts
               at water edge
          roots like spindly
               buttresses

First Indians Tequesta
     for 10–25,000 years—
          left behind shell
                    tools
     to make dugouts
     Mikasuki and Seminole
     were Creek Indians forced down
               from North Carolina
          by Sen. Jesse Helms
          then driven inland from
          Northern Florida
                    by the Army
               —Indian middens
               attest 100
          years’ occupation

     The Seminole
     more warlike than
          the innocent
               Tequestas

Quiet in a canoe
     Train whistle West
     & airplane above
          cottony clouds
               in blue afternoon

Seminole and Mikasuki
     accepted
     runaway slaves
               got in trouble with
               the whites—
Abraham the Runaway showed Chief Osceola
          guerrilla gunpowder—
                    Defied the U.S. Army—
Govt. fought 2 wars
               against them—
     first 1820 Andrew Jackson
               fought in Florida
     pushed Indians south
Second Seminole War
     transported 2,000
          Indians to Oklahoma
               around 1840, the Trail of Tears
—200 managed to
escape into swamp
where white man had
     yet no use for
          the land
Indians
     from before Columbus
                    & runaway slaves
               Strange & perpetual
                    alliance

Otherwise we’re all exotics
     like the Brazilian pepper
          and Australian pine

A brown heron
          flaps along the
               green surface
          to stand sentinel
               beak pointed out
     on a green lawn
               past the big rubber
                         tree—
          tall stalky legs
               rising halfway
heavy slow
               on long wings
               the height of the big
               ficus’ leafy
                         umbrella whose
                    thready prop roots hang
               over the concrete
               bank down to the brackish
                              water surface
Kids’ & crows’ voices
     (crows here for the
          season)

Water filled the
     coral, ojus,

               limestone
     a product trucked
          out since
               the railroad came down,
               turn of the century

Trains a mile long
               from rockpits now
               at the edge of
                    the Everglades

Mikasuki Indians now hold
               cultural events
               Steve & Billy Tiger
                    painter & musician

Seminoles more commercially
     oriented, invented Bingo on
          the reservation,
     On land they control
     untax’d cigarettes

A local issue
                    ecological!
We depend on Everglades
     for water to
                    sustain our days—
     Most of the body is
     made up of water—
     3–4 days without water
     we die—
Everglades filters the
     water Dade Broward
          & Palm Beach County drink—
          (Tricounty fresh water—)

But Brazilian pepper seeds
     explode
     and cause mumbo-jumbo
     growth at
               waterside.

     Exotic Malalluca trees—?
          The developers like it
               (it’s cheap)
     but they drink up water & their
     flowers cause allergies
     to Rochelle—

     Red mangrove
                    stains the water
     properly its own color

Are hyperindustrial White folks
     exotics to the planet now?

Here comes a duck
that flies, sings & runs
     but doesn’t do any
          of them well

El pato vuela, canta
     y corre, pero
     ninguno de las tres
          los hace bien.

Big yellow hibiscus faces
     with red noses—
Venetian sailors
     brought
          venereal disease
               to New World
now Millennial events
                    speed up?

Get off fossil fuels
     for transport
Get off oil addiction
Plastics could be
     recyclable

Zero Growth regenerative
     recycling as for
          thousands of years
          with the Tequesta
Get off this disposable
          binge—

& water! dont mess
          up the Oleta River Dont
     play with the big Snake

Can live without air
     8 minutes
Can live without water
          2–4 days
can live without food
     40–50 days—
Survive, clean up our
               air
Clean up water
Grow enuf food to
          keep everybody
               alive

Instructors: any
               indigenous populations

Indians, Africans,
          Tibetans, Bedouins
               Laplanders—
Chernobyl began
          the question—
How much can the
          Government lie?

(Miami Herald pervasive
          and controlling—)

Locally the Seminoles may
          be the Gurus.

With Steven Bornstein
November 16, 1990

Mistaken Introductions

or this marvelous hi Lama followed
          in here by screaming madwoman
          charging she was betrayed 10 years ago
          on one of the moons of Saturn
or, I want to introduce you to this
          universe which unfortunately
          doesn’t quite exist.
We set up luncheon at Rizzoli
          for the Tibetan photog who
          hadnt prepared his
          slides, it was a disaster—
May I introduce you to your
          prospective son-in-law—
          unfortunately today he’s drunk
               unshaven but a good
          businessman tomorrow
It’s a magnificent hotel
          just this week there’s no
          water to flush the toilet
          above the 10th floor
          where you’re staying and
we had a fire in the elevator

January 7, 1991

C.I.A. DOPE CALYPSO

CIA Dope Calypso

In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai-shek’s army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday

Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to sell to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA

Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Rai that’s a railroad town
Sold it next to police chief brain
He took it to town on the choochoo train

Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA

The policeman’s name was Mr. Phao
He peddled dope grand scale and how
Chief of border customs paid
By Central Intelligence’s U.S. A.I.D.

The whole operation, Newspapers say
Supported by the CIA

He got so sloppy & peddled so loose
He busted himself & cooked his own goose
Took the reward for an opium load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold

Big-time pusher a decade turned grey
Working for the CIA

Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & wench
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till opium flowed through the land like a flood

Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA

The whole operation fell into chaos
Till U.S. Intelligence came into Laos
I’ll tell you no lie I’m a true American
Our big pusher there was Phoumi Nosovan

All them princes in a power play
But Phoumi was the man for the CIA

And his best friend General Vang Pao
Ran our Meo army like a sacred cow
Helicopter smugglers filled Long Cheng’s bars
In Xieng Quang province on the Plain of Jars

It started in secret they were fighting yesterday
Clandestine secret army of the CIA

All through the Sixties the Dope flew free
Thru Tan Son Nhut Saigon to Marshal Ky
Air America followed through
Transporting confiture for President Thieu

All these Dealers were decades and yesterday
The Indochinese mob of the U.S. CIA

Operation Haylift offisir Wm. Colby
Saw Marshal Ky fly opium Mr. Mustard told me
Indochina desk he was Chief of Dirty Tricks
“Hitchhiking” with dope pushers was how he got his fix

Subsidizing traffickers to drive the Reds away
Till Colby was the head of the CIA

January 1972

II
N.S.A. Dope Calypso

Now Richard Secord and Oliver North
Hated Sandinistas whatever they were worth
They peddled for the Contras to ease their pain
They couldn’t sell Congress so Contras sold cocaine

They discovered Noriega only yesterday
Nancy Reagan & the CIA

Now coke and grass were exchanged for guns
On a border airfield that John Hull runs
Or used to run till his Costa Rican bust
As a CIA spy trading Contra coke dust

They discovered Noriega only yesterday
Nancy Reagan & the CIA

Ramón Milian Rodríguez of Medellín Cartel
Laundered their dollars & he did it very well
Hundreds of millions through U.S. banks
Till he got busted and sang in the tank

It was buried in the papers only yesterday
When Bush was Drug Czar U.S.A.

Milian told Congress $3,000,000 coke bucks
Went to Felix Rodríguez, CIA muck-a-muck
To give to the Contras only Hush Hush Hush
Except for Donald Gregg & his boss George Bush

Buried in the papers only yesterday
With Bush Vice President U.S.A.

Rodríguez met Bush in his office many times
They didn’t talk business, they drank lemon & limes
Or maybe they drank coffee or they smoked a cigarette
But cocaine traffic they remembered to forget

It was buried in the papers only yesterday
And Bush got in the White House of the U.S.A.

Now when Bush was director of the C.I.A.
Panama traffic in coke was gay
You never used to hear George Bush holler
When Noriega laundered lots of cocaine dollar

Bush paid Noriega, used to work together
They sat on a couch & talked about the weather

Then Noriega doublecrossed his Company pal
With a treaty taking back our Panama Canal
So when he got into the big White House
Bush said Noriega was a cocaine louse

The Cold War ended, East Europe found hope
The U.S. got hooked in a war on dope

Glasnost came, East Europe got free
So Bush sent his army to Panama City
Bush’s guns in Panama did their worst
Like coke fiends fighting on St. Marks & First

Does Noriega know Bush’s Company crimes?
In 2000 A.D. read the New York Times.

January-February 1990

III
Just Say Yes Calypso

When Schwarzkopf’s Father busted Iran’s Mossadegh
They put in the Shah and his police the Savak
They sucked up his oil, but got Ayatollah’s dreck
So Thirty years later we hadda arm Iraq

Though he used poison gas, Saddam was still our man
But to aid the Contras, hadda also arm Iran

Mesopotamia was doing just fine
Till the Ottoman Empire blew up on a mine
They had apple orchards in Eden and Ur
Till the Snake advised George Bush “This land is yours”

The Garden foul’d up, brimstone came down
In the good old days we had plenty ozone

The British & Americans & Frenchmen all
Took concessions in the Garden So the Garden took a fall
Got addicted to Emirs and their fossil fuels
Police state Sheiks & Intelligence ghouls

The Sphinx lost his nose, acid ate the Parthenon
Pretty soon the Persian Gulf is dead and gone

The Saudi desert bloomed with oil pipe lines
To push the auto industry It’s yours & it’s mine
L.A. and Osaka got a habit on gas
In a bullet-proof Caddie you can really move your ass

L.A. & Osaka got a habit on gas
In a bullet-proof Caddie you can really move your ass

From a Mickey-Mouse war on cocaine & crack
We dropped a million bombs on the kids in Iraq
How many we killed nobody wants to tell
It’d give a lousy picture of a war they gotta sell

When they wave a yellow ribbon & an oily flag
Just say yes or they’ll call you a flag

April 25, 1991

Hum Bom!

I
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!

Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!

What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do!
Who do we bomb?

What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb you!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb you!

Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!

May 1971

II

For Don Cherry

Whydja bomb?
We didn’t wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
We didn’t wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
You didn’t wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
You didn’t wanna bomb!

Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you hadda bomb?

Who wantsa bomb?
We don’t wanna bomb!
Who wantsa bomb?
We don’t wanna bomb!
Who wantsa bomb?
We don’t wanna bomb!
We don’t wanna
     we don’t wanna
          we don’t wanna bomb!

Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!

They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!

They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!

Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!

Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?

Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!
Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!
Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!
Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!

Saddam’s still there building a bomb!
Saddam’s still there building a bomb!
Saddam’s still there building a bomb!
Saddam’s still there building a bomb!

III
Armageddon did the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon did the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog

Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon does the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon does the job

Armageddon for the mob
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon for the mob
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog

Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog

Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog

Ginsberg says Gog & Magog
Armageddon did the job.

February-June 1991

Supplication for the Rebirth of the Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

Dear Lord Guru who pervades the space of my mind
permeates the universe of my consciousness,
still empties my balding head and’s stabilized my wand’ring thought
to average equanimity in Manhattan & Boulder

Return return reborn in spirit & knowledge in human body
my own or others as continual Teacher of chaotic peace,
Return according to your vow to pacify magnetize enrich destroy
grasping angry stupidity in me my family friends & Sangha

Return in body speech & mind to enlighten my labors
& the labors of your meditators, thousands from L.A. to Halifax
to relieve sufferings of our brothers, lovers
family, friends, fellow citizens, nations and planet.

Remember your vow to be with us on our deathbeds
in living worlds where we dwell in your tender perspective
breathe with your conscious breath, catch ourselves thinking
& dissolve bomb dream, fear of our own skin & yelling argument
                                   in the sky of your mind

Bend your efforts to regroup our community within your thought-body
& mind-space, the effects of your non-thought,
Turbulent ease of your spontaneous word & picture
nonmeditative compassion your original mind

These slogans were writ on the second day of June 1991
a sleepless night my brother’s 70th birthday on Long Island
my own sixty-fifth year in the human realm visiting his house
by the Vajra Poet Allen Ginsberg supplicating protection of his
                                   Vajra Guru Chögyam Trungpa

June 2, 1991, 2:05 A.M.

After the Big Parade

Millions of people cheering and waving flags for joy in Manhattan
Yesterday’ve returned to their jobs and arthritis now Tuesday—
What made them want so much passion at last, such mutual delight—
Will they ever regain these hours of confetti’d ecstasy again?
Have they forgotten the Corridors of Death that gave such victory?
Will another hundred thousand desert deaths across the world be
                                   cause for the next rejoicing?

June 11, 1991, 2:30 P.M.

Big Eats

Big deal bargains TV meat stock market news paper headlines love life Metropolis

Float thru air like thought forms float thru the skull, check the headlines catch the boyish ass that walks

Before you fall in bed blood sugar high blood pressure lower, lower, your lips grow cold.

Sooner or later let go what you loved hated or shrugged off, you walk in the park

You look at the sky, sit on a pillow, count up the stars in your head, get up and eat.

August 20, 1991

Not Dead Yet

Huffing puffing upstairs downstairs telephone
     office mail checks secretary revolt—
The Soviet Legislative Communist bloc
     inspired Gorbachev’s wife and Yeltsin
to shut up in terror or stand on a tank
     in front of White House denouncing Putschists—
September breezes sway branches & leaves in
     a calm schoolyard under humid grey sky,
Drink your decaf Ginsberg old communist New
     York Times addict, be glad you’re not Trotsky.

September 16, 1991

Yiddishe Kopf

I’m Jewish because love my family matzoh ball soup.

I’m Jewish because my fathers mothers uncles grandmothers said “Jewish,” all the way back to Vitebsk & Kaminetz-Podolska via Lvov.

Jewish because reading Dostoyevsky at 13 I write poems at restaurant tables Lower East Side, perfect delicatessen intellectual.

Jewish because violent Zionists make my blood boil, Progressive indignation.

Jewish because Buddhist, my anger’s transparent hot air, I shrug my shoulders.

Jewish because monotheist Jews Catholics Moslems’re intolerable intolerant—

Blake sd. “6000 years of sleep” since antique Nobodaddy Adonai’s mind trap—Oy! such Meshuggeneh absolutes—

Senior Citizen Jewish paid my dues got half-fare card buses subways, discount movies—

Can’t imagine how these young people make a life, make a living.

How can they stand it, going out in the world with only $10 and a hydrogen bomb?

October 1991

John

I
No one liked my hair
Mother pulled it toward the movies
Father hit the top of my head
Street gangs set it afire
My dry hair, my
short hair, black hair, drab hair
my stupid hair—frizzled!
Till I met John,
John loved my hair
Twined his fingers in my delicate curly locks
Told me let it grow
John buried his face in my hair
kissed my hair
Murmured endearments “Oh oh oh” to the top of my skull
Patted me on the head
Stroked me from crown to neck nape—
Sat across from me on the subway and gazed at me lovingly—

II
They were whispering, elbows leaned on the wide marble balustrade
balcony lobby of the Majestic Theater—
talking Jerusalem, Moscow, Ballet, Quasars, Interest rates—
John came down from his seat, stopped at the top stair—
sat down, hands on his ears in despair—“I’ve stymied my feet!”
“What” they asked, “you’ve stymied your feet? Whazzat mean?”
John nodded his head, eyes closed, hands against his head as before,
“I’ve stymied my feet,” he repeated dolefully.

III
John had AIDS.
First, he began talking to himself.
The psychiatrist said:
“If you’re going to talk to yourself,
do it in the form of poetry.”

November 7, 1991, 8:30 A.M.

A Thief Stole This Poem

These days steal everything

People steal your wallet, your watch

Break into your car steal your radio suitcase

Break in your house, your Sony Hi 8 your CD VCR Olympus XA

People steal your life, catch you on the street & steal your head off

Steal your sneakers in the toilet

Steal your love, mug your boyfriend rape your grandmother on the subway

Junkies steal your heart for medicine, they steal your credibility gap over the radio

Cokeheads & blackmen steal your comfort, peace of mind walking Avenue A your laundry package

steal your spirit, you gotta worry

Puerto Ricans steal white skin from your face

Wasps steal your planet for junk bonds, Jews steal your Nobodaddy and leave their dirty God in your bed

Arabs steal your pecker & you steal their oil

Everybody’s stealing from everyone else, time sex wristwatch money

Steal your sleep 6 A.M. Garbage Trucks boomboxes sirens loud arguments hydrogen bombs

steal your universe.

December 19, 1991, 8:15 A.M.

Lunchtime

Birds chirp in the brick backyard Radio
piano chopping gentle chords next door
A rush of tires & car exhaust on 14th Street
Delighted to be alive this cloudy Thursday
February window open at the kitchen table,
Senior Citizen ready for next week’s angiogram.

February 20, 1992, 1:15 P.M.

Deadline Dragon Comix

After Lalon

I
It’s true I got caught in
                    the world
When I was young Blake
          tipped me off
Other teachers followed:
Better prepare for Death
Don’t get entangled with
          possessions
That was when I was young,
          I was warned
Now I’m a Senior Citizen
and stuck with a million
          books
a million thoughts a million
               dollars a million
                    loves
How’ll I ever leave my body?
Allen Ginsberg says, I’m
          really up shits creek

II
I sat at the foot of a
               Lover
     and he told me everything
Fuck off, 23 skidoo,
          watch your ass,
          watch your step
exercise, meditate, think
          of your temper—
Now I’m an old man and
          I won’t live another
20 years maybe not another
          20 weeks,
maybe the next second I’ll
          be carried off to
                    rebirth
     the worm farm, maybe it’s
          already happened—
How should I know, says
          Allen Ginsberg
Maybe I’ve been dreaming
               all along—

III
It’s 2 A.M. and I got to
          get up early
and taxi 20 miles to satisfy
          my ambition—
How’d I get into this fix,
this workaholic show
     biz meditation market?
If I had a soul I sold it
     for pretty words
If I had a body I used
     it up spurting my essence
If I had a mind it got
     covered with Love—
If I had a spirit I forgot
     when I was breathing
If I had speech it was
     all a boast
If I had desire it went
     out my anus
If I had ambitions to
     be liberated
how’d I get into this
          wrinkled person?
With pretty words, Love essences,
          breathing boasts, anal
          longings, famous crimes?
What a mess I am, Allen Ginsberg.

IV
Sleepless I stay up &
          think about my Death
—certainly it’s nearer
          than when I was ten
               years old
and wondered how big the
          universe was—
If I dont get some rest I’ll die faster
If I sleep I’ll lose my
          chance for salvation—
asleep or awake, Allen
     Ginsberg’s in bed
          in the middle of the night.

V
     4 A.M.
Then they came for me,
     I hid in the toilet stall
They broke down the toilet door
     It fell in on an innocent boy
Ach the wooden door fell
     in on an innocent kid!
I stood on the bowl & listened,
     I hid my shadow,
they shackled the other and
     dragged him away
in my place— How long can
     I get away with this?
Pretty soon they’ll discover
     I’m not there
They’ll come for me again, where
     can I hide my body?
Am I myself or some one else
     or nobody at all?
Then what’s this heavy flesh this
     weak heart leaky kidney?
Who’s been doing time
     for 65 years
in this corpse? Who else went
     into ecstasy besides me?
Now it’s all over soon,
          what good was all that come?
Will it come true? Will
          it really come true?

VI
I had my chance and lost it,
many chances & didn’t
     take them seriously enuf.
Oh yes I was impressed, almost
     went mad with fear
I’d lose the immortal chance,
     One lost it.
Allen Ginsberg warns you
     dont follow my path
     to extinction.

March 31, 1992

Get It?

Get beat up on TV squirming on the ground for driving irregular

Get bombed in Philadelphia by helicopters with your little babies

Get kicked in the street by Newark police and charged w/riot

Get assassinated by a jerk while FBI sleeps with itself

Get shot by a stringer for the CIA & blame it on Fair Play for Cuba Committee

Get bumped off by an errandboy for Cuban drug kingpins, friend of the Feds & Dallas cops

Get caught paying off Contras with coke money while Acting U.S. Drug War Czar

Get busted for overcharging Iranians on secret warplane sales

Get convicted of lying to Congress about off-the-shelf dirty wars in Central America

Get 12 billion dollars for a drug bureaucracy and double the number of addicts

Get a million people in prison in the land of the free

Get the electric chair & gas chamber for unpopular crimes

Organize Citizens for Decency Through Law rob your own phony bank several billion dollars get sent to jail

May 1992
New York

Angelic Black Holes

By Andrey Voznesensky

Soul to crotch the streets commit hara-kiri,
Burnt-out stores chessboard moonlit households,
The City of Angels stares into black holes—
See down through Earth to scorched Nagorno-Karabakh.
How long is the tunnel of pain?
Does God need Welfare?

Even so, remembering the sheen on Peredelkino’s black gooseberries,
Rodney King’s name sounds Russian, rodnik for ground-spring.
As for me who crapped up my own homeland
How lay the blame on anybody else?
Rain & ashes seal my lips.
The two superpowers left the Little Man supersufferings.
Us—blown to hell. You—immolate yourselves in flame?

Any light at the end of the tunnel of pain?

Translated by Allen Ginsberg and Nina Bouis
May 17, 1992
Los Angeles

Research

Research has shown that black people have inferiority complexes regarding white folks

Research has shown that Jews are exclusively concerned with financial lasciviousness

Research has shown Socialism to be a universal failure wherever practiced by secret police

Research has shown that Earth was created 4004 B.C., a Divine Bang

Research has shown that sparrows, bees, lizards, chickens, pigs & cows exhibit signs of homosexual behavior when in prison

Research has shown Southern Baptist Inerrancy Confession the most virulent form of Christian Truth

Research has shown that 90% of people going to Dentists have bad teeth

brush your teeth violently 3 times a day after meals wear away the roots

Research has shown that Hollywood makes the best films ever, the sexually degenerate

that the U.N. is Good ? Bad ? Indifferent ? for American interests Check One

Research has shown that Christian Reconstructionist homosexuality is Sin, Lesbianism crime against nature, AIDS a plague sent to punish gay Angelmakers

bisexuality disapproved by 51% Americans

Research has shown that teen headshakers watching TV get more IQ tests than natives of Amazon & Ucayali rivers who have no antennae

Research has shown whales & porpoises to subscribe to a Higher Intelligence

Research has shown that Elitist Individualism Spiritual Corruption & Degenerate Art caused Dictatorships in Soviet Union China and Germany

that possession of pornography by American Family Institute has resulted in 35% increase in sex crimes among institute librarians

viewing murderous behavior on TV sitcoms resulted in 100% increased violent language behavior by intercontinental Heads of State

To conclude research has shown that the material universe does not exist

May 20, 1992

PUT DOWN YOUR CIGARETTE RAG

Put Down Your Cigarette Rag (Dont Smoke)

Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke
Dont smoke
It’s a nine billion dollar
Capitalist Communist joke
     Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke
                         Dont smoke

Smoking makes you cough,
You cant sing straight
You gargle on saliva
& vomit on your plate
     Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke,
               Dont smoke smoke smoke smoke

You smoke in bed
You smoke on the hill
Smoke till yr dead
You smoke in Hell
     Dont smoke dont smoke in living Hell Dope Dope
          Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke

You puff your fag
You suck your butt
You choke & gag
Teeth full of crud
     Smoke smoke smoke smoke Dont dont dont
          Dont Dont Dope Dope Dope Dont Smoke Dont Dope

Pay your two bucks
          for a deathly pack
Trust your bad luck
          & smoke in the sack
     Dont Smoke Dont Smoke Nicotine Nicotine No
     No dont smoke the official Dope Smoke Dope Dope

Four Billion dollars in Green
’swat Madison Avenue gets
t’ advertise nicotine
& hook you radical brats
          Dont Smoke Dont Smoke Dont Smoke
               Nope Nope Dope Dope Hoax Hoax Hoax Hoax
          Dopey Dope Dopey Dope Dope Dope dope dope

Black magic pushes dope
Sexy chicks in cars
America loses hope
& smokes and drinks in bars
          Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke,
          dont smoke dont dont dont dont
          choke choke choke choke kaf kaf
          Kaf Kaf Choke Choke
          Choke Choke Dope Dope

Communism’s flopped
Let’s help the Soviet millions
Sell ’em our Coffin-Nails
& make a couple billions
          Big Bucks Big Bucks bucks bucks
               bucks bucks smoke smoke smoke smoke
                    smoke bucks smoke bucks Dope bucks big
                    Dope Bucks Dig Big Dope Bucks Big Dope
                         Bucks dont smoke big dope bucks
                              Dig big Pig dope bucks

Nine billion bucks a year
a Southern Industry
Buys Senator Jesse Fear who pushes Tobacco subsidy
In the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
     Dope smokes dope smokes dont smoke dont smoke
          Cloak cloak cloak room cloak & dagger
          smoke room cloak room dope cloak
          cloak room dope cloak room dope dont smoke

Nine billion bucks for dope
approved by Time & Life
America loses hope
The President smokes Tobacco votes
     Dont Smoke dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke
          Dont smoke nope nope nope nope

20 thousand die of coke
     Illegal speed each year
400 thousand cigarette deaths
     That’s the drug to fear
          Dont smoke Dont smoke Dont smoke

Get Hooked on Cigarettes
Go Fight the War on Drugs
Smoke any other Weed
Get bust by Government Thugs
     Dont smoke dont smoke the official dope

If you will get in bed
& give your girlfriend head
then you wont want a fag
Nor evermore a drag
          Dont Smoke dont smoke Hope Hope Hope Hope
               O Please Dont Smoke Dont Smoke
               O Please O Please O Please
               I’m calling on my knees

Twenty-four hours in bed
& give your boyfriend head
Put something in your mouth
Like skin not cigarette filth
     Suck tit suck tit suck cock suck cock
          suck clit suck prick suck it
          but dont smoke nicotine dont smoke
          dont smoke nicotine nicotine it’s
          too obscene dont smoke dont smoke
          nicotine suck cock suck prick suck tit
          suck clit suck it But don’t smoke shit nope
          nope nope nope Dope Dope Dope Dope
               the official dope Dont Smoke

Make believe yer sick
Stay in bed and lick
yr cigarette habit greed
One day’s all you need
          In deed in deed in deed in deed smoke weed
               smoke weed Put something green
               in between but don’t smoke smoke dont smoke
               hope hope hope hope Nicotine dont
               smoke the official dope
               Dope Dope Dope Dope Don’t Smoke

1971; June 21, 1992

VIOLENT COLLABORATIONS

Violent Collaborations

Violate me
in violet times
the vilest way that you know
Ruin me
Ravage me
utterly savage me
on me no mercy bestow

—OLD SONG, 1944

Trespass against me
& penetrate deeply
Spare me not even your rape
Tie me up quickly
make me smile sickly
Seal up my mouth with scotch tape

—AG

Piss on me Crap on me
Wipe your fat ass on me
Make me a creature you loathe
Sorely harass me
Dont even ask me
But deal me your ultimate blow

—PH

Ignore me & stomp on me
Crack your big whip on me
Make me get down on my knees
Order me suck your dick
spank me & do it quick
Shove it in deep as you please

—AG & PH

Stun me & shun me
slave me & shave me
Give me your loathsome disease
Fuck me & fist me
in your army enlist me
Poop on me when you’re at ease

—AG & PH

Degrade & debase me
in public deface me
come on my beard in the mud
Double me over
in summertime clover
then hose me down w/your stud

—AG & PH

With Peter Hale
June 1992

Calm Panic Campaign Promise

End of Millennium
                    Earth’s decay—
Fire Air Water tainted
          We’re the Great Beast—
                    Dark bed thoughts
Can’t do anything to stop it—
Denial in Government, in Newspapers of Record—
Like watching gum disease & not brushing teeth
Getting heart failure, no rest much stress
Putting salt on your greasy pork
Putting sugar in coffee you’re diabetic
          Dysesthesia on foot soles
Poor circulation smoke more cigarettes
Kick your son under the table have another beer
Need President who’ll reverse the denial—
                    The Calm Panic Party
               to restore nature’s balance.

July 9, 1992, 12:55 A.M.

Now and Forever

I’ll settle for Immortality—
Not thru the body
     Not thru the eyes
          Star-spangled high mountains
               waning moon over Aspen peaks
But thru words, thru the breath
          of long sentences
loves I have, heart beating
          still,
inspiration continuous, exhalation of
          cadenced affection
These immortal survive America,
               survive the fall of States
          Departure of my body,
               mouth dumb dust
This verse broadcasts desire,
               accomplishment of Desire
Now and forever boys can read
               girls dream, old men cry
Old women sigh
               youth still come.

July 19, 1992
Aspen

Who Eats Who?

A crow sits on the prayerflagpole,
her mate blackwinged walks the wet green grass, worms?
Yesterday seagulls skimmed the choppy waves,
     feet touching foamed breakers
               looking for salmon? halibut? sole?
Bacteria eat parameciums or vice versa,
viruses enter cells, white cell count low—
Tooth & claw on TV, lions strike down antelope—
Whales sift transparent krill thru bearded teeth.
Every cannibal niche fulfilled, Amazon
     headhunters eat testicles—
               Enemy’s powers & energy become mine!

August 13, 1992
Gampo Abbey, Nova Scotia

The Charnel Ground

… rugged and raw situations, and having accepted them as part of your home ground, then some spark of sympathy or compassion could take place. You are not in a hurry to leave such a place immediately. You would like to face the facts, realities of that particular world. …

FROM A COMMENTARY ON THE SADHANA OF MAHAMUDRA, Chögyam TRUNGPA, RINPOCHE

Upstairs Jenny crashed her car & became a living corpse, Jake sold grass, the white-bearded potbelly leprechaun silent climbed their staircase

Ex-janitor John from Poland averted his eyes, cheeks flushed with vodka, wine who knew what

as he left his groundfloor flat, refusing to speak to the inhabitant of Apt. 24

who’d put his boyfriend in Bellevue, calling police, while the artistic Buddhist composer

on sixth floor lay spaced out feet swollen with water, dying slowly of AIDS over a year—

The Chinese teacher cleaned & cooked in Apt. 23 for the homosexual poet who pined for his gymnast

thighs & buttocks— Downstairs th’ old hippie flower girl fell drunk over the banister, smashed her jaw—

her son despite moderate fame cheated of rocknroll money, twenty thousand people in stadiums

cheering his tattooed skinhead murderous Hare Krishna vegetarian drum lyrics—

Mary born in the building rested on her cane, heavy-legged with heart failure on the second landing, no more able

to vacation in Caracas & Dublin— The Russian landlady’s husband from concentration camp disappeared again—nobody mentioned he’d died—

tenants took over her building for hot water, she couldn’t add rent & pay taxes, wore a long coat hot days

alone & thin on the street carrying groceries to her crooked apartment silent—

One poet highschool teacher fell dead mysterious heart dysrhythmia, konked over

in his mother’s Brooklyn apartment, his first baby girl a year old, wife stoical a few days—

their growling noisy little dog had to go, the baby cried—

Meanwhile the upstairs apartment meth head shot cocaine & yowled up and down

East 12th Street, kicked out of Christine’s Eatery till police cornered him, ’top a hot iron steamhole

near Stuyvesant Town Avenue A telephone booth calling his deaf mother—sirens speed the way to Bellevue—

past whispering grass crack salesman jittering in circles on East 10th Street’s

southwest corner where art yuppies come out of the overpriced Japanese Sushi Bar—& they poured salt into potato soup heart failure vats at KK’s Polish restaurant

—Garbage piled up, nonbiodegradable plastic bags emptied by diabetic sidewalk homeless

looking for returnable bottles recycled dolls radios half-eaten hamburgers—thrown-away Danish—

On 13th Street the notary public sat in his dingy storefront, driver’s lessons & tax returns prepared on old metal desks—

Sunnysides crisped in butter, fries & sugary donuts passed over the luncheonette counter next door—

The Hispanic lady yelled at the rude African-American behind the Post Office window

“I waited all week my welfare check you sent me notice I was here yesterday

I want to see the supervisor bitch dont insult me refusing to look in—”

Closed eyes of Puerto Rican wino lips cracked skin red stretched out

on the pavement, naphtha backdoor open for the Korean family dry cleaners at the 14th Street corner—

Con Ed workmen drilled all year to bust electric pipes 6 feet deep in brown dirt

so cars bottlenecked wait minutes to pass the M14 bus stopped mid-road, heavy dressed senior citizens step down in red rubble

with Reduced Fare Program cards got from grey city Aging Department offices downtown up the second flight by elevators don’t work—

News comes on the radio, they bomb Baghdad and the Garden of Eden again?

A million starve in Sudan, mountains of eats stacked on docks, local gangs & U.N.’s trembling bureaucrat officers sweat near the equator arguing over

wheat piles shoved by bulldozers—Swedish doctors ran out of medicine— The Pakistan taxi driver

says Salman Rushdie must die, insulting the Prophet in fictions—

“No that wasn’t my opinion, just a character talking like in a poem no judgment”—

“Not till the sun rejects you do I,” so give you a quarter by the Catholic church 14th St. you stand half drunk

waving a plastic glass, flush-faced, live with your mother a wounded look on your lips, eyes squinting,

receding lower jaw sometimes you dry out in Bellevue, most days cadging dollars for sweet wine

by the corner where Plump Blindman shifts from foot to foot showing his white cane, rattling coins in a white paper cup some weeks

where girding the subway entrance construction sawhorses painted orange

guard steps underground— And across the street the NYCE bank machine cubicle door sign reads

Not in Operation as taxis bump on potholes asphalt mounded at the crossroad when red lights change green

& I’m on my way uptown to get a CAT scan liver biopsy, visit the cardiologist,

account for high blood pressure, kidneystones, diabetes, misty eyes & dysesthesia—

feeling lack in feet soles, inside ankles, small of back, phallus head, anus—

Old age sickness death again come round in the wink of an eye—

High school youth the inside skin of my thighs was silken smooth tho

nobody touched me there back then—

Across town the velvet poet takes Darvon N, Valium nightly, sleeps all

day kicking methadone

between brick walls sixth floor in a room cluttered with collages & gold

dot paper scraps covered

with words: “The whole point seems to be the idea of giving away the

giver.”

August 19, 1992

Everyday

The Lama sat
     in bed
with bamboo
backscratcher
his false teeth
in a big
glass of water
on the sunny
windowsill.

August 1992

Fun House Antique Store

I’d been motoring through States &
stopped at a country antique store, an
old-fashioned house, in excellent condition—
Flower’d wallpaper, polished banisters
lampshades dusted, candelabra burnished
flaming quiet by the cloak closet
under the stairs, pitcher of water & white
washbowls beside the french doors
embroidered doilies & artificial flowers
ivory & light brown on mahogany
side tables, a brass bowl for cards,
kitchen with polished stove cold ready
at Summer’s end to light up with split
wood & kindling in buckets beside
the empty fireplace, tongs & screen
in neat order. The second floor as
perfectly appointed as the foyer
(set with hat & cane rack & mirror)
stairway rugs & oaken doors, down beds
a glass-front bookcase, brown shiny bureaus,
drawers crammed with old ties & bloomers,
celluloid collars, some long-sleeved underwear, silk
& paisley shirts & shawls—and the stairs
to the third-floor attic rose five steep steps
into a blank wall nicely wallpapered with roses.
     What a delicate touch, trompe l’oeil
artistry, what charming care & magical consciousness
arranged this antique shop, so practical
for display as Bed-and-Breakfast wayfarer’s
stop-over & lampshade collector’s twee daydream—
Yet it was a modern commercial establishment
we’d entered casually on our own road
through Maryland to see our lawyer in D.C.—
One attendant who observed us admiring his home
appointments watched us turn to go—
I wished to make a speech: “Congratulations
on your work of Ahrt, your antique care
& delicate intelligence, as if Messrs. McDermott
& McGough photographed the 1880s entire
& built it in 3-D renewed at millennium’s end—”

So I orated on but the attendants conferred,
minds elsewhere, only one scion of the house
moon-faced thirtysomething sat legs spread
on the fake stairway & applauded our appreciation
& delight—& so we left to go, our party
on its way to the postmodern Capital.

August 31, 1992

News Stays News

Diana & Roger Napoleon’s real estate empire
extended up to the Napoleon Castle Hotel’s penthouse
stainless steel & gold doorknobs bathtubs bars & windowsills
But Roger got Alzheimer’s & couldn’t keep his money books straight
Diana went to jail for back taxes & cheating at cards
Lost control of her castle, lawyers ate her Empire
She got sick & spent years maintaining her body,
skin growths, liver failure, kidney disturbances, upset stomach
But the castle of flesh ceased to function
She was left inside with her soul.
What is that? Where will it go? Who am I?
asked Napoleon in bed, eyes closing for the last time on St. Helena.

September 7, 1992, 3:00 P.M.

Autumn Leaves

At 66 just learning how to take care of my body

Wake cheerful 8 A.M. & write in a notebook

rising from bed side naked leaving a naked boy asleep by the wall

mix miso mushroom leeks & winter squash breakfast,

Check bloodsugar, clean teeth exactly, brush, toothpick, floss, mouthwash

oil my feet, put on white shirt white pants white sox

sit solitary by the sink

a moment before brushing my hair, happy not yet

to be a corpse.

September 13, 1992, 9:50 A.M.

In the Benjo

To G.S.

Reading No Nature in the toilet
Sitting down, absorbed
     page after page, forgetting
time, forgetting my bottom
     relax, detritus
          flopping out into water
—better than pushing and squeezing,
     nervous, self-conscious—
better forget and read a book,
     let your behind take care of itself
better than hemorrhoids, a good volume
                    of poetry.

October 23, 1992, 11:00 A.M.

American Sentences

Tompkins Square Lower East Side N.Y.

Four skinheads stand in the streetlight rain chatting under an umbrella.

1987

*   *   *

Bearded robots drink from Uranium coffee cups on Saturn’s ring.

May 1990

*   *   *

On Hearing the Muezzin Cry Allah Akbar While Visiting the Pythian Oracle at Didyma Toward the End of the Second Millennium

At sunset Apollo’s columns echo with the bawl of the One God.

*   *   *

Crescent moon, girls chatter at twilight on the busride to Ankara.

*   *   *

The weary Ambassador waits relatives late at the supper table.

*   *   *

To be sucking your thumb in Rome by the Tiber among fallen leaves …

June 1990

*   *   *

Rainy night on Union Square, full moon. Want more poems? Wait till I’m dead.

August 8, 1990, 3:30 A.M.

*   *   *

Approaching Seoul by Bus in Heavy Rain

Get used to your body, forget you were born, suddenly you got to get out!

August 1990

*   *   *

Put on my tie in a taxi, short of breath, rushing to meditate.

November 1991
New York

*   *   *

Taxi ghosts at dusk pass Monoprix in Paris 20 years ago.

*   *   *

The young stud who dreamt I “dick’d his ass” asked me to take him to supper.

*   *   *

Two blocks from his hotel in a taxi the fat Lama punched out his mugger.

*   *   *

I can still see Neal’s 23-year-old corpse when I come in my hand.

January 1992
Amsterdam

*   *   *

Naropa Hot Tub

The ocean is full of naked young boys and Neptune-bearded old men.

July 1992

*   *   *

He stands at the church steps a long time looking down at new white sneakers—

Determined, goes in the door quickly to make his Sunday confession.

September 21, 1992

*   *   *

The midget albino entered the hairy limousine to pipi.

September 25, 1992
Modesto

*   *   *

That grey-haired man in business suit and black turtleneck thinks he’s still young.

December 19, 1992

Notes

These reference notes may be of use to younger readers & translators not familiar with ephemeral news situations or translated & esoteric texts.

Title page epigraph

     Section 2, “Discussion on Making All Things Equal,” Chuang Tzu Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 42.

(p. 937) Improvisation in Beijing

     Discourse at Chinese Writers Association conference with American Academy of Arts and Letters on “Sources of Inspiration,” Beijing, October 1984. Improvised from notes, transcribed from tape, lightly edited.

(p. 941) Prologue: Visiting Father & Friends

     See “At the Grave of My Father,” Louis Ginsberg, Collected Poems, ed. Michael Fournier, Introduction Eugene Brooks, Afterword Allen Ginsberg (Orono, Maine: Northern Lights, 1992).

(p. 947) On the Conduct of the World

     Roque Dalton: Salvadorian poet-hero-martyr (1935–1975) was liquidated by fellow FMLN revolutionists for tactical differences of opinion.

     Velemir Khlebnikov (1885–1922), Snake Train (Ann Arbor: Ardis House, 1976). The classic Futurist poet perished after returning by train from Pyatigorsk to Moscow, “weakened by malnutrition and repeated bouts of typhus and malaria.” See The King of Time, Selected Writings of the Russian Futurian, trans. Paul Schmidt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).

(p. 951) Spot Anger

     “Drive All Blames into One”—i.e., oneself. Jamgon Kongtrul, The Great Path of Awakening. A Commentary on the Mahayana Teaching of the Seven Points of Mind Training, trans. Ken McLeod (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1987). Original text by Atisa.

(p. 952) London Dream Doors

     “God sent him to sea for pearls”: “For in my nature I quested for beauty, but God, God hath sent me to sea for pearls.” Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno, ed. W. H. Bond (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969).

(p. 954) Cosmopolitan Greetings

     Response to Macedonian request for message to Struga Evenings of Poetry festival, on receiving 1986 Golden Laurel Wreath prize.

     “Molecule/clinking against molecule.”: See “Winter Night,” Attila Józef’s Selected Poems and Texts, trans. John Bátki (Iowa City: International Writing Program, University of Iowa, 1976).

     First Thought, Best Thought, Chögyam Trungpa (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1984).

     “If the mind is shapely, the art will be shapely”: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, conversation 1958, Cherry Plains, N.Y.

(p. 957) Fifth Internationale

     See the “Internationale,” former Soviet national anthem:

“Arise ye prisoners of starvation,
Arise ye wretched of the earth,
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world’s in birth,” etc.

     Crazy Wisdom: i.e., wild wisdom “whispered lineage,” characteristic of Kagyu school, Tibetan Buddhism. See Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, Crazy Wisdom (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1992).

(p. 959) Europe, Who Knows?

     Russian Chernobyl translates literally as “wormwood.”

(p. 960) “Graphic Winces”

     Collaboration with Brooklyn College M.F.A. Writing Workshop, Fall 1986, and Bob Rosenthal.

(p. 961) Imitation of K.S.

     Jack Micheline, Skinny Dynamite (San Francisco: Second Coming Press, 1980). Story by the poet-painter.

(p. 967) On Cremation of Chögyam Trungpa

     Cremation ceremony took place at Karme-Chöling Retreat Center, Barnet, Vermont.

(p. 969) Nanao

     Written for back jacket copy, Break the Mirror: The Poems of
Nanao Sakaki (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987).

(p. 976) Salutations to Fernando Pessoa

     See “Salutation to Walt Whitman,” The Poems of Fernando Pessoa, trans. Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown (New York: Ecco Press, 1987).

(p. 979) May Days 1988

     “Arabs should throw words not stones,” Elie Wiesel, quoted in New York Post sometime 1988.

(p. 984) Return of Kral Majales

     See “Kral Majales,” p. 353 and notes, Collected Poems 1947–1980 (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

     Sen. Jesse Helms & Heritage Foundation’s October 1988 law directed Federal Communications Commission to enforce 24-hour ban on “indecent” language over all airwaves, declared unconstitutional by subsequent court decisions. At poem’s writing, ban extended 6:00 A.M. to midnight. Court decisions 1993 froze ban as of 6:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M., leaving as “safe harbor” late evening to 6:00 A.M. Daytime broadcast for students (& adults) reading the author’s “questionable” poems in schools is now forbidden by law.

     All gone all gone …: version of Prajnaparamita, Highest Perfect Wisdom, 17-syllable Sanskrit mantra: “Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.”

(p. 985) Elephant in the Meditation Hall

     “As late as 1988, 333 House members and 61 Senators hosted significant donations from Savings & Loan lobbyists.” “S & L Scandal: The Gang’s all Here,” by Mary Fricher and Steve Pizzo, New York Times Op-Ed, July 27, 1990.

(p. 987) Poem in the Form of a Snake That Bites Its Tail

     Ojus: hard coral limestone formations, North Miami area, Florida.

(p. 997) CIA Dope Calypso

     See New York Times, March 12, 1989:

HULL BAILED OUT IN COSTA RI CA

     San Jose, Costa Rica, March 10 (AP)—American-born John Hull, who has been linked to Nicaraguan rebel supply network, was released from prison Friday after he posted $37,000 bail, his attorney said. The 69-year-old Mr. Hull, who was jailed on Jan. 13 on charges of drug trafficking and violating Costa Rican security, was freed soon after friends collected bail money. Mr. Hull has lived in Costa Rica for 20 years. He is accused of allowing his ranch to be used by the Nicaraguan contras and of narcotics trafficking between 1982–1985.

     Part I originally published in First Blues (New York: Full Court Press, 1979). Here two additional sections update events. For scholarly history of government intelligence involvement with drug trafficking to aid or fund “off-the-shelf” secret & illegal operations, including most references in “CIA Dope Calypso,” see Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin (Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), to which poet contributed research.

(p. 1002) Just Say Yes Calypso

     After aiding CIA overthrow of Iran’s legal Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, General N. Schwarzkopf’s father, Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr., trained the Shah’s dreaded secret police, the Savak. See “Capitol Air,” Collected Poems 1947–1980; Lies of Our Times, vol. 2, no. 2 (February 19, 1991) (New York: Sheridan Square Press); and James Breslin, “A Son Follows Suit in the Matter of Oil,” New York Newsday, September 9, 1990.

(p. 1004) Hum Bom!

     Part I and shorter version of Part II were published in Collected Poems 1947–1980. Additional verses added 1991.

(p. 1011) Big Eats

     Mahamudra poetics exercise suggested by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso, Rinpoche, Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, Summer 1991. The first of five verses, 21 syllables each, begins in “neurotic confusion” (Samsara), the last concludes grounded in “ordinary mind” (Dharmakaya).

(p. 1019) After Lalon

     Lalon Shah (1774–1890), Bengali Baul singer, devotional forerunner of Rabindranath Tagore. See Songs of Lalon Shah, trans. Abu Rushd (Dhaka: Bangla Academy Press, 1991).

(p. 1024) Get It?

     Verse 1: Ref Rodney King videotape beating and police trials, Los Angeles 1992–93.

     Verse 3: Ref. Police frame-up of political poet Amiri Baraka, 1966, later thrown out of court.

     Verse 4: Ref. J. Edgar Hoover’s amative relationship with assistant Clyde Tolson and his withholding of Kennedy assassination information from Warren Commission. See Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets (New York: Penguin, 1991); and Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: Putnam, 1993).

     Verse 5: Ref Oswald’s role as government intelligence informant within Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

     Verse 6: Ref. Jack Ruby, courier to Cuba for Mafioso boss Santos Trafficante, Jr., former drug lord of Havana.

     Verse 7: See “N.S.A. Dope Calypso” pp. 58–59, stanzas 3–6, and note.

     Verse 8: Ref. Oliver North, Richard Secord, etc.

     Verse 9: Ref. Elliott Abrams, former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, pardoned by outgoing President Bush 1992 after guilty plea to withholding Iran-contra scam information from Congress.

     Verse 13: Charles H. Keating, Jr., 69, founder, Cincinnati Citizens for Decent Literature, later Citizens for Decency Through Law, was convicted 1993 on state and federal charges of swindling investors, fraud, and racketeering in collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. “The collapse of Lincoln, which was based in Irvine, California, in early 1989 is estimated to have cost taxpayers $2.5 billion” (New York Times, September 4, 1992). Along with pedophile Father Joseph Ritter, former director of wayward youths’ Covenant House, Keating was outstanding homophobe on President Reagan’s Meese Commission on Pornography.

(p. 1026) Research

     Verse 6: Rev. W. A. Criswell, mentor of TV Bible evangelist fundraising theopoliticians Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, decrees the Bible 100 percent “Inerrant.”

     Verse 11: John Rousas Rushdoony, fundamentalist author, leader of Chalcedon Foundation’s Christian Reconstructionist exertions, disapproves homosexual emotions.

(p. 1029) Put Down Your Cigarette Rag

     Originally published in First Blues (New York: Full Court Press, 1975). Here updated statistics, additional stanzas.

(p. 1033) Violent Collaborations

     Epigraph remembered from 1940s college days, heard by classmate from his mother, perhaps 1920s flappers’ ditty.

(p. 1038) The Charnel Ground

     Epigraph and final quotation, “The whole point seems to be the idea of giving away the giver,” taken from lectures on The Sadhana of Mahamudra, by Ven. Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, Karma Dzong, December 1973, privately printed.

(p. 1047) In the Benjo

     Gary Snyder, No Nature: New and Selected Poems (New York: Pantheon, 1992).

(p. 1048) American Sentences

     On Hearing the Muezzin Cry Allah Akbar While Visiting the Pythian Oracle at Didyma Toward the End of the Second Millennium

     Didyma, Asia Minor’s shore site where Magna Mater and Pythian oracle were displaced by Judeo-Christian-Islamic Father God. In response to imperial Roman request for prophecy circa 4th century A.D., the oracle’s last utterance declared the gods had departed, Apollo no longer inhabited the temple’s pillars.

        Rainy night on Union Square … Answering office mail late night, response to request from little magazine.

(p. 1049) Approaching Seoul by Bus in Heavy Rain

     Bus over steep mountains from Kangnung to Seoul one rainy night was delayed along precipice by a mile of ambulance lights marking crash of bus I’d missed, scheduled an hour earlier.

        Monoprix, familiar department store, onetime right bank of Seine across from Place St. Michel.

DEATH & FAME POEMS 1993–1997

Edited by Bob Rosenthal, Peter Hale, and Bill Morgan
Foreword by Robert Creeley
Afterword by Bob Rosenthal

Thanks to the hospital editors, variants of these writings were printed first in: Aftonbladet, Allen Ginsberg e Il Saggiatore, The Alternative Press, American Poetry Review, American Sentences, Ballad of the Skeletons [recording], The Best American Poetry 1997, Bombay Gin, Booglit, City Lights Review, Cuaderno Carmin, Davka, Harper’s magazine, Harvard magazine, Illuminated Poetics, Lettre International, Literal Latté, Long Shot, Man Alive, The Nation, New York Newsday, New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, Off the Wall, Poetry Flash, Poetry Ireland Review, Shambhala Sun, Tribu, Tricycle, Viva Vine, Viva Ferlinghetti!, and Woodstock Journal.

Acknowledgments

The editors wish to acknowledge the following people for their help and support: Andrew Wylie, Sarah Chalfant, Jeff Posternak, Terry Karten, Megan Barrett, Jaqueline Gens, Eliot Katz, Steven Taylor, Ben Schafer, and Regina Pellicano.

Foreword

Vale

This is Allen Ginsberg’s last book, particular to his determining intent, his last writings when in hospital aware of his impending death, his last reflections and resolutions—his last mind. When he was told by the doctors that he had at best only a short time to live, he called his old friends to tell them the hard news, comforting, reassuring, as particular to their lives as ever. Despite the intensely demanding fame he’d had to deal with for more than forty years, he’d kept the world both intimate and transcendent. It was a “here and now” that admitted all the literal things of each day’s substance and yet well knew that all such was finally “too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky/at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street…” He was, and remains, the enduring friend, the one who goes with us wherever we are taken, who counsels and consoles, who gets the facts when it seems we will never be told them, who asks “Who’ll council who lives where in the rubble/who’ll sleep in what brokenwalled hut/in the moonlight…” He kept a witness of impeccable kind.

The playful, reductive, teasing verses, which could sometime make this world seem just the bitter foolishness it finally has to, sound here clearly. What is the grandness of death, of a body finally worn out, at last the simple fact of stubbornly reluctant shit and a tediously malfunctioning heart, of “all the accumulations that wear us out,” as he put it, when still a young man? There is no irony, no despair, in delighting as one can in “No more right & wrong/yes it’s gone gone gone/ gone gone away…” No poet more heard, more respected, more knew the intricacies of melody’s patterns. He took such pleasure in the whimsical, insistent way the very rhythms could take hold of attention, bringing each word to its singular place. “Chopping apples into the fruit compote—suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer!” His company insisted upon music and he danced with a consummate grace.

Now we must make our own music, albeit his stays with us forever. William Blake’s great call, “Hear the voice of the bard …,” now changes to “The authors are in eternity,” because ours is a passing world. Yet the heroic voices, the insistent intimacies of their tenacious humanity, hold us in a profound and securing bond. Where else would we think to live? Our friend gave his whole life to keep faith with Whitman’s heartfelt insistence, “Who touches this book touches a man.” So Allen Ginsberg will not leave us even now. “To see Void vast infinite look out the window into the blue sky.”

ROBERT CREELEY
JUNE 13, 1998

New Democracy Wish List

for President Clinton White House

Retro Axioms:

“Progress” ended in XX century.

Hyper-rationalism reduces natural complexity of nature through narrow thought abstraction; Hyper-rationalization, hyper-industrialization & Hyper-technology create chaos.

U.S. command economy subsidizes fossil fuel and nuclear Energy & Science, Agriculture, Air & Motor Transport, Banking, Communications, Military Industrial Complex, licit & illicit psychoactive Drugs, also rules Mass Media via FCC. American Free Market is hi-tech myth with national socialist centralized regulation implicit everywhere except small business & little magazines.

Muscle Power connected to appropriate hi-tech might rehabilitate Earth.

Lacks & Needs:

Fossil Fuels retard the planet. Detoxify America: tainted Fire poisons Earth, fouls Air & pollutes Water.

Emphasize prevention & alternative medicine with medical insurance rebates for not using Self-insured health credits: like mythic China, “Only pay Doctor when you are well.”

Fund Ryan White Care Act, separate Church & State in Center for Disease Control, fund bleach kits, needle exchange & plainspoken AIDS education, build infrastructure of decentralized community based health care preventative medicine early intervention clinics for poverty class disease-prone high-risk teens women & men living with AIDS & TB inner city plagues.

Coordinate National crash program to research inexpensive anti-AIDS medicines.

Separate Church & State in arts, education & civil law. Restore National Endowment for the Arts & FCC freedom from Fundamentalist political intrusion.

Sexuality’s loose not fixed. Legalize it.

Decriminalize addictive drug problem, doctors can cure addiction or provide maintenance if no cure. Reduce mass-million expense on narcotics-addicted political prisoners overcrowding courts & jails, Medicalize drug trade.

Decriminalize marijuana, its disadvantages are minor; reserve hemp grass as unadvertised private small cash crop for failing family farms, encourage hemp fabric industries.

Privatize & entrust psychedelics to medical educational priestly professions. End Military monopoly on LSD research and development.

End tobacco farming subsidies, cut use. Ex-Nicotine lobbyists working in Clinton’s new White House can stop smoking.

Shift agricultural subsidies toward grain beans & vegetable diet. Tax meat as a nutritional agronomic & ecologic disaster.

With massive scale reforestation rural & in wilderness, plant also universal urban tree rows.

Establish Civilian Conservation Corps for Urban homesteading, thin out corrupt local bureaucracies obstructing populist housing reconstruction.

Encourage international trade in Eco-technology in place of enabling codependency on weapons trade.

Inaugurate National “Limits of Growth” Program for Population/Land Use/Pollution.

Jump start national state & city human and industrial waste compost & recycling.

Honor primary and secondary school teachers, elevate respect, reward educators as handsomely as Plumbers, reduce class crowding to human size, under 15 students; encourage national child-care projects.

Take back money from SLA bankruptcy profiteer goniffs.

Purge U.S. military death squad subsidies in Salvador, Guatemala, etc. We backed up dictators in Zaire, Somalia, Liberia, Sudan, Angola, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Salvador, we’re responsible: admit it then figure ways out.

Open CIA & FBI & NSA archives on Cointelpro raids, Government drug dealing, Kennedy/King assassinations, Iranian Contragate, Panama Deception, Vatican, Hand & Lavoro Bank thuggery, etc. including Bush-Noriega relations and other CIA client-agent scandals.

Open all secret files on J. Edgar Hoover-Cardinal Spellman-Roy Cohn-Joe McCarthy alcoholic Closet-Queen Conspiracy with Organized Crime to sabotage the U.S. Labor Movement, Native African-American Hispanic & Gay minority leaderships; and blackmail U.S. Presidents Congress each other for half century.

Get Government Secret Police (DEA CIA FBI NSA etc.) off our backs by the next millennium.

January 17, 1993

Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina

General Mother Teresa
     Emperor Dalai Lama XIV
          Chief of Staff Thich Nhat Hanh
               Army Chaplain John Paul II
     followed by the shades of Gandhi
          Sakharov, Sartre & his uncle
                    Albert Schweitzer
went to the bombed out streets
talked to Moslem Bosnians in
          the burnt out grocery stores
parlayed with Croatian & Serbian Generals & Parliament
asked them to quit shooting & firing
          artillery from the mountainside
overlooking villages
          emptied of grandmothers—
So now there was quiet—a few fires
          smoldered in back alleys
a few corpses stank in wet fields
—But who owns these houses? The
          cinema theaters with broken doors?
Who owns that grocery store, that City Hall,
          that windowless school with broken
          rooftiles?
Who owns these little apartments, now
          all worshippers of Allah
pray in towns besieged 100 miles away
overcrowded in tenements & tents, with
          U.N. portosans at the crossroads?
Who owns these abandoned alleys &
          drugstores with shattered bottle shards over
          the sidewalk & inside the door?
Who’ll be the judge, attorney, file
          legal briefs,
bankruptcy papers, affidavits of ownership,
          deeds, old tax receipts?
Who’ll council who lives where in the rubble,
          who’ll sleep in what brokenwalled hut
in the full moonlight when spring clouds
          pass over the face
of the man in the moon at the end of May?

May 6, 1993, 3 A.M.

After the Party

amid glasses clinking, mineral water, schnapps
among professors’ smiling beards,
sneaker’d classicists, intelligent lady millionaire
          literary Patron fag hags
          earth mothers of Lambeth, Trocadero,
          Hyde Park, 5th Avenue
blond haired journalists with bracelets, grand
          readers of Dostojevsky & Gogol—
senior editor escorts from Trotskyite weeklies,
lesbians sitting on glossy magazine covers—
what have we here? a kid moving from
          foyer to bathroom, thin body,
Pale cheeked with red cap, 18 year old window washer,
          came with Señora Murillo
She admired his impudence, amused by his
          sincere legs
as I admire his glance, he turns aside to
          gaze at me, I’m
happy to guess he’ll show his
          naked body in bed
where we talk the refined old doctrine,
          Coemergent Wisdom

Lódz’, October 5, 1993
9:15 P.M. at “Construction in Process”poetry reading

After Olav H. Hauge

I

Some live on islands, hills near Trondheim
Some in St. Moritz, or the forest depths
Some lonely have beautiful wives
castles, fine carpets on Wall Street
Buy & sell currencies, solitary on marble floors
consumed by a passion for fossil fuel
magnetized by cannons, lasers, bombsights, enriched uranium
or together play the stock market
They live & die at the throw of the dice
They’re all businessmen
who have found eachother.

II

Fermented Jungle

North wind blows
Fish fly around the room
wind dies down
Fish fly under water.

III

Sometimes the Godliness
          strikes me as heroic
People mill about
Bodø won the Norwegian soccer cup
It’s so crowded, fans are drunk
People’s feet get mixed up
That big man wanders around
               lost, barefoot
he can’t find his feet—
Finally he goes out, late
on his way home
not sure if he’s on
his own two feet

Trondheim, October 25, 1993

These knowing age

These knowing age
fart
These knowing age
walk slowly
these knowing age
remind themselves of their grandmothers
these knowing age
take waterpills, high blood pressure,
          watch their sugar and salt
these knowing age eat less meat, some
          stopped smoking a decade ago
Some quit coffee, some drink it strong
These knowing age saw
best friends’ funerals, telephoned
          daughters & granddaughters
Some drive, some don’t, some cook, some
          do not
These knowing age often
keep quiet.

Munich, November 5, 1993

C’mon Pigs of Western Civilization Eat More Grease

Eat Eat more marbled Sirloin more Pork’n
          gravy!
Lard up the dressing, fry chicken in
          boiling oil
Carry it dribbling to gray climes, snowed with
          salt,
Little lambs covered with mint roast in racks
          surrounded by roast potatoes wet with
          buttersauce,
Buttered veal medallions in creamy saliva,
          buttered beef, by glistening mountains
          of french fries
Stroganoffs in white hot sour cream, chops
          soaked in olive oil,
surrounded by olives, salty feta cheese, followed
          by Roquefort & Bleu & Stilton
          thirsty
for wine, beer Cocacola Fanta Champagne
          Pepsi retsina arak whiskey vodka
Agh! Watch out heart attack, pop more
          angina pills
order a plate of Bratwurst, fried frankfurters,
couple billion Wimpys’, McDonald’s burgers
          to the moon & burp!
Salt on those fries! Hot dogs! Milkshakes!
Forget greenbeans, everyday a few carrots,
          a mini big spoonful of salty rice’ll
          do, make the plate pretty;
throw in some vinegar pickles, briny sauerkraut
          check yr. cholesterol, swallow a pill
and order a sugar Cream donut, pack 2 under
          the size 44 belt
Pass out in the vomitorium come back cough
          up strands of sandwich still chewing
          pastrami at Katz’s delicatessen
Back to central Europe & gobble Kielbasa
          in Lódz
swallow salami in Munich with beer, Liverwurst
on pumpernickel in Berlin, greasy cheese in
          a 3 star Hotel near Syntagma, on white
          bread thick-buttered
Set an example for developing nations, salt,
          sugar, animal fat, coffee tobacco Schnapps
Drop dead faster! make room for
          Chinese guestworkers with alien soybean
          curds green cabbage & rice!
Africans Latins with rice beans & calabash can
          stay thin & crowd in apartments for working
          class foodfreaks—

Not like Western cuisine rich in protein
          cancer heart attack hypertension sweat
          bloated liver & spleen megaly
Diabetes & stroke—monuments to carnivorous
          civilizations
presently murdering Belfast
          Bosnia Cypress Ngorno Karabach Georgia
mailing love letter bombs in
          Vienna or setting houses afire
          in East Germany—have another coffee,
          here’s a cigar.
And this is a plate of black forest chocolate cake,
          you deserve it.

Athens, December 19, 1993

Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush

I got old & shit in my pants
                    shit in my pants
                    shit in my pants
I got old & shit in my pants
                    shit in my pants again

We got old & shit in our pants
                    shit in our pants
                    shit in our pants
We got old & shit in our pants
                    shit in our pants again

You’ll be lucky if you get old
                    & shit in your pants
                    & shit in your pants
You’ll be lucky if you get old
                    & shit in your pants again

January 1, 1994

Tuesday Morn

Waking with aching back at base of spine, walked stiffly to kitchen toilet to pee,

more limber returned to unmade bed, sat to write, dreamlike yesterdays recorded—

From pill dispenser 60 mg Lasix, water pills brings blood to kidney to relieve heart stressed by lung liquid

one white Lanoxin something further steadies the heart, one brown Vasotec for high blood pressure

a round blue potassium pill set aside for breakfast

Next another quaff of water for sleep-dried tongue

& check stove water boiling Tibetan medical powders

Quarter tsp. directly in mouth with hot water, morn & night

Next make the bed—pull out mattress, lift up sheets ballooning in air to settle all four corners,

lay on the orange-diamonded Mexican wool blanket & 3 pillows—push mattress back in place

brush teeth—then prick my finger

a drop, Exac-Tech blood sugar teststrip results noted morn & eve

98 today, a little low, swab pinkie with alcohol pad, another sip medicinal tea—

replace reading glasses with bifocals, brush teeth at front-room sink & looking out window, church door passers-by four floors below

while noon bells ring, clock ticking on the kitchen wall above the toilet cabinet—pull chain

worked this morning, flushed a wobbly porcelain throne—needa get Mike the Super fix pipes—

Back to front room, brush teeth, bowels begin to stir relief, electric shave,

brush out gray dust from razor head, wash face, clear throat’s pale yellow phlegm, blow nose

in paper towel, stick pinkie end with white cream Borofax drop in each nostril, wipe mustache, put on teashirt

Vitalis on short hair around bald head, brush back small beard—& ready for breakfast

in boxer shorts alone at home, pee again, gray sky out window

Sparrows on courtyard dirt, bare Heaven Trees—yesterday’s Times half read on the table where

red tulip blossoms dry in a glass jar—Time to crap & finish Exquisite Corpse—not much came down—

flush, climb ladder and fix the water ball, wash ass change shorts and choose fresh sox—

At last it’s time to eat, clear & safe in the morning—1 P.M.

Salt-free cornflakes from the icebox, brown rice, shredded wheat in a Chinese bowl

filled thereafter with Rice Dream milk—banana that!

Chew and wonder what to read, answer phone, yes, “Peter’s flown to Colorado, Huncke’s rent is due” to patron Hiro—

Finish cereal reading yesterday’s Times “How Mental Patients Sleep Out of Doors”

“ ‘Last time, I was just walking in the rain,’ he said, his hands and lips quivering slightly from the medication he takes.”

Slip a multivitamin pill in my mouth, grab a dish, fruit stewed two nites ago—

Ring Ring the telephone—the office, Bob Rosenthal, Debbie for Jewel Heart Benefit,

Ysrael Lubavitcher fairy returned from his Paris year

Edith not home, Aunt Honey leaving for Australia next week,

she had stroke & splenectomy 1942, long story—

David Rome preparing arts program Halifax during Sawang’s Shambhala confirmation

—Finally 3 P.M. I get dressed go to office couple hours—

Phone Robert Frank? Yup, he’s out, call early evening. I’m free.

January 23, 1994

God

The 18 year old marine “had made his Peace with God.”

A word. A capitol G. Who is God? I thought I saw him once

and heard his voice, which now sounds like my own,

and I’m not God, so who’s God? Jesus Bible God?

Whose Bible? Old JHVH? The 4 letter one without vowels or the 3 letter word God? G-O-D?

Allah? Some say Allah’s great, tho’ mock his name you’re dead!

Zoroaster’s Wise One used to be great, & Mormons’ version got absolute pedigrees & Genealogies.

Is Pope’s God same as Southern Baptist Inerrancy televangelists?

How’s that square with the Ayatollah’s Allah, Billy Graham Nixon’s on his knees, Ronald Reagan’s Armageddon deity?

What of Lubavitcher Rabbi’s God refusing land for peace exchange?

Is Yassir Arafat’s God same as Shamir’s? What about Magna Mater?

What happened to Aphrodite, Hecate, Diana many breasted at Ephesus,

round bottom’d Willendorf Venus older than Jahweh & Allah & Zoroaster’s dream!

older than Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddha & the 39 patriarchs.

Is any God real? Is there one God? How come so many Gods—

Fighting eachother, poor Mayans, Aztecs, Peruvian sun worshippers? Hopi peyote dreamers round the half moon fire.

Am I God after all, made the universe, we dreamed it up together

or got tumbled out of the Chute onto the Planet, looking for progenitors?

I know I’m not God, are you? Don’t be silly.

God? God? Everybody’s God? Don’t be silly.

February 25, 1994

Ah War

Ah War bigness addiction
Alchemized thru meta-industrial
Labor-Intensive permanent tree
Crop protein energy system
recycling Urban Wastes
in Meditative Egoless non
Theistic Space

Lisner Auditorium
Monday, March 21, 1994, 8:00 P.M.

Excrement

Everybody excretes different loads
To think of it—
Marilyn Monroe’s pretty buttocks,
               Eleanor Roosevelt’s bloomers dropt
     Rudolf Valentino on the seat, taut
                    muscles relaxing
Presidents looking down the bowl
                         to see their state of health
     Our White House rosy-cheeked dieter,
               One last, gaunt sourpuss
                    striped pants ankle’d
                         in the Water Chamber

Name it? byproduct of
          vegetables, steak, sausages, rice
     reduced to a brown loaf in the watery tureen,
                    splatter of dark mud on highway
                         side cornfields
          studded with peanuts & grape seeds—

Who doesn’t attend to her business
No matter nobility, Hollywood starshine, media
               Blitz-heroics, everyone at
                    table follows watercloset
                         regulation & relief
An empty feeling going back to banquet,
               returned to bed, sitting for Breakfast,
     a pile of dirt unloaded from gut level
          mid-belly, down thru the butthole
                    relaxed & released from the ton
                         of old earth, poured back
                              on Earth
It never appears in public
     ’cept cartoons, filthy canards,
          political commix left & right
The Eminent Cardinal his robes pushed aside,
     Empress of Japan her 60 pound kimono,
          layered silks pushed aside,
The noble German Statesman giving his heart ease
     The pretty student boy in Heidelberg
          between chemic processor abstractions,
     Keypunch operators in vast newsrooms
                         Editors their wives and children
          drop feces of various colors
          iron supplement black
               to pale green-white sausage
                    delicacies the same
                         in tiny bathroom
                              distant suburbs,
          even dogs on green front lawns
                    produce their simulacra of
                         human garbage
               we all drop
Myself the poet aging on the stool
     Polyhymnia the Muse herself, lowered to this throne—
                    what a relief!

March 24, 1994

New Stanzas for Amazing Grace

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone

O homeless hand on many a street
Accept this change from me
A friendly smile or word is sweet
As fearless charity

Woe workingman who hears the cry
And cannot spare a dime
Nor look into a homeless eye
Afraid to give the time

So rich or poor no gold to talk
A smile on your face
The homeless ones where you may walk
Receive amazing grace

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone

April 2, 1994

Composed at the request of Ed Sanders for his production of The New Amaz
ing Grace, performed November 20, 1994, at the Poetry Project in St. Mark’s
Church in-the-Bouwerie.

City Lights City

On Via Ferlinghetti & Kerouac Alley young heroes muse melancholy 2025 A.D.

Musicians brood & pace Bob Kaufman Street and practice future jazz on Rexroth place

Spiritual novelists sit rapt in contemplation under the street sign at Saroyan Place before they cross to Aram Alley

Loves’ eyes gaze sparkling on Bay waters from McClure Plaza at the foot of Market

Old Market itself as Robert Duncan Boulevard teems with theosophic shops & Hermetic Department Stores

& crossing Duncan Blvd.: First DiPrima Second Henry Miller Third Corso Street

Fourth Jeffers Street & Fifth on John Wieners Street the Greyhound Terminal stands

surrounded by Bookstore Galleries, Publishers Rows, and Artists lofts

Sightseers in tourist buses breathe fresh foggy air on Harold Norse & Hirschman Peaks—oldies but goldies

Ken Kesey’s name makes Bayshore famous as you barrel up past Brother Everson Memorial Stadium

Whalen Bridge sits meditating all the way to Oakland

Snyder Bridge connects the East-West Gate between S.F & Marin

Commuters crowd exhausted into the Neal Cassady R.R. Station on Corso

Czeslaw Milosz Street signs shine bright on Van Ness

Poet Jack Micheline gets Tenderloin, Philip Lamantia Tower crowns Telegraph Hill

where international surrealist tourists climb to see the view—

& I’ll take Alcatraz (to return to Native Americans along with Treasure Island)

April 21, 1994

Newt Gingrich Declares War on “McGovernik Counterculture”

Does that mean war on every boy with more than one earring on the same ear?

against every girl with a belly button ring? What about nose piercing? a diamond in right nostril?

Does that mean more plainclothesmen high on LSD at Dead concerts?

What about MTV—no more Michael Jackson, no Dylan Subterranean Homesick Blues? Yoko & John no more Give Peace a Chance

Will there be laws against Punk, Generation X, the Voidoids, Slackers, Grunge?

Blues, Jazz, Bebop, Rocknroll? Where did it get countercultural?

What about Elvis’ Pelvis? Sonic Youth dumbed, Cobain’s screams banished from Nirvana?

No more grass on college campuses, Mushrooms stomped to death by the Elephant Party?

What about African-Americans? That’s a terrific Counterculture, & what about the Yellow Peril, Chinese restaurants? New Age Cooking? is Japanese Sushi too much Zen?

Sitting meditation, that be frowned satanic in Congress? Tai Chi, Tai Kwando, Karate, Martial Arts? Ballet? Opera, La Bohème?

Don’t mention us cocksuckers?! Is eating pussy countercultural?

Sappho, Socrates, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Proust in or out the canon?

J. E. Hoover’s name wiped off FBI granite in the Capital?

Poetry slams, is poetry countercultural, like a Third Party?

Is ecology pro or counter culture? Astronomy determining the Universe’s age & size?

Long hair, relativity, is Einstein countercultural?

January 1995

Pastel Sentences (Selections)

Mice ate at the big red heart in her breast, she was distracted in love.

Bowed down by the weight of nebulae he crouches underneath the hill.

A bat that’s bigger than your ear watches you sleep while you dream him there.

A round blue eye woke red lipped ’neath this century’s gigantic lightbulb.

Lantern-jawed Bismarck dreams a rich red rose blossoms thorn-stemmed through his skull.

In an oval blue womb a full-grown girl curled up eyes closed dreams her birth.

Big little people do yab yum in their ten petal’d yellow daisy.

Long hand over left eye Mother Sudan sees big bellied kids’ thin ribs.

In midst of coition a blood-red worm spurts out his heaving rib-cage.

The one eyed moon-whale watches you weep, drifting brown seas in a pale boat.

Thirty Kingdoms’ keys chainmailed down his chest, the Pope dreams he’s St. Peter.

Jeannie Duval’s cheek tickled by a Paris fly, 1852.

Puff a cigarette between skullfleshed lips, smoke gets in your empty eyes.

Sphincter-wound in his chest, he kneels and lifts both hands in surprise to pray.

All mixed up breasts feet genitals nipples & hands, both fall into sleep.

Adam contemplates his navel covered with a bush of jealous hearts.

Body spread open, black legs held down, she eats his ice cream—white sex-tongue.

One centaur palm raised thru earth-crust lifts a red live dog barking at stars.

Her dog licks the live red heart of th’ African lady curled up in bed.

Naked in solitary prison cell he looks down at a hard-on.

Hands hold her ass tight with joy to lick & eat the blue star ’twixt her thighs.

Small pink-winged Lady-Heart hovers, rose-cunt legs spread nigh his stiff black dick.

Chic shoes rest in a black rose vortex of sociable fashion money.

She poses self-confident, blue sky & clouds borne in her oval womb.

Lady Buddha sleeps on blue air in a green leaf, knees raised spread naked.

Repose open-eyed on starry blue pillows under a star-roofed sky.

The black guy steps in the shade, glancing back at the sunlit boy he screwed.

Legs behind neck, arms hung down, Yogi’s solar anal navel burns red.

Blowing bubbles in blue sky he squats on his own blue bubble planet.

Star, bird, cane & big thigh bones, the ghost baby dreams life beyond the womb.

Regarding their long thick tails, blue demons wrestle with golden scissors.

He steps on his own breast lying in bed with red half hard-on.

Lady snails delicately climb naked thighs to stir his genitals.

Left forefinger probed into his own left hand proves a Doubting Thomas.

They exchange glances, a bee shadows her tail, a rose grows on his hip.

William Burroughs’ skeleton twists a towel, he’s got the bloody rag on.

The rose-girl kneels weighed down, iron tanks on shoulder, coccyx, calves & footsoles.

Horse stands on horse upon horse, lie back on top & take your forty winks.

He dives from naked sky past the sun’s nimbus into space-blue ocean.

Curtains part on a nail and its shadow, Samsara’s drama Act I.

The red lip’d fat billionaire appeals you try out his wee twat or dick.

Arms to neck, his tit, her belly, prong-twat, the President and his wife.

Pale green headless phantoms upside-down dipsy-doodle with thin hard-ons.

Lady Day bows her neck under a pyramid of oily black rocks.

Beneath breast-eyed wasp-beaks the pink rose opens, better get in there quick!

Inside her red womb the hermaphrodite fetus closes a third eye.

Wiping blood-black tears from hard labor, try holding up your big sad head.

Jealousy! Jealousy! Chin in hand he ponders the Unfaithful Muse.

Young Don Juan bravely displays his girlish red-sexed lips and eyeshadow.

Caught in the burning house of my brown body I fainted openeyed.

Big phallus, black womb lined with reddish flesh, look at the monkey we birthed.

One bird pecks her double’s breast on a ghost-white lingam’s unblinking head.

She flies down thousands of stone steps for years, aged climbs them all back up.

for Francesco Clemente
Château Chenonceau, June 24, 1995
Naropa Institute, July 5, 1995
Lawrence, Kansas, July 22, 1995

Nazi Capish

Catholicism capish
Catholicism capish
Catholicism abortion capish
Capish capish capish

Christian capish
Christian capish
Christian sin capish

Islamic capish
Islamic capish
Islamic Jihad capish

Zionist capish
Zionist capish
Zionist nationalist capish

Fundamentalism capish
Fundamentalism capish
Fundamentalism absolutism
Fundamentalism capish

Hunkie Honkie Aryan Frog
Jap & Gook & Limey Wog
     Afric Chink capish

Nazi capish
Nazi capish
Nazi capish capish

Commie capish
Commie capish
Commie capish capish

Capitalist capish
Capitalist capish
Capitalist capish capish

Fascisti capish
Fascisti capish
Fascisti shit capish

September 21, 1995

Is About

Dylan is about the Individual against the whole of creation

Beethoven is about one man’s fist in the lightning clouds

The Pope is about abortion & the spirits of the dead …

Television is about people sitting in their living room looking at their things

America is about being a big Country full of Cowboys Indians Jews Negroes & Americans

Orientals Chicanos Factories skyscrapers Niagara Falls Steel Mills radios homeless Conservatives, don’t forget

Russia is about Tzars Stalin Poetry Secret Police Communism barefoot in the snow

But that’s not really Russia it’s a concept

A concept is about how to look at the earth from the moon

without ever getting there. The moon is about love & Werewolves, also Poe.

Poe is about looking at the moon from the sun

or else the graveyard

Everything is about something if you’re a thin movie producer chainsmoking muggles

The world is about overpopulation, Imperial invasions, Biocide, Genocide, Fratricidal Wars, Starvation, Holocaust, mass injury & murder, high technology

Super science, atom Nuclear Neutron Hydrogen detritus, Radiation Compassion Buddha, Alchemy

Communication is about monopoly television radio movie newspaper spin on Earth, i.e. planetary censorship.

Universe is about Universe.

Allen Ginsberg is about confused mind writing down newspaper headlines from Mars—

The audience is about salvation, the listeners are about sex, Spiritual gymnastics, nostalgia for the Steam Engine & Pony Express

Hitler Stalin Roosevelt & Churchill are about arithmetic & Quadrilateral equations, above all chemistry physics & chaos theory—

Who cares what it’s all about?

I do! Edgar Allan Poe cares! Shelley cares! Beethoven & Dylan care.

Do you care? What are you about

or are you a human being with 10 fingers & two eyes?

New York City,
October 24, 1995

The Ballad of the Skeletons

Said the Presidential Skeleton
I won’t sign the bill
Said the Speaker skeleton
Yes you will

Said the Representative Skeleton
I object
Said the Supreme Court skeleton
Whaddya expect

Said the Military skeleton
Buy Star Bombs
Said the Upperclass Skeleton
Starve unmarried moms

Said the Yahoo Skeleton
Stop dirty art
Said the Right Wing skeleton
Forget about yr heart

Said the Gnostic Skeleton
The Human Form’s divine
Said the Moral Majority skeleton
No it’s not it’s mine

Said the Buddha Skeleton
Compassion is wealth
Said the Corporate skeleton
It’s bad for your health

Said the Old Christ skeleton
Care for the Poor
Said the Son of God skeleton
AIDS needs cure

Said the Homophobe skeleton
Gay folk suck
Said the Heritage Policy skeleton
Blacks’re outa luck

Said the Macho skeleton
Women in their place
Said the Fundamentalist skeleton
Increase human race

Said the Right-to-Life skeleton
Foetus has a soul
Said Pro Choice skeleton
Shove it up your hole

Said the Downsized skeleton
Robots got my job
Said the Tough-on-Crime skeleton
Tear gas the mob

Said the Governor skeleton
Cut school lunch
Said the Mayor skeleton
Eat the budget crunch

Said the Neo Conservative skeleton
Homeless off the street!
Said the Free Market skeleton
Use ’em up for meat

Said the Think Tank skeleton
Free Market’s the way
Said the S&L skeleton
Make the State pay

Said the Chrysler skeleton
Pay for you & me
Said the Nuke Power skeleton
& me & me & me

Said the Ecologic skeleton
Keep Skies blue
Said the Multinational skeleton
What’s it worth to you?

Said the NAFTA skeleton
Get rich, Free Trade,
Said the Maquiladora skeleton
Sweat shops, low paid

Said the rich GATT skeleton
One world, high tech
Said the Underclass skeleton
Get it in the neck

Said the World Bank skeleton
Cut down your trees
Said the I.M.F skeleton
Buy American cheese

Said the Underdeveloped skeleton
Send me rice
Said Developed Nations’ skeleton
Sell your bones for dice

Said the Ayatollah skeleton
Die writer die
Said Joe Stalin’s skeleton
That’s no lie

Said the Middle Kingdom skeleton
We swallowed Tibet
Said the Dalai Lama skeleton
Indigestion’s whatcha get

Said the World Chorus skeleton
That’s their fate
Said the USA skeleton
Gotta save Kuwait

Said the Petrochemical skeleton
Roar Bombers roar!
Said the Psychedelic skeleton
Smoke a dinosaur

Said Nancy’s skeleton
Just say No
Said the Rasta skeleton
Blow Nancy Blow

Said Demagogue skeleton
Don’t smoke Pot
Said Alcoholic skeleton
Let your liver rot

Said the Junkie skeleton
Can’t we get a fix?
Said the Big Brother skeleton
Jail the dirty pricks

Said the Mirror skeleton
Hey good looking
Said the Electric Chair skeleton
Hey what’s cooking?

Said the Talkshow skeleton
Fuck you in the face
Said the Family Values skeleton
My family values mace

Said the N.Y. Times skeleton
That’s not fit to print
Said the C.I.A. skeleton
Cantcha take a hint?

Said the Network skeleton
Believe my lies
Said the Advertising skeleton
Don’t get wise!

Said the Media skeleton
Believe you Me
Said the Couch-potato skeleton
What me worry?

Said the TV skeleton
Eat sound bites
Said the Newscast skeleton
That’s all Goodnight

February 12–16, 1995

“You know what I’m saying?”

I was shy and tender as a 10 year old kid, you know what I’m saying?

Afraid people’d find me out in Eastside H.S. locker room you know what I’m saying?

Earl had beautiful hips & biceps when he took off his clothes to put on gym shorts you know what I’m saying?

His nose was too long, his face like a ferret but his white body

Proportioned thin, muscular definition thighs & breasts, with boy’s nipples you know what I’m saying? uncircumcised

& strange, goyishe beauty you know what I’m saying, I was dumbstruck—

at Golden 50th H.S. Reunion I recognized him, bowed, & exchanged pleasant words, you know what I’m saying?

He was retired, wife on his arm, you know what I’m saying?

& Millie Peller “The Class Whore” warmest woman at our last Silver 25th Reunion alas had passed away

She was nice to me a scared gay kid at Eastside High, you know what I’m saying?

December 23, 1995

Bowel Song

You’ve been coughing for weeks
still you don’t sit on your cushion & visualize Bam
You’ve been in the hospital just last week
still you read the newspapers
Recovered from congestive heart failure,
you took 7 hours last week to read the Sunday N.Y Times
Listen, your days are numbered, why waste the essence of your clock
How will you feel when you can’t breathe?
What’ll you do the last six minutes?
Where’ll you go for the next 6 hours?
What good, half dozen gay porno films then?
You can hardly catch your breath now, why jack off limp prick?
Your master gives good advice, you listen, follow it couple weeks
then lapse into old habits, waste time on the toilet reading books,
at the kitchen sink 3am washing dishes daydreaming.
If you don’t get ready now, what’ll you do at the Black Hole
You wanna get born a pretty little girl & go through agony?
Wanna get caught between snakes coupling?
In between death and life, still wanna get laid?
What makes you lazy? you’re not on your deathbed yet,
if you’ve an ounce of strength, use it to look inside.
Clear your mind, you won’t escape the Great Sickness
the Immortal Plague, Grand Disaster continuous to eternity—
Whatever it is, whyn’cha figure it out?
Wanna drift off & become a newspaper headline,
what good favorable publicity in the bardo?
Allen Ginsberg says, these words’ll get you nowhere
these jokes won’t be funny when everyone leaves the seven exits.

January 2, 1996

Popular Tunes

What do I hear in my ear
          approaching my 70th year—
Echoes of popular tunes, old rhymes
                         familiar runes
Songs my mother taught me
               “O tell me pretty maiden
                    are there any more at home
                         like you?”
Cousin Claire heard on the Newark radio
Aunt Elanor played on her Bronx phonograph
piercing Bell Song soprano notes,
               sostenuto Amelita Galli-Curci & Rosa Ponselle
Wind up Victrola Yiddish Monologues
          Cohen On The Telephone,
                    The Wind the Wind,
“Last night da vind, da vind blew down da shutters.”
               “No I didn’t say shuddup!”
The fugitive words of a Scots contralto
          woman’s chant “McCushla,
     McCushla my dark eyed McCushla”
Ask Aunt Honey age 83, ask Stepmother Edith just 90,
          they’ll know—
               they’ll remember
     “The March of the Wooden Soldiers,” tin drums
          & pipes of Babes in Toyland
“Comin’ thru the rye” new generations of
          folksing kids never remember sung
     when they play Guitar on Union Square’s
               L train subway platform—
or “Auchichornya, auchimolinka, rasdrivyminya,
          molijeninka,” with Mandolins or Balalaikas
and “Tis the last rose of Summer” by Thomas Moore—
     echoing thru Time’s skull as my beard’s
          turned white, sugar high in my blood
               coughing weeks on end fall to winter,
          Chronic bronchitis the rest of my days?
& “Down will come baby cradle and all”
          as 1930’s all fell down with
          mournful Peat Bog Soldiers’
               “Lied des Concentrationslagers”

February 9, 1996

Five A.M.

Élan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmitted into words
                    Transmuted back to breath
          in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho’s 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing—beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars,
chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind—but where’s it come from?
Inspiration? The muses drawing breath for you? God?
Nah, don’t believe it, you’ll get entangled in Heaven or Hell—
Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night
flooding mind with space, echoing thru future cities, Megalopolis or
Cretan village, Zeus’ birth cave Lassithi Plains—Otsego County
          farmhouse, Kansas front porch?
Buddha’s a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana—
coffee, alcohol, cocaine, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas?
Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky
at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street—
Where does it come from, where does it go forever?

May 1996

Power

The N Power, the feminine power
          the woman power the
          flower power, the power of Marigolds
          & roses, Sequoia power,
          Nature’s power
wont blossom in this lifetime
          or the next, this Yuga’s finished,
          seeds shot, entered the earth
          gestating with alligators & waterworms
          in swamps where planes crash,
Next lifetimes after, watch roses turn
          red, Marigolds yellow, little
          sequoias begin to climb the sky
Millions of African kids’ll grow up
          amid green bushes & radiant
                    camelopards again—
Down 12th Street corner Avenue A midnight police
          lean against Bodega shutters looking for
          last week’s swarthy crack pushers

May 15, 1996, 11 A.M.

Anger

How’d I get angry? Analytic approach:
M’I still angry with Carolyn? forty three years ago
          kicked me out of bed with
               naked Neal their house San Jose—
Disadvantaged hating Podhoretz
               for put-down of Beat writers
                         queers nineteen fifty eight
               later defense of death-squad drug-dealer
                    Generals in El Salvador
                         & op-ed B2 Bombers
Angrily sat an hour adamant
          Thangka-thief meth-head Gaiton’s apt.
               E. Houston Street nineteen sixty three
                    never got my Dancing Skeletons back—
Never forgave late Alan Marlowe nineteen seventy five
               stole back my $100 loan gift
               to Jyoti Datta Calcutta four years earlier
Lost my telephone temper with critic Walter
               Goodman
          insulting Gunther Grass’ visit to poor South Bronx
     International PEN Congress nineteen eighty five
               & my own handmade Nicaraguan
                    Contra-War peace petition mocked
                         as “all the news that’s fit to print.”

May 18, 1996

Multiple Identity Questionnaire

“Nature empty, everything’s pure; Naturally pure, that’s what I am.”

I’m a jew? a nice Jewish boy?
A flaky Buddhist, certainly
Gay in fact pederast? I’m exaggerating?
Not only queer an amateur S&M fan, someone should spank me for
          saying that
Columbia Alumnus class of ’48, Beat icon, students say.
White, if jews are “white race”
American by birth, passport, and residence
Slavic heritage, mama from Vitebsk, father’s forebears Grading in
          Kamenetz-Podolska near Lvov.
I’m an intellectual! Anti-intellectual, anti-academic
Distinguished Professor of English Brooklyn College,
Manhattanite, Another middle class liberal,
but lower class second generation immigrant,
Upperclass, I own a condo loft, go to art gallery Buddhist Vernissage
          dinner parties with Niarchos, Rockefellers, and Luces
Oh what a sissy, Professor Four-eyes, can’t catch a baseball or drive a
          car—courageous Shambhala Graduate Warrior
addressed as “Maestro” Milano, Venezia, Napoli
Still student, chela, disciple, my guru Gelek Rinpoche,
Senior Citizen, got Septuagenarian discount at Alfalfa’s Healthfoods
          New York subway—
Mr. Sentient Being!—Absolutely empty neti neti identity, Maya Nobo-
          daddy, relative phantom nonentity

July 5, 1996, Naropa Tent,
Boulder, CO

Don’t Get Angry with Me

for Chödok Tulku

          Don’t get angry with me
          You might die tomorrow
I’m an empty hungry ghost
Any spare change I can borrow?

          Don’t get angry with me
          Full of God tomorrow
Could get sorry you got mad,
wanna be the God of sorrow?

          Don’t get angry with me
          War starts tomorrow
I’ll get bombed You’ll get shot
in the eye with Interdependent Arrow

          Don’t get angry with me
          Hell’s hot tomorrow
If we’re burned up now inflamed
Could pass aeons in cold horror

          Don’t get angry with me
          We’ll be worms tomorrow
Both wriggling in the mud
cut in two by the ploughman’s harrow

          Don’t get angry with me—
          Who’ll we be tomorrow?
who knows who we are today?
Better meditate & pray,
          Tila, Mila, Marpa, Naro.

August 27, 1996

Swan Songs in the Present

“Swan songs in the present
moon systems in gleeps
Don’t hang on to the essence
the refrigerator’s for keeps
the Hot house vernacular
Sets up on the moldy hill
you and I climb the ribcage
& look for a heart to kill

you can do whatcha want with Europe
Eat Bananas with your dung
Whistle while you wonk the Pope
Breathe out of a spastic lung
but you’ll live forever anyway
in birds’ beasts hungry ghosts
& various Boddhisattvas
Drinking morning coffee
eating loxes & toasts

Hypnogogi Twaddle
anytime I can
But 70 years I’ll sleep
like other old men

October 29, 1996, 3:50 A.M.

Gone Gone Gone

“The wan moon is sinking under the white wave
and time is sinking with me, O!”

—Robert Burns

yes it’s gone gone gone
gone gone away
yes it’s gone gone gone
gone gone away
yes it’s gone gone gone
gone gone away
yes it’s gone gone gone
it’s all gone away
gone gone gone
won’t be back today
gone gone gone
just like yesterday
gone gone gone
isn’t any more
gone to the other shore
gone gone gone
it wasn’t here to stay
yes it’s gone gone gone
all gone out to play
yes it’s gone gone gone
until another day
no one here to pray
gone gone gone
yak your life away
no promise to betray
gone gone gone
somebody else will pay
the national debt no way
gone gone gone
your furniture layaway
plan gone astray
gone gone gone
made hay
gone gone gone
Sunk in Baiae’s Bay
yes it’s gone gone gone
wallet and all you say
gone gone gone
so you can waive your pay
yes it’s gone gone gone
gone last Saturday
yes it’s gone gone gone
tomorrow’s another day
gone gone gone
bald & old & gay
gone gone gone
turned old and gray
yes it’s gone gone gone
whitebeard & cold
yes it’s gone gone gone
cashmere scarf & gold
yes it’s gone gone gone
warp & woof & wold
yes it’s gone gone gone
gone far far away
to the home of the brave
down into the grave
yes it’s gone gone gone
moon beneath the wave
yes it’s gone gone gone
so I end this song
yes this song is gone
gone to kick the gong
yes it’s gone gone gone
No more right & wrong
yes it’s gone gone gone
gone gone away

November 10, 1996

Reverse the rain of Terror …

Reverse the rain of Terror on street consciousness U.S.A.

Death Penalty! Electric Chair! A roomsful of poison gas! Lethal injections! Mortal Hanging! Beheading the Idiot killer!

Dogs slaver over airport luggage! Suitcase bottoms caked with hash! Strip search the sick opium addict, medicine’s up his anus in a finger stall

arriving from legal India, cozy England, lax Morocco, face 12 billion Dollars worth of cops

Sniffing bodies for illegal medicine! Vomiting in a stone cell, abdominal convulsions, muscle spasms thigh & foot, sleepless cold-turkey torture—

Puerto Rican kid needs a doctor, young black man needs his girlfriend’s fix, white boy didn’t know his habit was immortal!

The octogenarian schmecker’s liver & kidneys failed, wants a deathbed shot of M

Half mad lady on the street had a fight with her daughter the whore!

The old boy lies on the sidewalk hands dirty red faced in his own saliva.

The delicate youth’s in his halfway house a decade, thorazine eyes glazed over

His brother’s Christmas card arrives at Binghampton State Hospital!

The elder hides in a furnished room drinks wine delivers newspapers, didn’t wanna work on the neutron bomb!

The salesman’s product went off the market, recycling coke bottles he cries at kitchen tables blaming Jews

An auto worker shoveling snow curses six African-Americans mugged him twenty years ago—

A black man walked the street with his B.A. pager, clubbed down giving lip to a cop car

The young fruit dies body with sores he challenged the Senate on the plague.

The homeless jewish guitarist sings on the 14th Street’s L Train Subway platform, blows harmonica, taps tambourine with one foot, with another drums

then back to his graybeard cocksucker’s apartment fries eggs

Streetcorner boys and girlfriends hang round the butcher shop corner, “Smoke smoke?”

Rocky Flats engineers tear their hair, Plutonium waste’ll outlast an otherworldly God

December 1996

Sending Message

They are sending a message to the youth of America

Smoking medical marijuana’s all right

They’re sending a message in cartoon saloons hard-ass blokes look like camels smoke Camels at the bar, 5 year olds love it,

To the youth of America they’re sending a message

CIA no official connections to Contra coke dealers in New York Times Washington Post expert crackheads send same messages to adolescent Senior citizen crackhead readers

They’re sending a message to American youth, African youth can starve to death we can’t care

too much money, far over the Atlantic, our boys’ll never die, politically unpopular, they’ll become dependent, it won’t fly

They’re sending message by Bronco, Honda, 4 by 4, cinema MG, Land Rover & half million gas stations

youth of this nation fossil fuel’s neat, hella cool, admirable dope really rad, as if—what valley girls think when their fathers drive them to Highschool—

They’re sending the message to Saturn, American Democracy works over the globe, spin that round your rings

To Chinese youth, eat like us, we do flesh & fries,

Don’t sleep on streets, dangerous off-duty death-squad police send this message to Brazilian kiddies

Someone sent naked pretty boys on FCC Internet, Don’t!

No Forbidden Planet Swedish sex? Got the message pretty girls?

Got the message clean old men? Michelangelo got the message? Da Vinci got it? Phidias, Socrates, Shakespeare, J. Edgar Hoover at the Plaza, Cardinal Francis Spellman on Roy Cohn’s yacht, Senator Jesse Helms in your gut, duh

got the message teeny-weenies? They’re sending a message right below your belly button.

A message to the youth of America, “Diminished expectations,” they’s too many people,

native gooks work cheaper, rich get richer, North hemispheric whites live longer, Black high-blood pressure rules Kentucky Fried Chicken

Across the highway from Arbie’s Barbecue Palace, Roy Rogers’ Horsechops, or McDonalds Amazon Treeburgers

you heard about on Television serves the message Eat your meat

or beat your meat, safe sex with ketchup, Whatever

The message now’s pay 4 trillion dollars debt Reagan pissed away on Military,

promised before you born, sit in school waterclosets study yr Latin

They’re sending youth a message look at TV football baseball hypnotic soccer basketball sports, sport!

General Rios-Montt & Pat Robertson sent a message to Guatemalan Indians

so 200,000 dropped dead with delight at sight of Christ’s military

pistol machete machinegun baseball bat & Inerrant Bible

700 Club’s Antichrist sends U.S. youth this message Despise the poor & piss on liberal Jesus

The message is Compassion’ll cause a Wall Street crash

& Networks send me messages Shut the fuck up.

December 3, 1996, 4:30 A.M.
New York City

No! No! It’s Not the End

No! No!
     Not the end of
               Civilization
     Not the end of
               Civilization

Blast of industrial
     Gas in Bhopal
          No! No! Not the end of
               Civilization

Dropt one bomb
     killed one
               hundred thousand
     Hiroshima nineteen forty five

No no not the end of
          Civilization
     Not the end of Civilization

Guatemala murdered
     two hundred thousand
               Indians

No no not the end of
               Civilization
     Not the end of Civilization

200 thousand
               slaughtered in Rwanda
     Crazed events
                    on the TV screen

No no not the end of
               Civilization
     Not the end of Civilization

U.S. Blacks in jail
               land of the free
     mosta these citizens you & me

No no not the end of
               Civilization
     Not the end of Civilization

Fossil fuel dust filling heaven
     ozone layer hole in the sky

No no not the end of
               Civilization
     Not the end of Civilization

Oldest trees in the world cut down
     Weyerhaeuser Bush wears a cardboard Crown

No no not the end of
               Civilization
     Not the end of Civilization

Amazon forests cut to the ground
     you can still breathe
          to the chainsaw’s sound

No no not the end of
               Civilization
     Only a temporary aberration

No No it’s not the end of Civilization
It’s Nobadaddy’s
     old temptation
No no it’s not the end of Civilization
Everybody’s waltzing
     to “the Hesitation”
It’s the same damned
President’s Inauguration
No no it’s not the end of Civilization
We’re come to “the fabled
damned of Nations”
No no it’s not the end of Civilization
Slaves wore chains
at the States’ creation
No no it’s not the end of Civilization
sourpuss wantsa stop colored immigration
Nobody’s wearing
hooves & scales
all they wanna do is
kill more whales
No no it’s not the end of Civilization

No no it’s not the end of Civilization
Cayenne saved a little bit of sensation
No no it’s not the end of civilization
No final solution
just gas & cremation

December 18–20, 1996

Bad Poem

Being as Now has been re-invented
I have devised a new now
Entering the real Now
at last
which is now

December 24, 1996, 3 A.M.

Homeless Compleynt

Pardon me buddy, I didn’t mean to bug you
     but I came from Vietnam
where I killed a lot of Vietnamese gentlemen
                    a few ladies too
and I couldn’t stand the pain
               and got a habit out of fear
& I’ve gone through rehab and I’m clean
     but I got no place to sleep
                    and I don’t know what to do
                         with myself right now

I’m sorry buddy, I didn’t mean to bug you
     but it’s cold in the alley
                    & my heart’s sick alone
     and I’m clean, but my life’s a mess
                    Third Avenue
                         and E. Houston Street
     on the corner traffic island under a red light
     wiping your windshield with a dirty rag

December 24, 1996

Happy New Year Robert & June

Happy New Year Robert & June
Tho I’d hoped to see you soon
I’d better say Happy Hanukkah too
Till I get your number that’s new—
I’ll be leaving for retreat,
Where they make me salt-free meat
along with Gelek Rinpoche
Who’s got ailments same as me,
in Michigan Camp Copneconic
Where I’ll room with Mr. Harmonic
Philip Glass in our Buddhist Class
Ten days later January 8
I’ll go to Boston, rest & wait
the weekend in anticipation
Maybe a hernia operation
supervised by Dr. Lown
(cardiologist of wide renown
—I’d recommended him to you
elderly trustworthy smart & true)
—Recuperate a week with Ellie
Dorfman, eat yellow fish-yuckh jelly
with Gefilte fish, then best
Mid January home NY to rest
Maybe we’ll see eachother then,
in any case let me know when.

Love, Allen
December 12, 1996

Diamond Bells

“Clear light & illusion body become one”

Hearing the all pervading scintillation of empty bells I realize

Napoleon had toes

Frankenstein’s big toe

Hayagriva cosmic horse one big cleft toe

Virgin Mary white-toed married Joseph brown-toed, impregnated by a white dove transparent triple-toed

How many toes has God? Yahweh nobody knows his toes

Allah’s toes? Mohammed, prophetic ten

Jesus Christ well-kissed human toes

Sealo the Seal Boy who two-fingered hand-flippers at shoulders could smoke & type with regular ten toes

sold tiny white toilets wrapped in toilet paper, souvenirs one dollar

Shelly ten pale pure toes

Michelangelo enjoyed five digits per foot, Da Vinci mapped ten on his two feet

Flies toes get stuck on spiderwebs

Spiders slide swift-toed on sticky nets

Scratch the sole, toes curl

Foetus is capable of toes

Stubbed my bare fourth toe on a step ladder one dark Friday night, though it still wiggles

walking on snowy mud’s painful, back aches

John Madison has chocolate toes

Hitler natural toes

Buddha ten bare toes enlightened

Lay my skull on night pillows, rest on Tara’s lap between gentle toes

Lama YabYum dreams with 20 toes

Emptiness innumerable trillion toes

Old men’s toenails thicken ivory aged

Dead toenails grow in cenotaphs

Napoleon wore toenails inside polished riding boots

Elephant toenail stubs nudge tussocks

Such is the all pervading scintillation of empty bells

December 30, 1996, 12:55 A.M.

Virtual Impunity Blues

With Virtual impunity Clinton got campaign funds from pink Chinese

With Virtual impunity CIA Contra stringers sold Cocaine disease L.A. & Minneapolis

With Virtual impunity FBI burned down apocalyptic Waco

With Virtual impunity gov’t began charging huge fees for public college studies

With Virtual impunity Congress FCC ok’d Fundamentalist Broadcast censorship

With Virtual impunity Family Values insulted ladies, gays, Afric Americans

With Virtual impunity the Pope banned planet birth control

With Virtual impunity N. Carolina banned sodomy in the wrong hole

With Virtual impunity the Chinese banned fresh speech electrics

With Virtual impunity Albanian Lottery bosses bought & sold elections

January 1997

Waribashi

Walk into your local Japanese restaurant Teriyaki Boy—
order sliced raw fish mackerel, smoked eel, roe on vinagered rice balls
slide thin wooden utensils out a white paper sleeve with blue Crane print
split the wood, rub ends together smooth down splinters, sit & wait & sigh—
200,000 cubic meters Southeast Asian timber exports
sawed & processed in Japan, resold, 20 billion waribashi
used once, thrown away—roots of rainforest destruction—help pay interest
Thailand’s & Malaysia’s yearly debt service to World Bank, IMF—
Your plate arrives with sharp green mustard & pink pickled ginger slices
new sprig of parsley, lift the chopsticks to your mouth enjoy sashimi

January 7, 1997, 6:30 A.M.

Good Luck

I’m lucky to have all five fingers on the right hand

Lucky peepee with little pain

Lucky bowels move

Lucky, sleep nights on a captain’s bed, nap mid-afternoons

Lucky to amble down First Avenue

Lucky make a couple hundred thousand a year

singing Eli Eli, writing passing mind, etching primordial doodles, teaching Buddhist college, snapping Leica bus-stop photos thru my window eyeballs

Hear ambulance sirens, smell garlic & rust, taste persimmons & flounder, walk the loft floor barefoot soles a little desensitized

Lucky I can think, and sky can snow

January 8, 1997

Some Little Boys Dont

Some little boys like it
Some little boys dont
Some little girls swipe it
Some little girls won’t

Some nephews suck it
Some lollypops grunt
Some nieces truck it
If grandpa’s a runt

Some puberties request it
Four times a month
Some girl teens breast it
Some eat it for brunch

Some little people gargle
Some adolescents warble
Some teenyboppers babble
Some kiddies play Scrabble

January 10, 1997, 4 A.M.

Jacking Off

Who showed up?
          Joe S. pale bodied wiry leanness,
          suck your cock—I kissed his belly,
          thin muscular breast—
Suck my cock you bitch, little bitch
          suck my cock,
Huck, I got him on his knees
          licked his ass his hairy behind
          doggie style, jacked him off he
          grabbed his own dick finished—come.
Tom G. big cocked passed thru my
          dream bed, didn’t stay
Ah John got you, bought the
          leather handcuffs & strap
          binding hand & feet helpless,
          Leather collar roped to the
          bedstead’s head—buy it
          once for all S&M shops
          Christopher Street
          Uptown leather
Spank good & hard, slap his ass
          let him writhe, better
          than cutting him up,
          designs with razor—
So came on that unfamiliar fear
          savage control over
          Adonis body, willing
          eager—bound to be true.

January 28, 1997

Think Tank Rhymes

think tank
pick thank
lamb shank
wet wank
drug dork
hankie pankey
kitchey camp
namby pamby
macho wimp
witchy granny
randy daddy
skimpy mammie
toilet Tilly
itchy nursie
Golden Grammie
dandy Sammy

Fried pork
mind wonk
brain konk
junk funk
coke dink
dead drunk
Big Pink
skunk stink
mom wink
nuke kink
big dick
instinct
gum crank
space pork
fried wok

Hershey drink
Einstein

January 30, 1997, 2:45 A.M.

Song of the Washing Machine

Burned out Burned out Burned out
We’re not burned out We’re not burned out
for a house for a house for a house for a house
Bathroom Bathroom Bathroom Bathroom
At home at home at home at home
We’re not burned out We’re not burned out
Fair enough fair enough fair enough
Can you account for yourself account for yourself
Better not better not better not better not

January 31, 1997

World Bank Blues

I work for the world bank yes I do
My salary was hundred thousand smackeroo
I know my Harvard economics better than you

Nobody knows that I make big plans
I show Madagascar leaders how to dance
How to read statistics & wear striped pants

Emotional statistics that’s not my job
Facts & figures, I’m no slob
But foresting & farming’s all a big blob

Here’s our scheme to stabilize your paper
for International trade right now or later
Follow our advice you’ll thank your creator

Whatcha got to export, what raw materials?
Monoculture diamonds, coffee, Cereals
Sell ’em on the market to Multinational Imperials

We’ll loan you money to expand production
Pay our yearly interest, for your own protection
Tighten your belts, we’ll have no objection

Throw in some little minimal principle
tho debt service paid makes the deal invincible
That takes dollars but your currency’s exchangeable

Get people working on mass market land
cut down forests, for your cash in hand
Or superhighways money where Rainforests stand

With agribusiness farms you can export beef
Cut social services & poverty relief
Forest people shift to the cities in grief

Tighten your belt for a roller coaster ride
Production’s up, market prices slide
Wood pulp burger meat, coffee downside

Increase production pay yr. World Bank debt—
At least the interest if that’s all you can get
Cut down Amazon you haven’t paid it yet

In one decade you give all the money back
As Bank debt service but the Principal, alack!
We’ll lend more cash (but dont sell smack)

Austerity measures, wages go down,
th’urban sewage is a charnel ground
Buses fall apart at the edge of town

coral reef fish dead factory waste,
Indigines hooked on Yankee dollar taste
Swiss bank funds for dictators disgraced

Fauna killed for the debt Costa Rica
Unknown flora at the mouth of Boca Chica
Birds in Equador, sick with toxic leakage?

Riots start over bags of foreign rice
Arm your teenage army with U.S. mace
Borrow money for a local Arms race

Families driven from crop land to forests
Forest folk in hovels hid from tourists
Currencies bankrupt for free market purists?

I just retired from my 20 year job
at World Bank Central with the money mob
Go to AA meetings so’s not die a slob

I worked in Africa, Americas, Vietnam
Bangkok too with World Banks’ big clan
Now I’m retired and I don’t give a damn

Walk the streets of Washington alone at night
The job I did, was it wrong was it right?
Big mistakes that’ve gone out of sight?

It wasn’t the job of a bureaucrat like me
to check the impact of the Bank policy
When debt bore fruit on the world money tree.

February 1997

Richard III

Toenail-thickening age on me,
Sugar coating my nerves, leg
          muscles lacking blood, weak kneed
Heart insufficient, a thick’d valve-wall,
Short of breath, six pounds
          overweight with water—
logged liver, gut & lung—up at 4 A.M.
          reading Shakespeare.

February 4, 1997, 4:03 A.M., NYC

Death & Fame

When I die

I don’t care what happens to my body

throw ashes in the air, scatter ’em in East River

bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B’nai Israel Cemetery

But I want a big funeral

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St. Mark’s Church, the largest synagogue in Manhattan

First, there’s family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,

Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear’d, sister-in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters their grandchildren.

companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan—

Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya’s ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche there, Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting America, Satchitananda Swami,

Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche, Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi’s phantoms

Baker, Whalen, Daido Loori, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau Roshis, Lama Tarchin—

Then, most important, lovers over half-century

Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich

young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories

“He taught me to meditate, now I’m an old veteran of the thousand day retreat—”

“I played music on subway platforms, I’m straight but loved him he loved me”

“I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone”

“We’d lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly arms round each other”

“I’d always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my skivvies would be on the floor”

“Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master”

“We’d talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then

sleep in his captain’s bed.”

“He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy”

“I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my stomach

shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips—”

“All I did was lay back eyes closed, he’d bring me to come with mouth & fingers along my waist”

“He gave great head”

So there be gossip from loves of 1946, ghost of Neal Cassady commingling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997

and surprise—“You too? But I thought you were straight!”

“I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me,”

“I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head,

my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly, on my prick, tickled with his tongue my behind”

“I loved the way he’d recite ‘But at my back always hear/time’s winged chariot hurrying near,’ heads together, eye to eye, on a pillow—”

Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear

“I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his walk-up flat,

seduced me didn’t want to, made me come, went home, never saw him again never wanted to …”

“He couldn’t get it up but loved me,” “A clean old man,” “He made sure I came first”

This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor—

Then poets & musicians—college boys’ grunge bands—age-old rock star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical conductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trumpeters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger

fiddlers with dobro tambourine harmonica mandolin autoharp pennywhistles & kazoos

Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60’s India, late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massachusetts surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American provinces

Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate bibliophiles, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex

“I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved him anyway, true artist”

“Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me from suicide hospitals”

“Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink dishes, my studio guest a week in Budapest”

Thousands of readers, “Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois”

“I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet—”

“He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas City”

“Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City”

“Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston 1982”

“I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized others like me out there”

Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures

Then Journalists, editors’ secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural historians come to witness the historic funeral

Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatniks & Deadheads, autographhunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers

Everyone knew they were part of “History” except the deceased

who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive

February 22, 1997

Sexual Abuse

“A Nation of Finks”
—W. S. Burroughs

A voice in the kitchen light:
Sexual abuse should not be
          rewarded with a wink
Sexshual abuse should not be
          revarded mit a vink
Re Boston-Herald headline “Sexual Abuse Law Targets Clergy”
“Senator: Religious leaders must report child molesters”
Priests should turn each other in, fink—
So, say it in the confession box, not
          over sherry at intimate dinner.

February 26, 1997, 6 A.M.

Butterfly Mind

The mind is like a butterfly
That lights upon a rose
or flutters to a stinky feces pile
swoops into smoky bus exhaust
or rests upon porch chair, a flower breathing
open & closed balancing a Tennessee breeze—
Flies to Texas for a convention
spring weeds in fields of oil rigs
Some say these rainbow wings have soul
Some say empty brain
tiny automatic large-eyed wings
that settle on the page.

January 29, 1997, 2:15 A.M., NYC

A fellow named Steven

A fellow named Steven
went to look for God
on a street that’s even
and a street that’s odd

A lifestyle clean
with music and wife
A golden mean
For a heavenly life

He went to the city
Tried all tricks
Sadness & pity
many highs, many kicks

Saved by music
Books & dance bands,
Generous, correct
Taught class, steady hands

Married, had a boy
Whom he sang into life
He’ll long enjoy
His Child & Wife

Air Shuttle Boston—N.Y.
March 4, 1997, 5 P.M. in milky sky

Half Asleep

Moved six months ago left it behind for Peter
He’d been in Almora when we bought it,
an old blanket, brown Himalayan wool
two-foot-wide long strips of light cloth
bound together with wool strings
That after 3 decades began to loosen
Soft familiar with use in Benares & Manhattan
I took it in my hands, searched to match the seams,
          fold them, sew together as I thought
But myself, being ill, too heavy for my arms,
Leave it to housekeeper’s repair
          it disappeared suddenly in my hands—
back to the old apartment
where I’d let go half year before

March 7, 1997

Objective Subject

It’s true I write about myself
Who else do I know so well?
Where else gather blood red roses & kitchen garbage
What else has my thick heart, hepatitis or hemorrhoids—
Who else lived my seventy years, my old Naomi?
and if by chance I scribe U.S. politics, Wisdom
meditation, theories of art
it’s because I read a newspaper loved
teachers skimmed books or visited a museum

March 8, 1997, 12:30 A.M.

Kerouac

I can’t answer,
reason I can’t answer
I haven’t been dead yet
Don’t remember dead
I’m on 14th St & 1st Avenue
Vat’s the qvestion?

March 12, 1997

Hepatitis Body Itch …

Hepatitis
Body itch
nausea
hemorrhage
tender Hemorrhoids
High Blood
Sugar, low
leaden limbs
lassitude
bed rest
shit factory
this corpse
cancer

March 13, 1997

Whitmanic Poem

We children, we
          school boys,
girls in America
          laborers, students
dominated by lust

March 18, 1997

American Sentences 1995–1997

I felt a breeze below my waist and realized that my fly was open.

April 20, 1995

*   *   *

Sitting forward elbows on knees, oh what luck! to be able to crap!

April 17, 1995

“That was good! that was great! That was important!” Standing to flush the toilet.

June 22, 1995

Relief! relief! O Boy O Boy! That was necessary, wash behind!

January 18, 1997

“A good shit is worth a thousand dollars if your purse can afford it.”

February 10, 1997, 5 A.M.

Heard at every workplace—obnoxious slogan: “Shit or get off the pot!”

January 24, 1997

How did I know? How did my ass know? Suddenly, go to the bathroom!

March 10, 1997

*   *   *

Château d’Amboise

Sun setting on their faces the diners chatter over plates of duck.

June 22, 1995

Baul Song

“Oh my mad mind, my mad mind, where’ve you been all my life, my old mad mind?”

October 7, 1996

The three-day-old kitchen fly’s flown into my bedroom for company.

December 9, 1996

“Hi-diddly-Dee, a poet’s life for me,” Gregory Corso sang in Paris sniffing H.

January 16, 1997

Chopping apples for the fruit compote—suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer!

January 24, 1997

Courageous little lemon with so many pits! sliced into the pot.

January 25, 1997

The young dog—he jumped out the TV tube stood still then barked for supper.

January 26, 1997

Stupid of me, stupid of me, just dumb plain stupid ass! Where’s my pen?

February 19, 1997, 2:45 A.M.

My father dying of Cancer, head drooping, “Oy kindelach.”

February 24, 1997

Whatcha do about little girls who want to play Horsey on my knee?

March 10, 1997

“Hey Buster! Whatcha looking at me like that for?” in the Bronx subway.

March 10, 1997, 2:45 A.M.

To see Void vast infinite look out the window into the blue sky.

March 23, 1997

Variations on Ma Rainey’s See See Rider

“I’ve been down at the bus stop
     Buy my jellyroll there
If I can’t sell it in Memphis
               you can
     buy it in Eau St. Claire.
See See Rider
          you got me
                    in your chair
          But if I have
               my fanny
                    can sell it anywhere
          See what I want today
                    yes yes yes
          Need a man who
                    really can do
     anything I say
          Do that for me
                    Then I
                         guess I
          won’t go way.

Go way go way go way from here
     look for all old gray home
     I can live by myself and
          ring my telephone
     Dirty pictures on my new TV
          Just now turned them on
     I don’t need you and your
               mamma’s long time gone

March 3, 1997

Sky Words

Sunrise dazzles the eye
Sirens echo tear thru the sky
Taxi klaxons echo the street
Broken car horns bleat bleat bleat

Sky is covered with words
Day is covered with words
Night is covered with words
God is covered with words

Consciousness covered with words
Mind is covered with words
Life & Death are words
Words are covered with words

Lovers are covered with words
Murders are covered with words
Spies are covered with words
Governments covered with words

Mustard gas covered with words
Hydrogen Bombs covered with words
World “News” is words
Wars are covered with words

Secret police covered with words
Starvation covered with words
Mothers bones covered with words
Skeleton Children made of words

Armies are covered with words
Money covered with words
High Finance covered with words
Poverty Jungles covered with words

Electric chairs covered with words
Screaming crowds are covered with words
Tyrant radios covered with words
Hell’s televised, covered with words

March 23, 1997, 5 A.M.

Scatalogical Observations

The Ass knows more than the mind knows

Young romantic readers
Skip this part of the book
If you want a glimpse of life
You’re free to take a look

Shit machine shit machine
I’m an incredible shit machine
Piss machine Piss machine
Inexhaustible piss machine

Piss & shit machine
That’s the Golden Mean
Whether young or old
Move your bowels of gold

Piss & shit machine
It always comes out clean
Whether you’re old or young
Never hold your tongue

(Chorus)
Shit machine piss machine
I’m an incredible piss machine
Piss machine piss machine
Inexhaustible shit machine.

Brown or black or green
everything will be seen
Hard or soft or loose
Shit’s a glimpse of Truth

Babe or boy or youth
Fart’s without a tooth
Baby girl or maid
Many a fart in laid

Shit piss shit piss
Fuck & shit & piss
Fuck fart shit Piss
It all comes down to this

Beautiful male Madonnas
Wrathful Maids of Honor
To be frank & honest
Stink the watercloset

Shit machine piss machine
Much comes down to this
Piss machine shit machine
Nature’s not obscene

Shit piss shit piss
How’ll I end my song?
Shit piss shit piss
Nature never wrong

(Chorus)
Shit machine Piss Machine
I’m an incredible piss machine
Piss machine shit machine
Inexhaustible shit machine

March 23, 1997

My Team Is Red Hot

My dick is red hot
Your dick is diddly dot

My politics red hot
Your politics diddly-plot

My President’s red hot
your President’s diddly-blot

My land is red hot
Your land is diddly-knot

My nation’s red hot
Your nation’s diddly rot

My cosmos red hot
Your cosmos diddly iddly squat

March 23, 1997

Starry Rhymes

Sun rises east
Sun sets west
Nobody knows
What the sun knows best

North star north
Southern Cross south
Hold close the universe
In your mouth

Gemini high
Pleiades low
Winter sky
Begins to snow

Orion down
North Star up
Fiery leaves
Begin to drop

March 23, 1997, 4:51 A.M.

Thirty State Bummers

Take a pee pee take a Bum
Take your choice for number one

Old man more or someone new
Take your choice someone new

President Clinton President Dole
Number three you’re in a hole

Anchor two or anchor four
One’s a liar one’s a bore

Richard Helms Angleton live
We were lucky to survive

Jesse Helms & dirty pix
Dance your fate with his party mix

Idi Amin General Mobutu
Were paid by me & you

They were bought by me & mine
Albania, number 9

Mr. Allende was number 10
Pinochet Dictator then

Death squads in El Salvador
We paid D’Aubisson to score

Guatamalas by the dozen
Pat Robertson was country cousin

Rios-Montt the Indian killer
Born-again General Bible pillar

Nicaragua squeezed between
Col. North & a cocaine queen

Drug Czar Bush gave Company moolah
To Noriega Panama’s ruler

Venezuela’s Drug War Chief
Turned around to be a thief

Mexico’s general drug-war head
pumped informers full of lead

State Department’s favorite bloke
In Haiti he sold tons of coke

Till Aristide unhex’d the curse
CIA filled Cedras’ Purse

White Peru’s its Indian shame
Gave “Shining Path” worldwide fame

Then dictator Fujimori
Paid the World Bank hunky dory

With Indian Class the majority
Peru got respectable with poverty

Made a deal with English banks
To pay back USA with thanks

The price of rubber tin went down
Cocaine syndicates come to town

Now the money’s in cocaine crops
U.S. Hellies do their dope air drops

We got rid of the President of Costa Rica
He had no army he didn’t kill people

Lots began in ’53
Guatemala couldn’t break free

United Fruits annulled the vote
As Alan & Foster Dulles gloat

Then unseated Mosaddeq
& left Iran a police-state wreck

Then we sold the guy in Iraq
Money to bomb Iranians back

Central America Middle East
Preyed on by “Great Satan’s” beast

Worst of all, & hell be damned!
Think what happened in Vietnam

Laos, victim of the war
Nobody really knew what for

Cambodia, caught by the tail
When we blew up Mekong’s Ho Chi Minh Trail,

Descended into Anarchy
Pol Pot’s Maoist Butchery

Shihanook’s book before that day
Was called “My War with the CIA”

Who’s to blame, Who’s to blame
Anybody share America’s shame

But there’s more! Count the score!
So far we got twenty-four

25 is Afghanistan
Fundamentalists armed by The Man

Tribal Drug Lord Mountain gangs
Veiling up their own sex thangs

Looking around for number 26
Indochina was the Colonial sticks

France introduced the opium crop
France would sell the Chinese hop

Britain, U.S. got in on the deal
Opium war made the Emperor kneel

China opened to our own junk men
Shanghai famous for the opium den

Strung out on junk we took their silk
The yellow peril drank Christian milk

We’re doing exactly the same thing again
In Indochina with Marlboro men

Smoke our dope to be Favored Nation
Nicotine cancer next generation

Who’s pushing this new dope ring?
Senator Jesse Helms the Moralist King

Peaches Prunes & company goons
For the next two-hundred eighty eight moons

NAFTA NAFTA what comes after?
Toxic waste—Industrial laughter

Industrial Smog, Industrial sneers
Industrial women weeping tears

Wages low no CIO
No medical plan oh no! no! no!

No FDR No WPA
No toilet time, human say

No overtime no other way
Yankee work for a dollar a day

No jobs today No jobless pay
No future life but turn to clay

Work hard for a little bit of honey
But USA takes all the money

March 24, 1997, 10:40 P.M.

I have a nosebleed You have a nosebleed
He has a nosebleed three
She has a nosebleed It has a nosebleed
They all bleed on me

March 24, 1997

Timmy made a hot milk
Better than a warm milk
Better than a cold milk shake
Hot cream warm cream oh La La!
Pretty boy straight kids, Ha ha ha
Sneakers Jeans & T-shirts, damn!
Got it made said houseboy Sam
All except the Ku Klux Klan
Wham Bam & thank you ma’m

March 25, 1997, 6:30 A.M.

This kind of Hepatitis can cause ya
Nosebleed skin itch bowel nausea
Swell up hanging hemorrhoid heads
Easter lilies by your hospital beds

March 24, 1997

Giddy-yup giddy-yup giddy-yap
I can’t take more of your crap
Giddy-yap Giddy-yap Giddy-yup
So you’re right, so you’re right, Shut up!
Giddy yup shut up, Giddy yup shut up
Giddy-yap giddy yap giddy yap shut up.

March 24, 1997

Turn on the heat & take a seat
& lookit junkies on the street

Forget the news from old Time-Warner
Lookit crackheads on the corner

Turn off TV 7 o’clock
They’re selling grass around the block

Minimum wage is whacha make
Narcs are mostly on the take.

Make big money from your mob
Till Old MacDonald makes a job.

March 25, 1997

Bop Sh’bam

OO Bop Sh’bam
At the poetry slam
Scream & yell
At the poetry ball

Get in a rage
On the poetry stage
Make it rhyme
In double-time

Talk real fast
till your time’s passed
Sound like a clown
& then sit down.

Listen to the next
’cause she listened to you
Tho all she says is
Peek-a-boo-boo.

March 25, 1997, 3:30 P.M.

Dream

There was a bulge in my right side, this dream recently—just now I realized I had a baby, full grown that came out of my right abdomen while I in hospital with dangerous hepatitis C.

I lay there awhile, wondering what to do, half grateful, half apprehensive. It’ll need milk, it’ll need exercise, taken out into fresh air with baby carriage.

Peter there sympathetic, he’ll help me, bent over my bed, kissed me, happy a child to care for. What compassion he has. Reassured I felt the miracle was in Peter’s reliable hands—but gee what if he began drinking again? No this’ll keep him straight. How care for a baby, what can I do?

Worried & pleased since it was true I slowly woke, still thinking it’d happened, consciousness returned slowly 2:29 AM I was awake and there’s no little mystic baby—naturally appeared, just disappeared—

A glow of happiness next morn, warm glow of pleasure half the day.

March 27, 1997, 4A.M.

Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgias)

Never go to Bulgaria, had a booklet & invitation

Same Albania, invited last year, privately by Lottery scammers or recovering alcoholics,

Or enlightened poets of the antique land of Hades Gates

Nor visit Lhasa live in Hilton or Ngawang Gelek’s household & weary ascend Potala

Nor ever return to Kashi “oldest continuously habited city in world” bathe in Ganges & sit again at Manikarnika ghat with Peter, visit Lord Jagganath again in Puri, never back to Birbhum take notes tales of Khaki Baba

Or hear music festivals in Madras with Philip

Or return to have Chai with older Sunil & the young coffeeshop poets,

Tie my head on a block in the Chinatown opium den, pass by Moslem Hotel, its rooftop Tinsmith Street Choudui Chowh Nimtallah Burning ground nor smoke ganja on the Hooghly

Nor the alleyways of Achmed’s Fez, nevermore drink mint tea at Soco Chico, visit Paul B. in Tangiers

Or see the Sphinx in Desert at Sunrise or sunset, morn & dusk in the desert

Ancient collapsed Beirut, sad bombed Babylon & Ur of old, Syria’s grim mysteries all Araby & Saudi Deserts, Yemen’s sprightly folk,

Old opium tribal Afghanistan, Tibet-Templed Beluchistan

See Shanghai again, nor caves of Dunhuang

Nor climb E. 12th Street’s stairway 3 flights again,

Nor go to literary Argentina, accompany Glass to Sao Paolo & live a month in a flat Rio’s beaches & favella boys, Bahia’s great Carnival

Nor more daydream of Bali, too far Adelaide’s festival to get new song sticks

Not see the new slums of Jakarta, mysterious Borneo forests & painted men & women

No more Sunset Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, Oz on Ocean Way

Old cousin Danny Leegant, memories of Aunt Edith in Santa Monica

No more sweet summers with lovers, teaching Blake at Naropa,

Mind Writing Slogans, new modern American Poetics, Williams Kerouac Reznikoff Rakosi Corso Creeley Orlovsky

Any visits to B’nai Israel graves of Buba, Aunt Rose, Harry Meltzer and Aunt Clara, Father Louis

Not myself except in an urn of ashes

March 30, 1997, A.M.

Afterword
On Death & Fame

This final collection of Allen Ginsberg poems completes a remarkable half century of continuous verse creation. Allen leaves nothing out and takes the readers down a final walk of sickness and decline, but still the illumination of life shines through these strophes and rhythms. In these final five years, Allen struggles through several transformations. He is placed under the ever intensifying glare of media attention as a founder of the Beat Generation. He is interviewed as a living icon/prophet to each generation from the 1940s through the 1990s and is expected to elucidate the meaning of the century’s conclusion and make new millennial predictions. The telephones ring continually for talk and advice on every subject from presidential politics to baby naming. He finally manages to place his lifelong archives into a permanent home at Stanford University. He is reviled in the New York Times on several occasions for “selling out.” For the first time in his life, he buys himself a bit of comfort. At age seventy, he leaves his fourth-floor walk-up tenement apartment and moves into an elevator loft building still within his beloved Lower East Side of Manhattan. In these years, he embraces Jewel Heart Buddhist Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he attends retreats, performs benefits, and receives profound and ultimate instructions from his teacher Gelek Rinpoche. Although struggling with illnesses continually, he does not learn of his fatal diagnosis until a week before his last breath. The poems follow these paths and illumine our own lives.

“New Democracy Wish List” was written at the request of Long Island Newsday. Allen polled his friends and collected advice on various subjects. The poem was sent to the White House and politely received. Allen’s diabetes led to a state of dysesthesia below the waist. Allen transformed any shame of incontinence to a celebration of aging and life, as in “Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush.” It was Allen’s habit to write poetry in his journals in the late night or the early morning. He would often write at dawn and then go back to sleep until late morning. His waking routine took several hours. There is a good sample of that routine in “Tuesday Morn.” When Allen had collected several pages of poetry in his journals, he would photocopy them and hand them to his office to perform a first typing. Peter Hale typed them and returned them promptly. Allen would make alterations by hand and return them. Sometimes this process went on through ten drafts. We kept every draft in a file folder labeled with the title of the poem. Often slight rhythmic corrections to poems would come in after Allen returned from giving poetry readings. Allen Ginsberg was one of very few poets who had the opportunity to refine the exact cadence of his lines through his frequent public readings.

One of Allen’s most beautiful song lyrics was “New Stanzas for Amazing Grace.” Allen never ignored the homeless or beggars. He was generous to a fault and could not pass an outstretched hand without leaving a coin and looking deeply into the face beyond the hand. Allen lived comfortably within his modest fame. As he walked the streets of Lower Manhattan, people would nod to him in recognition or simply say “Hi Allen!” as they passed. If they stopped to recall when they last met him or ask a question, he was patient and conversed with them. If someone came up and said, “Are you Allen Ginsberg?” he might answer, “No, but that is what I am called.” Allen was always supportive of the writers he admired and who were his friends. Notice in “City Lights City” which was written for the naming ceremony of Via Ferlinghetti, Allen used the occasion to create new literary renamings of streets for all the worthy writers of his circle.

“Pastel Sentences” were written in Allen’s form of American Haiku (seventeen syllables with the common haiku associational enjambment of senses but carried through on a single strophe each). These sentences were composed to accompany a set of water colors by his friend, Francesco Clemente. There was a conciliation in Allen’s poems; he was commingling his worldview with its detail of causes into Buddhist mindfulness and ego urges. He continued a flirtation with children’s poetry in “The Ballad of the Skeletons” which was turned into a rock ’n’ roll song with Paul McCartney, Philip Glass, and Lenny Kaye collaborating musically. Gus Van Sant made a music video. Memories from East Side High, Paterson, are explored in “You know what I’m saying?” Allen remembered the songs of his childhood (“Popular Tunes”). One day he walked around the loft trying to find his scarf. He sang a little ditty about the lost scarf, which became “Gone Gone Gone”: a poem about loss, which was read at a Buddhist service the day after Allen’s death.

Allen was unsteady on his feet, hesitant in his step, and exhausted in his frame. He had to fly the shuttle to Boston to see his cardiologist. I sensed that, for the first time, he didn’t have the energy to fly by himself. “Allen, I’ll go with you,” I reassured him in the early twilight of a late February afternoon. He protested that it was not necessary. I insisted and he gave in happily.

I carried my bag and his. He shuffled with me. In the taxi to LaGuardia Airport, Allen asked for his book bag. The taxi was dark, only lit by the street lamps whisking by in an alternating stream. As the vehicle sped between lanes, I felt my stomach rise up to my throat and stick there. Allen said, “Listen to this. I started it last night!” He was laughing and cracking up. He searched in his journal and found the scrawled poem. It started:

When I die
I don’t care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter ’em in the East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B’nai Israel Cemetery
But I want a big funeral

I wanted the cab ride to be over. I didn’t want to hear the poem, but it got funnier and funnier. He was almost in hysterics as he listed what all his myriad boyfriends would say at his funeral. He wanted to know if I could add any lines. I suggested that women would all say, “He never did remember my name.”

On the shuttle, Allen fell into a deep sleep. I stared at the deep lines in his face. He seemed so far away. I thought he might be dead. But at the beginning of our descent, he jerked awake, grabbed his notebook, scribbled for about two minutes, and read me this American sentence: “My father dying of Cancer, head drooping, ‘Oy kindelach.’”

Allen’s health continued to deteriorate. Poems were being written so fast that we could not keep up with them. Weeks after the trip to Boston, Allen entered Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. One of the doctors in the Emergency Room handed Allen a poem he had written seeking Allen’s improvements. Allen obliged and was pleased as he confided in me that it was “a much stronger poem now.” In the hospital, Allen asked for a copy of Mother Goose. I brought my children’s Rackham edition. “Starry Rhymes” injected pure beauty into the simple rhymes. The poetry of late March 1997 reflected Allen’s lively mind balancing the primary hospital bodily events and his childhood innocence so long overridden in the need to grow up fast in a dysfunctional family.

Although we are unsure that Allen had finished with the rhymes dated March 24, 1997, we include them as exemplar of the pure, supple child Allen slipped in and out of in the late stages of liver cancer. “Dream” resolves contradictions inherent in his long love affair with Peter Orlovsky and remained the last poem written before the fatal diagnosis of liver cancer. After being told of the massive metastasized cancer within him, Allen Ginsberg only completed one poem in his final week of life. “Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgias)” is the only poem that Allen did not have a chance to proof and amend before his death. The poem is a compendium of farewells, with honest regrets and true Buddhist ability to let go. Allen was sad to leave the world, but he was also exhilarated.

Besides calling friends to take leave, and extract a few promises, he wrote a final political letter to President Clinton. He prefaces his note with, “Enclosed some recent political poems.” Allen lapsed into his death coma before he could select the poems.

In preparing Death & Fame, Peter Hale, Bill Morgan, and myself have honored Allen’s insistence on chronology and notes. We have included each poem as Allen fashioned it. We suspect that some of the short verse would be further revised and combined. These are the final poetry breaths—no more Allen Ginsberg. When Allen died many people felt as if a large hole gaped in their lives. Allen left many writings and songs to fill that hole. With Death & Fame, we find the circle will be unbroken.

Bob Rosenthal
July 7, 1998

Notes

(p. 1063) “New Democracy Wish List”

Ryan White Care Act—A federal program designed to provide support services for people with HIV/AIDS. The act was named for youth Ryan White, a hemophiliac who had contracted HIV through blood transfusion. His battle to return to school helped advance the rights of people living with AIDS.

SLA—Savings & Loan Association, a 1980’s Federal program to bail out bankrupted savings & loan banks resulted in much mis-use and corruption.

Hand & Lavoro Bank Thuggery—Lavoro: Banca Nazionale del Lavoro.

(p. 1066) “Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina”

Thich Nhat Hanh—(b. 1926) Zen monk, exiled from Vietnam, heads a retreat community in the south of France. Authored over seventy-five books.

Sakharov—Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Russian engineer and humanist, first known as “father of the Soviet Hydrogen Bomb” but soon realized radioactivity’s hazards and in a series of articles confronted the Soviet government. In 1975, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Albert Schweitzer—(1875–1965) Theologian, minister, medical missionary in Gabon, Organist, awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1952. Schweitzer was in fact Sartre’s cousin, though Sartre referred to him as “uncle Al.”

(p. 1068) “After the Party”

Coemergent Wisdom—A key term in Vajrayana Buddhism referring to the simultaneous arising of samsara and nirvana, naturally giving birth to wisdom.

(p. 1069) “After Olav H. Hauge”

Olav H. Hauge—Norwegian poet (1908–1994). Trained as a gardener, his work was inspired by the natural world.

Bodø—Second largest city of northern Norway, just inside the Arctic Circle.

(p. 1074) “Tuesday Morn”

Exquisite Corpse—Literary Journal, edited by poet Andrei Codrescu.

Peter’s flown—Peter Orlovsky

Sawang’s … confirmation—Sawang: Previous title for Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche (see note, page 108). Confirmation: Or enthronement in Tibetan Buddhism, it is the formal recognition of an incarnation.

(p. 1076) “God”

Willendorf Venus—Late Stone-Age limestone statuette of Venus, found near the village of Willendorf, Austria.

39 patriarchs—In Chinese and Zen Buddhism, patriarch is the founder of a school and his successors. In some accounts lineages are traced back to 28 original Patriarchs in India, and many more in China, although never as a group of 39—. It’s likely the Author remembered incorrectly here.

(p. 1078) “Excrement”

Polyhymnia—Polyhymnia (Polymnia) is one of the nine muses; sometimes considered the muse of Sacred Poetry.

(p. 1083) “Pastel Sentences”

The author had worked out a series of 108 seventeen syllable sentences describing individual pastel paintings by Francesco Clemente. With a copy of the catalogue, he continued to polish them as he traveled on. Included here are the sentences that the Author felt could stand alone without accompanying images.

(p. 1089) “Is About”

muggles—Hipster term for marijuana cigarette.

(p. 1091) “The Ballad of the Skeletons”

Yahoo—From Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels: A member of a race of brutes who have all the human vices, hence a boorish, crass, or stupid person.

Heritage Policy—Heritage Foundation: Conservative foundation think tank, often thwarting NEA projects, opposing social welfare programs and favoring strict FCC restrictions on “indecent” language. In their own words “One of the nations largest public policy research organizations.”

NAFTA—North American Free Trade Agreement, passed by President Clinton and Congress over objections of many labor and environmental groups concerned about lowered workplace and ecological safeguards.

Maquiladora—Foreign-owned factories operating on the Mexican side of the U.S./Mexican border producing goods mainly for the U.S. market.

GATT—General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

I.M.F.—International Monetary Fund.

(p. 1097) “Bowel Song”

Bam—Seed syllable for Vajrayogini, one of the Author’s principal Tibetan Buddhist practices.

(p. 1101) “Power”

Yuga—As in kaliyuga, Sanskrit for “age,” as in the dark age.

(p. 1102) “Anger”

Carolyn—Carolyn Cassady

(p. 1103) “Multiple Identity Questionnaire”

chela—Sanskrit term, literally “servant,” though often used as the general word for a student, as in a spiritual student seeking guidance from a teacher.

neti neti—“Not this, not this.” Vedantic process of discrimination by negation.

Maya—Sanskrit term in Buddhism meaning “deception, illusion, appearance,” the continually changing impermanent phenomenal world of appearances and forms of illusion or deception which the unenlightened mind takes as the only reality.

(p. 1104) “Don’t Get Angry with Me”

Chödok Tulku—Gelugpa school Tibetan Lama friend of Gelek Rin-poche, he was a guest speaker at a summer retreat attended by the Author. Because of nervousness or difficulty with English, he repeatedly interjected, “Don’t get angry with me.” The Author found it funny and innocent and wrote this poem during the lecture.

Tila, Mila, Marpa, Naro—Said here in prayer form, it is short for Tilopa, Milarepa, Marpa, Naropa (Gampopa). The line of saints or Mahasidhas of Kagupa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.

(p. 1108) “Reverse the rain of Terror …”

Rocky Flats—Rockwell Corporation Nuclear Facility’s Plutonium Bomb trigger factory, near Boulder, Colorado. Starting in the late ’70s, the Author joined in many protests against the plant. In 1989 the FBI investigated the site, confirmed careless handling of radioactive materials, suspended activity there and subsequently shut it down, but only after a $2 billion failed attempt to get the plant back on line. Cleanup will continue into the next millennium.

(p. 1110) “Sending Message”

General Rios-Montt—Efrain Rios-Montt (b. 1926), Guatemalan dictator, rose to power in a 1982 coup lasting seventeen months. Claiming himself a “Born-Again” Christian reformer and backed by President Reagan, his campaigns were responsible for the destruction of native villages and the killing of tens of thousands of natives.

700 Club—Televangelist cable talk show, Christian Broadcasting Net-works’s Flagship program, founded by Pat Robertson.

(p. 1117) “Happy New Year Robert & June”

Robert & June—Robert Frank, June Lief.

(p. 1118) “Diamond Bells”

Hayagriva—One of the eight fierce protective deities, identified by a horse’s head in Tibetan Buddhist iconology

(p. 1120) “Waribashi”

See “Roots of Rain Forest Destruction,” Khor Kok Pen, Third World Resurgence, no. 4, December 1990 (Malaysia, Third World Network), paraphrased in The Debt Boomerang, Susan George, 1992 (London, Pluto Press with Transnational Institute).

(p. 1130) “Death & Fame”

Trungpa Vajracharya—Vajracharya: In Tibetan Buddhism, Mantrayanastyle meditation practice master. Trungpa: Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche (1939–1987), the Author’s first meditation master (1971–1987), founder of Naropa institute and Shambhala centers, author of Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and First Thought Best Thought, with introduction by Allen Ginsberg, 1984, both published by Shambhala Publications, Boston.

Gelek Rinpoche—Kyabje or Ngawang Gelek Rinpoche (b. 1939), friend and teacher to the Author, he is the founder of Jewel Heart Tibetan Buddhist centers. A refugee in India since 1959, where he gave up monastic life to better serve the Tibetan Buddhist lay community, in the late ’70s he was directed by tutors to the Dalai Lama to begin teaching Western students. He currently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche—(b. 1962) The lineage holder of the Buddhist and Shambhala meditation traditions brought from Tibet by his father and teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He is the leader of the international Shambhala community based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Satchitananda Swami—Sri Swami Satchidananda, founder of Integral Yoga Institute. Came to the United States from India 1966.

Dehorahava Baba—A yogi the Author met at the Ganges River across from Benares in 1963.

Karmapa XVI—(1924–1981) Sixteenth lama head of Milarepa lineage, Kagupa order of Tibetan Buddhism.

Dudjom Rinpoche—(1904–1987) Former lama head of Nyingmapa “old school” Tibetan teachings, founded by Padmasambhava.

Katigiri Roshi—Dainin Katagiri-Roshi (1928–1990), first Abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in Minneapolis. Came to the United States from Japan in 1963. Taught and practiced in California and also assisted Suzuki-roshi at the San Francisco Zen Center.

Suzuki Roshi—Shunryu Suzuki-roshi: Zen master of the Soto Lineage. Came to the United States in 1958 as head of the Japanese Soto sect in San Francisco, where he established a Zen Center. He built Zen Mountain Center at Tassajara Springs, the first Zen monastery in America. His Dharma heir is Richard Baker.

Baker Roshi—Richard Baker, Roshi, Abbot, head teacher, and founder of the Dharma Sangha centers, Crestone, Colorado, and Germany.

Whalen Roshi—Zenshin Philip Whalen (b. 1923), poet friend associated with the Beat Generation, now an ordained Zen Buddhist priest, he is Abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center, San Francisco.

Daido Loori Roshi—John Daido Loori, Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, New York, and the founder/director of the Mountains and Rivers Order. Master in Rinzai and Soto lines of Zen Buddhism. Dharma heir of Hakuyu Taizen Maezumi Roshi.

Kapleau Roshi—Philip Kapleau Roshi, Zen master, studied Zen in Japan, founded the Rochester Zen Center in 1966, author of many books on Zen practice.

Lama Tarchin—Nyingmapa school Tibetan Lama, founded the Vajrayana Foundation, Santa Cruz, California, at the request of HH Dudjom Rinpoche.

(p. 1133) “Sexual Abuse”

See article “Sexual Abuse Bill Targets Clergy,” Mark Mueller, Boston Herald (February 21, 1997).

(p. 1136) “Half Asleep”

Almora—Town in Uttar Pradesh state of Northern India, near the foothills of the Himalayas.

(p. 1151) “Thirty State Bummers”

Idi Amin—Idi Amin Dada Oumee (b. 1925), president and dictator of Uganda from 1971–1979, responsible for the killing of 300,000 tribal Ugandans.

General Mobutu—Joseph Mobutu (1930–1997), president and dictator of Zaire from 1965–1991, supported by Western powers.

Mr. Allende—Salvador Allende Gossens (1908–1973), Popularly elected Democratic Socialist President of Chile, overthrown by a military coup supported by the CIA.

Pinochet—Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (b. 1915), president of Chile following the death of Allende.

D’Aubuisson—Roberto D’Aubuisson Arrieta, Death Squad Leader of Arena Party in El Salvador.

Pat Robertson—Conservative Baptist minister and television talk show host who ran for president in 1988.

Rios-Montt—(See note, p. 108.)

Col. North—Oliver L. North, Jr. (b. 1943), U.S. Marine Colonel and a key figure in the Iran-Contra affair.

Aristide—Jean-Bertrand Aristide (b. 1951), the first democratically elected leader of Haiti from 1990–1991 and 1994–1995.

Cedras—Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, Haitian military ruler who overthrew Aristide in 1991.

Fujimori—Alberto Fujimori (b. 1938), president of Peru.

United Fruits—Corporation that controlled much of the Central American fruit market and now part of United Brands Company. United Fruit Company’s law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, had employed State Secretary Dulles, whose brother, Allen, heading the CIA, coordinated the 1954 then-covert overthrow of Jacob Arbenz, elected president of Guatemala. The event is notorious throughout Latin America as a mid-twentieth-century example of “banana republic” repression by North American imperium. By 1980, the U.S.-trained Guatemalan military had reportedly killed 10 percent of jungle Indian population as part of a “pacification” program to “create a favorable business climate.” (See note: Rios-Montt.)

Mosaddeq—Mohammad Mosaddeq (1880–1967), Democratically elected Iranian premier from 1951–1953 who nationalized Western oil holdings.

Pol Pot—(1928–1998), Prime Minister of Cambodia from 1976–1979 and former leader of the Khmer Rouge.

Sihanook—Norodom Sihanook, Prime Minister since 1955 and crowned king of Cambodia in 1993 for the second time.

(p. 1160) “Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgias)”

Kashi—Known now as Benares, a city in northern India, mentioned in ancient Buddhist writings.

Manikarnika ghat—Benares, India; steps near the river where corpses are burned.

Jagganath, Lord—Lord Jagganath is the form under which the Hindu god Krishna is worshipped in Puri, a town in eastern India.

Birbhum—A district in West Bengal state, northeastern India, home of nineteenth-century holy fool, Khaki Baba (see below).

Khaki Baba—North Bengali (Birbhum area), nineteenth-century saint who, dressed in khaki loincloth, is pictured sometimes sitting surrounded by canine friends and protectors.

Philip—Philip Glass, American composer.

Sunil—Sunil Ganguly, Indian poet-friend.

Choudui Chowh Nimtallah—Calcutta neighborhood where the Author lived in the summer of 1962, near the burning ghats.

Soco Chico—Square in the medina, Tangiers, where outdoor cafes were popular with the Author, William S. Burroughs, and Paul Bowles.

Paul B.—Paul Bowles, American writer living in Tangier.

Baluchistan—Baluchistan province in Pakistan, bordered by Afghanistan on the north and Iran on the west.

Dunhuang—Pinyin Dunhuang, city in western Kansu Sheng province, China.

Buba—(Yiddish) Grandmother Rebecca Ginsberg was Allen Ginsberg’s grandmother, buried in this cemetery.

INDEX OF TITLES, FIRST LINES, AND ORIGINAL BOOK SOURCES

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

Poem titles appear in italics. Books in which the poems originally appeared are abbreviated as follows:

AD | Airplane Dreams
AE | As Ever
AW | Angkor Wat
CG | Cosmopolitan Greetings
D&F | Death & Fame
EM | Empty Mirror
Fall | The Fall of America
GW | The Gates of Wrath
Howl | Howl
IH | Iron Horse
IJ | Indian Journals
J | Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties
Kaddish | Kaddish
MB | Mind Breaths
Mss. | Unpublished Manuscript
PAOTP | Poems All Over the Place
PN | Planet News
PO | Plutonian Ode
RS | Reality Sandwiches
SDG | Sad Dust Glories
SHD | Straight Hearts’ Delight
WS | White Shroud

A bitter cold winter night, 273

A brown piano in diamond, 373

A Crazy Spiritual (EM), 83

A crow sits on the prayerflagpole, (CG), 1036

ADAPTED FROM Neruda’s “Que dispierte el leñador” (PO), 704

A Desolation (EM), 64

A Dream (GW), 52

A drunken night in my house with a, 132

Aether (RS), 250

A faithful youth, 83

A fellow named Steven (D&F), 1135

A fellow named Steven (D&F), 1135

After All, What Else Is There to Say? (EM), 37

After Antipater (WS), 921

After Dead Souls (EM), 73

After 53 years, 730

After Lalon (CG), 1019

After Long Absence, I returned from the land of the dead (WS), 916

After midnite, Second Avenue horseradish Beef (CG), 948

Afternoon Seattle (RS), 158

After Olav H. Hauge (D&F), 1069

After the Big Parade (CG), 1010

After the Party (D&F), 1068

After Thoughts (Fall), 544

After Whitman & Reznikoff(PO), 740

After Yeats (PN), 351

A Ghost May Come (EM), 79

Ah, still Lord, ah, sweet Divinity, 28

Ah War (D&F), 1077

Ah War bigness addiction (D&F), 1077

Airplane Blues (WS), 859

Albany throned in snow! It’s winter, Poe, 522

All afternoon cutting bramble blackberries, 143

Allen when you get angry you got two choices— (CG), 951

All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?” (CG), 959

Alone, 341

a lot of mouths and cocks, 606

Always Ether Comes, 509

A Mad Gleam (GW), 24

A Meaningless Institution (EM), 23

America (Howl), 154

America is like Russia, 72

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing, 154

American Change (RS), 194

American Sentences (CG), 1048

American Sentences 1995–1997 (D&F), 1042

A Methedrine Vision in Hollywood (PN), 388

amid glasses clinking, mineral water, schnapps (D&F), 1068

An Asphodel (Howl), 96

An Atypical Affair (EM), 80

and ate so much the bill was five dollars, 63

And the Communists have nothing to offer but fat cheeks, 361

And the youth free stripling bounding along the Hills of Color, 673

An Eastern Ballad (GW), 26

A new moon looks down on our sick sweet planet, 538

Angelic Black Holes (CG), 1025

Anger (D&F), 1102

Angkor—on top of the terrace, 314

Angkor Wat, 314

An Imaginary Rose in a Book (GW), 57

An itch in the auditory canal scratches for years, (WS), 886

An Open Window on Chicago (Fall), 481

Anti–Vietnam War Peace Mobilization (Fall), 549

A Poem on America (EM), 72

A Prophecy (Fall), 504

A Public Poetry (WS), 869

Arguments (WS), 885

Arise ye prisoners of your mind-set (CG), 957

Art recalls the memory, 43

As I cross my kitchen floor the thought of Death returns, (CG), 979

As I’m no longer young in life (WS), 915

As I passed thru Moscow’s grass lots I heard, 655

As Is you’re bearing (WS), 901

As orange dusk-light falls on an old idea, 295

A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley (Howl), 143

A Supermarket in California (Howl), 144

At Apollinaire’s Grave (Kaddish), 188

At gauzy dusk, thin haze like cigarette smoke, 642

A Thief Stole This Poem (CG), 1016

a thousand sunsets behind tramcar wires in open skies of Warsaw, 360

At midnight the teacher lectures on his throne, 741

At 66 just learning how to take care of my body (CG), 1045

A Typical Affair (EM), 71

Aunt Rose—now—might I see you, 192

Auto Poesy: On the Lam from Bloomington (Fall), 420

Autumn Gold: New England Fall (Fall), 469

Autumn Leaves (CG), 1046

A Very Dove (GW), 15

A very Dove will have her love, 15

A voice in the kitchen light: (D&F), 1133

A Vow (Fall), 468

A Western Ballad (GW), 21

Ayers Rock / Uluru Song (MB), 587

Aztec sandstone waterholes known by Moapa’ve, 728

Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square’ (RS), 196

Bad Poem (D&F), 1115

Ballade of Poisons (PAOTP), 700

Balmy, hotter outside than in the living room— (WS), 843

Baltimore bones grown maliciously under sidewalk, 672

Bare skin is my wrinkled sack, 34

Battleship Newsreel (RS), 214

Bayonne Entering NYC (Fall), 427

Bayonne Turnpike to Tuscarora (Fall), 476

Because I lay my, 343

Because this world is on the wing and what cometh no man can know, 263

Because we met at dusk, 247

Beginning of a Poem of These States (Fall), 377

Being as Now has been re-invented (D&F), 1115

Be kind to your self, it is only one, 367

Bend knees, shift weight— (WS), 898

Big Beat (PN), 357

Big deal bargains TV meat stock market news paper headlines (CG), 1011

Big Eats (CG), 1011

Bill Burroughs in Tangiers slowly transfiguring into Sanctity, 269

Birdbrain! (PO), 746

Birdbrain runs the World, 746

Birds chirp in the brick backyard Radio (CG), 1017

Bixby Canyon (Fall), 505

Bixby Canyon Ocean Path Word Breeze (Fall), 567

Black Magicians, 332

Black Shroud(WS), 911

Blame the Thought, Cling to the Bummer (PO), 717

Blandly mother, 86

Blasts rip Newspaper Gray Mannahatta’s mid day Air Spires, 546

Blessed be the Muses (RS), 133

Bop Lyrics (GW), 50

Bop Sh’bam (D&F), 1158

Born in this world, 649

Bowel Song (D&F), 1097

Brain washed by numerous mountain streams (CG), 968

brilliant network-lights tentacle dim suburbs, 521

Brooklyn College Brain (PO), 725

Brown Rice Quatrains (WS), 887

Brown stonepeaks rockstumps, 530

Buddha died and, 669

Burned out Burned out Burned out (D&F), 1125

Busride along waterfront down Yessler under street bridge, 158

Butterfly Mind (D&F), 1134

Cabin in the Rockies (MB), 653

Cadillac Squawk (WS), 925

Café in Warsaw (PN), 358

Calm Panic Campaign Promise (CG), 1035

Candle light blue banners incense, 670

Capitol Air (PO), 751

Car Crash (Fall), 516

Carmel Valley (PN), 381

Cars slide minute down asphalt lanes in front of, 637

Car wheels roar over freeway concrete, 561

Catholicism capish (D&F), 1087

Cézanne’s Ports (EM), 61

Chances “R” (PN), 401

Chicago to Salt Lake by Air (Fall), 498

China be China, B.C. Clay armies underground (WS), 913

CIA Dope Calypso (CG), 997

City Flats, Coal yards and brown rivers, 435

City Lights City (D&F), 1081

City Midnight Junk Strains (PN), 465

Cleveland, the Flats (Fall), 437

Clouds’ silent shadows passing across the Sun, 697

C’mon Jack (PAOTP), 657

C’mon Pigs of Western Civilization Eat More Grease (D&F), 1071

Come All Ye Brave Boys (MB), 645

Come all you young men that proudly display, 645

Complaint of the Skeleton to Time (GW), 25

Consulting I Ching Smoking Pot Listening to the Fugs Sing Blake (Air Dreams), 434

Contest of Bards (MB), 673

Continuation of a Long Poem of These States (Fall), 383

Cool black night thru the redwoods, 382

Cosmopolitan Greetings (CG), 953

Coughing in the Morning, 469

covered with yellow leaves, 539

Crash (GW), 57

“Criminal possession of a controlled substance, 613

Crossing Nation (Fall), 507

Dawn, a mastiff howls on the porch across the street (WS), 926

Dawn’s orb orange-raw shining over Palisades, 640

Deadline Dragon Comix (CG), 1018

Dear Jacob I received your translation, what kind (CG), 972

Dear Lord Guru who pervades the space of my mind (CG), 1009

Death & Fame (D&F), 1130

Death News (PN), 305

Death on All Fronts (Fall), 538

Death to Van Gogh’s Ear! (Kaddish), 175

December 31, 1978 (PO), 722

“Defending the Faith” (PO), 750

Delicate eyes that blinked blue Rockies all ash, 513

Denver tower blocks group’d under gray haze, 620

Describe: The Rain on Dasaswamedh Ghat (PN), 303

Diamond Bells (D&F), 1118

Diana & Roger Napoleon’s real estate empire (CG), 1045

Does that mean war on every boy with more than one earring on the same ear? (D&F), 1082

Done, Finished with the Biggest Cock (Fall), 474

Done, finished, with the biggest cock you ever saw, 474

Don’t Get Angry with Me (D&F), 1104

Don’t get angry with me (D&F), 1104

Don’t Grow Old (MB), 659

“Don’t Grow Old” (PO), 718

Don’t send me letters Don’t send me poems (WS), 877

Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke (CG), 1029

Do the Meditation Rock (WS), 863

Do We Understand Each Other? (GW), 17

Dread spirit in me that I ever try, 16

Dream (D&F), 1159

Dream Record: June 8, 1955 (RS), 132

“Drive All Blames into One” (MB), 669

Drowse Murmurs (PN), 365

Dylan is about the Individual against the whole of creation (D&F), 1089

Easter Sunday (Fall), 524

Eat Eat more marbled Sirloin more Pork’n (D&F), 1071

Ecologue (Fall), 550

Ego Confession (MB), 631

Élan that lifts me above the clouds (D&F), 1100

Elegy Che Guevara (Fall), 492

Elegy for Neal Cassady (Fall), 495

Elements on my table, 79

Elephant in the Meditation Hall (CG), 984

Empire Air (WS), 893

End of Millennium (CG), 1034

Entering Minetta’s soft yellow chrome, to the acrid bathroom, 433

Enthroned in plastic, shrouded in wool, diamond crowned, 439

Epigram on a Painting of Golgotha (GW), 41

Eroica (PO), 748

European Trib. boy’s face photo’d eyes opened, 492

Europe! Europe! (Kaddish), 179

Europe, Who Knows? (CG), 959

Everybody excretes different loads (D&F), 1078

Everyday (CG), 1042

Every time I read Pessoa I think (CG), 975

Excrement (D&F), 1078

Falling Asleep in America (Fall), 525

Father Guru (PO), 700

Father Guru unforlorn, 702

Fie My Fum (GW), 31

Fifth Internationale (CG), 957

Fighting Phantoms Fighting Phantoms (WS), 884

Fighting phantoms we have car wrecks on Hollywood Freeway (WS), 884

First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels (PN), 382

Five AM. (D&F), 1100

Flash Back (Fall), 542

Flying Elegy (MB), 620

Footnote to Howl, 142

For Creeley’s Ear (PAOTP), 671

for their descent, 133

Forty feet long sixty feet high hotel, 302

Four Haiku (J), 145

4 Sniffs & I’m High, 250

Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters (PO), 744

Fragment 1956 (RS), 157

Fragment: The Names II (PAOTP), 269

Friday the Thirteenth (Fall), 546

From Great Consciousness vision Harlem 1948 buildings, 603

Full moon over the shopping mall, 727

Fun House Antique Store (CG), 1043

Funny Death (RS), 208

Fyodor (EM), 40

Galilee Shore (PN), 297

Garden State (PO), 726

General Mother Teresa (D&F), 1066

Get beat up on TV squirming on the ground for driving irregular (CG), 1024

Get It? (CG), 1024

“Giddy-yup giddy-yup giddy-yap” (D&F), 1156

Go back to Egypt and the Greeks, 24

God (D&F), 1076

God answers with my doom! I am annulled, 265

Going to Chicago (Fall), 514

Going to the World of the Dead (WS), 875

Going to the World of the Dead Stalin & Hitler in Bed (WS), 875

Gold beard combd down like chinese fire gold hair, 545

Gone Gone Gone (D&F), 1106

Good Luck (D&F), 1121

Gospel Noble Truths (MB), 649

Graffiti 12th Cubicle Men’s Room Syracuse Airport (Fall), 543

Grandma Earth’s Song (CG), 973

Grant Park: August 28, 1968 (Fall), 515

Graphic Winces (CG), 960

Grass yellow hill, 381

Gray clouds blot sunglare, mountains float west, plane, 519

Gray water tanks in gray mist, 476

Green air, children sat under trees with the old, 515

Green Valentine Blues (Mss.), 103

Gregory Corso’s Story (EM), 75

Growing Old Again, 431

Grim Skeleton (PO), 698

Grim skeleton come back & put me out of Action, 698

G S. Reading Poesy at Princeton (Fall), 545

Guru (PN), 364

Guru Om (Fall), 561

Hadda be flashing like the Daily Double, 643

Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox (MB), 643

Half Asleep (D&F), 1136

Happening Now? (WS), 868

Happening now? End of Earth? Apocalypse days? (WS), 868

Happy New Year Robert & June (D&F), 1117

Happy New Year Robert & June (D&F), 1117

Hard Labor (CG), 948

Haunting Poe’s Baltimore (MB), 672

Havana 1953 (RS), 100

“Have You Seen This Movie?” (Fall), 563

Headless husk legs wrapped round a grass spear, (WS), 883

Hearing the all pervading scintillation of empty bells I realize (D&F), 1118

Heat (IJ), 302

He cast off all his golden robes, 65

He drags his bare feet, 98

Hepatitis (D&F), 1139

Hepatitis Body Itch … (D&F), 1139

Here at the atomic Crack-end of Time XX Century, 388

Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush (D&F), 1073

He rises he stretches he liquefies he is hammered again, 173

High on Laughing Gas, 197

Hiway Poesy: L.A.–Albuquerque–Texas–Wichita (Fall), 390

Holy Ghost on the Nod over the Body of Bliss (PN), 475

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!, 142

Homage Vajracarya (WS), 850

Homeless Compleynt (D&F), 1116

Homework (PO), 739

Hospital Window (MB), 642

How Come He Got Canned at the Ribbon Factory (EM), 68

How’d I get angry (D&F), 1102

Howl (Howl), 134

How lucky we are to have windows! (WS), 895

How sick I am, 74

Huffing puffing upstairs downstairs telephone (CG), 1012

Hum Bom! (CG), 1004

Hum. Bom! (Fall), 576

hundred million cars running out of gasoline, 604

Hymn (EM), 44

I Am a Victim of Telephone (PN), 352

I am Fake Saint, 717

I am I, old Father Fisheye that begat the ocean, 267

I am married and would like to fuck someone else, 543

I Am Not (WS), 881

I am summoned from my bed (WS), 889

I am the King of the Universe (CG), 971

I attempted to concentrate (EM), 41

I Beg You Come Back & Be Cheerful (RS), 243

I came home and found a lion in my living room, 182

I came home from the movies with nothing on my mind, 81

I cannot sleep, I cannot sleep, 18

I can’t answer (D&F), 1138

I climbed the hillside to the lady’s house (CG), 941

I’d been motoring through States & (CG), 1043

I don’t like the government where I live, 751

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place (D&F), 1080

I drove out to the airport on a blue sunny day (WS), 859

I dwelled in Hell on earth to write this rhyme, 13

I feel as if I am at a dead (EM), 79

I felt a breeze below my waist and realized my fly was open. (D&F), 1141

If Hanson Baldwin got a bullet in his brain, outrage, 498

If I had a Green Automobile, 91

If it weren’t for you Mr Jukebox with yr aluminum belly, 296

If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran, 739

If money made the mind more sane, 35

If my pen hand were snapped by a Broadway truck, 740

If you want to learn how to meditate (WS), 863

Ignu (Kaddish), 211

I got old & shit in my pants (D&F), 1073

I hauled down lifeless mattresses to sidewalk refuse-piles, 537

“I have a nosebleed …” (D&F), 1156

I Have Increased Power (EM), 76

I hope my good old asshole holds out (CG), 950

I lay down to rest weary at best (WS), 852

I Lay Love on My Knee (MB), 688

I’ll go into the bedroom silently and lie down, 123

I’ll settle for Immortality— (CG), 1036

I’ll tell my deaf mother on you! Fall on the floor, 691

I Love Old Whitman So (WS), 900

Imaginary Universes (Fall), 520

I’m a Prisoner of Allen Ginsberg (WS), 882

I’m a traveler in a strange country (WS), 905

I’m crying all the time now, 159

I’m delighted by the velocity of money as it whistles (CG), 949

I met Einstein in a dream, 595

I’m happy, Kerouac, your madman Allen’s, 131

Imitation of K.S. (CG), 961

I’m Jewish because love my family matzoh ball soup (CG), 1013

I’m late, I’m gonna die before I mark (CG), 1018

I’m lucky to have all five fingers on the right hand (D&F), 1121

I’m not a lesbian screaming in the basement strapped (WS), 881

Improvisation in Beijing (CG), 937

I’m sick of arguments (WS), 885

In a car Gray smoke over Elmira, 542

In a Moonlit Hermit’s Cabin (Fall), 535

In a thousand years, if there’s History, 550

In back of the real (Howl), 121

In bed on my green purple pink, 275

Incense under Horse Heaven Hills, 526

In Death, Cannot Reach What Is Most Near (EM), 42

Independence Day (Fall), 534

Industrial Waves (WS), 845

I needed a young musician take off his pants (WS), 888

In highschool when you crack your front tooth (CG), 960

“In later days, remembering this I shall certainly go mad ”, 607

In Memoriam: William Cannastra, 1922–1950 (GW), 65

In My Kitchen in New York (WS), 898

In nineteen hundred forty-nine (CG), 997

I noticed the grass, I noticed the hills, I noticed the highways, (CG), 967

In Russia the tyrant cockroach mustache ate 20 million souls (CG), 943

In Society (EM), 11

In the Baggage Room at Greyhound (Howl), 161

In the Benjo (CG), 1046

In the depths of the Greyhound Terminal, 161

In the foreground we see time and life, 61

Into the Flats, thru Cleveland’s, 437

In the mud, in the night, in Mississippi Delta roads (CG), 962

I nurs’d love where he lay, 688

I place my hand before my beard with awe, 347

I received in mail offer beautiful certificate, 665

Iron Horse (IH), 440

Irritable Vegetable (WS), 877

Is About (D&F), 1089

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, 134

I sit because the Dadaists screamed on Mirror Street (WS), 851

I speak of love that comes to mind, 26

I started down Capitol Hill side along unfamiliar black central (CG), 973

Is that the only way we can become like Indians, like Rhinoceri, (CG), 947

Is this the God of Gods, the one I heard about, 475

It is a multiple million eyed monster, 239

It is here, the long Awaited bleap-blast light that Speaks, 280

It is the moon that disappears, 364

It’s All So Brief (WS), 899

It’s everybody’s fault but me, 669

It’s true I got caught in (CG), 1019

It’s true I write about myself (D&F), 1137

It used to be, farms, 726

I’ve a pain in my back Fifth lumbar &

sacrum (WS), 918

“I’ve been down at the bus stop” (D&F), 1144

I’ve climbed the Great Wall’s stone steep out of breath (WS), 921

I’ve got to get out of the sun, 306

I’ve got to give up (WS), 899

I visited Père Lachaise to look for the remains of Apollinaire, 188

I waked at midmost in the night, 52

I walked into the cocktail party, 11

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock, 146

I walked out on the lamp shadowed concrete at midnight, 703

I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America, 631

I was born in Wyoming, Cody is my home town, 690

I was given my bedding, and a bunk, 23

I was high on tea in my fo’c’sle near the forepeak hatch, 214

I was shy and tender as a 10 year old kid, you know what I’m saying? (D&F), 1096

I went in the forest to look for a sign, 103

I Went to the Movie of Life (CG), 961

I will haunt these States, 468

I will have to accept women, 292

I work for the world bank yes I do (D&F), 1126

I write poetry because the English word Inspiration (CG), 937

Jacking Off(D&F), 1123

Jaweh and Allah Battle (MB), 622

Jaweh with Atom Bomb, 622

Joe Blow has decided, 69

John (CG), 1014

Journal Night Thoughts (PN), 275

Jumping the Gun on the Sun (WS), 922

Junk Mail” (PAOTP), 665

Just Say Yes Calypso (CG), 1002

Kaddish (Kaddish), 217

Kali Ma tottering up steps to shelter tin roof, 303

Kansas City to Saint Louis (Fall), 421

Kerouac (D&F), 1138

Kiss Ass (Fall), 501

Kissass is the Part of Peace, 501

Kral Majales (PN), 361

Kunming Hotel, I vomited greasy chicken (WS), 911

Lack Love (PO), 701

Land OLakes, Wisc., (MB), 669

Land OLakes, Wisconsin: Vajrayana Seminary (PAOTP), 670

Last night I dreamed, 60

Last Night in Calcutta (PN), 309

Las Vegas: Verses Improvised for El Dorado H.S. Newspaper (PO), 728

Late sun opening the book, 105

Laughing Gas (Kaddish), 197

Lay down Lay down yr mountain Lay down God, 651

Leaving K.C. Mo. past Independence past Liberty, 421

lemme kiss your face, lick your neck, 621

Let me say beginning I don’t believe in Soul, 625

Let some sad trumpeter stand, 196

Let the Railsplitter Awake, 704

Listen to the tale of the sensitive car, 174

Living in an apartment with a gelded cat, 71

London Dream Doors (CG), 952

—Long enough to remember the girl, 80

Long Live the Spiderweb (EM), 54

Long since the years, 356

Long stone streets inanimate, repetitive machine Crash, 501

Looking over my shoulder, 145

Lord Heart, heal my right temple bang’d soft pain, 611

Lord Lord I got the sickness blues, I must’ve done something wrong, 647

Love came up to me, 692

Love Comes (WS), 852

Love Forgiven (PO), 737

Love Poem on Theme by Whitman (RS), 123

Love Replied (PO), 692

Love Returned (PO), 720

Love returned with smiles, 720

Love wears down to bare truth, 701

Lunchtime (CG), 1017

Lysergic Acid(Kaddish), 239

Magic Psalm (Kaddish), 263

Malest Cornifci Tuo Catullo (RS), 131

Manhattan May Day Midnight (PO), 703

Manhattan Thirties Flash (Fall), 501

Manifesto (MB), 625

Man’s glory (J), 268

Many Loves, 164

Many prophets have failed, their voices silent, 745

Many seek and never see, 15

Marijuana Notation (EM), 74

Marlene Dietrich is singing a lament, 62

Maturity (WS), 872

Maybe Love (PO), 731

Maybe love will come, 731

May Days 1988 (CG), 979

Memory Cousins (WS), 916

Memory Gardens (Fall), 539

Mescaline (Kaddish), 236

Message (Kaddish), 191

Message II (PN), 356

Metaphysics (EM), 41

Mexcity drugstore table, giant, 511

Mice ate at the big red heart in her breast, she was distracted in love. (D&F), 1083

Midwinter night, 481

Milarepa Taste (Fall), 565

Millions of babies watching the skies, 579

Millions of people cheering and waving flags for joy in Manhattan (CG), 1010

Mind Breaths (MB), 617

Mistaken Introductions (CG), 995

Moral Majority (WS), 917

Morning (PN), 345

Moved six months ago left it behind for Peter (D&F), 1136

Mugging (MB), 633

Multiple Identity Questionnaire (D&F), 1103

Must be thousands of sweet gourmets rustling through, 588

My Alba (RS), 97

My dick is red hot (D&F), 1149

My love has come to ride me home, 17

My Sad Self (RS), 209

My Team Is Red Hot (D&F), 1149

Nagasaki Days (PO), 707

Nanao (CG), 969

“Nature empty, everything’s pure; (D&F), 1103

Nazi Capish (D&F), 1087

Neal Cassady was my animal: he brought me to my knees, 164

Never go to Bulgaria, had a booklet & invitation (D&F), 1160

New Democracy Wish List (D&F), 1063

News Bulletin (PAOTP), 613

New Stanzas for Amazing Grace (D&F), 1080

News Stays News (CG), 1045

Newt Gingrich Declares War on “McGovernik Counterculture” (D&F), 1082

Night Gleam (MB), 609

No hyacinthine imagination can express this clock of meat, 44

No! No! (D&F), 1112

No! No! It’s Not the End (D&F), 1112

No one liked my hair (CG), 1014

Northwest Passage (Fall), 586

Not Dead Yet (CG), 1012

Nov. 23, 1963: Alone (PAOTP), 341

Now and Forever (CG), 1036

Now I have become a man, 67

Now I’ll record my secret vision, impossible sight of the face of God, 246

Now incense fills the air, 351

Now mind is clear, 64

Now Richard Secord and Oliver North (CG), 1000

Now that I’ve wasted, 97

Now that Samurai bow & arrow, Sumi brush, (WS), 850

Now to the come of the poem, let me be worthy, 157

N.S.A. Dope Calypso (CG), 1000

Numbers in U.S. File Cabinet (CG), 982

Nymph and shepherd raise electric tridents, 401

Objective Subject (D&F), 1137

O dear sweet rosy, 96

Ode: My 24th Year (GW), 67

Ode to Failure (PO), 745

Ode to the Setting Sun (GW), 46

O Future bards, 504

Oh dry old rose of God, 57

“Oh just hanging around picking my nose …” (WS), 870

O I am happy! O Swami Shivananda—a smile, 353

Oil brown smog over Denver, 636

OK Neal, 495

Old Love Story (WS), 856

Old maple hairytrunks root asphalt grass marge, 563

Old moon my eyes are new moon with human footprint, 171

Old Poet, Poetry’s final subject glimmers months ahead, 659

Old Pond (PO), 715

Oleta (Snake) River! (CG), 987

OM—the pride of perfumed money, music food from China, 597

On a bare tree in a hollow place, 41

On Burroughs’ Work (RS), 122

On Cremation of Chögyam Trungpa, Vidyadhara (CG), 967

One day 3 poets & 60 ears sat under a green-striped, 707

100,000,000 buffalo 17th century on North American Plains (CG), 982

One Morning I took a Walk in China (WS), 903

On Illness (PAOTP), 611

On London’s Tavern’s wooden table, been reading Kit Smart— (CG), 952

On Neal’s Ashes (Fall), 513

On Neruda’s Death (MB), 615

On Reading William Blake’s “The Sick Rose” (GW), 14

On the Conduct of the World (CG), 947

On top of that if you know me I pronounce you an ignu, 211

On Via Ferlinghetti & Kerouac Alley young heroes muse melancholy 2025 A.D. (D&F), 1081

OO Bop Sh’bam (D&F), 1158

Opening a bus window in N.Y., 668

Orange hawkeye stronger than thought winking above, 534

Organs and War News, 384

or this marvellous hi Lama followed (CG), 995

O Statue of Liberty Spouse of Europa Destroyer of Past, 298

Over and over thru the dull material world the call is made, 609

Over Denver Again (Fall), 519

Over Kansas (RS), 124

over knowledge of death, 76

Over Laramie (Fall), 566

Pardon me buddy, I didn’t mean to bug you (D&F), 1116

Pastel Sentences (Selections) (D&F), 1083

Past Silver Durango Over Mexic Sierra-Wrinkles (Fall), 512

Paterson (EM), 48

Path crowded with thistle fern blue daisy, 505

Patna–Benares Express (PN), 308

Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina (D&F), 1066

Pentagon Exorcism (PN), 491

Personals Ad (CG), 970

Pertussin (Fall), 509

Philadelphia city lights boiling under the, 590

Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof, 744

Plastic & cellophane, milk cartons & yogurt containers, (WS), 880

Please Master (Fall), 502

Please master can I touch your cheek, 502

Please Open the Window and Let Me In (GW), 39

Plutonian Ode (PO), 710

Portland Coliseum (PN), 373

Poem in the Form of a Snake (CG), 987

POEM Rocket (Kaddish), 171

Poems rise in my brain, 654

POET is Priest, 175

Poet professor in autumn years (CG), 970

Popular Tunes (D&F), 1098

Porch Scribbles (WS), 843

Power (D&F), 1101

Proclamation (CG), 971

“Progress” ended in XX century. (D&F), 1063

Prophecy (WS), 916

Psalm I (EM), 26

Psalm II (GW), 28

Psalm III (RS), 163

Psalm IV(J), 246

Pull my daisy, 31

Pull my daisy, 32

Pull My Daisy (GW), 32

Punk Rock Your My Big Crybaby (PO), 691

Pussy Blues (PAOTP), 658

Put Down Your Cigarette Rag (CG), 1029

railroad yard in San Jose, 121

Rain-wet asphalt heat, garbage curbed cans (Fall), 537

reaching my own block, 78

Reading Bai Juyi (WS), 905

Reading French Poetry (PAOTP), 654

Reading No Nature in the toilet (CG), 1047

Ready to Roll (RS), 167

Real as a dream, 311

Reality is a question, 58

Red cheeked boyfriends tenderly kiss me sweet mouthed, 743

Red Guards battling country workers, 484

Red Scabies on the Skin, 509

Reflections at Lake Louise (PO), 741

Reflections in Sleepy Eye (Fall), 532

Refrain (GW), 19

Research (CG), 1026

Research has shown that black people have inferiority complexes (CG), 1026

Retire abandon world sd Swami Bhaktivedanta, 610

Returning North of Vortex (Fall), 484

Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit (MB), 607

Return of Kral Majales (CG), 984

Reverse the rain of Terror… (D&F), 1108

Reverse the rain of Terror on street

consciousness U.S.A. (D&F), 1108

Rexroth’s face reflecting human, 160

Richard III (D&F), 1129

Rising above the used car lots & colored dumps of Long Island (WS), 893

Rising over night-blackened Detroit Streets (Fall), 521

Rolling Thunder Stones (MB), 651

Rose of spirit, rose of light, 14

Rotting Ginsberg, I stared in the mirror naked today, 236

Ruhr-Gebiet (PO), 734

Sad Dust Glories (MB), 626

said Rinpoche Chögyam Trungpa Tulku in the marble, 600

Sakyamuni Coming Out from the Mountain (RS), 98

Said the Presidential Skeleton (D&F), 1091

Salutations to Fernando Pessoa (CG), 976

Sather Gate Illumination (RS), 150

Scatalogical Observations (D&F), 1147

Scribble (RS), 160

Seabattle of Salamis Took Place off Perama (PN), 296

Sending Message (D&F), 1110

September on Jessore Road (Fall), 579

Setting out East on rain bright highways, 420

Seven years’ words wasted, 54

Sexual Abuse (D&F), 1133

Shines on top of Mountains where Grey Stone monastery sits, 268

Shining Diamonds & Sequins glitter, 722

Sickness Blues (MB), 647

Siesta in Xbalba (RS), 105

Sincerity is the key to living in Eternity (WS), 922

Since we had changed, 191

Sitting on a tree stump with half cup of tea, 653

Sitting on the twelfth floor Gomden I heard a wild siren (WS), 925

Sky Words (D&F), 1145

Slope woods’ snows melt, 524

Smog trucks mile after mile high wire, 427

Smoke Rolling Down Street (Fall), 509

Snow-blizzard sowing, 516

Snow mountain fields, 620

Some breath breathes out Adonais & Canto General, 615

Some Little Boys Dont (D&F), 1122

Some little boys like it (D&F), 1122

Some live on islands, hills near Trondheim (D&F), 1069

Some Love (PO), 730

Something evil about you Mr. Viguerie Mr. Falwell (WS), 917

Some think the love of boys is wicked in the world, (WS), 856

Sometime I’ll lay down my wrath, 38

Sometime Jailhouse Blues (GW), 38

Sometimes when my eyes are red, 209

Song (Howl), 119

Song of the Washing Machine (D&F), 1125

Sonora Desert-Edge (Fall), 530

Soul to crotch the streets commit hara-kiri, (CG), 1025

Sphincter (CG), 950

Spot Anger (CG), 951

Spring Fashions (PO), 727

Squeal (RS), 173

Stage-lit streets, 383

Stand up against governments, against God. (CG), 954

Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City (GW), 35

Starry Rhymes (D&F), 1150

Starting with eyeball kicks, 124

Still night. The old clock Ticks, 309

Stool Pigeon Blues (PO), 690

Stopping on the bus from Novi Pazar in the rain, 750

Stotras to Kali Destroyer of Illusions (PN), 298

Straight and slender, 737

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, 217

Student Love (WS), 896

Students danced with wooden silvered swords, (WS), 903

Studying the Signs (PN), 371

Sunday Prayer (WS), 886

Sunflower Sutra (Howl), 146

Sunrise dazzles the eye (D&F), 1145

Sun rises east (D&F), 1150

Sunset (EM), 45

Sunset S.S. Azemour (PN), 295

Supplication for the Rebirth of the Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa (CG), 1009

Surprise Mind (WS), 895

Swan Songs In the Present (D&F), 1105

“Swan songs in the present (D&F), 1105

Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass (MB), 621

Sweet Levinsky (GW), 27

Sweet Levinsky in the night, 27

Swirls of black dust on Avenue D (Fall), 510

Switch on lights yellow as the sun, 465

Take a pee pee take a Bum (D&F), 1151

Take my love, it is not true, 25

Tears (RS), 159

Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber (PN), 280

“τεθνάκην δ’ όλίγω ’πιδενης ϕαίόμ’ άλαία” (PO), 743

Teton Village (MB), 620

That tree said I don’t like that white car under me, (WS), 849

That which pushes upward, 434

The air is dark, the night is sad, 19

The Archetype Poem (EM), 69

The Ballad of the Skeletons (D&F), 1091

The Blue Angel (EM), 62

The boy’s fresh faced, 18, big smile (WS), 896

The Bricklayer’s Lunch Hour (EM), 12

The Change: Kyoto–Tokyo Express (PN), 332

The Charnel Ground (CG), 1038

The death’s head of realism, 40

The delicate french girl jukebox husky lament, 431

The 18 year old marine “had made his Peace with God.” (D&F), 1076

The End (Kaddish), 267

The Eye Altering Alters All (GW), 15

The fact is, the Russians are sissies (WS), 869

The first I looked on, after a long time far from home, 194

The first time I went, 75

The flower in the glass peanut bottle formerly in the kitchen, 148

The Green Automobile (RS), 91

The Guest (WS), 918

The Lama sat (CG), 1042

The Lion for Real (Kaddish), 182

The Little Fish Devours the Big Fish (WS), 865

The method must be purest meat, 122

The mind is like a butterfly (D&F), 1134

The Moments Return (PN), 360

The music of the spheres—that ends in Silence, 208

The Names (SHD), 184

The New Right’s a creepy pre-Fascist fad (WS), 845

The Night-Apple (EM), 60

The night café—4 A.M., 100
The N Power, the feminine power (D&F), 1101

The old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk, 715

The Old Village Before I Die, 433

The Olympics have descended into, 357

The Question (WS), 897

There is more to Fury, 57

The Reply (Kaddish), 265

There was a bulge in my right side, this dream recently— (D&F), 1159

There was this character come in, 68

These are the names of the companies that have made money, 494

These days steal everything (CG), 1016

These knowing age (D&F), 1070

These knowing age (D&F), 1070

These psalms are the workings of the vision haunted mind, 26

These spectres resting on plastic stools, 358

These States: into L.A. (Fall), 384

These States: to Miami Presidential Convention (PAOTP), 590

The Shrouded Stranger (EM), 55

The Shrouded Stranger (GW), 34

The Shroudy Stranger’s reft of realms, 55

The Terms in Which I Think of Reality (EM), 58

The Trembling of the Veil (EM), 22

The Voice of Rock (GW), 18

The Warrior is afraid, 738

The weight of the world, 119

The whitewashed room, roof, 301

The whole, 671

The whole blear world, 45

The wrathful East of smoke and iron, 46

They are sending a message to the youth of America (D&F), 1110

The young kid, horror buff, monster Commissar, ghoul connoisseur, (CG), 960

They’re All Phantoms of My Imagining (WS), 888

345 W. 15th St. (AE), 81

Things I Don’t Know (WS), 926

Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgias) (D&F), 1160

think tank (D&F), 1124

Think Tank Rhymes (D&F), 1124

Thirty State Bummers (D&F), 1151

This Form of Life Needs Sex (PN), 292

This Is About Death (EM), 43

This is the creature I am, 440

This is the one and only, 41

“This kind of Hepatitis can cause ya” (D&F), 1156

This silver anniversary much hair’s gone from my head (CG), 984

Those high lunches needn’t matter (WS), 887

Those Two (WS), 849

Thoughts on a Breath (PAOTP), 637

Thoughts Sitting Breathing (MB), 597

Thoughts Sitting Breathing II (WS), 878

3,489 friendly people, 532

“Throw Out the Yellow Journalists of Bad Grammar & Terrible Manner” (WS), 873

Thus crosslegged on round pillow sat in Teton Space, 617

Time comes spirit weakens and goes blank, 184

“Timmy made a hot milk” (D&F), 1156

Tiny orange-wing-tipped butterfly, 567

To an Old Poet in Peru (RS), 247

To Aunt Rose (Kaddish), 192

Today (PN), 353

Today out of the window, 22

Toenail-thickening age on me, (D&F), 1129

To God: to illuminate all men. Beginning with Skid Road, 163

To Jacob Rabinowitz (CG), 972

To Lindsay (Kaddish), 191

To Mexico! To Mexico! Down the dovegray highway, 167

Tompkins Square Lower East Side N.Y. (CG), 1048

Tonite all is well (EM), 40

Tonite I got hi in the window of my apartment, 243

Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door, 633

Too much industry, 734

To PO. (IJ), 301

To Poe: Over the Planet, Air Albany–Baltimore (Fall), 522

To the Body (PN), 439

To the Punks of Dawlish (PO), 729

… touch of vocal flattery, 365

Transcription of Organ Music (Howl), 148

Tübingen–Hamburg Schlafwagen (PO), 736

Tuesday Morn (D&F), 1074

Turn me on your knees, 657

“Turn on the heat & take a seat” (D&F), 1157

Turn Right Next Corner, 402

Twenty-eight years before on the living room couch, 718

22,000 feet over Hazed square Vegetable planet Floor, 514

Two Boys Went Into a Dream Diner (EM), 63

Two bricklayers are setting the walls, 12

Two Dreams (MB), 655

221 Syllables at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center (WS), 883

Two Sonnets (GW), 13

Ugh! the planet screams, 345

Under orders to shoot the spy, I discharged, 520

Under silver wing, 507

Understand That This Is a Dream (Air Dreams), 311

Under the bluffs of Oroville, blue cloud September skies, 377

Under the world there’s a lot of ass, a lot of cunt (MB), 606

Upstairs Jenny crashed her car & became a living corpse, (CG), 1038

Uptown (PN), 432

up up and away, 390

Vachel, the stars are out, 191

Variations on Ma Rainey’s See See Rider (D&F), 1144

Velocity of Money (CG), 949

Verses Written for Student Antidraft Registration Rally 1980 (PO), 738

Violate me (CG), 1033

Violence (Fall), 511

Violent Collaborations (CG), 1033

Virtual Impunity Blues (D&F), 1119

Vision 1948 (GW), 16

Visiting Father & Friends (CG), 941

Voznesensky’s “Silent Tingling” (PAOTP), 588

Vulture Peak: Gridhakuta Hill (PN), 306

Waking in New York (PN), 347

Wales Visitation (PN), 488

Walking at night on asphalt campus, 305

Walking home at night (EM), 78

Walking with aching back at base of spine, walked stiffly to kitchen toilet to pee, (D&F), 1074

Walk into your local Japanese restaurant Teriyaki Boy— (D&F), 1120

Waribashi (D&F), 1120

War Profit Litany (Fall), 494

Watching the White Image, electric moon, white mist, 535

We children, we (D&F), 1140

We know all about death that, 42

We’re in the Great Place, Fable Place, Beulah, Man wedded to Earth, 525

We Rise on Sun Beams and Fall in the Night (MB), 640

Western Air boat bouncing, 566

Westward Mother-mountains drift Pacific, green-sloped canyons, 512

What do I hear in my ear (D&F), 1098

What do I want in these rooms papered, 48

Whatever it may be whoever it may be, 308

What Id Like to Do (MB), 610

What new element before us unborn in nature, 710

What’s Dead? (PO), 697

What the Sea Throws Up at Vlissingen (WS), 880

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, 144

“What would you do if you lost it?” (MB), 600

“What You Up To?” (WS), 870

When he kissed my nipple, 544

When I die (D&F), 1130

When I died, love, when I died, 21

When I lie down to sleep dream the Wishing Well it rings, 352

When I sat in my bedroom for devotions, meditations & prayers (WS), 878

When I sit before a paper, 37

When I think of death, 50

When Schwarzkopf’s Father busted Iran’s Mossadegh (CG), 1002

When that dress-gray, gray haired and gray-faced (WS), 897

When the Light Appears (CG), 965

When the red pond fills fish appear, 587

When the troops get their poop (WS), 865

Where O America are you, 73

White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow, 488

white haze over Manhattan’s towers, 510

White light’s wet glaze on asphalt city floor, 371

White marble pillars in the Rector’s courtyard, 748

White Shroud (WS), 889

White sunshine on sweating skulls, 549

Whitmanic Poem (D&F), 1140

Who (PAOTP), 603

Who am I? Saliva, 565

Who Be Kind To (PN), 367

Who Eats Who? (CG), 1037

Who is the shroudy stranger of the night, 39

Who is this Slave Master makes me answer letters in his name (WS), 882

Whom bomb, 576

Whom bomb? (CG), 1004

who report Ten Commandments & Golden Rule (WS), 873

Who represents my body in Pentagon? Who spends, 491

Who Runs America? (MB), 636

Who showed up? (D&F), 1123

Who Will Take Over the Universe? (PN), 273

Why am I so angry at Kissinger, 736

Why do I deny manna to another, 150

Why I Meditate (WS), 851

Why Is God Love, Jack? (PN), 343

Wichita Vortex Sutra (PN), 402

Wild Orphan (Howl), 86

Wind mills churn on Windy City’s, 641

Wings Lifted over the Black Pit (Fall), 435

With oil that streaks streets a magic color, 700

With the blue-dark dome old-starred at night, 297

With Virtual impunity Clinton got campaign funds from pink Chinese (D&F), 1119

World Bank Blues (D&F), 1126

World Karma (WS), 913

World world world, 179

Written in My Dream by W. C. Williams (WS), 901

Written on Hotel Napkin: Chicago Futures (MB), 641

Wrote This Last Night (RS), 174

Xmas Gift (MB), 595

Yellow-lit Budweiser signs over oaken bars, 432

Yes all the spiritual groups scandal the shrine room (CG), 984

Yes and It’s Hopeless (MB), 604

yes it’s gone gone gone (D&F), 1106

Yiddishe Kopf (CG), 1012

You Don’t Know It (CG), 943

“You know what I’m saying?” (D&F), 1096

You’ll bare your bones you’ll grow you’ll pray you’ll only know (CG), 966

“You Might Get in Trouble” (PAOTP), 668

Young I drank beer & vomited green bile (WS), 872

Young romantic readers (D&F), 1147

Your electric hair’s beautiful gold as Blake’s Glad Day boy, 729

You said you got to go home & feed your pussycat, 658

Youthful, caressing, boisterous, tender (WS), 900

You used to wear dungarees & blue workshirt, 725

You’ve been coughing for weeks (D&F), 1097

You were here on earth, in cities, 626

About the Author

Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1926, a son of Naomi and lyric poet Louis Ginsberg. As a student at Columbia College in the 1940s, he began a close friendship with William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, and he later became associated with the Beat movement and the San Francisco Renaissance in the 1950s. After jobs as a laborer, sailor, and market researcher, Ginsberg published his first volume of poetry, Howl and Other Poems, in 1956. Howl defeated censorship trials to become one of the most widely read poems of the century, translated into more than twenty-two languages, from Macedonian to Chinese, a model for younger generations of poets from West to East.

Crowned Prague May King in 1965, then expelled by Czech police and simultaneously placed on the FBI’s Dangerous Security list, Ginsberg traveled to and taught in the People’s Republic of China, the Soviet Union, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe, receiving Yugoslavia’s Struga Poetry Festival “Golden Wreath” in 1986.

Ginsberg was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French minister of culture, was a winner of the National Book Award (for The Fall of America), and was a cofounder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, the first accredited Buddhist college in the Western world. He died in New York City in 1997.

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ALSO BY ALLEN GINSBERG

POETRY

Howl and Other Poems, 1956

Kaddish and Other Poems, 1961

Empty Mirror, Early Poems, 1961

Reality Sandwiches, 1963

Planet News, 1968

The Fall of America, Poems of These States, 1972

The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948–52, 1973

Iron Horse, 1973

First Blues, 1975

Mind Breaths, Poems 1971–76, 1978

Plutonian Ode, Poems 1977–1980, 1982

Collected Poems 1947–1980, 1984

White Shroud, Poems 1980–1985, 1986

Cosmopolitan Greetings, Poems 1986–1992, 1994

Selected Poems 1947–1995, 1996

Death & Fame: Poems 1993–1997, 1999

PROSE

The Yage Letters (with William Burroughs), 1963

Indian Journals, 1970, 1996

Gay Sunshine Interview (with Allen Young), 1974

Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness, 1974

Chicago Trial Testimony, 1975

To Eberhart from Ginsberg, 1976

As Ever: Collected Correspondence Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady, 1977

Neal Cassady, 1977

Journals Early Fifties Early Sixties 1977, 1993

Composed on the Tongue: Literary Conversations 1967–1977, 1980

Straight Hearts Delight, Love Poems and Selected Letters 1947–1980 (with Peter Orlovsky), 1980

Howl, Original Draft Facsimile, Fully Annotated, 1986, 1995

The Visions of the Great Rememberer (with Visions of Cody, Jack Kerouac), 1993

Journals Mid-Fifties: 1954–1958, 1994

Luminous Dreams, 1997

Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995, 2000

Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958–1996, 2001

PHOTOGRAPHY

Photographs, 1991

Snapshot Poetics, 1993

VOCAL WORDS & MUSIC

First Blues, 1981, 2006

The Lion For Real, 1989, 1996

Howls, Raps & Roars, 1993

Hydrogen Jukebox (opera with Philip Glass), 1993

Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems & Songs 1949–1993, 1994

The Ballad of the Skeletons, with Paul McCartney, Philip Glass, 1996

Howl, U.S.A., Kronos Quartet, Lee Hyla score, 1996

Howl & Other Poems, 1998

Wichita Vortex Sutra, 2004

The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Collection, 2004

Allen Ginsberg Reads Kaddish, 2006

Copyright

COLLECTED POEMS 1947–1997. Copyright © 2006 by the Allen Ginsberg Trust.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-04617-8

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

Ginsberg, Allen, 1926–1997.
   [Poems]
   Collected poems, 1947–1997 / Allen Ginsberg.— 1st ed.
       p. cm.
   Includes indexes.
   ISBN-13: 978–0-06–113974–1
   ISBN-10:0–06–113974–2
       I. Title.

PS3513.I74 2006

811′.54—dc22                                                                                           2006041191

6 7 8 9 10 NMSG/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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