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

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.

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!

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

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”

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.

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

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”

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

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

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.

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.

Studying the Signs

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.

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.