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—

Cleveland, the Flats

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!

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—

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—?

AUM

“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.

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?

          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.

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.

      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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

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—

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.

& 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.

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?

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?

          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

City Midnight Junk Strains

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.

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

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,

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—

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.

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 …

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—

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.

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.

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.

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.

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—

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.

Pentagon Exorcism

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