Elegy Che Guevara

European Trib. boy’s face photo’d eyes opened,
     young feminine beardless radiant kid
         lain back smiling looking upward
Calm as if ladies’ lips were kissing invisible parts of the body
Aged reposeful angelic boy corpse,
     perceptive Argentine Doctor, petulant Cuba Major
                pipe mouth’d & faithfully keeping Diary
                     in mosquitos Amazonas
Sleep on a hill, dull Havana Throne renounced
More sexy your neck than sad aging necks of Johnson
                     De Gaulle, Kosygin,
     or the bullet pierced neck of John Kennedy
Eyes more intelligent glanced up to death newspapers
     than worried living Congress Cameras passing
                dot screens into TV shade, glass-eyed
                McNamara, Dulles in old life …

Women in bowler hats sitting in mud outskirts 11,000 feet up in Heaven
                with a headache in La Paz
         selling black potatoes brought down from earth roof’d huts
                on mountain-lipped Puno
     would’ve adored your desire and kissed your Visage new Christ
They’ll raise up a red-bulb-eyed war-mask’s
     white tusks to scare soldier-ghosts
                who shot thru your lungs

Incredible! one boy turned aside from operating room
         or healing Pampas yellow eye
     To face the stock rooms of Alcoa, Myriad Murderous
                     Board Directors of United Fruit
Smog-Manufacturing Trustees of Chicago U
         Lawyer Phantoms ranged back to dead
                John Foster Dulles’ Sullivan and Cromwell lawfirm
         Acheson’s mustache, Truman’s bony hat
To go mad and hide in jungle on mule & point rifle at OAS
     at Rusk’s egoic Courtesies, the metal deployments of Pentagon
         derring-do Admen and dumbed intellectuals
                from Time to the CIA
One boy against the Stock Market all Wall Street ascream
         since Norris wrote The Pit
     afraid of free dollars showering from the Observers’ Balcony
         scattered by laughing younger brothers,
Against the Tin Company, against Wire Services,
         against infrared sensor Telepath Capitalism’s
                money-crazed scientists
     against College boy millions watching Wichita Family Den TV

War Profit Litany

These are the names of the companies that have made money from this war

nineteenhundredsixtyeight Annodomini fourthousandeighty Hebraic

These Corporations have profited by merchandising skinburning phosphorus or shells fragmented to thousands of fleshpiercing needles

and here listed money millions gained by each combine for manufacture and here are gains numbered, index’d swelling a decade, set in order,

here named the Fathers in office in these industries, telephones directing finance,

names of directors, makers of fates, and the names of the stockholders of these destined Aggregates,

and here are the names of their ambassadors to the Capital, representatives to legislature, those who sit drinking in hotel lobbies to persuade,

and separate listed, those who drop Amphetamines with military, gossip, argue, and persuade

suggesting policy naming language proposing strategy, this done for fee as ambassadors to Pentagon, consultants to military, paid by their industry:

and these are the names of the generals & captains military, who now thus work for war goods manufacturers;

and above these, listed, the names of the banks, combines, investment trusts that control these industries:

and these are the names of the newspapers owned by these banks

and these are the names of the airstations owned by these combines;

and these are the numbers of thousands of citizens employed by these businesses named;

and the beginning of this accounting is 1958 and the end 1968, that statistic be contained in orderly mind, coherent & definite,

and the first form of this litany begun first day December 1967 furthers this poem of these States.

December 1, 1967

Elegies for Neal Cassady
(1968)
Elegy for Neal Cassady

OK Neal
     aethereal Spirit
         bright as moving air
                blue as city dawn
happy as light released by the Day
     over the city’s new buildings—

Maya’s Giant bricks rise rebuilt
                     in Lower East Side
     windows shine in milky smog.
         Appearance unnecessary now.

Peter sleeps alone next room, sad.
Are you reincarnate? Can ya hear me talkin?
If anyone had strength to hear the invisible,
And drive thru Maya Wall
     you had it—
                     What’re you now, Spirit?
That were spirit in body—

The body’s cremate
                                             by Railroad track
                         San Miguel Allende Desert,
                                             outside town,
                         Spirit become spirit,
                                             or robot reduced to Ashes.

Tender Spirit, thank you for touching me with tender hands
When you were young, in a beautiful body,
                         Such a pure touch it was Hope beyond Maya-meat,
                         What you are now,
                                             Impersonal, tender—

I’m a phantom skeleton with teeth, skull
                         resting on a pillow
                         calling your spirit
               god echo consciousness, murmuring
                                             sadly to myself.

Chicago to Salt Lake by Air

If Hanson Baldwin got a bullet in his brain, outrage?

If President Johnson got a bullet in his brain, fast Karma?

If Reader’s Digest got a bullet in its brain would it be smarter?

March ’68, P. 54 “Report from Vietnam, The foe is Hurting”
… “The dismal picture of 1965, when I previously visited Vietnam,
has been reversed: The Allies are winning, and the enemy is being hurt,”
wrote “The distinguished military Editor of the New York Times”
The Dinosaur moves slowly over Chicago.

Arrived on United Airlines just in time all wrong.

Anger in the back of the plane cabin, anger at Reader’s Digest
Hanson Baldwin’s “Allies”? Hanson Baldwin’s “The Enemy”?

Arguing with a schizophrenic is hopeless. A bullet in the brain.

Mr. Baldwin suggests more bullets in the brain to solve his Vietnam Problem.

Hanson Baldwin is a Military Ass-Kisser.

Dead Neal was born in Salt Lake, & Jim Fitzpatrick’s dead.

Flowers die, & flowers rise red petaled on the field.

Anger, red petal’d flower in my body

Detroit’s lake from a mile above chemical muddy,

streams of gray waste fogging the surface to the center,

more than half the lake discolored metallic—

Cancerous reproductions the house flats rows of bee boxes, DNA Molecular Patterns

microscopic reticulations topt w/Television Antennae

and the horizon edged with gray gas clouds from East to West unmoved by wind.

They fucked up the planet! Hanson Baldwin Fucked up the Planet all by himself, emitted a long Military gas cloud Dec 26 27 28 1967 in NY Times.

“Purely military considerations” he told TV—

Till Gov. LaSalle sd/ the Prexy cdnt be peaceful till election time,

as Baldwin nodded agree.

A bunch of fat & thin Schizophrenics running the planet thoughtwaves. Shit, Violence, bullets in the brain Unavailing.

Deeper into gray clouds, there must be invisible farms, invisible farmers walking up and down rolling cloud-hills.

Kiss Ass

Kissass is the Part of Peace
America will have to Kissass Mother Earth
Whites have to Kissass Blacks, for Peace & Pleasure,
Only Pathway to Peace, Kissass

Houston, April 24, 1968

Manhattan Thirties Flash

Long stone streets inanimate, repetitive machine Crash cookie-cutting

dynamo rows of soulless replica Similitudes brooding tank-like in Army Depots

Exactly the same exactly the same exactly the same with no purpose but grimness

& overwhelming force of robot obsession, our slaves are not alive

& we become their sameness as they surround us—the long stone streets inanimate,

crowds of executive secretaries alighting from subway 8:30 A.M.

bloodflow in cells thru elevator arteries & stairway glands to typewriter consciousness,

Con Ed skyscraper clock-head gleaming gold-lit at sun dusk.

1968

Please Master

Please master can I touch your cheek

please master can I kneel at your feet

please master can I loosen your blue pants

please master can I gaze at your golden haired belly

please master can I gently take down your shorts

please master can I have your thighs bare to my eyes

please master can I take off my clothes below your chair

please master can I kiss your ankles and soul

please master can I touch lips to your hard muscle hairless thigh

please master can I lay my ear pressed to your stomach

please master can I wrap my arms around your white ass

please master can I lick your groin curled with blond soft fur

please master can I touch my tongue to your rosy asshole

please master may I pass my face to your balls,

please master, please look into my eyes,

please master order me down on the floor,

please master tell me to lick your thick shaft

please master put your rough hands on my bald hairy skull

please master press my mouth to your prick-heart

please master press my face into your belly, pull me slowly strong thumbed

till your dumb hardness fills my throat to the base

till I swallow & taste your delicate flesh-hot prick barrel veined Please

Master push my shoulders away and stare in my eye, & make me bend over the table

please master grab my thighs and lift my ass to your waist

please master your hand’s rough stroke on my neck your palm down my backside

please master push me up, my feet on chairs, till my hole feels the breath of your spit and your thumb stroke

please master make me say Please Master Fuck me now Please

Master grease my balls and hairmouth with sweet vaselines

please master stroke your shaft with white creams

please master touch your cock head to my wrinkled self-hole

please master push it in gently, your elbows enwrapped round my breast

your arms passing down to my belly, my penis you touch w/ your fingers

please master shove it in me a little, a little, a little,

please master sink your droor thing down my behind

& please master make me wiggle my rear to eat up the prick trunk

till my asshalfs cuddle your thighs, my back bent over,

till I’m alone sticking out, your sword stuck throbbing in me

A Prophecy

O Future bards
chant from skull to heart to ass
as long as language lasts
Vocalize all chords
zap all consciousness
I sing out of mind jail
in New York State
without electricity
rain on the mountain
thought fills cities
I’ll leave my body
in a thin motel
my self escapes
through unborn ears
Not my language
but a voice
chanting in patterns
survives on earth
not history’s bones
but vocal tones
Dear breaths and eyes
shine in the skies
where rockets rise
to take me home
                    May 1968

Bixby Canyon

Path crowded with thistle fern blue daisy,
               glassy grass, pale morninglory
                         scattered on a granite hill
bells clanging under gray sea cliffs,
dry brackensprout seaweed-wreathed
where bee dies in sand hollows
                         ant-swarmed above
white froth-wave glassed bay surge
               Ishvara-ripple on cave wall
                                   sea birds
                    skating wind swell,
Amor Krishna Om Phat Svaha air rumble at
                    ocean-lip
                                   Yesterday
Sand castles Neal, white plasm balls round
               jellies—
               Skeleton snaketubes & back
               nostrils’ seaweed-tail dry-wrinkled
               brown seabulb & rednailed
               cactus blossom-petal tongues—
Brownpickle saltwater tomato ball
               rubber tail Spaghettied
                         with leafmeat,
Mucus-softness crown’d Laurel thong-hat
               Father Whale gunk transparent
                         yellowleaf egg-sac sandy
               lotos-petal cast back to cold
                         watersurge.

                              Bouquet of old seaweed
on a striped blanket, kelp tentacle spread
round the prayer place
                                             Hermes silver
                         firelight spread over wave sunglare—
The Cosmic Miasma Anxiety meditating nakedman
                                   —Soft Bonepipe!
Musical Sea-knee gristlebone rubber
                    burp footswat beard ball bounce
of homosexual Shlurp ocean hish
                    Sabahadabadie Sound-limit
                                   to Evil—

Crossing Nation

Under silver wing
          San Francisco’s towers sprouting
                              thru thin gas clouds,
          Tamalpais black-breasted above Pacific azure
                    Berkeley hills pine-covered below—
Dr. Leary in his brown house scribing Independence Declaration
                         typewriter at window
                    silver panorama in natural eyeball—

Sacramento valley rivercourse’s Chinese
                         dragonflames licking green flats north-hazed
               State Capitol metallic rubble, dry checkered fields
                         to Sierras—past Reno, Pyramid Lake’s
                         blue Altar, pure water in Nevada sands’
                                   brown wasteland scratched by tires

               Jerry Rubin arrested! Beaten, jailed,
                         coccyx broken—
Leary out of action—“a public menace …
               persons of tender years … immature
                         judgment… psychiatric examination …”
i.e. Shut up or Else Loonybin or Slam

LeRoi on bum gun rap, $7,000
                         lawyer fees, years’ negotiations—
SPOCK GUILTY headlined temporary, Joan Baez’
                         paramour husband Dave Harris to Gaol
Dylan silent on politics, & safe—
                         having a baby, a man—
Cleaver shot at, jail’d, maddened, parole revoked,
Vietnam War flesh-heap grows higher,
                         blood splashing down the mountains of bodies
                                   on to Cholon’s sidewalks—
Blond boys in airplane seats fed technicolor
                         Murderers advance w/ Death-chords
                                        thru photo basement,
                         Earplugs in, steak on plastic
                                        served—Eyes up to the Image—

What do I have to lose if America falls?

Smoke Rolling Down Street

Red Scabies on the Skin
Police Cars turn Garbage Corner—
Was that a Shot! Backfire or Cherry Bomb?

Ah, it’s all right, take the mouth off,
it’s all over.

Man Came a long way,
Canoes thru Fire Engines,
Big Cities’ power station Fumes
Executives with Country Houses—
Waters drip thru Ceilings in the Slum—
It’s all right, take the mouth off
it’s all over—
                                   New York, June 23, 1968

Pertussin

Always Ether Comes
               to dissuade the
                         goat-like
                                   sensible—
or N₂O recurring to
               elicit ironic
                         suicidal pen marks—
Parallels: in Montmartre Rousseau
               daubing or Rimbaud arriving,
                         the raw Aether
shines with Brahmanic cool moonshine
               aftertaste, midnight Nostalgia.

June 28, 1968

Swirls of black dust on Avenue D

white haze over Manhattan’s towers
               midsummer green Cattails’ fatness
                         surrounding Hoboken Marsh
                                        garbage Dumps,

Wind over Pulaski Skyway’s
               lacy networks
Trucks crash Bayonne’s roadways,
               iron engines roar

Stink rises over Hydro Pruf Factory
Cranes lift over broken earth
Brain Clouds boil out tin-cone scrap burners
                         Newark sits in gray gas
                         July heat gleams on airplanes
Trailer tyres sing toward forests of oiltowers,
Power grids dance in th’Iron Triangle,
                         Tanks roast in Flatness—
Old Soybean-oil-storage Scandals
                                        echo thru airwaves,
the family car bumps over asphalt toward Bright Mexico.

July 10, 1968

Violence

Mexcity drugstore table, giant
               sexfiend in black spats
Sticks knife in a plump faggot’s
               sportscoat seam;
at Teotihuacán in blue sunlight, I slap
               my mocking blond nephew
               for getting lost on the Moon
               Pyramid.

In Oakland, legendary police shoot a
               naked black boy running out
               of his political basement
In Pentagon giant machines humm and
               bleep in neon arcades,
Buttons click in sockets & robots
               pencil prescriptions for acid gas
               sunsets—
New York on the stairway, the dumbed
               whitefaced Junkie pulls a knife
               and stares immobile—the victim
               gasps, “oh come off it” & a sixpack
               of cokebottles
bounces down worn black steps, in
               Vietnam plastic fire
Streams down myriad phantom cheeks
               rayed over planet television—
Adrenalin runs in armpits from Los Angeles
               to Paris, Harlem & Cannes
explode thru plateglass, Sunset Strip & Sorbonne
               are crowded with Longhaired angels
               armed with gasmasks & Acid,
& Angry Democrats gather in Chicago
               fantasizing armies running
               thru Sewers sprayed with Mace.

I walk up Avenida Juárez, over
               cobbled shadows, blue-tiled streetlamps
lighting Sanborns’ arcades, behind me violent
               chic fairy gangsters with bloody hands
hustle after midnight to cut my throat from
               its beard.

July 22, 1968, 4:30 A.M.

Past Silver Durango Over Mexic Sierra-Wrinkles

Westward Mother-mountains drift Pacific, green-sloped canyons vaster than Mexico City

without roads under cloud-flowers bearing tiny shadow-blossoms on vegetable peaks—

red riverbeds snake thru paradises without electricity

—Huichol or Tarahumara solitudes hectare’d irregular, antpaths to rocky plateaux,

hollows for lone indian humility, hand-ploughed mountainside patches—

naked white cloud-fronds floating silent over silent green earth-crags.

O vast meccas of manlessness, Bright cloud-brains tower’d in blue space up to the Sun

with rainbow garlands over white water-gas, O tree-furred body defenseless thru clear air, visible green breast of America!

vaster than man the Mother Mountains manifest nakedness greater than all the bombs Bacteria ever invented

Impregnable cloud-cities adrift & dissolving no History,

white rain-ships alighted in Zenith Blue Ocean—

No ports or capitals to the horizon, emerald mesas ridged infinite-budded where rivers and ants gather garbage man left behind in the Valley of Mexico—

Iron’ll rust under living tree roots & soak back underground

to feed the sensitive tendrils of Ego covering mountains of granite green mossed unconscious.

Heaven & ocean mirror their azure, horizon lost in yellowed spectrum-mist—

Baja California Blue water lies flat to the brown armpit of United States,

River’s course muddies the delta with teardrops washed dusty from Utah— Green irrigated farm squares in desert—

& the dung colored gas, brown haze of labor near Los Angeles risen the height of Sierras—

gray smog drifts thru low mountain passes, city invisible.

                                             Floating armchairs descend

from sky in sunlight, rocking back & forth in polluted fields of air.

                                             July 22, 1968, 11 A.M.

On Neal’s Ashes

Delicate eyes that blinked blue Rockies all ash
nipples, Ribs I touched w/ my thumb are ash
mouth my tongue touched once or twice all ash
bony cheeks soft on my belly are cinder, ash
earlobes & eyelids, youthful cock tip, curly pubis
breast warmth, man palm, high school thigh,
baseball bicept arm, asshole anneal’d to silken skin
                                        all ashes, all ashes again.

August 1968

Going to Chicago

22,000 feet over Hazed square Vegetable planet Floor
Approaching Chicago to Die or flying over Earth another 40 years
to die—Indifferent, and Afraid, that the bone-shattering bullet
be the same as the vast evaporation-of-phenomena Cancer
Come true in an old man’s bed. Or Historic
Fire-Heaven Descending 22,000 years End th’ Atomic Aeon

The Lake’s blue again, Sky’s the same baby, tho papers & Noses
rumor tar spread through the Natural Universe’ll make Angel’s feet sticky.

I heard the Angel King’s voice, a bodiless tuneful teenager
Eternal in my own heart saying “Trust the Purest Joy—
Democratic Anger is an Illusion, Democratic Joy is God
Our Father is baby blue, the original face you see Sees You—”

How, thru Conventional Police & Revolutionary Fury
Remember the Helpless order the Police Armed to protect,
The Helpless Freedom the Revolutionary Conspired to honor—?

I am the Angel King sang the Angel King
as mobs in Amphitheaters, Streets, Colosseums Parks and offices
Scream in despair over Meat and Metal Microphone

August 24, 1968

Grant Park: August 28, 1968

Green air, children sat under trees with the old,
bodies bare, eyes open to eyes under the hotel wall,
the ring of Brown-clothed bodies armed
               but silent at ease leaned on their rifles—

Harsh sound of mikrophones, helicopter roar—
A current in the belly, future marches
               and detectives naked in bed—
where? on the planet, not Chicago,
               in late sunlight—

Miserable picnic, Police State or Garden of Eden?

in the building walled against the sky
magicians exchange images, Money vote
               and handshakes—
The teargas drifted up to the Vice
               President naked in the bathroom
—naked on the toilet taking a shit weeping?

Who wants to be President of the
               Garden of Eden?

Car Crash

I

Snow-blizzard sowing
ice-powder drifts on stone fenced
gardens near gray woods.

Yellow hump-backed snow plow
rocking giant tires round
the road, red light flashing
iron insect brain.

Mrow, the cat with diarrhea.

Sunlight settled into human form,
tree rings settled age after age
stone forests accumulating atoms
traveled 93,000,000 miles,
carbon deposits settled into beds,
the mountain’s head breathes light,
Earth-hairs gather gold beams
thru chlorophyll, poets walk
between the green bushes
sprouting solar language.

Broken bones in bed,
hips and ribs cracked by autos,
snowdrifts over rubber tires,
tree stumps freeze, the body stump
heals temporarily in wintertime.

II

So that’s it the body, ah!
Beat yr meat in a dark bed.

Boy friends wrinkle & shit in snow.

Girls go fat-eyed to their mother’s coffin.

Cigarettes burned my tastebuds’ youth,
I smelled my lover’s behind,
This autocrash broke my hip and ribs,
Ugh, Thud, nausea-breath at solar plexus paralyzed my bowels four days—
Eyeglasses broke, eyeballs still intact—
Thank God! alas, still alive but talk words
died in my body, thoughts died in pain.

And who’s left watching, or even
remembers the car crash that severed
the skull from the spinal column?

Raw pine walls, ice-white windows
three weeks now, snowy flatness
foot-thick down valley meadows,
wind roar in bare ash arms, oak branch
tendrils icy gleaming, yellow stain of morning water in front
door’s snow—I walk out on crutches
to see white moonglow make snow blue
—three men just rode a space ship
round the moon last week—gnashing
their teeth in Biafra & Palestine,
Assassins & Astronauts traveling from
Athens to the sea of Venus Creatrix—
Lovers’ quarrels magnified decades to mad
violence, half naked farm boys stand
with axes at the kitchen table,
trembling guilty, slicing egg
grapefruit breasts on breakfast oilcloth.

Ecologues of These States
(1969–1971)
Over Denver Again

Gray clouds blot sunglare, mountains float west, plane
softly roaring over Denver—Neal dead a year—clean suburb yards,
fit boardinghouse for the homosexual messenger’s
alleyway Lila a decade back before the Atombomb.

Denver without Neal, eh? Denver with orange sunsets
& giant airplanes winging silvery to San Francisco—
watchtowers thru red cold planet light, when the Earth Angel’s dead
the dead material planet’ll revolve robotlike
& insects hop back and forth between metallic cities.

February 13, 1969

Imaginary Universes

Under orders to shoot the spy, I discharged my pistol into his mouth.

He fell face down from the position life left his body kneeling blindfold.

No, I never did that. Imagined in airport snow, Albany plane discharging passengers.

Yes, the Mexican-faced boy, 19 in Marine cloth, seat next me

Descending Salt Lake, accompanied his brother’s body from Vietnam.

“The Gook was kneeling in front of me, crying & pleading. There were two; he had a card we dropped on them.”

The card granted immunity to those V.C. surrendering.

“On account of my best friend & my brother I killed both Gooks.”

That was true, yes.

                                             February 1969

Rising over night-blackened Detroit Streets

brilliant network-lights tentacle dim suburbs
Michigan waters canalled glitter thru city building blocks’
Throne-brain lamps strung downtown, green signals’
concentrate brightness blinking metal prayers & bright Hare Krishnas
telepathic to Heavenly darkness whence I stare down and adore O beautiful!
Mankind maker of such contemplate machine! Come gentle brainwaves
delicate-soft heart-throbs tender as belly butterflies,
light as Sexual charm-penumbras be, of radiant-eyed
boys & girls black-faced & blond that Born believe
Earth-death at hand, or Eden regenerate millennial Green
their destiny under your Human Police Will, O
Masters, fathers, mayors, Senators, Presidents, Bankers & workers
sweating & weeping ignorant on your own plastic-pain Maya planet…

February 15, 1969

To Poe: Over the Planet, Air Albany-Baltimore

Albany throned in snow! It’s winter, Poe,
upstate New York scythed
               into mental fields, flat arbors & hairy woods
               scattered in Pubic mounds twittering w/ birds—
Nobody foresaw these wormpaths asphalted
               uphill crost bridges to small church towns, chill
               hoarfields streaked with metal feces-dust.

Maelstrom roar of air-boats to Baltimore!
Farmland whirlpooled into mechanic apocalypse
               on Iron Tides!
… Wheels drop in Sunlight, over
               Vast building-hive roofs glittering,
New York’s ice agleam
               in a dying world.

                         Bump down to ground
                                             Hare Krishna Preserver!

Philadelphia smoking in Gold Sunlight, pink blue
               green Cyanide tanks sitting on hell’s floor,
Many chimneys smoldering, city flats virus-linked
               along Delaware bays under horizon-smog—
airplane drifting black vapor-filaments
               above Wilmington—The iron habitations
               endless from Manhattan to the Capital.

Poe! D’jya prophesy this Smogland, this Inferno,
Didja Dream Baltimore’d Be Seen From Heaven
by Man Poet’s eyes Astounded in the Fire Haze,
                                             carbon Gas aghast!
Poe! D’jya know yr prophecies’ red death
would pour thru Philly’s sky like Sulphurous Dreams?

Walled into Amontillado’s Basement! Man
                         kind led weeping drunk into the Bomb
                         Shelter by Mad Secretaries of Defense!

South! from the Bearded Sleeper’s Wink
at History, Hudson polluted & Susquehanna
               Brown under bridges laced with factory smoke—
Proving grounds by Chesapeake,
                         Ammunition & Artillery

Easter Sunday

Slope woods’ snows melt
Streams gush, ducks stand one foot
beak eye buried in backfeathers,
Jerusalem pillars’ gold sunlight
yellow in window-shine, bright
rays spikey-white flashed in mud,
coo coo ripples thru maple branch,
horse limps head down, pale grass shoots
green winter’s brown vegetable
hair—washed by transparent trickling
ice water freshets
earth’s rusty slough bathed clean,
streams ripple leaf-bottomed
channels sounded vocal, white light
afternoon sky end—

Goat bells move, black kids bounce,
butting mother’s hairy side & tender tit
one maa’ing child hangs under Bessie’s udder
ducks waggle yellow beaks, new grass flooded,
tiger cat maeows on barn straw,
herb patch by stone wall’s a shiny marsh,
dimpling snow water glimmers, birds whistle
from icecrystal beds under bare bushes,
breeze blows rooster crow thru chill light
extended from the piney horizon.

1969

Falling Asleep in America

We’re in the Great Place, Fable Place, Beulah, Man wedded to Earth, Planet of green Grass

Tiny atomic wheels spin shining, worlds change Heavens inside out, the planet’s reborn in ashes,

Sun lights sparkle on atomic cinder, plants levitate, green moss precedes trees trembling sentient,

Stone eats blue skies solar dazzle with invisible mouths & flowers are the rocks’ excrement—

Each million years atoms spin myriad reversals, worlds in worlds interchange populations—

from worm to man’s a tiny jump from earth to earth souls are borne ever forgetful—

populations eat their own meat, roses smell sweet in the faeces of horses risen red-fac’d.

Consciousness changes nightly, dreams flower new universes in brainy skulls.

Lying in bed body darkened ear of the bus roar running, only the eye flickering grass green returns me to Nashville.

April 1969

Northwest Passage

Incense under Horse Heaven Hills
Empty logger trucks speed
                         Lake Wallula’s flatness shimmering
Under Hat Rock painted w/
                              white highschool signs.

Chemical smoke boils up
                    under aluminum-bright cloud-roof—
Smog assembling over railroad
                    cars parked rusting on thin rails—
Factory looming vaster than Johnson
                    Butte—Look at that Shit!
Smell it! Got about 30 smokestacks going!
Polluting Wallula! Boise Cascade
                                             Container Corp!
The Package is the Product, onomatopoeticized
                                             McLuhan in ’67—
Wall Street Journal Apr. 22 full
               page ad Proclaimed:

We got the trees! We got
                         the land beneath!
We Gotta invent More Forms
                         for Cardboard Country!
We’ll dig forests for Genius
                         Spirit God Stuff Gold-root
for Sale on Wall Street. Give
                         us your money! order
                         our cardboard Wastebaskets!
We just invented throwaway Planets!

Trees crash in Heaven! Sulphurous Urine
pours thru Boise, Chevron & Brea
                         Wastepipes where Snake & Wallula
                                             ripple shining
Where Sakajawea led White Men thru blue sky
                                   fresh sweet water roads
                         Towards mountains of juicy
                                   telepathic pine & open Thalassa
Thalassa! Green salt waves
                    washing rock mountains, Pacific Sirhan lives!
                              to hear his jury say
“We now fix the penalty at Death.”

By now, Beatles & Beach Boys have
                         entered the Sublime
thru Acid The Crist of Kali Yuga, thru
                         Transcendental Meditation, Chanting Hare Krishna climbing Eiffel Tower,
Apollinaire & Mira Bai headless
               together with Kabir transmitted
over Apocalyptic Radios, their voice-
               vibrations roaring
thru a million loudspeakers in Green
               Autos on the world’s roads—
Matter become so thick, senses so sunk
               in Chickens & Insulation
“Love aint gonna die, I’m gonna haveta
               kill it”
god cries to himself, Christ merging with
               Krishna in Car Crash Salvation!

“Saigon (AP) U.S. B52 bombers made their heaviest raids of the Vietnam War last night near the Cambodian border, dropping more than 2,000 tons of bombs along a 30 mile stretch Northwest of Saigon, the US COMMAND reported. ‘They are harassing enemy troops so as not to let them get organized,’ an American SPOKESMAN said.”

Sonora Desert-Edge

Brown stonepeaks rockstumps
                                             cloudless sunlight
Saguaro green arms praying up
                    spine ribs risen
                                             woodpecker-holed
                    nose-pricked limbs
                                   lifted salutation—
orange flower eyes lifted on
                    needly Ocotillo stalk
Jumping Cholla pistils closing pollened
                    eyebrow-vagina buds to the
                              poked pinkie—
Palo Verde smooth forked branch
                    above prickly-pear ears

Smoke plumed up white
          from scratched desert plain,
               chemical smoke, military copper
                    airplanes rotting,
                         4% Copper Smelter smog

—in wire cage, ivory hook-beaked
                         round black pupiled
               Bald Eagle’s head, tailfeathers
               hung below claw’d branch, symmetric
body plumes brown webbed like dollarbills,
               insecticides sterilized many
                                        adults

—green duck neck sheen spectral as
                         moon machines
Raven hopping curious black beaked
Coyote’s nose sensitive lifted to air
                         blinking eye sharp
as the rose bellied Cardinal’s ivory whistle

—tiny bright statues of Buddha
                    standing,                     blue desert valley haze—
                    cactus lessons in sentience,
Trees like mental carrots—Anaconda
                    smelters white plumesmoke in
                    San Manuel, or Phelps-Dodge
                    in Douglas?—
Yellow’d Creosote bushes in granular
                    dust, hills jeep tracked,
Prairie dogs stand quivering-spined in
                    cactus-shade. A museum,

Reflections in Sleepy Eye
For Robert Bly

3,489 friendly people
Elm grove, willow, Blue Earth County’s
               red barns, tiny feoff with
               gas nozzle snout on hillock,
Large beetles & lizards—
                         orange-painted steel
                         cranes & truck cabs,
               Green seeder down-pointed
                         Science Toy earth-cock.

Thin floods, smooth planted acres
                         upturned, brown
               cornstubble plowed under,
               tractor pulling discs over fenced land.

Old box-alder fallen over
               on knees in pond-flood,
white painted gas tanks by
               Springfield’s rail yard woods,
                         tiny train parade by Meats
                         Groceries North Star Seeds
Our Flag at full mast
               TV antennae, large leafy antennaed
                         trees upstretched green,
                         trunks standing sunlit
               Sheep on stormfenced knoll,
                         green little wood acres—
               one forest from Canada to these
               plains—Corn silage in net bins,
                                   Windmills in Tracy,
                         Blue enamel silos cap’d
               aluminum, minarets in white sunbeam.

Cannabis excellent for drying lymph-
               glands, specific relief for
               symptoms of colds, flu,
                         ear pressure grippe &
               Eustachian tube clogging—
A tree, bent broken mid-trunk
                         branches to ground— Much land, few folk, excelsior grave
                                             yard stones
                         silver tipp’d phalloi to heaven—
Aum, Om, Ford, Mailbox
                                   telephone pole wire strung
                                   down road. Lake house
                                   fence poles, tree shade
                                             pine hill grave, Ah
Lake Benton’s blue waved waters—
                         finally, Time came to
                                   the brick barn! collapsed!
Old oak trunk sunk thick
                                             under ground.

Independence Day

Orange hawkeye stronger than thought winking above a thousand thin grassblades—

Dr. Hermon busted in Texas for green weed garden-grown

licensed Federal, Municipal-cop-prosecuted natheless—

Sweet chirrup from bush top to bush top, orange wing’d

birds’ scratch-beaked telegraphy signaled to and fro buttercup earlets—

warbles & sweet whistles swifting echo-noted by fly buzz,

jet-roar rolling down thru clouds—

So tiny a grasshopper climbing timothy stub the birds can’t tell they’re there—

intense soft leaf-spears budding symmetric,

breeze bending gentle flowerheads against yarrow their persons—

eyelids heavy, summer heavy with fear, mapletrunks heavy with green leafmass—

closed buds of hawkeye stronger than thought tremble on tall hairy stems.

•

Red shelled bedbugs crawl war sheets,

city garbage spoils wet sidewalks where children play—

A telephone call from Texas tells the latest police-state bust.

O Self tangled in TV wires, white judges and laws

your jet-thunder echoes in clouds, your DDT spread thru firmament waters poisons algae & brown pelican—

Smog veils Maya, paranoia walks great cities in blue suits with guns,

—are all these billion grassblades safe?

My stomach’s bitter, city haste & money loss—

Hawkeye stronger than thought! Horsefly and bee!

St. John’s wort nodding yellow bells at the sun! eyes close in your presence, I

lie in your soft green bed, watch light thru red lid-skin, language persistent as birdwarble in my brain.

Independence Day! the Cow’s deep moo’s an Aum!

                                             1969

In a Moonlit Hermit’s Cabin

Watching the White Image, electric moon, white mist drifting over woods

St. John’s Wort & Hawkeye wet with chance Yarrow on the green hillside

“D’ya want your Airline Transport Pilot to smoke grass? Want yr moonmen to smoke loco weed?”

What Comedy’s this Epic! The lamb lands on the Alcohol Sea—Deep voices

“A Good batch of Data”—The hours of Man’s first landing on the moon—

One and a Half Million starv’d in Biafra—Football players broadcast cornflakes—

TV mentioned America as much as Man—Brillo offers you free Moon-Map —2 labels—

And CBS repeats Man-Epic—Now here again is Walter Cronkite,

“How easy these words … a shiver down the old spine …

Russia soundly beaten! China one Fifth of Mankind, no word broadcast …”

The Queen watched the moon-landing at Windsor Castle—

Pulling a fast one on Hypnosis at Disneyland, the Kerchief-headed Crowd

Waving to the TV Camera—Ersatz Moon—

“No place gives you history today except the Moon”—

Running behind time entering Space Suits—

And a Moon-in at Central Sheep Meadow—

Western Electric’s solemn moment!

And rain in the woods drums on the old cabin!

I want! I want! a ladder from the depths of the forest night to the silvery moon-wink—

A flag on the reporter’s space-suit shoulder—

Peter Groaning & Cursing in bed, relieved of the lunatic burden at last—

’Tis Tranquillity base where the Tragedy will settle the Eve.

Alert for solar flares, clock ticks, static from Antennae—swift as death.

I didn’t think we’d see this Night.

Plant the flag and you’re doomed! Life a dream—slumber in eyes of woods,

Antennae scraping the ceiling. Static & Rain!

Saw the earth in Dream age 37, half cloud-wrapped, from a balcony in outer-space—

Méliès—giddiness—picture tube gaga—

“Men land on Sun!” decennial sentences—

Announcers going goofy muttering “142—”

Alone in space: Dump Pressure in the LEM!

Hare Krishna! Lift m’ Dorje on the kitchen table!

Rain-wet asphalt heat, garbage curbed cans overflowing

I hauled down lifeless mattresses to sidewalk refuse-piles,

old rugs stept on from Paterson to Lower East Side filled with bed-bugs,

gray pillows, couch seats treasured from the street laid back on the street

—out, to hear Murder-tale, 3rd Street cyclists attacked tonite—

Bopping along in rain, Chaos fallen over City roofs,

shrouds of chemical vapour drifting over building-tops—

Get the Times, Nixon says peace reflected from the Moon,

but I found no boy body to sleep with all night on pavements 3 A.M. home in sweating drizzle—

Those mattresses soggy lying by full five garbagepails—

Barbara, Maretta, Peter Steven Rosebud slept on these Pillows years ago,

forgotten names, also made love to me, I had these mattresses four years on my floor—

Gerard, Jimmy many months, even blond Gordon later,

Paul with the beautiful big cock, that teenage boy that lived in Pennsylvania,

forgotten numbers, young dream loves and lovers, earthly bellies—

many strong youths with eyes closed, come sighing and helping me come—

Desires already forgotten, tender persons used and kissed goodbye

and all the times I came to myself alone in the dark dreaming of Neal or Billy Budd

—nameless angels of half-life—heart beating & eyes weeping for lovely phantoms—

Back from the Gem Spa, into the hallway, a glance behind

and sudden farewell to the bedbug-ridden mattresses piled soggy in dark rain.

                              August 2, 1969

Death on All Fronts
                    “The Planet Is Finished”

A new moon looks down on our sick sweet planet
Orion’s chased the Immovable Bear halfway across the sky
from winter to winter. I wake, earlier in bed, fly corpses
cover gas lit sheets, my head aches, left temple
brain fibre throbbing for Death I Created on all Fronts.

Poisoned rats in the Chickenhouse and myriad lice
Sprayed with white arsenics filtering to the brook, City Cockroaches
stomped on Country kitchen floors. No babies for me.

Cut earth boys & girl hordes by half & breathe free
say Revolutionary expert Computers:
Half the blue globe’s germ population’s more than enough,
keep the cloudy lung from stinking pneumonia.

I called in Exterminator Who soaked the Wall floor with
bed-bug death-oil: Who’ll soak my brain with death-oil?

I wake before dawn, dreading my wooden possessions,
my gnostic books, my loud mouth, old loves silent, charms
turned to image money, my body sexless fat, Father dying,
Earth Cities poisoned at war, my art hopeless—
Mind fragmented—and still abstract—Pain in
left temple living death—
                                             Cherry Valley, September 26, 1969

Memory Gardens

covered with yellow leaves
                    in morning rain

—Quel Deluge
                    he threw up his hands
                              & wrote the Universe dont exist
                                        & died to prove it.

Full Moon over Ozone Park
                    Airport Bus rushing thru dusk to
                                             Manhattan,
Jack the Wizard in his
                                             grave at Lowell
for the first nite—
That Jack thru whose eyes I
                              saw
                         smog glory light
                              gold over Mannahatta’s spires
                    will never see these
                              chimneys smoking
anymore over statues of Mary
                              in the graveyard

Black misted canyons
                    rising over the bleak
                                   river
Bright doll-like ads
                    for Esso Bread—
Replicas multiplying beards
                    Farewell to the Cross—
Eternal fixity, the big headed
               wax painted Buddha doll
                    pale resting incoffined—

Empty-skulled New
                    York streets
Starveling phantoms
                    filling city—

Wax dolls walking park
                                             Ave,
Light gleam in eye glass
Voice echoing thru Microphones
Grand Central Sailor’s
                         arrival 2 decades later
                                   feeling melancholy—
Nostalgia for Innocent World
                    War II—
A million corpses running
                    across 42d street
Glass buildings rising higher
                         transparent
                                   aluminum—
artificial trees, robot sofas,
                         Ignorant cars—
One Way Street to Heaven.

Can I go back in time & lay my head on a teenage
                         belly upstairs on 110th Street?

I threw a kissed handful of damp earth
                                   down on the stone lid
                                             & sighed
                              looking in Creeley’s one eye,
Peter sweet holding a flower
                              Gregory toothless bending his
                                   knuckle to Cinema machine— and that’s the end of the drabble tongued
                              Poet who sounded his Kock-rup
                                        throughout the Northwest Passage.