In a car Gray smoke over Elmira
The vast boy reformatory brick factory
Valed below misty hills 25 years ago
I sat with Joe Army visiting and murmured green Grass.
Jack’s just not here anymore, Neal’s ashes
Loneliness makes old men moan, God’s solitude,
O women shut up, yelling for baby meat more.
November 10, 1969
I am married and would like to fuck someone else
Have a strange piece (Go Home)
USN ’69
I want to suck a big cock Make Date
Support Third World Struggle Against US Imperialism
I fucked Mom and got VD
All power to the Viet Cong!
Yeah! Max Voltage up the Ass!! O
Perhaps Man needs—But to kill is only brown butter Wax
April 20, 1965 Mike Heck & Salena Bennett
Keep on Chugglin
Eat prunes and be a regular guy.
I would like to suck a big cock.
So would I.
War is good business Invest your son.
Help me J.P.
John Wayne flunked basic training.
Pat Miller ’69 Home on Leave
My wife sucks cock.
Chickenman Lives Yes somewhere in Argentina
Peace & Love Sucks
I want a blow job Who do I call
What if someone gave a war & Nobody came?
Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be Itself again.
J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. is a Voyeur.
Man, I’m really stoned out of my skull really O-Zoned—good old LSD the colors in here are so nice really fine colors and the floor tile is really outasight if you haven’t tried it you ought to since it is the only way to really get your head together by first getting it apart LSD Forever.
CH2CH2N(CH3)2
When he kissed my nipple
I felt elbow bone thrill—
When lips touched my belly
tickle ran up to my ear
When he took my cock head to tongue
a tremor shrunk sphincter, joy
shuddered my reins
I breathed deep sighing ahh!
•
Mirror looking, combing
gray glistening beard
Were I found sharp eyed
attractive to the young?
Bad magic or something—
Foolish magic most likely.
November 1969
Gold beard combd down like chinese fire gold hair braided at skullnape—
gold turning silver soon—worn face young forehead wrinkled, deep-boned smile,
tiny azure earring, turquoise finger stone, Paramita beads centered by ivory skull-nut—
On Deer Mountain, in ship’s iron belly, sat crosslegged on Princeton couch,
body voice rumbling Bear Sutra to younger selves—her long hair to rug, dungareed legs lotus-postured;
or that half-Indian boy his face so serious woe’d by tree suffering he’s
more compassionate to bear, skunk, deer, coyote, hemlock, whale
than to his own new-sprung cock. O Lizard Dharma
what doth breath, that Aums thru elm bough & rock canyon loud as thru mammal skull hummed,
hymn to bone-chaliced minds now multiplied over planet colleges
so many, with such hollow cheek gaze-eye tenderness, Fitzgerald himself’d weep to see
student faces celestial, longhaired angelic Beings planet-doomed to look thru too many human eyes—?
Princeton in Eternity! Long years fall, December’s woods in snow
Old poets half century ago their bones cracked up in death
alcohol trembling in immortal eyes, Fitzgerald & Kerouac weeping, on earth once—
earth’s voice moves time, old vows and prophecies remembered, mountain prayers repeated,
Gary’s voice echoes hollow under round electric lamps.
1970
Blasts rip Newspaper Gray Mannahatta’s mid day Air Spires,
Plane roar over cloud, Sunlight on blue fleece-mist,
I travel to die, fellow passengers silk-drest & cocktailed burn oil NY to Chicago—
Blasting sky with big business, billion bodied Poetry Commerce,
all Revolution & Consumption, Manufacture & Communication
Bombburst, vegetable pie, rubber donut sex accessory & brilliant TV Jet-plane CIA Joke Exorcism Fart Mantra
or electronic war Laos to AID Gestapo training in Santo Domingo
equally massacre grass, exhaust flower power in coal factory smokedust
—O how beautiful snowy fields earth-floored below cloud-holes
glimpsed from air-roads smogged thru heavens toward Illinois—
What right have I to eat petrol guns & metal from earth heart
What right have I to burn gas air, screech overground rubber tired round midnight stoplight corners in Peoria, Fort Wayne, Ames—
What prayer restores freshness to eastern meadow, soil to cindered acres, hemlock to rusty hillside,
transparency to Passaic streambed, Blue whale multitudes to coral gulfs—
What mantra bring back my mother from Madhouse, Private Brakefield from Leavenworth, Neal from the Streets of Hades,
Hampton, King, Gold, murdered suicided millions from the War-torn fields of Sheol
where bodies twitch arm from leg torn heart beat spasmed brainless in dynamite Napalm rubble Song-My to West 11th Street Manhattan
as war bomb-blast burns along neckbone-fused nations Hanoi to Chicago Tu-Do to Wall Street,
Dynamite metastasis heading toward earth-brain cankering human world forms—
Banks burn, boys die bullet-eyed, mothers scream realization the vast tonnage of napalm
rolling down Grand Concourse, Fragmentation nails bounced off Haiphong walls
rattling machine-gunned down Halstead, the Karma of State Violence
washing terror-waves round earth-globe back to suburb TV home night kitchens
The image 3 years ago, prophetic shriek of electric screen dots bursting thru bathroom walls,
tile & pipes exploded in NY as on Saigon’s Embassy Street
—“Northrop is favorite in hot bidding on a jet fighter for a fat market overseas”—Business Week March 7, 1970
Earth pollution identical with Mind pollution, consciousness Pollution identical with filthy sky,
dirty-thoughted Usury simultaneous with metal dust in water courses
murder of great & little fish same as self besmirchment short hair thought control,
mace-repression of gnostic street boys identical with DDT extinction of Bald Eagle—
Mothers’ milk poisoned as fathers’ thoughts, all greed-stained over the automobile-body designing table—
What can Poetry do, how flowers survive, how man see right mind multitude, hear his heart’s music, feel cockjoys, taste
ancient natural grain-bread and sweet vegetables, smell his own baby body’s tender neck skin
when 60% State Money goes to heaven on gas clouds burning off War Machine Smokestacks?
When Violence floods the State from above, flowery land razed for robot proliferation
metal rooted & asphalted down 6 feet below topsoil,
then when bombcarrying children graduate from Grammar-school’s sex-drenched gymnasia
terrified of Army Finance Meatbones, busted by cops for grassy hair,
Who can prophesy Peace, or vow Futurity for any but armed insects,
steeltip Antennaed metal soldiers porting white eggbombs where genitals were,
Blue-visor’d spray-bugs, gasmasked legions in red-brick Armory Nests—
(bearded spiders ranged under attick & roof with home-brew Arsenic mercury dung plastic readied for the Queen Bee’s Immolation
in Sacramento, Trenton, Phoenix, Miami?)
The State set off a plague of bullets bombs & burning words
two decades back, & seeded Asia with Mind-thoughts excreted in Washington bathrooms—
now the Great Fear’s rolled round the world & washes over Newspaper Gray air
rolling waved through cloud-smogbanks in Heaven
as the gas-burning TWA Jet house crashes thru sound barriers over Manhattan.
Chicago Chicago Chicago Trials, screams, tears, Mace, coalgas, Mafia highways—old Massacres in suburb garages!
Autos turn to water City Halls melt in Aeon-flood,
Police & revolutionaries pass as gas cloud by eagle wing.
“What’s your name?” asks badge-man as machines eat all Name & Form,
History’s faster than thought, poetry obsolete in tiny decades tho maybe slow tunes dance eternal—
war language comes, bombblasts last a minute, coalmines exhaust earth-heart,
Chicago suburb blocks stretch new-bared earthskin under sun eye,
autos speed myriad thru gray air to jet port.
Slaves of Plastic! Leather-shoe chino-pants prisoners! Haircut junkies! Dacron-sniffers!
Striped tie addicts! short hair monkeys on their backs! Whiskey freaks bombed out on 530 billion cigarettes a year—
twenty Billion dollar advertising Dealers! lipstick skin-poppers & syndicate
Garbage telex-Heads!
Star-striped scoundrelesque flag-dopers! Car-smog hookers Fiendish on superhighways!
Growth rate trippers hallucinating Everglade real estate! Steak swallowers zonked on Television!
Old ladies on Stockmarket habits—old Wall Street paper Money-pushers!
Central Intelligence cutting Meo opium fields! China Lobby copping poppies in Burma!
How long this Addict government support our oil-burner matter-habit
shooting gasoline electric speed before the blue light blast & eternal Police-roar Mankind’s utter bust?
Robot airfields soulless Market electronic intelligence business skyscraper streets
empty-soul’d, exploding.
Sheer matter crackling, disintegrating back to void,
Sunyatta & Brahma undisturbed, Maya-cities blow up like Chinese firecrackers,
Samsara tears itself apart—Dusk over Chicago, light-glitter along boulevards,
insect-eyed autos moving slow under blue streetlamps,
plane motor buzz in eardrum, city cloud roof filling with gray gas on up into clear heaven—planet horizon auroral twilight-streaked,
blue space above human truck-moil, Empty sky
Empty mind overhangs Chicago, the universe suspended entire overhanging
Chicago.
O Jack thou’st scaped true deluge.
Smart cock, to turn to shade, I drag hairy meat loss thru blood-red sky
down thru cloud-floor to Chicago, sunset fire obliterate in black gas.
March 13, 1970
White sunshine on sweating skulls
Washington’s Monument pyramided high granite clouds
over a soul mass, children screaming in their brains on quiet grass
(black man strapped hanging in blue denims from an earth cross)—
Soul brightness under blue sky
Assembled before White House filled with mustached Germans
& police buttons, army telephones, CIA Buzzers, FBI bugs
Secret Service walkie-talkies, Intercom squawkers to Narco
Fuzz & Florida Mafia Real Estate Speculators.
One hundred thousand bodies naked before an Iron Robot
Nixon’s brain Presidential cranium case spying thru binoculars
from the Paranoia Smog Factory’s East Wing.
May 9, 1970
In a thousand years, if there’s History
America’ll be remembered as a nasty little Country
full of Pricks, thorny hothouse rose
Cultivated by the Yellow Gardeners.
“Chairman Mao” for all his politics, head of a Billion
folk, important old & huge
Nixon a dude, specialized on his industrial
Island, a clean paranoiac Mechanic—
Earth rolling round, epics on archaic tongues
fishermen telling island tales—
all autos rusted away,
trees everywhere.
•
Rough Wind roar, mapletop mass
shaking in window,
a panic Cry from the garden
Bessie Cow’s loose near the Corn!
The little dakini playing her bells
& listening to late baritone Dylan
dancing in the living room’s forgot almost
th’electric supply’s vanishing
from the batteries in the pasture.
Chairs shifting downstairs, kitchen voices
Smell of apples & tomatoes bubbling on the stove.
Behind the Chicken house, dirt flies from the shovel
hour after hour, tomorrow they’ll be a big hole.
The editor sleeps in his bed, morning Chores are done,
Clock hands move noonward, pig roots by flagstone
pathways, papers & letters lie quiet
on many desks.
Books everywhere, Kabbalah, Gnostic Fragments, Mahanirvana & Hevajra Tantras, Boehme Blake & Zohar, Gita & Soma Veda, somebody reads—one cooks, another digs a pighouse foundation, one chases a Cow from the vegetable garden, one dances and sings, one writes in a notebook, one plays with the ducks, one never speaks, one picks the guitar, one moves huge rocks.
The wind charger’s propeller
whirs & trees rise windy
one maple at woods edge’s turned red.
Chickens bathe in dust at the house wall,
rabbit at fence bends his nose to a handful of Cornsilk,
fly lights on windowsill.
At the end of a long chain, Billy makes a Circle in grass
by the fence, I approach
he stands still with long red stick
stretched throbbing between hind legs
Spurts water a minute, turns his head down
to look & lick his thin pee squirt—
That’s why he smells goat like.
Horse by barbed wire licking salt,
lifts his long head & neighs
as I go down by willow thicket
to find the 3-day-old heifer.
At bed in long grass, wet brown fur—
her mother stands, nose covered with a hundred flies.
The well’s filled up—
the Cast-iron ram
that pushes water uphill
by hydraulic pressure
flowed from gravity
Can be set to motion soon,
& water flow in kitchen sink tap.
some nights in sleeping bag
Cricket zinging networks dewy meadows,
white stars sparkle across black sky,
falling asleep I listen & watch
till eyes close, and wake silent—
at 4 A.M. the whole sky’s moved,
a Crescent moon lamps up the woods.
& last week one Chill night
summer disappeared—
little apples in old trees red,
tomatoes red & green on vines,
green squash huge under leafspread,
corn thick in light green husks,
sleepingbag wet with dawn dews
& that one tree red at woods’ edge!
Louder wind! ther’ll be electric to play the Beatles!
At summer’s end the white pig got so fat
it weighed more than Georgia
Ray Bremser’s 3-year-old baby.
Scratch her named Dont Bite Me under hind leg,
she flops over on her side sweetly grunting,
nosing in grass tuft roots, soft belly warm.
Eldridge Cleaver exiled w/ bodyguards in Algiers
Leary sleeping in an iron cell,
John Sinclair a year jailed in Marquette
Each day’s paper more violent—
War outright shameless bombs
Indochina to Minneapolis—
a knot in my belly to read between lines,
lies, beatings in jail—
Short breath on the couch—
desolation at dawn in bed—
Wash dishes in the sink, drink tea, boil an egg—
brood over Cities’ suffering millions two
hundred miles away
down the oilslicked, germ-Chemicaled
Hudson river.
Ed Hermit comes down hill
breaks off a maple branch
& offers fresh green leaves to the pink eyed rabbit.
Under birch, yellow mushrooms
sprout between grassblades & ragweed—
Eat ’em & you die or get high & see God—
Waiting for the exquisite mycologist’s visit.
Winter’s coming, build a rough wood crib
& fill it with horse dung, hot horse dung,
all round the house sides.
Bucolics & Eclogues!
Hesiod the beginning of the World,
Virgil the end of his World—
& Catullus sucked cock in the country
far from the Emperor’s police.
Empire got too big, cities too crazy, garbage-filled Rome
full of drunken soldiers, fat politicians,
circus businessmen—
Safer, healthier life on a farm, make yr own wine
in Italy, smoke yr own grass in America.
Pond’s down two feet from drainpipe’s rusty top—
Timothy turned brown, covered with new spread manure
sweet-smelt in strong breeze,
it’ll be covered in snow couple months.
& Leary covered in snow in San Luis Obispo jail?
His mind snowflakes falling over the States.
Did Don Winslow the mason come look at the basement
So we can insulate a snug root cellar
for potatoes, beets, carrots,
radishes, parsnips, glass jars of corn & beans
Did the mortician come & look us over for next Winter?
Black flies walking up and down the metal screen,
fly’s leg tickling my forehead—
“I’ll play a fly’s bone flute
& beat an ant’s egg drum”
sang the Quechua Injun
high on Huilca snuff, Medieval
Peruvian DMT.
Phil Whalen in Japan
stirring rice, eyes in the garden,
fine pen nib lain by notebook.
Jack in Lowell farming worms, master of his
minuscule deep acre.
Neal’s ashes sitting under a table piled with
books, in an oak drawer,
sunlight thru suburb windows.
O wind! spin the generator wheel, make Power Juice
To run the New Exquisite Noise Recorder, & I’ll sing
praise of your tree music.
Squash leaves wave & ragweeds lean, black tarpaulin
plastic flutters over the bass-wood lumber pile
Hamilton Fish’s Congressional letter
reports “Stiffer laws against peddling smut”
flapping in dusty spiderwebs by the windowscreen.
What’s the Ammeter read by the Windmill? Will
we record Highest Perfect Wisdom all day tomorrow,
or Blake’s Schoolboy uninterrupted next week?
Fine rain-slant showering the gray porch
Returnable Ginger Ale Bottles
on the wood rail, white paint flaked
off into orange flowered
blossoms
Out in the garden, rain
all over the grass, leaves, roofs,
rain on the laundry.
•
Night winds hiss thru maple black masses
Gas light shine from
farmhouse window upstairs
empty kitchen wind
Cassiopeia zigzag
Milky Way thru cloud
September 4
The baby pig screamed and screamed
four feet rigid on grass
screamed and screamed
Oh No! Oh No!
jaw dripping blood
broken by the horse’s hoof.
Slept in straw all afternoon, eyes closed,
snout at rest between paws—
ate hog mash liquid—two weeks
and his skull be healed
said the Vet in overalls.
That bedraggled duck’s sat under the door
June to Labor Day, three hatched
yellow chicks’ dry fur bones found
by the garage side—
two no-good eggs left, nights chillier—
Next week, move her nest
to the noisy chickenhouse.
We buried lady dog by the apple tree—
spotted puppy daughter Radha
sniffed her bloated corpse, flies
whisping round eyeball & dry nostril,
sweet rot-smell, stiff legs, anus puffed out,
Sad Eyes chased the milk truck & got killed.
How many black corpses they found in the river
looking for Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner?
Man and wife, they weep in the attic
after bitter voices,
low voices threatening.
Broken Legs in Vietnam!
Eyes staring at heaven,
Eyes weeping at earth.
Millions of bodies in pain!
Who can live with this Consciousness
and not wake frightened at sunrise?
The Farm’s a lie!
Madmen growing giant organic zucchini
mulching asparagus, boiling tomatoes for Winter,
drying beans, pickling cucumbers
sweet & garlicked, salting cabbage for sauerkraut,
canning fresh corn & tossing Bessie husks—
Marie Antoinette had milkmaid costumes ready,
Robespierre’s eyeball hung on his cheek
in the tumbril to guillotine—
Black Panther’s teeth knocked out in Paterson,
red blood clotted on black hairy skin—
Millions of bodies in pain!
One by one picked orange striped soft potato bugs off
withered brown leaves
dropped them curl’d up in kerosene,
or smeared them on ground with small stones—
Moon rocket earth photo, peacock colored,
tacked to the wood wall,
globe in black sky
living eyeball bathed in cloud swirls—
Is Earth herself frightened?
Does she know?
Oh No! Oh No! the Continuous scream
of the pig
Don’t Bite Me in the backyard,
bloody jawbone askew.
Uphill on pine forest floor
Indian peace pipes curl’d up thru dry needles,
half translucent fungus, half metal blossom
Frog sat half out on mud shallows’
minnow-rippling surface,
& stared at our Universe—
So many fish frog, insect ephemera, swamp fern
—So many Ezekiel-wheeled Dragonflies
hovering over old Hemlock root moss—
They wont even know when humans go
Waking 2 A.M. clock tick
What was I dreaming
my body alert
Police light down this dirt road?
Justice Dogs sniffing field for Grass Seeds?
Would they find a little brown mushroom button
tossed out my window?
BI read this haiku?
Four in the morning
rib thrill eyes open—
Deep hum thru the house—
Windmill Whir? Hilltop Radar Blockhouse?
Valley Traffic 5 miles downtown?
When’ll Policecar Machinery assemble
outside State pine woods?
Head out window—bright Orion star line,
Pleiades and Dipper shining silent—
Bathrobe flashlight, uproad Milky Way
Moved round the house this month
—remember Taurus’ Horn up there last fall?
White rabbit on goat meadow, got over the chickenwire?
Hop away from flash light? Wait till Godly
Dog wakes up!
Come back! He’ll bite you! Here’s a green beet leaf!
Pwzxst! Pwzxst! Pwzxst!
Attic window lit between trees,
Clouds drift past the sickle moon—
Tiny lights in the dark sky
Stars & Crickets everywhere
Electric whistle-blinks
tweedle-twinks
Squeak-peeks
Locust planet
zephyr sizzle
Squinks—
Grasshoppers in cold dewy fall grass
Singing lovesongs as they die.
•
Morning, the white rabbit stiff, eyes closed,
lain belly up in grass, tooth nosed,
beside the manure pile—dig a hole
—Shoulda introduced him to dogs in daylight—
Cripple Jack drove up
to judge the ducks—
All eggs sterile,
smashed on rock, wet guts
& rotted-throat smell—
Bedraggled duck mother,
dragged off straw nest
& pecking skin at my wrist,
All afternoon walked up and down quacking
thru chickenwire fence
Pig on her side woke up,
slurped beet juice, rooted at porch wood
ignorant of broken head bones—
Morning dew, papery leafs & sharp blossoms
of sunflower ripped off battered stalks,
Who’d do that!? Too late
to fix the barbed wire fence,
intelligent Bessie Cow strays in the moonlight.
Leary’s climbed the chainlink fence & two strands of
barbedwire too
This weekend, “Armed & Dangerous,”
Signed with Weathermen!
Has Revolution begun? World War III?
May no Evil Eye peek thru window, keyhole or
gunsight at his white haired face!
Now’s halfmoon over America,
leaves tinged red fall blush scattered overhill,
down pasture singular trees orange foreheads think
Autumn time in pines—
The maple at woods’ edge fire-red’s brighter
Australian Aborigines’ Eternal Dream Time’s come true—
Usta be bears on East Hill; fox under old Hemlock,
Usta be otter—even woolly mammoths in Eternal
dream time—
Leary’s out in the woods of the world—cockroaches immune
to radiation?
Richard Nixon has means to end human Worlds,
Man has machines for Suicide,
Pray for Timothy Leary in the planet’s Woods!
Om Mani Padme Hu?
& Hare Krishna!
“ As we forgive those who trespass against us,
Thy Will be done
on Earth as in Heaven”
Oh Bessie you ate my unborn sunflowers!
“God never repeats himself” Harry Smith telephoned tonite.
We may not come back, Richard Nixon.
We may not come back, dear hidden Tim.
Will Peter fix the sink’s hand pump? the basement freeze?
Backyard grasses stink, if kitchen drains
to septic tank, will Bacteria die
of soap, Ammonia & Kerosene?
Get rid of that old tractor or fix it!
Cardboard boxes rotten in garageside rain!
Old broken City desks under the appletree! Cleanum
up for firewood!
Where can we keep all summer’s bottles?
Gas pumps, broken mandolins, old tires—
Ugly backyard—Shelf the garage!
Where stack lumber handy to eye?
Electric generator money? Where keep mops in Wintertime?
Leary fugitive, Sinclair sent up for a decade—
though 83% of World’s illegal opium’s fixed
in Central Intelligence Agency’s Indochinese Brain!
Fed State Local Narcs peddle junk—
Nixon got a hard hat from Mafia,
Pentagon Public Relations boodle’s 190 million A.D. 1969.
J. E. Hoover’s a sexual blackmailer,
Times pities “idealistic students”
Police killed 4 Blacks in New Orleans
Fascism in America:—
i.e. Police control Cities, not Mayors or philosophers—
Police, & Police alone, cause most crime.
Preventive Detention now law in D.C.
Mexico & Senegal close borders to Adam Longhair
So many apples in abandoned orchards,
and such fresh sweet Cider, supper tonite—
onions & cabbage fried on iron—
groundwells overflow, hydraulic ram
works steady again,
Eclogues! the town laundry’s detergent phosphate
glut’s foul’d clear Snyders Creek—
I have a beautiful boy in the house,
learn keyboard notation, chords, & improvise
freely on Blake’s mantras at midnite.
Hesiod annaled Beginnings
I annal ends for No man.
Hail to the Gods, who are given Consciousness.
Hail to Men Conscious of the Gods!
Electric tempest!
Entire hillsides turned wet gold,
Leaf death’s begun, universal September
Emerges in old maples
Goat bells near the house, not much in the
garden they can eat now anyway,
& cow got beet tops and mangles already—
What do dogs hear?
Birds squeak & chatter as Rooster call
echoes round house wall
Civilization’s breaking down! Freezertray’s
lukewarm, who knows why?
The year-old Toilet’s leaking at the heel—Wind
Charger’s so feeble batteries are almost down—
Hundreds of black spotted tomatoes
waiting near the kitchen wood stove
“Useless! useless! the heavy rain driving into the sea!”
Kerouac, Cassady, Olson ash & earth, Leary the Irish
coach on the lam,
Black Magicians screaming in anger Newark to Algiers,
How many bottles & cans piled up in our garbage pail?
Fall 1970
Car wheels roar over freeway concrete
Night falls on Dallas, two buildings shine under sickle moon
Many boys and girls in jail for their bodies poems and bitter thoughts
My belly’s hollow breath sighs up thru my heart
Guru Om Guru Om enlarges in the vast space of the breast
The Guru has a man’s brown belly and cock long hair white beard short hair orange hat no person
The bliss alone no business for my body but to make Guru Om dwell near my heart
shall I telephone New York and tell my fellows where I am silent
shall I ring my own head & order my own voice to be silent but
How giant, silent and feather-soft is the cave of my body eyes closed
To enter the body is difficult, the belly’s full of bad smelling wind
the body’s digesting last weekend’s meat thinking of Cigarettes, bright eyes of boys
What Acid eight hours equals eight hours’ Om continuous attention—
the Guru is equal to the Om of the Seeker
Guru Guru Guru Guru Guru Guru Guru Sitaram Omkar Das Thakur thin voic’d recommended “Give up desire for children”
Dehorahava Baba sat on the Ganges and described eat & drinking pranayam
Nityananda floated thru his giant photo body
Babaji’s hand the hand of a dead man in my dead man’s fingers
Out the plane window brown gas rises to heaven’s blue sea
—how end the poetry movie in the mind?
how tell Kabir Blake & Ginsberg shut their ears?
Folded in silence invisible Guru waits to fill his body with Emptiness
I am leaving the world, I will close my eyes & rest my tongue and hand.
To look in the City without hatred
the orange moon edge sunk into blue Cloud
a second night autos roar to and fro Downtown towers’ horizon
airplane moving between moon and white-lit bank towers
lightning haze above twinkling-bulbed man city flats
It is mind-City risen particularly solid.
What elder age grew such cities visioned from these far towers’ windows
Seraph armchaired in Babylonic Déjà Vu from Hilton Inn?
Dallas buildings’ heaped rock tangled steel electric lit under quarter moon
Cars crash at dusk at Mockingbird Lane, Drugstore Supermarket signs revolve with dumb beckoning persistence over North Central Freeway
Leary leaped over the wall with a sword, Errol Flynn’s in the grave, flags & bombs fly over Dallas’ stock exchange
oil flows thru the Hilton Faucets, gasoline fumes smother Neem trees in Ganeshpuri—
Maya revolves on rubber wheels, Samsara’s glass buildings light up with neon, Illusion’s doors open on aluminum hinges—
my mother should’ve done asanas & Kundalini not straightjackets & Electroshock in the birthdays of Roosevelt’s FBI—
Where in the body’s the white thumbsize subtle corpus, in the neck they say
where’s the half-thumbjoint black causal body, down in the heart hidden?
where’s the lentil-sized Cosmic Corpse, a tiny blue speck in the navel?
All beings at war in the Gross body, armor’d Cars & Napalm, rifles & grass huts burning, Mace on Wall Street, tear gas flooding the fallen stockmarket.
Look in halls of the head, nervous leg halls, universe inside Chest dark baby kingdom in the skull.
Old maple hairytrunks root asphalt grass marge, November branches rare leaved,
Giant woodlegged wiretowers’ threads stretch above pond woods highway, white sun fallen hills West.
Car rolling underpass, radio hornvoice “the sight of Bobby Seale bound & gagged at Trial” denied lawyer presum’d innocent?
MDA Love Drug Cure Junk Habit? Rochester Exit one mile flashing out Volkswagen window—
Blue sky fring’d with clouds’ whale-ghost-blue schools north drift—
High, high Manson sighed on Trial, how many folk in jail for grass Ask Congressman?
Highway Crash! Politics! Police! Dope! armed robbery Customary E. 10th street, no insurance possible.
—Brown deer tied neat footed dead eye horned across blue Car trunk, old folks Front seat, they’re gonna eat it!
Help! Hurrah! What’s Going on here? Samsara? Illusion? Reality?
What’re all these trailers row’d up hillside, more people? How can Lyca sleep?
Cows on Canandaigua fields lactate into rubber stainless steel plastic milk-house machinery vats ashine—
Revolutionary Suicide! Driving on Persian gasoline?
Kill Whale & ocean? Oh one American myself shits 1000 times more Chemical waste into freshwater & seas than any single Chinaman!
America Suicide Cure World Cancer! Myself included dependent on Chemicals, wheels, dollars,
metal Coke Cans Liquid propane batteries marijuana lettuce avocados cigarettes plastic pens & milkbottles—electric
in N.Y.C. heavy habit, cut airconditioners isolation from street nightmare smog heat study decentralized Power sources 10 years
not atomic thermopollutive monolith. Om. How many species poisoned biocided from Earth realms?
O bald Eagle & Blue Whale with giant piteous Cat Squeak—Oh Wailing whale ululating underocean’s sonic roar of Despair!
Sing thy Kingdom to Language deaf America! Scream thy black Cry thru Radio electric Aether—
Scream in Death America! Or did Captain Ahab not scream Curses as he hurled harpoon
into the body of the mother, great White Whale Nature Herself,
thrashing in intelligent agony innocent vast in the oil-can sick waters?
All Northvietnam bomb-Cratered ruined topsoil Laos in secrecy more bombs than many W W II’s!
Mekong swamp lethicided by Monsanto Pentagon Academy Death-brains!
What wisdom teaching this? What Mafia runs N.J.? What Mafia knew J. Edgar FBI?
What’s Schenley’s Whiskey trader Fleischmann’s Hoover Institute?
What opium’s passed thru CIA Agents’ airplane’s luggage in Saigon, Bangkok, Athens, Washington?
What narcotic agent’s not dependent on Shit for a living?
What Bank’s money created ex nihil serves orphan, widow, monk, philosopher?
or what Bank’s money serves real Estate Asphalt over widow’s garden? Serves old Nick in the Pentagon?
Old Indian prophecies believe Ghost Dance peace will Come restore prairie Buffalo or great White Father Honkie
be trampled to death in his dreams by returning herds’ thundering reincarnation!
Oh awful Man! What have we made the world! Oh man capitalist exploiter of Mother Planet!
Oh vain insect sized men with metal slaves by Great Lake Erie, tenderest Passaic & Hudson poisoned by dollars!
bid tampering probed in lackawanna Buffalo News headline folded on rubber floor, car vibrating smooth to sun ruddy woods’ dusk quiet—
Radio hissing cough words dashboard noisemusic—Any minute Apocalypse Rock!
Brown Pelican eggs softened by DDT. Seal’s livers poisoned to Northman. Oceans Dead 2000 A.D.?
Television Citizen 6% Earths human Americans ingest half the planet’s raw matter as alchemized by Syracuse Gen. Electric Power brown robot palace near 8 Lane Thruway’s Exit before Ramada Inn.
HXL Trucks sleeping on brokenearthed embankment past Iron-strutted passages,
fields aglitter with damp metallic garbage under th’electricwire trestles—
And woods survive into another Thanksgiving’s brown sacred silence—
Lights on cars front Western Lane gray twilight falls on rolling robotland.
November 1970
Who am I? Saliva,
vegetable soup,
empty mouth?
Hot roach, breathe smoke
suck in, hold, exhale—
light as ashes.
Western Air boat bouncing
under rainclouds stippled
down gray Rockies
Springtime dusk,
Look out on Denver, Allen,
mourn Neal no more,
Old ghost loves departed
New lives whelm the plains, rains
wash Rocky mountainsides
World turns under sun eye
Man flies a moment Cheyenne’s
dry upland highways
A tiny fossil brachiapod in pocket
Precambrian limestone clam
fingernail small
four hundred fifty million years old
Brain gone, flesh passed thru myriad
phantom reincarnations,
the tiny-ridged shell’s delicate
as hardened thought.
—over Laramie, Front Range
pine gully snow pockets,
Monolith Cement plume smoke
casting dust gas over
the red plateau
into the New World.
April 12, 1971
Tiny orange-wing-tipped butterfly
fluttering sunlit
from violet
blossom to violet
blossom
Ocean is private
you have to visit
her to see her
Garden undercliff
Dewey Pinks,
bitter Mint,
Sea Sage,
Orange flaming
Paintbrush
greenspiked fleurs,
Thick dainty stalked
Cow Parsley,
Starleaf’d violet bushes,
yelloweyed blue
Daisy clump—
red brambled mature sour
blackberry briars,
yellow budded
Lupine
nodding stalkheads
in Sunwarm’d
breezes
by the brooks tricklet
wash in the ravine
Bridged with cloud
Ruddy withwine morning
glory’s tiny tender
cowbells,
guarded by poison oak sprigs
oily hands
Green horned little
British chickweed,
waxlight-leafed black
seed stalk’s
lilac sweet budcluster
Ah fluted morning
glory bud
oped
& tickled to yellow
tubed stamen root
by a six legged
armed mite
deeping his head
into sweet pollened
crotches,
Crawls up yr veined
blossom wall
to petal lip in
sunshine clear
and dives again
to your tongue-stamen’s
foot-pipe, your
bloom unfolded
to light—
Above ye the
Spider’s left
his one strand
catgut silk
shining
bridge
between
cuckoospitted
mint leafheads
& newgreen leafsprig’d
seedy lilac
Granite Sagely
Browed above the Path’s
black pepper peapod marge—
Gray rock dropping
seed,
withered bush-fingers
tangled up
stoneface
—cracked with
green stalk
sprout—
Brooktrickle deep
below Airplane
Bridge
Concrete
arches balcony’d
Pendant over
Oceancrash
waves
falling empty eyed
breathing water
wash afar
Morning Night shade
in alder shadow’d
Pathside—Nettle plant
Leaf-shoulder
vegetable wing’d
baby faces,
green earmouths
sprouting
Celery handspread
Heal-All mudras
open asking why me.
Sunlight trembling
branch-leafy willow,
yellow haired wingy bee’s
black horn
bowed into threadpackt mauve
round thistle mouth,
dewey web throat
green needle collar’d,
Symmetric little
Cathead erect
electric thorn’d
under giant hogweed
stalked parasol blossoms—
Ash branch’s tender
pinecone cluster
proffered by leathery
sawtooth rib leafs
red browed beedle
perched on Egyptian
bridge of Spider fern’s
soft-jointed spike-sticks
Brown water
streaming
underbrush
sparrowsong
winged brown
whistling above
cold water pebble
silver pour …
Shrouded
under the
Ash spread, on
damp leafwither,
shield tubes
& condensers
of small Sony
TV machine enwired
rusty w/resistances
giant grass
leafspears
morning glory hillside
perched over clearing
All branches lifting up
papery seedhusks,
parasolspiked Fern
Tramping together
upright pushing
a thistle aside,
groundwheat leaned
by beach path—
Oh ocean white-
waved pouring
foamy noises over
rocky sandshore
Chevrolet writ
on radiatormouth
Set above
Private Land
Do Not Enter
incised wood
Sign-beams
Frying chickens from
Arkansas!
Musselshells’
Briared graveyard
footplot—
Dewey round bushes
guarding ocean
path with
myriad greenstar’d
leafarms
cradling white-walled
dewdrops
Telephone
pole trunk
stuck
out of old
landslide head
Covered with iceplant
green lobsterclaw
trefoil solid
edged,
pinked with
hundredfingerpetaled
Sea vine blossoms
Dry brown kelp
ribs washed
in a heap at
streamside in
wet brown sand
to listen to
oceanroar
and wait the
slow moon
tide.
Stream water
rushing flat through
beachmound
Sand precipices,
tiny wet arizonas
flood lips
—cliffs
cradling the last
graysmooth boulders
shat by the rains
pissed out
by spring storm
from
the forests
bladder
hills
Small granite
blackpocked
hearthstones
washed to last rest
Ocean wavelet’s
salt tongue
touching
forward thru
sand throated
streambed
to lave foam &
pull back bubbles
from the iron
Car’s rusty
under carriage
kelp pipes
& brown chassis,
one rubber wheel
black poked from
Sand mattresses
rock wash
O Kerouac
thy broken
car Behold
Digested in
Saltwater
sandbottom
giant soulless
Chicken
sea gizzard filled
with unthinking
marble rocks—
Poured down
road in
avalanche!
to the granite
snout of the
seacliff
O see the great
Snake kelp’s
beet green head still lettuce-
haired
stretch forth
a fingerthick tailroot
above seaweed broider
wavelets
rushing foam
tongued—
Was that kelp
Intelligent
Einstein hairleafed
faceless bulbhead
Oh father
Welcome!
The seal’s
head lifted
above the wave,
eyes watching
from black
face
in waterfroth
floating!
Come back again!
Huge white
waves rolling
in gray mist
birds flocking
rocks foamed
floating above
the
horizon’s
watery
wrinkled
skin
grandmother
oceanskirt
rumbling
pebbles
silver hair ear to ear
May 28, 1971
I
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom Bomb?
You bomb you!
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do!
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
May 1971
II
Why bomb?
We don’t want to bomb!
Why bomb?
We don’t want to bomb!
Why bomb?
You don’t want to bomb!
Why bomb?
You don’t want to bomb!
Who said bomb?
Who said we had to bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said we had to bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you had to bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you had to bomb?
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
We don’t bomb!
for Don Cherry and Elvin Jones
New York, June 16, 1984
Copyright © 1972 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg
Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road—long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go
One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad
Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone
Millions of souls Nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under gray sun
A million are dead, the millions who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan
Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts
Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads dont talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise
Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there
on one floor mat with a small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother’s eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry
Two children together in palmroof shade
Stare at me no word is said
Rice ration, lentils one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek
No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days eat while they can
Then children starve three days in a row
and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.
On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees
Bengali tongue cried mister Please
Identity card torn up on the floor
Husband still waits at the camp office door
Baby at play I was washing the flood
Now they won’t give us any more food
The pieces are here in my celluloid purse
Innocent baby play our death curse
Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys
Crowded waiting their daily bread joys
Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks
to whack them in line They play hungry tricks
Breaking the line and jumping in front
Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt
Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage
The guards blow their whistles & chase them in rage
Why are these infants massed in this place
Laughing in play & pushing for space
Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread
Why this is the House where they give children bread
The man in the bread door Cries & comes out
Thousands of boys & girls Take up his shout
Is it joy? is it prayer? “No more bread today”
Thousands of Children at once scream “Hooray!”
Run home to tents where elders await
Messenger children with bread from the state
No bread more today! & no place to squat
Painful baby, sick shit he has got.
Malnutrition skulls thousands for months
Dysentery drains bowels all at once
Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep
Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep
Refugee camps in hospital shacks
Newborn lay naked on mothers’ thin laps
Monkeysized week-old Rheumatic babe eye
Gastroenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die
September Jessore Road rickshaw
50,000 souls in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo huts in the flood
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food
Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,
American Angel machine please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?
Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok’s green shade.
Where is America’s Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?
Where are the President’s Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine food and relief?
Napalming North Vietnam and causing more grief?
Where are our tears? Who weeps for this pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road’s children close their big eyes
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?
Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this shit flood foul’d lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!
Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe
Ring out ye voices for Love we dont know
Ring out ye bells of electrical pain
Ring in the conscious American brain
How many children are we who are lost
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care?
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare—
Cries in the mud by the thatch’d house sand drain
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet shit-field rain
waits by the pump well, Woe to the world!
whose children still starve in their mothers’ arms curled.
Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my loins?
What should we care for our cities and cars?
What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars?
How many millions sit down in New York
& sup this night’s table on bone & roast pork?
How many million beer cans are tossed
in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost?
Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams
Stinking the world and dimming star beams—
Finish the war in your breast with a sigh
Come taste the tears in your own Human eye
Pity us millions of phantoms you see
Starved in Samsara on planet TV
How many millions of children die more
before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord?
How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild
Armed forces that boast the children they’ve killed?
How many souls walk through Maya in pain
How many babes in illusory rain?
How many families hollow eyed lost?
How many grandmothers turning to ghost?
How many loves who never get bread?
How many Aunts with holes in their head?
How many sisters skulls on the ground?
How many grandfathers make no more sound?
How many fathers in woe
How many sons nowhere to go?
How many daughters nothing to eat?
How many uncles with swollen sick feet?
Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children nowhere to go
New York, November 14–16, 1971