IX
MIND BREATHS ALL OVER THE PLACE
(1972–1977)

Sad Dust Glories
(1972–1974)
Ayers Rock / Uluru Song

When the red pond fills fish appear

When the red pond dries fish disappear.

Everything built on the desert crumbles to dust.

Electric cable transmission wires swept down.

The lizard people came out of the rock.

The red Kangaroo people forgot their own song.

Only a man with four sticks can cross the Simpson Desert.

One rain turns red dust green with leaves.

One raindrop begins the universe.

When the raindrop dries, worlds come to their end.

Central Australia, March 23, 1972

Voznesensky’s “Silent Tingling”

Must be thousands of sweet gourmets rustling through
leaf crowded branches, thrushes cracking seedling shells
all over America like crystalline carillon bells,
a really strange silent tingling.

Silent carillons, not to celebrate Main Street
but rustling up some food their only scene—
No miracle but millions of hungry souls
silently tingling.

This tingling silence heralds
an orgy of hermit thrushes eating
like thousands of song-men’s clapsticks clacking
or faraway Moscow’s million bells
—some dream collective—generational vogue.

Thrush communes don’t be afraid of the big Broom,
your flock continues an ancient tradition,
now all over America—collective marriage;
though some detractors put down your in-group, not big enough!

A silent Individualist in top hat & tails drest
coffinlike denounces your collective struggles in bed—
but his own wife wears rings on every finger,
as if she wound up in a group marriage.

This gentle gang’s only enemy’s insects,
Cleaning up bark parasites—silently, silently—
Anybody can crush bones and oink louder
but cant beat this silent tingling.

Fast New York Sydney chicks—
thanks Brisbane birds & Chicago thrushes
for your own silent tingling—your cities’ trees’
leaves tremble like golden curlicues on Byzantine crosses.

Maybe someday our descendants
’ll ask about this poet—What’d he sing about?
I didn’t ring Halleluiah bells, I didn’t clank leg-irons,
I was silently tingling.

These States: to Miami Presidential Convention

I

Philadelphia city lights boiling under the clouds
green Babylon’s heat attracting rain,
          lightning, smoke gathered
     about the excited city—shouts, vibration
          of trucks, radio antennae, streets’
solid electric glitter under sulphur waterfumes—
the plane glides to Miami Beach over Atlantic’s
          Coast metropolis
     red downtown sores of theater money,
          bar sign pinprick bulbs under
               Cloud curtain’d sunlit velvet horizon
To the political drama, march to
          Auditorium thru tacky downtown
          Cuban neons blinking angry language,
     Yippies survived unto this Presidentiad!

Woe to the States, whoever’s the empty President
          Nixon McGovern X or Caesar
Must decree end to matter habit,
     America swallowing aluminum sleep pills
Cries of millions of trees travel thru TV
          loudspeakers to the Athletic Club’s basement steamroom—
          Millions of yellow faces call thru radio
Cries of the longhairs in the Rockies,
          Choruses of American prophets in their graves
     echo thru newspaper horns to the
                    Ear Consciousness Mind
Matter Consumption must end,
          Dirty alchemy destroys the House—
     Billion year old leaf plates become inert matter
          Plastic particles mixed
                         with living cells in the Walleyed
                              pike’s retina—

Soaring over Atlantic’s lit-up electric
                    houses to the politics Warre
Ah! Shall be my mantra—America’s gasp of Awe—
     Ah as Fireworks ascend & light glitters
          faery shimmering in treetop darkness
               sky over Eastside Park July 4th—Ah
As the enlightened Aborigine sighs his
     soul-journey with birds to New Guinea
Ah! the madman screamed
          to himself in the silence of the Ward
Ah as car owner collapsed into
          his ruined heap of metal on his own
               Front Yard
Ah! the divorcee steps off her plane onto Mexico City Airport—
Ah! as I ride spitting petrol into the exquisite
                              Midnight Atmosphere
          above cloud cities
toward another gateway of Police Boys
     & State Powers convened
Clocks Ticking two centuries
          now America
approaching the great Ah of all cities
     burning under Clouds, Conscious
          of Death Machines Downtown.
                         Ah, for the garden—

Ah! that we know ourselves better,
     Ah! that America rise from
          the dead matter
& transcend this body heavy asphalt usury
          being with each other
          Trembling with city hatred
          dropping acid Death Fear
     lovelessness alone on metal
          planet floor—or
          grass green meadow
among Equal Creatures, trees flourishing their Barken Kind leaf flared—
ah What Seek we in Miami Heaven Earth
          But End to Fear
Ah! to rejoice in World Illusion
     airplane sound street body under sky—
Apocatastasis Ah!
               Release of our knowledge
                         our suffering in kind—

Angers, Loves & Wars—Great Politics shakes
          planet tremors through our souls—
Ah! Great Consciousness Here
Salutations to the Great Self we come to know
Ah to All souls, Republican empty as
Democrat—Identity we Citizens
          share this late century
Conscious after matter madness
          Drunkenness-drug’d manufacture
               Business Consumption
                    Transitory petrochemical toy
                         plastic aluminum
               airconditioned hotel & old folks
                         home atrembling in our mortal bed
for the Big Nigger, the FBI the CIA the
          NLF the ITT USSR the U.S.A.
Great Government Robot State
     above us dominates our news,
takes up our telephone time labor paper work
     in Magic War,
Ah! that we return to our Bodies alert
     electric limb’d, lungs & heart
               empty tingling, lightness
          we all know Heaven on Earth
          Our Will Be Thine as we Say

Our Ah—of Suffering Understood,
          our life itself in pain
     Ah! our ignorance! our desire!
Ah to know that suffering ends,
          surrendered self’s sweet death—
our Ah to search the way together thru
                         some Eightfold Endless Path!
Ah! for the Hell we have made in America,
          Ah for the Heaven we see among Us
Ah! for the Earth we are here!
Ah Miami streets, hotels lobbies crowded
          auditorium! Ah for the fat sad police—
               Ah for sad soldiers forlorn all over the world
Ah for the Madman in White House asylum
          who dreams Planet Fate—
Depression armaments? Conspicuous
     Consumption Cars! Great Ah
Protect us! Ah! for the Petrochemical Wonderland,
     Conscious vast glittery buildings
                         fog dream neon’d
                              for Magical Emphasis
                    Hypnosis Money
A billfold full of Ah!
          Ah! credit card plastic
               broke in wastebasket
Ah for Cosa Nostra, Imagined or Real
               Ah! Ah! Ah!
Ah Mayor Daley, Senator Humphrey voluble
     Redeemed in Paradise, ah Laborer
          Meany hatted with Milkweed
                         & Day Lilies,
Chiefs Nixon Agnew crowned with
          Pigweed & snowballs’ tender blue blossoms
     sent with Jersey Greeting,
Governor Wallace flowered with Mushrooms, magic
          amanita & psilocybin, & Morning Glory halo’d
McGovern McCarthy ringed with Roses & Laurels,
ourselves all decked with Common Grass,
          plebeian pleasures, ah
Ah! Normal voiced & Future President
          Whoever Ye Are True Ah to Thee
Ah! to the Republic how it fare, Ah
          sad flag, color transmuted
               into all Three Worlds
                    This prayer to All Souls in America
               Citizens of Body Mind & Speech
                              Ah! Ah! Ah!

Xmas Gift

I met Einstein in a dream
Springtime on Princeton lawn grass
I kneeled down & kissed his young thumb
like a ruddy pope
his face fresh broad cheeked rosy
“I invented a universe separate,
something like a Virgin”—
“Yes, the creature gives birth to itself,”
I quoted from Mescaline
We sat down open air universal summer
to eat lunch, professors’ wives
at the Tennis Court Club,
our meeting eternal, as expected,
my gesture to kiss his fist
unexpectedly saintly
considering the Atom Bomb I didn’t mention.

New York, December 24, 1972

Thoughts Sitting Breathing

OM—the pride of perfumed money, music food from China, a place to sit quiet

MA—How jealous! the million Pentagon myrmidons with dollar billions to spend on Rock & Roll, restaurant high thrones in sky filled with Electric Bombers—Ah! how jealous they are of the thin stomached Vietnamese boy.

NI—Lust in heart for the pink tender prick’d school-boy upstairs bedroom naked with his books, high school locker shower, stretching on the bed, the young guitar player’s ass

PA—Impercipience, cat meows natural words at the window, dog barks cheerful morn, cockroach feelers touch the wall, the fly buzzes long long on the sunny windowsill lying upside-down in deathly prayer exhausted, man bends over oblivious books, buds stick forth their heart-tips when ice melts New Year’s eve, green grass shoots show ’neath melted snow, screams rise out of thousands of mouths in Hanoi—

DMI—alone the misery, the broken legs of carcrash alcohol, gimme another cigarette, I ain’t got a dime for coffee, got no rupee for rice ain’t got no land I got hunger in my gland my belly’s swollen potatoes my knees got cut on the Tanks—

HUM—the pigs got rocks in their head, C.I.A. got one eye bloody mind tongue, fiends sold my phonograph TV set to the junkman, Hate that dog shat my rug, hate Gook Heaven, hate them hippies in Hell stinking Marijuana smog city.

OM—Give it all away, poetry bliss & ready cash for taxicabs, walk Central Park alone & cook your beans in empty silence watching the Worm crawl thru meat walls—

MA—sit down crosslegged and relax, storm Heaven with your mental guns? Give up let Angels alone to play their guitars in Hollywood and drink their Coke-snuff in mountainside bathroom peace—

NI—Light as ashes, love for Neal sublimed into Poesy, love for Peter gone into the Vegetable garden to grow corn & tomatoes—

PA—Dog bark! call the mind gods! scream happiness in Saigon behind the bar my mother in throes of Police vomit rape! that garbage can I threw in Atlantic Ocean floats over Father Fisheye’s sacred grave—

DMI—I forgive thee Cord Meyer secret mind police suborned the Student Congress Cultural Freedom & destroyed Intellect in Academe Columbia Harvard made great murder Indochina War our fantasy-bomb gutted New York’s soul— HUM—Miserable victims flashing knives, Hell’s Angels Manson Nixon Calley-Ma, all the cops in the world and their gangster lovers, car salesmen Wall Street brokers smoking in rage over dwindling oil supplies, O poor sick junkies all here’s bliss of Buddha-opium, Sacred Emptiness to fix your angry brains—

“What would you do if you lost it?”

said Rinpoche Chögyam Trungpa Tulku in the marble glittering apartment lobby

looking at my black hand-box full of Art, “Better prepare for Death” …

The harmonium that’s Peter’s

the scarf that’s Krishna’s the bell and brass lightningbolt Phil Whalen selected in Japan

a tattered copy of Blake, with chord notations, black books from City Lights,

Australian Aborigine song sticks, green temple incense, Tibetan preciousmetal finger cymbals—

A broken leg a week later enough reminder, lay in bed and after few days’ pain began to weep

no reason, thinking a little of Rabbi Schacter, a little of father Louis, a little

of everything that must be abandoned,

snow abandoned,

empty dog barks after the dogs have disappeared

meals eaten passed thru the body to nourish tomatoes and corn,

The wooden bowl from Haiti too huge for my salad,

Teachings, Tantras, Haggadahs, Zohar, Revelations, poetries, Koans

forgotten with the snowy world, forgotten

with generations of icicles crashing to white gullies by roadside,

Dharmakaya forgot, Nirmanakaya shoved in coffin, Sambhogakaya eclipsed in candle-light snuffed by the playful cat—

Goodbye my own treasures, bodies adored to the nipple,

old souls worshipped flower-eye or imaginary auditory panoramic skull—

goodbye old socks washed over & over, blue boxer shorts, subzero longies,

new Ball Boots black hiplength for snowdrifts near the farm mailbox,

goodbye to my room full of books, all wisdoms I never studied, all the Campion, Creeley, Anacreon Blake I never read through,

blankets farewell, orange diamonded trunked from Mexico Himalayan sheepwool lugged down from Almora days with Lama Govinda and Peter trying to eat tough stubborn halfcooked chicken.

Paintings on wall, Maitreya, Sakyamuni & Padmasambhava, Dr. Samedi with Haitian spats & cane whiskey,

Bhaktivedanta Swami at desk staring sad eye Krishna at my hopeless selfconsciousness,

Attic full of toys, desk full of old checks, files on NY police & C.I.A. peddling Heroin,

Files on laughing Leary, files on Police State, files on ecosystems all faded & brown, notebooks untranscribed, hundreds of little poems & prose my own hand,

goodbye to my brothers who write poetry & play fiddle, my nephews who blow tuba & stroke bass viol, whistle flute or smile & sing in blue rhythm,

goodbye shades of dead living loves, bodies weeping bodies broken bodies aging, bodies turned to wax doll or cinder

Goodbye America you hope you prayer you tenderness, you IBM 135–35 Electronic Automated Battlefield Igloo White Dragon-tooth Fuel-Air Bomb over Indochina

Goodbye Heaven, farewell Nirvana, sad Paradise adieu, adios all angels and archangels, devas & devakis, Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, rings of Seraphim, Constellations of elect souls weeping singing in the golden Bhumi Rungs, goodbye High Throne, High Central Place, Alleluiah Light beyond Light, a wave of the hand to Thee Central Golden Rose,

Om Ah Hu? A La La Ho Sophia, Soham Tara Ma, Om Phat Svaha Padmasambhava Marpa Mila sGam.po.pa Karmapa Trungpaye!

Who

Yes and It’s Hopeless

hundred million cars running out of gasoline

million coalstoves burning shale carbonmist over cities

Hopeless I’ll never get laid again, O what a beautiful body that boy from Jersey City last night

Hopeless, locked in plaster-of-Paris leg cast, bones, skull heart, intestines, liver, eyes and tongue

All hopeless, the entire solar system running Thermodynamics’ Second Law

down the whole galaxy, all universes brain illusion or solid electric hopeless emptiness

evacuating itself through quasar pressure Furnaces,

hopeless the 300,000 junkies in N.Y.

hopeless President waging war, “fighting for peace” sending State Secretary to Israel, the moon, China, Acapulco,

hopeless the Dutch boy standing with his finger in the dike,

the energy crisis, the protein crisis 1990, the Folklore Crisis, the Aboriginal Crisis, the Honkie Crisis, the old Nazi Crisis, the Arab Crisis, the Chrysophrase Crisis, Tungsten, the crisis in Panama, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Santa Domingo, Haiti, Cuba, Florida, Alabama, Texas, New Jersey, New York, East 10th Street, the Crisis in San Juan Capistrano, the Oil-spill in Bolinas Bay, Santa Barbara’s tar tide, the crisis of the Loch Ness Monster & the Dublin Bomb Crisis,

all hopeless, the overpopulation of dogs, humans, cockroaches, rats, Crown of Thorn Starfish, green algae in Lake Erie—

Hopeless, hopeless, Jesus on the Cross or Buddha voided passing through

Hopeless, the First Zen Institute, the Second Church of the Resurrection, the Third Eye System Inc., the 4th Estate, the 5th Column in the Kundalini, the 6th sense, the Seventh Seal Chowder & Marching Society the 8th Nerve in the Vagus Nebula System the 9th Degree Samadhi Monopoly the 10th sorry passenger on the bus crashed over Freeway’s iron ropes down into the Swamp Abyss outsida Roanoke—

OK hopeless, Rolling Stone Consciousness, Mammoth Sunday NY Times

Hopeless all silence, all Yoga, all quiet Ecstasies of Saints and Starvation Monks Ceylon to Bhutan—

Hopeless two million deaths in Indochina, the half million Communists assassinated in Indonesia? Slaughter of Innocents in Mexico City, Massacres of Wounded Knee Mylai Lidice Attica, 15 million never came back from Siberia

the jail murder of George Jackson, Sacco & Vanzetti electrocuted Rosenbergs, bullet assassination of Kennedy, Luther King, Malcolm X, the burning of Zwingli, hemlock death of Socrates the headless catastrophe Jayne Mansfield’s autocrash & Jimmy Dean’s highway wreck-aged body—

Under the world there’s a lot of ass, a lot of cunt

a lot of mouths and cocks,

under the world there’s a lot of come, and a lot of saliva dripping into brooks,

There’s a lot of Shit under the world, flowing beneath cities into rivers,

a lot of urine floating under the world,

a lot of snot in the world’s industrial nostrils, sweat under the world’s iron arm, blood

gushing out of the world’s breast,

endless lakes of tears, seas of sick vomit rushing between hemispheres

floating toward Sargasso, old oily rags and brake fluids, human gasoline—

Under the world there’s pain, fractured thighs, napalm burning in black hair, phosphorus eating elbows to bone

insecticides contaminating oceantide, plastic dolls floating across Atlantic,

Toy soldiers crowding the Pacific, B-52 bombers choking jungle air with vaportrails and brilliant flares

Robot drones careening over rice terraces dropping cluster grenades, plastic pellets spray into flesh, dragontooth mines & jellied fires fall on straw roofs and water buffalos,

perforating village huts with barbed shrapnel, trenchpits filled with fuel-gas-poison’d explosive powders—

Under the world there’s broken skulls, crushed feet, cut eyeballs, severed fingers, slashed jaws,

Dysentery; homeless millions, tortured hearts, empty souls.

April 1973

Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit

Annotations to Amitendranath Tagore’s Sung Poetry

“In later days, remembering this I shall certainly go mad.”

Reading Sung poems, I think of my poems to Neal
dead few years now, Jack underground
invisible—their faces rise in my mind.
Did I write truthfully of them? In later times
I saw them little, not much difference they’re dead.
They live in books and memory, strong as on earth.

“I do not know who is hoarding all this rare work.”

Old One the dog stretches stiff legged,
soon he’ll be underground. Spring’s first fat bee
buzzes yellow over the new grass and dead leaves.

What’s this little brown insect walking zigzag
across the sunny white page of Su Tung-p’o’s poem?
Fly away, tiny mite, even your life is tender—
I lift the book and blow you into the dazzling void.

“I fear that others may know I am here;
An immortal may appear to welcome me.”

Right leg broken, can’t walk around
visit the fishpond to touch the cold water,
tramp thru willows to the lonely meadow across the brook—
here comes a metal landrover, brakes creaking hello.

“You live apart on rivers and seas …”

You live in apartments by rivers and seas

Spring comes, waters flow murky, the salt wave’s covered with oily dung

Sun rises, smokestacks cover the roofs with black mist

winds blow, city skies are clear blue all afternoon

Night Gleam

Over and over thru the dull material world the call is made

over and over thru the dull material world I make the call

O English folk, in Sussex night, thru black beech tree branches

the full moon shone at three AM, I stood in under wear on the lawn—

I saw a mustached English man I loved, with athlete’s breast and farmer’s arms,

I lay in bed that night many loves beating in my heart

sleepless hearing songs of generations electric returning intelligent memory

to my frame, and so went to dwell again in my heart

and worship the Lovers there, love’s teachers, youths and poets who live forever

in the secret heart, in the dark night, in the full moon, year after year

over & over thru the dull material world the call is made.

July 16, 1973

What I’d Like to Do

Retire abandon world sd Swami Bhaktivedanta my age 47 approaching half-century

Go to San Marino see Blake’s vision of Moloch, go to Manchester see Moloch

Visit Blake’s works all over World West, study prophetic Books interpret Blake unify Vision

Step in same river twice

Build hermitage of wood and stone with porch 3000 foot up Rockies, Sierras, Catskills fine soft forests

sit crosslegged straight spine belly relaxed heart humming Ah each exhalation

Inspiration established compose English Apocalypse American science Greek rhythm Tibetan mantra Blues

long hours half-lotus-legged at desk window pine trees omming in rainy wind

Spend three years in solitude Naropa’s Six Doctrines mastered and another hundred days intermediate State twixt Death and Birth

Read Milton’s Paradise Lost decipher Egyptian Book of Dead and Annutara Tantra etc.

Compose poems to the wind

Chant into electric microphones, pacify Rock, enrich

skull emptiness with vocal salami taxicabs, magnetize nervous systems,

destroy Empire State’s dead Life Time smog

Masturbate in peace, haunt ancient cities for boys, practice years of chastity, save Jewels for God my own ruddy body, hairy delicate antennae

Vegetable, eat carrots, fork cabbage, spoon peas, fry potatoes, boil beets, ox forgiven, pig forgotten, hot dogs banished from celestial realms cloud-roofed over Kitkitdizze’s green spring weeds—milk, angel-Milk

Read Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov I laid down half-finished a dozen times decades ago

Compose last choirs of Innocence & Experience, set music to tongues of Rossetti Mss. orchestrate Jerusalem’s quatrains—

War’s over, soft mat wood floor, flower vase on inkstand, blue oaks gazing in the window.

London, August 1973

On Illness

Lord Heart, heal my right temple bang’d soft pain the bookshelf

rising to fuck Peter embrac’d naked on big wooden couch mattress sheeted blanketed

My broken leg Lord Heart heal crooked bone above stiff ankle, straight tibia tender sore

Lord Heart, more near, lax abdomen muscle, nausea hiatus hernia

That I never eat too much Lord Heart eat Lord’s parts sick with solar plexus pain,

deep breath your airy body tingling empty pleasur’d skin kissed cock surrender’d rising buttock entering yr Lord Heart—

Entered I surrender to Lord Heart himself disguised Krishna Ke Jai yr blue lingam—Hey Bom Shivaye!

Lord Heart your female poetry bottom, penis female sensitive—

ass kissed & tongued by Jove Jupiter Zeus

Ganymede-ass or Tara ladybelly

Om Saraswati Hrih Sowha

MOM

Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom

Lord Heart my baldness cure thru confident eye my lover’s open pupil

My teeth Lord Heart keep clean as I do brush them twice daily. Keep me from pain.

My hernia rupture paunch healed no pain these coughs—soft muscle stomach-fold sewn insentient muscle skin.

Lord Heart not smoke cigarette butts anymore—

Keep me Lord Heart for yr Works & Destruction

Body meat cries, sighs, sits immobile Ah, pain passed over—

Lord Heart, my aged father’s hand is cool, legs stumbling

defend us from Death Fear, Matter-formed fear faces, disgrac’d mere Flesh

Gone known Lord Heart ourselves defend from Foul Fiend

Grant peace this body Lord Heart, this Soul, this Spirit hand & tongue—

this Great Presence defend Lord Heart your silent Inviolable Witness—

Lord Heart the Great Planet defend this Space Mirror of our Vast Emptiness

Lord Heart come fill my Soul with Mountain snow & Glacier-melt slow Aeon’s Gnosis—

ancient voice Lord Heart, your thousand arms & eight, of preservation & compassion

Conch Shell, Lotus, Diamond Sceptre, Book of Memory, Umbrella, Fish & Mirror & Machine Wheel

News Bulletin

“Criminal possession of a controlled substance—
     Marijuana” came over the radio
I got mad & sent Gov. Rockefeller a
     crystal skull postcard

Abbie Hoffman just got busted
     million pounds of Cocaine
I wrote the wrong essay & combed burrs
     out of a Godly dog’s hide

A lady asked text on Jewish Holocaust
     I filed her letter and made sugar borscht

Tim Leary silent Folsom Jail’d I jacked
     off with a plastic cock in my ass

Catastrophe everywhere today propane
     shortage prophesied I answered my mail
I stuck my head out the edge of
     Universe wheels in starry wheels
while Supreme Court struck down pornography
     for the umpteenth time

It’ll begin all over dope raids
     sex flick police assassinations
     mass Television in Vietnam
Mugging on streets your favorite
     policeman peddling junk
your favorite President falling falling falling
     endlessly the dream cliff
receding into Heaven Vice
     President falling falling
stars flying by the earth
     oceans awash with blue
galaxies spinning past I washed
     my big toe
I exercised my painful ankle smoked
     a joint I came I wrote letters
     scratched my head
Populations flee the flood, crowds
     move downstreet in teargas clouds,
camel riders footweary skeletons
     walk away from drought
desert burning, sea screaming,
     Bacteria frothing mouth preserve
     jars
I made toast I fried mushrooms I ate
     raw corn

On Neruda’s Death

Some breath breathes out Adonais & Canto General
Some breath breathes out Bombs and dog barks
Some breath breathes silent over green snow mountains
Some breath breathes not at all

Teton Village, September 25, 1973

Mind Breaths

Thus crosslegged on round pillow sat in Teton Space—

I breathed upon the aluminum microphone-stand a body’s length away

I breathed upon the teacher’s throne, the wooden chair with yellow pillow

I breathed further, past the sake cup half emptied by the breathing guru

Breathed upon the green sprigged thick-leaved plant in a flowerpot

Breathed upon the vast plateglass shining back th’ assembled sitting Sangha in the meditation cafeteria

my breath thru nostril floated out to the moth of evening beating into window’d illumination

breathed outward over aspen twigs trembling September’s top yellow leaves twilit at mountain foot

breathed over the mountain, over snowpowdered crags ringed under slow-breathed cloud-mass white spumes

windy across Tetons to Idaho, gray ranges under blue space swept

with delicate snow flurries, breaths Westward

mountain grass trembling in tiny winds toward Wasatch

Breezes south late autumn in Salt Lake’s wooden temple streets,

white salt dust lifted swirling by the thick leaden lake, dust carried up over Kennecott’s pit onto the massive Unit Rig,

out towards Reno’s neon, dollar bills skittering downstreet along the curb,

up into Sierras oak leaves blown down by fall cold chills

over peaktops snowy gales beginning,

a breath of prayer down on Kitkitdizze’s horngreen leaves close to ground,

over Gary’s tile roof, over temple pillar, tents and manzanita arbors in Sierra pine foothills—

a breath falls over Sacramento Valley, roar of wind down the sixlane freeway across Bay Bridge

uproar of papers floating over Montgomery Street, pigeons flutter down before sunset from Washington Park’s white churchsteeple—

Golden Gate waters whitecapped scudding out to Pacific spreads

over Hawaii a balmy wind thru Hotel palmtrees, a moist warmth swept over the airbase, a dank breeze in Guam’s rotten Customs shed,

clear winds breathe on Fiji’s palm & coral shores, by wooden hotels in Suva town flags flutter, taxis whoosh by Friday night’s black promenaders under the rock & roll discotheque window upstairs beating with English neon—

on a breeze into Sydney, and across hillside grass where mushrooms lie low on Cow-Flops in Queensland, down Adelaide’s alleys a flutter of music from Brian Moore’s Dobro carried in the wind—

up thru Darwin Land, out Gove Peninsula green ocean breeze, clack of Yerkalla village song sticks by the trembling wave

over Iona Isle blue day and balmy Inner Hebrides breeze, fog drifts across Atlantic,

Flying Elegy

Denver tower blocks group’d under gray haze

on tracted plains gassed to azure horizon—“no place to take revenge.”

Alan Watts epicure drank much

sang bass Christo voice a long long long breathed Aum passed on

in sleep exhausted heart philosopher

wandering age 58 in Chinese dressing gown to seek love, or enter Buddha blind

like this blue sky wing plunged thru rainbow halo in clouds’ drifty whiteness

The skandas are a veil suchlike, no place to take revenge

Blessed the dead who can’t fight back resent a poem knife thought

Blessed the dead in ignorance, dead with no sores or cigarette yen

Blessed the dead that don’t get laid, don’t eat fine casseroles herb-spiced with crusty cheese

don’t drink slow tea

don’t waste petrol surveying clouds in Heaven

don’t waste words at their condition, no one to talk to

Bless the free dead lecturing in the deep with moveless tongue

perfect meditators without thought, accomplished in Sunyata

Bless the dead last Philosophers, thought of the thought of Philosophers

Perfected Wisdom’s teachers escaped from Blessing and the Bliss of grasping prayer

’scaped from the curse of meditation on a cushion on yr ass

Dead that’ve left breath, renounced sex body, suffered stroke & begone

alone, the drinker, thinker, divorcé, grandfather weary wise

dying in bed night’s stillness silent and wake.

November 17, 1973

Teton Village

Snow mountain fields
seen thru transparent wings
of a fly on the windowpane

November 29, 1973

Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass

lemme kiss your face, lick your neck
touch your lips, tongue tickle tongue end
nose to nose, quiet questions
ever slept with a man before?
hand stroking your back slowly down to the cheeks’ moist hair soft asshole
eyes to eyes blur, a tear strained from seeing—

Come on boy, fingers thru my hair
Pull my beard, kiss my eyelids, tongue my ear, lips light on my forehead
—met you in the street you carried my package—
Put your hand down to my legs,
touch if it’s there, the prick shaft delicate
hot in your rounded palm, soft thumb on cockhead—

Come on come on kiss me full lipped, wet tongue, eyes open—
animal in the zoo looking out of skull cage—you
smile, I’m here so are you, hand tracing your abdomen
from nipple down rib cage smooth skinn’d past belly veins, along muscle to your silk-shiny groin
across the long prick down your right thigh
up the smooth road muscle wall to titty again—
Come on go down on me your throat
swallowing my shaft to the base tongue
cock solid suck—
I’ll do the same your stiff prick’s soft skin, lick your ass—
Come on Come on, open up, legs apart here this pillow
under your buttock
Come on take it here’s vaseline the hard on here’s
your old ass lying easy up in the air—here’s
a hot prick at yr soft mouthed asshole—just relax and let it in—
Yeah just relax hey Carlos lemme in, I love you, yeah how come
you came here anyway except this kiss arms round my neck mouth open your
     two eyes looking up, this hard slow thrust this
               softness this relaxed sweet sigh.

New York, January 3, 1974

Jaweh and Allah Battle

     Jaweh with Atom Bomb
          Allah cuts throat of Infidels
Jaweh’s armies beat down neighboring tribes
Will Red Sea waters close & drown th’armies of Allah?

Israel’s tribes worshipping the Golden Calf
                    Moses broke the Tablets of Law.

Zalmon Schacter Lubovitcher Rebbe what you say
          Stone Commandments broken on the ground
     Sufi Sam whaddya say
          Shall Prophet’s companions dance circled
     round Synagogue while Jews doven bearded electric?

Both Gods Terrible! Awful Jaweh Allah!
                    Both hook-nosed gods, circumcised.
Jaweh Allah which unreal?
                         Which stronger Illusion?
                              Which stronger Army?
                    Which gives most frightening command?
     What God maintain egohood in Eden? Which be Nameless?
                         Which enter Abyss of Light?
Worlds of Gods, jealous Warriors, Humans, Animals & Flowers,
               Hungry Ghosts, even Hell Beings all die,
          Snake cock and pig eat each other’s tails & perish
     All Jews all Moslems’ll die All Israelis all Arabs
     Cairo’s angry millions Jerusalem’s multitudes
          suffer Death’s dream Armies in battle!
Yea let Tribes wander to tin camps at cold Europe’s walls?
Yea let the Million sit in desert shantytowns with tin cups?
I’m a Jew cries Allah! Buddha circumcised!
                    Snake sneaking an apple to Eden—
               Alien, Wanderer, Caller of the Great Call!
What Prophet born on this ground
                    bound me Eternal to Palestine
          circled by Armies tanks, droning bomber motors,
                         radar electric computers?
What Mind directed Stern Gang Irgun Al Fatah
                              Black September?
     Meyer Lansky? Nixon Shah? Gangster? Premier? King?
                                        one-eyed General Dayan?
          Golda Meir & Kissinger bound me with Arms?
HITLER AND STALIN SENT ME HERE!
          WEIZMANN & BEN-GURION SENT ME HERE!
               NASSER AND SADAT SENT ME HERE!
ARAFAT SENT ME HERE! MESSIAH SENT ME HERE!
                              GOD SENT ME HERE!
          Buchenwald sent me here! Vietnam sent me here!
               Mylai sent me here!
                              Lidice sent me here!
     My mother sent me here!
               I WAS BORN HERE IN ISRAEL, Arab
          circumcised, my father had a coffee shop in Jerusalem
One day the Soldiers came & told me to walk down road my hands up
               walk away leave my house business forever!
                    The Israelis sent me here!
     Solomon’s Temple the Pyramids & Sphinx sent me here!
                         JAWEH AND ALLAH SENT ME HERE!
Abraham will take me to his bosom!
          Mohammed will guide me to Paradise!
                         Christ sent me here to be crucified!
     Buddha will wipe us out and destroy the world.
The New York Times and Cairo Editorialist Heykal sent me here!
     Commentary and Palestine Review sent me here!
     The International Zionist Conspiracy sent me here!
     Syrian Politicians sent me here! Heroic Pan-Arab
               Nationalists sent me here!
                    They’re sending Armies to my side—
The Americans & Russians are sending bombing planes tanks
     Chinese Egyptians Syrians help me battle for my righteous
          house my Soul’s dirt Spirit’s Nation body’s
                    boundaries & Self’s territory my
          Zionist homeland my Palestine inheritance
The Capitalist Communist & Third World Peoples’
     Republics Dictatorships Police States Socialisms & Democracies
          are all sending Deadly Weapons to our aid!
We shall triumph over the Enemy!
          Maintain our Separate Identity! Proud
               History evermore!
     Defend our own bodies here this Holy Land! This hill
          Golgotha never forget, never relinquish
                    inhabit thru Eternity
          under Allah Christ Yaweh forever one God
Shema Yisroel Adonoi Eluhenu Adonoi Echad!
                    La ilah illa’ Allah hu!

Manifesto

Let me say beginning I don’t believe in Soul
The heart, famous heart’s a bag of shit I wrote 25 years ago
O my immortal soul! youthful poet Shelley cried
O my immortal Ego—little knowing
he didn’t believe in God. Neither do I.
Nor all science reason reality and good moral Will—
collections of empty atoms as Kerouac Buddha scribed.

Neither does great love immortal defy pain nightmare Death Torture Saigon Police Underground Press Pravda Bill of Rights—

And while we’re at it, let’s denounce Democracy, Fascism, Communism and heroes.

Art’s not empty if it shows its own emptiness

Poetry useful leaves its own skeleton hanging in air

like Buddha, Shakespeare & Rimbaud.

Serious, dispense with law except Cause & Effect, even the latter has exceptions

No cause & effect is not foolproof.

There is Awareness—which confounds the Soul, Heart, God, Science Love Governments and Cause & Effects’ Nightmare.

New York, January 28, 1974, 1 A.M.

Sad Dust Glories

You were here on earth, in cities—
          where now?
Bones in the ground,
          thoughts in my mind.

*

Teacher
bring me to heaven
or leave me alone.
Why make me work so hard
when everything’s spread around
open, like forest’s poison oak turned red
empty sleepingbags hanging from
               a dead branch.

*

When I sit
I see dust motes in my eye
Ponderosa needles trembling
               shine green
in blue sky.
Wind sound passes thru
               pine tops, distant
windy waves flutter black
               oak leaves
and leave them still
like my mind
which forgets
why the bluejay across the woods’
                    clearing
squawks, mid afternoon.

*

The mood
is sadness, dead friends,
or the boy I slept with last night
came twice silently
and I still lie in the colored
                    hammock, half naked
reading poetry
Sunday
in bright sun pine shade.

Wind makes sound
          in tree tops
like express trains like city
          machinery
Slow dances high up, huge
branches wave back & forth sensitive
needlehairs bob their heads
—it’s too human, it’s not human
It’s treetops, whatever they think,
It’s me, whatever I think,
It’s the wind talking.

Driving Volkswagen
          with tired feet
returned from camping
          in Black Buttes
thru sad dust glories
turning off Malakoff
     Diggings road
Blinded by sunlight
     squirrel in
          windshield.

Ego Confessions
(1974–1977)
Ego Confession

I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America

Introduced to Gyalwa Karmapa heir of the Whispered Transmission Crazy Wisdom Practice Lineage

as the secret young wise man who visited him and winked anonymously decade ago in Gangtok

Prepared the way for Dharma in America without mentioning Dharma—scribbled laughter

Who saw Blake and abandoned God

To whom the Messianic Fink sent messages darkest hour sleeping on steel sheets “somewhere in the Federal Prison system” Weathermen got no Moscow Gold

who went backstage to Cecil Taylor serious chat chord structure & Time in a nightclub

who fucked a rose-lipped rock star in a tiny bedroom slum watched by a statue of Vajrasattva—

and overthrew the CIA with a silent thought—

Old Bohemians many years hence in Viennese beergardens’ll recall

his many young lovers with astonishing faces and iron breasts

gnostic apparatus and magical observation of rainbow-lit spiderwebs

extraordinary cooking, lung stew & Spaghetti a la Vongole and recipe for salad dressing 3 parts oil one part vinegar much garlic and honey a spoonful

his extraordinary ego, at service of Dharma and completely empty

unafraid of its own self’s spectre

parroting gossip of gurus and geniuses famous for their reticence—

Who sang a blues made rock stars weep and moved an old black guitarist to laughter in Memphis—

I want to be the spectacle of Poesy triumphant over trickery of the world

Omniscient breathing its own breath thru War tear gas spy hallucination

whose common sense astonished gaga Gurus and rich Artistes—

who called the Justice department & threaten’d to Blow the Whistle

Stopt Wars, turned back petrochemical Industries’ Captains to grieve & groan in bed

Mugging

     I

Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street’s dusk—

Walked out of my home ten years, walked out in my honking neighborhood

Tonite at seven walked out past garbage cans chained to concrete anchors

Walked under black painted fire escapes, giant castiron plate covering a hole in ground

—Crossed the street, traffic lite red, thirteen bus roaring by liquor store,

past corner pharmacy iron grated, past Coca Cola & Mylai posters fading scraped on brick

Past Chinese Laundry wood door’d, & broken cement stoop steps For Rent hall painted green & purple Puerto Rican style

Along E. 10th’s glass splattered pavement, kid blacks & Spanish oiled hair adolescents’ crowded house fronts—

Ah, tonite I walked out on my block NY City under humid summer sky Halloween,

thinking what happened Timothy Leary joining brain police for a season?

thinking what’s all this Weathermen, secrecy & selfrighteousness beyond reason—F.B.I. plots?

Walked past a taxicab controlling the bottle strewn curb—

past young fellows with their umbrella handles & canes leaning against a ravaged Buick

—and as I looked at the crowd of kids on the stoop—a boy stepped up, put his arm around my neck

tenderly I thought for a moment, squeezed harder, his umbrella handle against my skull,

and his friends took my arm, a young brown companion tripped his foot ’gainst my ankle—

as I went down shouting Om Ah Hu? to gangs of lovers on the stoop watching

slowly appreciating, why this is a raid, these strangers mean strange business

with what—my pockets, bald head, broken-healed-bone leg, my softshoes, my heart—

Have they knives? Om Ah Hu?—Have they sharp metal wood to shove in eye ear ass? Om Ah Hu?

& slowly reclined on the pavement, struggling to keep my woolen bag of poetry address calendar & Leary-lawyer notes hung from my shoulder

dragged in my neat orlon shirt over the crossbar of a broken metal door

dragged slowly onto the fire-soiled floor an abandoned store, laundry candy counter 1929—

Nobody home, but scattered stoopfuls of scared kids frozen in black hair

Who Runs America?

Oil brown smog over Denver
Oil red dung colored smoke
level to level across the horizon
     blue tainted sky above
Oil car smog gasoline
     hazing red Denver’s day
          December bare trees
               sticking up from housetop streets
Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over
               radar wheels, black smoke
                    drifts wobbly from tailfins

Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains
Oil from Texas, Bahrain, Venezuela Mexico
Oil that turns General Motors
          revs up Ford
     lights up General Electric, oil that crackles
thru International Business Machine computers,
          charges dynamos for ITT
     sparks Western Electric
          runs thru Amer Telephone & Telegraph wires
Oil that flows thru Exxon New Jersey hoses,
rings in Mobil gas tank cranks, rumbles
                    Chrysler engines
shoots thru Texaco pipelines,
          blackens ocean from broken Gulf tankers
spills onto Santa Barbara beaches from
               Standard of California derricks offshore.

Braniff Air, Denver-Dallas, December 3, 1974

Thoughts on a Breath

Cars slide minute down asphalt lanes in front of

Dallas Hilton Inn

Trees brown bare in December’s smog-mist roll up

to the city’s squared towers

beneath electric wire grids trestled toward country water tanks

distanced under cloud streak crossed with fading

vapor trails.

Majestic in a skirt of human fog, building blocks

rise at sky edge,

Branches and house roofs march to horizon.

I sat again to complete the cycle, eyes open seeing

dust motes in the eye screen

like birds over telephone wires, curve of the eyeball

where Dallas and I meet—

white motel wall of the senses—ear roar

oil exhaust, snuffle and bone growl

motors rolling North Central freeway

Energy playing over Concrete, energy

hymning itself in emptiness—

What’ve I learned since I sat here four years ago?

In the halls of the head or out thru the halls of the senses,

same space

Trucks rolling toward Dallas skyscrapers

or mind thoughts floating thru my head

vanish on a breath—What was it I began

my meditation on?

Police state, Students, Poetry open tongue,

anger and fear of Cops,

oil Cops, Rockefeller Cops, Oswald Cops,

Johnson Cops Nixon Cops

president Cops

SMU Cops Trustee Cops CIA Cops

FBI Cops Goon Squads of Dope

Cops busted Stony Burns and sent him to

Jail 10 years and a day

for less than a joint of Grass, a Citizen

under republic, under Constitution, of Texas?

We sit here in police state and sigh, knowing

we’re trapped in our bodies,

our fear of No meat, no oil, no money, airplanes

and fixed the axles of Capitalism, dumbed and laughing at hallucinated Secretaries

We Rise on Sun Beams and Fall in the Night

Dawn’s orb orange-raw shining over Palisades
bare crowded branches bush up from marshes—
New Jersey with my father riding automobile
highway to Newark Airport—Empire State’s
spire, horned buildingtops, Manhattan
rising as in W. C. Williams’ eyes between wire trestles—
trucks sixwheeled steady rolling overpass
beside New York—I am here
tiny under sun rising in vast white sky,
staring thru skeleton new buildings,
with pen in hand awake …

December 11, 1974

Written on Hotel Napkin: Chicago Futures

Wind mills churn on Windy City’s
     rooftops          Antennae
          collecting electric
above thick-loamed gardens
     on Playboy Tower
Merchandise Mart’s compost
                    privies
     supply nightsoil for Near North Side’s
                    back Gardens
Cabbages, celery & cucumbers
     sprout in Mayor Daley’s
                    frontyard
          rich with human waste—
Bathtub beer like old days
Backyard Mary Jane like
                    old days,
Sun reflectors gather heat
     in rockpile collectors
          under apartment walls
Horses graze in Parks &
     streets covered with grass
Mafia Dons shovel earth
     & bury Cauliflower
                    leaves
Old gangsters & their sons
     tending grapevines

Mid-March 1975

Hospital Window

At gauzy dusk, thin haze like cigarette smoke
ribbons past Chrysler Building’s silver fins
tapering delicately needletopped, Empire State’s
taller antenna filmed milky lit amid blocks
black and white apartmenting veil’d sky over Manhattan,
offices new built dark glassed in bluish heaven—The East
50s & 60s covered with castles & watertowers, seven storied
tar-topped house-banks over York Avenue, late may-green trees
surrounding Rockefellers’ blue domed medical arbor—
Geodesic science at the waters edge—Cars running up
East River Drive, & parked at N.Y. Hospital’s oval door
where perfect tulips flower the health of a thousand sick souls
trembling inside hospital rooms. Triboro bridge steel-spiked
raftertops stand stone-piered over mansard
penthouse orange roofs, sunset tinges the river and in a few
Bronx windows, some magnesium vapor brilliances’re
spotted five floors above E 59th St under gray painted bridge
trestles. Way downtown along the river, as Monet saw Thames
100 years ago, Con Edison smokestacks 14th street,
& Brooklyn Bridge’s skeined dim in modern mists—
Pipes sticking up to sky nine smokestacks huge visible—
U.N. Building hangs under an orange crane, & red lights on
vertical avenues below the trees turn green at the nod
of a skull with a mild nerve ache. Dim dharma, I return
to this spectacle after weeks of poisoned lassitude, my thighs
belly chest & arms covered with poxied welts,
head pains fading back of the neck, right eyebrow cheek
mouth paralyzed—from taking the wrong medicine, sweated
too much in the forehead helpless, covered my rage from
gorge to prostate with grinding jaw and tightened anus
not released the weeping scream of horror at robot Mayaguez
World self ton billions metal grief unloaded
Phnom Penh to Nakhon Thanom, Santiago & Tehran.
Fresh warm breeze in the window, day’s release
from pain, cars float downside the bridge trestle
and uncounted building-wall windows multiplied a mile
deep into ash-delicate sky beguile
my empty mind. A seagull passes alone wings
spread silent over roofs.

May 20, 1975 (Mayaguez Crisis)

Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox

Hadda be flashing like the Daily Double

Hadda be playing on Tee Vee

Hadda be loudmouthed on the Comedy Hour

Hadda be announced over Loud Speakers

CIA & Mafia are in Cahoots

Hadda be said in old ladies’ language

Hadda be said in American Headlines

Kennedy stretched & smiled & got doublecrossed by low life goons & Agents

Rich bankers with Criminal Connections

Dope pushers in CIA working with dope pushers from Cuba

working with Big Time syndicate Tampa Florida

Hadda be said with big mouth

Hadda be moaned over Factory foghorns

Hadda be chattered on Car Radio News Broadcast

Hadda be screamed in the kitchen

Hadda be yelled in the basement where uncles were fighting

Hadda be Howled on the streets by Newsboys to bus conductors

Hadda be foghorned into N.Y. Harbor

Hadda echo under hard hats

Hadda turn up the Volume in University ballrooms

Hadda be written in library books, footnoted

Hadda be in headlines of the Times & Le Monde

Hadda be barked over TV

Hadda be heard in side alleys thru bar room doors

Hadda be played on Wire Services

Hadda be bells ringing, Comedians stopt dead in the middle of a joke in Las Vegas,

Hadda be FBI chief J. E. Hoover & Frank Costello syndicate mouthpiece meeting in Central Park N.Y. together weekends reported posthumously Time magazine

Hadda be the Mafia & CIA together

started War on Cuba Bay of Pigs & Poison assassination headlines

Hadda be the Dope Cops & the Mafia

sold all that Heroin in America

Hadda be FBI & Organized Crime working together in Cahoots “against the Commies”

let Lucky Luciano out of Jail take over Sicily Mediterranean drug trade

Hadda be Corsican goons in Office Strategic Services’ Pay busted 1948 dock strikes in Marseilles, sixties port transshipment Indochina heroin,

Hadda be ringing on Multinational Cashregisters

Come All Ye Brave Boys

Come all you young men that proudly display
Your torsos to the Sun on upper Broadway
Come sweet hearties so mighty with girls
So lithe and naked to kiss their gold curls
Come beautiful boys with breasts bright gold
Lie down in bed with me ere ye grow old,
Take down your blue jeans, we’ll have some raw fun
Lie down on your bellies I’ll fuck your soft bun.

Come heroic half naked young studs
That drive automobiles through vaginal blood
Come thin breasted boys and fat muscled kids
With sturdy cocks you deal out green lids
Turn over spread your strong legs like a lass
I’ll show you the thrill to be jived up the ass
Come sweet delicate strong minded men
I’ll take you thru graveyards & kiss you again

You’ll die in your life, wake up in my arms
Sobbing and hugging & showing your charms
Come strong darlings tough children hard boys
Transformed with new tenderness, taught new joys
We’ll lie embrac’d in full moonlight till dawn
Whiteness shows sky high over the wet lawn
Lay yr head on my shoulder kiss my lined brow
& belly to belly kiss my neck now

Yeah come on tight assed & strong cocked young fools
& shove up my belly your hard tender tools,
Suck my dick, lick my arm pit and breast
Lie back & sigh in the dawn for a rest,
Come in my arms, groan your sweet will
Come again in my mouth, lie silent & still,
Let me come in your butt, hold my head on your leg,
Let’s come together, & tremble & beg.

Boulder, August 25, 1975, 4 A.M.

Sickness Blues

Sickness Blues

Boulder, July 19, 1975

Gospel Noble Truths

Born in this world
You got to suffer
Everything changes
You got no soul

Try to be gay
Ignorant happy
You get the blues
You eat jellyroll

There is one Way
You take the high road
In your big Wheel
8 steps you fly

Look at the View
Right to horizon
Talk to the sky
Act like you talk

Work like the sun
Shine in your heaven
See what you done
Come down & walk

Sit you sit down
Breathe when you breathe
Lie down you lie down
Walk where you walk

Talk when you talk
Cry when you cry
Lie down you lie down
Die when you die

Look when you look
Hear what you hear
Taste what you taste here
Smell what you smell

Touch what you touch
Think what you think
Let go Let it go Slow
Earth Heaven & Hell

Die when you die
Die when you die
Lie down you lie down
Die when you die

New York Subway, October 17, 1975

Rolling Thunder Stones

I

LAY DOWN YR MOUNTAIN

Lay down     Lay down yr mountain     Lay down God
Lay down     Lay down your music     Love lay down

Lay down     Lay down yr hatred     Lay yrself down
Lay down     Lay down your nation     Lay your foot on the rock

Lay down yr whole creation     Lay yr mind down
Lay down     Lay down yr empire     Lay your whole world down

Lay down your soul forever     Lay your vision down
Lay down yr bright body     Down your golden heavy crown

Lay down     Lay down yr magic hey!     Alchemist lay it down clear
Lay down your practice precisely     Lay down yr wisdom dear

Lay down yr skillful camera     Lay down yr image right
Lay down your brilliant image     Lay down light

Lay down     your ignorance     Roll yr wheel once more
Lay down yr empty suffering     Lay down yr Lion’s Roar

October 31, 1975

II

Sunrise Ceremony Verse
Improvised with Australian Aborigine Song-Sticks
at Request of Medicine Man Rolling Thunder November 5, 1975

When Music was needed Music sounded
When a Ceremony was needed a Teacher appeared
When Students were needed Telephones rang.
When Cars were needed Wheels rolled in
When a Place was needed a Mansion appeared
When a Fire was needed Wood appeared
When an Ocean was needed Waters rippled waves
When Shore was needed Shore met Ocean
When Sun was needed the Sun rose east
When People were needed People arrived
When a circle was needed a Circle formed.

Cabin in the Rockies

I
Sitting on a tree stump with half cup of tea,
               sun down behind mountains—
                    Nothing to do.

Not a word! Not a Word!
Flies do all my talking for me—
and the wind says something else.

Fly on my nose,
I’m not the Buddha,
There’s no enlightenment here!

Against red bark trunk
               A fly’s shadow
lights on the shadow of a pine bough.

An hour after dawn
I haven’t thought of Buddha once yet!
—walking back into the retreat house.

II
Walking into King Sooper after Two-week Retreat

A thin redfaced pimpled boy
          stands alone minutes
looking down into the ice cream bin.

Boulder, September 16, 1975

Reading French Poetry

Poems rise in my brain
like Woolworth’s 5 & 10¢ Store perfume
O my love with thin breasts
17 year old boy with smooth ass
O my father with white hands
specks on your feet & foul breath bespeak tumor
O myself with my romance
fading but fat bodies remain
in bed with me warm passionless
unless I exercise myself like a dumbbell
O my Fiftieth year approaching
like Tennessee like Andy a failure, big nothing—
very satisfactory subjects for Poetry.

New York, January 12, 1976

Two Dreams

I
As I passed thru Moscow’s grass lots I heard
a voice, a small green dwarf, leaf-clothed &
thin corn-stalk arms, head capped with green
husk & tassel, walking toward me talking:
“You see these other tassel heads stalking
thru long green grass spears half buried
in empty lots where building-ghosts stand
razed by police state but bursting from ground
Springtime as now seeds grown natural
So I full grown sprite of Friendship salute
you who seek love in Roman Moscow circuses—
Be cheerful our enemy’s enemy is Death
and since Death is We, since all die, all
is not lost but to Death, & what lives eccentric
as yourself & Me, ancient friends, lives
humorous and democratic as your leaves of grass
which die also prophesied but live as you and I.
Bee cheerful, good Sir. Cockhead green am I
an entertainer triumphant in the tiny cliffs
between buildings, in old grasslots of Paterson
where the wrecker’s ball creates a tiny farm
for worms, and bottles glint in new turned earth—
and weeds and we sprout renewing Nature’s
humor where the architectural police are on the nod.
The sun will rise and I’ll accompany your eye
that walks thru Moscow looking for human love.”

March 1, 1976

II     sludge
Dantean, the cliffside whereon I walked
With volumes of Milton & the Tuscan Bard enarmed:
Highway prospecting th’ocean Sludged transparent
lipped to asphalt built by Man under sky.
Far down below the factory I espied, and plunged
full clothed into the Acid Tide, heroic precipitous
Stupidly swam the noxious surface to my goal—
An Oil platform at land’s end, where Fellows watched
my bold approach to the Satanic World Trade Center.

C’mon Jack

Turn me on your knees
Spank me & Fuck me
Hit my ass with your hand
Spank me and Fuck me
Hit my hole with your fingers
Hit my ass with your hand
Spank me and fuck me
Turn me on your knees
Ah Robertson it’s you
Yes hit my ass with your hand
real hard, ass on your knees
sticking up hard harder slap
Spank me and Fuck me
Got a hard on Spank me
When you get a hard on Fuck me.

March 29, 1976

Pussy Blues

You said you got to go home     & feed your pussycat
When I ast you to stay here tonight     Where’s your pussy at?

Keep your pussy here     Try our hot cat food
Yeah lotsa cats around here     & they’s all half nude
Going home alone     do your pussy no good

Hey it’s 4th of July     Say it’s your U.S. birthday
Yeah stay out all night     National Holiday
Tiger on your fence     Don’t let him get away

Pussy pussy come home     I’m gonna feed you fish
Yeah pussy pussy here     come your big red dish
I’ll tickle your belly     All the eats you wish

Hey there pussy     Cantcha catch my mouse
Hey please pussy     Play with my white mouse
You can stay all night     You can clean my house

Boulder, Independence Day 1976, 1 A.M.

Don’t Grow Old

I

Old Poet, Poetry’s final subject glimmers months ahead

Tender mornings, Paterson roofs snowcovered

Vast

Sky over City Hall tower, Eastside Park’s grass terraces & tennis courts beside Passaic River

Parts of ourselves gone, sister Rose’s apartments, brown corridor’d high schools—

Too tired to go out for a walk, too tired to end the War

Too tired to save body

too tired to be heroic

The real close at hand as the stomach

liver pancreas rib

Coughing up gastric saliva

Marriages vanished in a cough

Hard to get up from the easy chair

Hands white feet speckled a blue toe stomach big breasts hanging thin

hair white on the chest

too tired to take off shoes and black sox

Paterson, January 12, 1976

II

He’ll see no more Times Square
honkytonk movie marquees, bus stations at midnight
Nor the orange sun ball
rising thru treetops east toward New York’s skyline
His velvet armchair facing the window will be empty
He won’t see the moon over house roofs
or sky over Paterson’s streets.

New York, February 26, 1976

III
Wasted arms, feeble knees
     80 years old, hair thin and white
          cheek bonier than I’d remembered—
head bowed on his neck, eyes opened
     now and then, he listened—
     I read my father Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality
“… trailing clouds of glory do we come
     from God, who is our home …”
          “That’s beautiful,” he said, “but it’s not true.”

IV
Will that happen to me?
Of course, it’ll happen to thee.

June 1976

V

VI
Near the Scrap Yard my Father’ll be Buried
Near Newark Airport my father’ll be
Under a Winston Cigarette sign buried
On Exit 14 Turnpike NJ South
Through the tollgate Service Road 1 my father buried
Past Merchants Refrigerating concrete on the cattailed marshes
past the Budweiser Anheuser-Busch brick brewery
in B’Nai Israel Cemetery behind a green painted iron fence
where there used to be a paint factory and farms
where Pennick makes chemicals now
under the Penn Central power Station
transformers & wires, at the borderline
between Elizabeth and Newark, next to Aunt Rose
Gaidemack, near Uncle Harry Meltzer
one grave over from Abe’s wife Anna my father’ll be buried.

“Junk Mail”

I received in mail offer beautiful certificate National Conference Synagogue Youth

invites subscriber Monthly Review Independent Socialist Mag

Congressman Koch reports on collapse of our cities

Epilepsy Foundation misdelivered for Mr. Pantonucci light candle understanding 4 million Americans

Dear Mr. Orlovsky put Salvation Army on your Christmas List $50 return enclosed envelope

American Friends Service Committee act now meet urgent human needs hungry families Prisoners

in remote penal institutions Rehabilitation Vietnam Laos Northern Great Plains Indians block land-destruction by energy seeking industries Contact between Israeli Jews & Arabs

Psychoenergetics workshops in Vermont Green Mountain Quarterly’s Imperialist Ideology in Donald Duck with a new bibliography Sri Aurobindo and the Mother protected by Intnl. copyright laws News of Auroville

Dear Friend: we are Michael & Robert Meeropol, sons of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg executed by U.S. Government 22 years ago.

Sue the Government for the Files duplicating fees alone Twenty-five

Thousand Dollars

Christmas Greetings Help Hospitalized Veterans art or craft Kit enthused busily working for days Bob Hope helps.

Fund For Peace if your blood boils Press accounts C.I.A. blackmail assassination a powerful alternative to World Violence Private Citizens acting Global

Gay Peoples Union NYU faces bankruptcy Dance Halloween

Boycott Gallo Grapes lettuce United Farmworkers of America Our struggle is not over make checks payable Si Se Puede Cesar E. Chavez Union Label

Announcing Energy & Evolution Quarterly how to make harps lyres & dulcimers Quantum Theory Tantra & land reform organic gardening

Give Poets & Writers’ CODA to a friend subscribe United Nations Childrens’ Fund severe malnutrition Starvation faces 400 to 500 million children poorer countries. Dwarfism

disease blindness mental retardation stunted growth crop failures drought flood exhausted wheat rice reserves skyrocketing fuel costs fertilizer shortages Desperately need your help.

Racial motives lead to Innocent Marine’s conviction in Georgia murder trial a thick envelope from Southern Poverty Law Center Julian Bond

& subscribe to the William Carlos Williams Newsletter. Penmaen Press: Two fascinating heretofore unpublished letters written in 1956 to Richard Eberhart by Allen Ginsberg …

“You Might Get in Trouble”

Opening a bus window in N.Y.
     with the left hand in front of
     Bellevue you might get a
                    hernia.
Walking across First avenue
     you might stumble in a
                    pothole
& get your head run over by
                    taxicab
Plowing the field by Cherry
     Creek your trailer might
     turn over & fall on your ear
you might get your ear cut off
     arresting a junkie
or having an angry conversation with
     a speedfreak on E. 10 street
or arguing your case before the
     supreme court
someone might shoot you in
     the brain
There’s nothing you can do to
     keep your nose clean
taking baths plunging in the
     ice & snow
you might catch cold, the
     flu Swine epidemic’s
     “in” this year
according to the Authorities.

September 18, 1976

Land O’Lakes, Wisc.

Buddha died and
left behind a
big emptiness.

October 1976

“Drive All Blames into One”

It’s everybody’s fault but me.

I didn’t do it. I didn’t start the universe.

I didn’t steal Dr. Mahler’s tiles from his garage roof for my chicken coop

where I had six baby chicks I paid for so I could attract

my grammar school boyfriends to play with me in my backyard

They stole the tiles I’m going across the street to the candystore

and tell the old uncle behind the glass counter I’m mad at my boyfriends

for stealing that slate I took all the blame—

Last night I dreamt they blamed me again on the streetcorner

They got me bent over with my pants down and spanked my behind I was ashamed

I was red faced my self was naked I got hot I had a hard on.

New York, October 25, 1976

Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin: Vajrayana Seminary

Candle light blue banners incense
aching knee, hungry mouth—
any minute the gong—potatoes and sour cream!

Sunlight on the red zafu,
clank of forks & plates—
I’ll never be enlightened.

*

Did you ever see yourself
a breathing skull
looking out the eyes?

*

Under wooden roof beams
a hundred people
sit
sniffling, coughing, clearing throat
sneezing, sighing
breathing through nose
shifting on pillows in clothes
swallowing saliva,
listening.

November 11, 1976

For Creeley’s Ear

The whole
weight of
everything
too much

my heart in
the subway
pounding
subtly

head ache
from smoking
dizzy
a moment

riding
uptown to see
Karmapa Buddha
tonight.

New York, December 13, 1976

Haunting Poe’s Baltimore

I     POE IN DUST
Baltimore bones groan maliciously under sidewalk
Poe hides his hideous skeleton under church yard
Equinoctial worms peep thru his mummy ear
The slug rides his skull, black hair twisted in roots of threadbare grass
Blind mole at heart, caterpillars shudder in his ribcage,
Intestines wound with garter snakes
midst dry dust, snake eye & gut sifting thru his pelvis
Slimed moss green on his phosphor’d toenails, sole toeing black tombstone—
O prophet Poe well writ! your catacomb cranium chambered
eyeless, secret hid to moonlight ev’n under corpse-rich ground
where tread priest, passerby, and poet
staring white-eyed thru barred spiked gates
at viaducts heavy-bound and manacled upon the city’s heart.

January 10, 1977

II HEARING “ LENORE ” READ ALOUD AT 203 AMITY STREET
The light still gleams reflected from the brazen fire-tongs
The spinet is now silent to the ears of silent throngs
For the Spirit of the Poet, who sang well of brides and ghouls
Still remains to haunt what children will obey his vision’s rules.

They who weep and burn in houses scattered thick on Jersey’s shore
Their eyes have seen his ghostly image, though the Prophet walks no more
Raven bright & cat of Night; and his wines of Death still run
In their veins who haunt his brains, hidden from the human sun.

Reading words aloud from books, till a century has passed
In his house his heirs carouse, till his woes are theirs at last:
So I saw a pale youth trembling, speaking rhymes Poe spoke before,
Till Poe’s light rose on the living, and His fire gleamed on the floor—

The sitting room lost its cold gloom, I saw these generations burn
With the Beauty he abandoned; in new bodies they return:
To inspire future children ’spite his Ravens “Nevermore”
I have writ this antient riddle in Poe’s house in Baltimore.

January 16, 1977

Contest of Bards

I

THE ARGUMENT: Old bard lived in solitary stone house at ocean edge three decades retired from the world, Young poet arrives naked interrupting his studies & announces his own prophetic dreams to replace the old Bard’s boring verities. Young poet had dreamed old poet’s scene & its hidden secret, an Eternal Rune cut in stone at the hearth-front hidden under porphyry bard-throne. Young bard tries to seduce old Boner with his energy & insight, & makes him crawl down on the floor to read the secret riddle Rhyme.

And the youth free stripling bounding along the Hills of Color

And the old man bearded, wrinkled, browed in his black cave

Meet in the broken house of stone, walls graven by Prophet Hands,

& contend for the Mysteries, vanity against vanity, deciphering

Eternal runes of Love, & Silence, & the Monster of Self

Covered with Blood & Lilies, covered with bones and hair and skin:

They glory in Night & Starvation the Fat Bright Cherub of Resurrection,

Bliss & God: Terrible Mental Cherub of Chemistry Imagination & Vanity

Bard after Bard orating and perishing, casting his image behind on men’s brains

thru sounds symboled on the mind’s stone walls reverberating Syllables Visionary

Perfect formed to ’dure Millennia, but Phantom is such Rock,

Phantom as the Cellular Believer in’s own tangible re-creation.

“I hear the Bard’s stone words Build my Immortal Architecture:

This body stone hands and genitals this Heart stone Tenderness

and Delight This head Stone language to Rafter the Stone Bed of Love.

Come lay down on this rock pillow, kid, lay down your tender breast,

Pale face, red hair, soft belly hairy tender foot and Loins

Under the hard immortal blanket, mattress of Rock sheeted with Vocables!

In twenty years I’ll vanish from this shore & Solitary Eternal Cave—

Here I studied & Deciphered the Granite Alphabet surrendered

from Graves from Sands that swirled at the door, from star-fish

spotted boulders in seas’ low tide when full-moon-gleam

Pulls bones of Leviathan & tiny bass-fins tide-pool’d

many in ancient nights.” So one spoke, ocean serpents curl’d around

his whitened beard, eyes wide in horror he be left by the Dark Shore,

to burn his memories in the rocky hearth & keep his cold loins warm

in winter-rain days or in snowy night’s vastness filled

& read me aloud in Bardic Voice, that Voice of Rock you boast so well so many decades,

The hearth seat was moved, the porphyry throne worn smooth by the sea’s muscles

January 17–22, 1977

II

each silver lock of hair, each worried frown wrinkling that skull, each conscious smile

pale ivory with vanity! Re-waken ignorant desires no mortal boy can satisfy?

Y’ever had naked in hot sunshine summer noon ecstatic far from mankind

robin lit from the maple leaf whistling, cat scratched the farmhouse door bulls groaned in barns, the aluminum pail clanked on cement by wooden stools in steaming flop

skulled rafters of the hermitage long-haired with sea moss barnacled at foot, stone girders snailed and starfish stinking, sea sperm rotten in kelp masses at the porch stone. “Your door’s the musty stone door of a tomb, old man, corpses of corrupted loves’re buried under the smooth stone bed we lie on, pitted with yr fearful tears! What animal skins you vulgarize your bed with, boorish stained with creepy-handed dream stuff jacked out of your Impotent loins in Pain—

All but the Last verse I understand, thick rhymed with senses and nonsenses of worst Beauty

Grandfather Clocks bong noon in oriental Carpet living-rooms in the Capital!

or unrhymed Rune, not in this house on America’s Eastern Shore.

Back here in our bodies we may renew these studies & labors

I Lay Love on My Knee

I nurs’d love where he lay
I let love get away
I let love lie low
I let my love go
I let love go along
I knew love was strong
So I let love go stray
I told love go away

I called love come home
my tongue wasn’t dumb
I kissed love on the neck
& told love to come back
I told love come stay
Down by me love lay
I told love lie down
Love made a fine sound

I told love to Work
as musician or clerk
I sent love to the farm
He could do earth no harm
I told love get married
With children be harried
I said love settle down
with the worms in the ground
I told love have pity
Build me a good city

I taught love to sit
to sharpen his wit
I taught love to breathe
mindful of death
I showed love a straight spine
energetic as mine
I told love take it easy
Manners more breezy
Thoughts full of light
make love last all night

I kissed love on the brow
Where he lay like a cow
moaning and pleasured
his happy heart treasured
I kissed love’s own lips
I laid love on his hips
I kissed love on his breast
When he lay down to rest
I kissed love on his thigh
Up rose his cock high

Stool Pigeon Blues

I was born in Wyoming, Cody is my home town
Got myself busted, the sheriff brought me down
The Feds hit my nose, I felt like a dirty Clown

I turned in my sister, just like they asked me to
I turned in my brother, I had to, wouldn’t you?
If they beat me again, I guess I’d turn you in too

Please don’t blame me, they had me for twenty years
An ounce of weed, they planted it in my ears
They found one seed, and watered it with my tears

I got A’s in highschool, smartest boy in class
Got laid at eleven, the sweetest piece of ass
They found us in bed smoking a stick of grass

Girl broke down crying, the Narcs liked her looks in the nude
Asked us for blowjobs, I told them that was too crude
Took us to jail & accused us of being lewd

Ten years for resisting arrest, ten years for a little joint
Ten years kid, beginning to get the point?
Feds want a big bust, let’s hear you sing oink oink!

Who do you know in highschool, how many’s dealing lids?
Who do you smoke with? We want the names of kids.
They’ll bust all our parents, unless Good God forbids!

I’m just a poor stoolie, got busted in Wyoming
From Cody, to Casper, to Riverton I will sing!
From Gillette to Powell a pigeon I’m on the wing.

Governor Governor Get me out of this fix!
President President decriminalize the sticks,
Out here in Wyoming, Sheriffs play dirty tricks.

Casper, April 16, 1977

Punk Rock Your My Big Crybaby

I’ll tell my deaf mother on you! Fall on the floor
and eat your grandmother’s diapers! Drums,
Whatta lotta Noise you want a Revolution?
Wanna Apocalypse? Blow up in Dynamite Sound?
I can’t get excited, Louder! Viciouser!
Fuck me in the ass! Suck me! Come in my ears!
I want those pink Abdominal bellybuttons!
Promise you’ll murder me in the gutter with Orgasms!
I’ll buy a ticket to your nightclub, I wanna get busted!
50 years old I wanna Go! with whips & chains & leather!
Spank me! Kiss me in the eye! Suck me all over
from Mabuhay Gardens to CBGB’s coast to coast
Skull to toe Gimme yr electric guitar naked,
Punk President, eat up the FBI w/ yr big mouth.

Mabuhay Gardens, May 1977

Love Replied

Love came up to me
& got down on his knee
& said I am here to serve
you what you deserve
All that you wish
as on a gold dish
eyes tongue and heart
your most private part.

Why do you eat
my behind & my feet
Why do you kiss
my belly like this
Why do you go down
& suck my cock crown
when I bare you the best
that is inside my breast

I lay there reproved
aching my prick moved
But Love kissed my ear
& said nothing to fear
Put your head on my breast
There let your skull rest
Yes hug my breast, this
is my heart you can kiss

Then Love put his face
in my tenderest place
where throbbed my breast sweet
with red hot heart’s heat
There, love is our bed
There, love lay your head
There you’ll never regret
all the love you can get.

From the hair to the toes
neck & knees in repose
Take the heart that I give
Give heart that you live
Forget my sweet cock
my buttock like a rock
Come up from my thighs
Hear my heart’s own straight sighs