Porch Scribbles

Balmy, hotter outside than in the living room—
          Wind rustles the rattlesnake reeds.
Didja see the Perseus star shower last night?

*   *   *

Bright on Flatirons, sunshine gleams
          on clouds, on brown shake shingles,
                    tree limbs rock,
So bright on the car roof, I gotta sleep—

*   *   *

I want that brick house on Mapleton,
it’s for sale “Moore Real Estate”—
               But price too high,
I’m too drowsy to go to the telephone.

*   *   *

Clouds float up from the end of the world—
          Have we enough room for population explosion?
Call up Gary, let’s find out what he thinks.

July 11, 1980

That tree stands higher than a house
          like a dog with hair drooping over its mouth—
green long beanpods hang from its branches

*   *   *

It’s a whale that big gray-bottom cloud floating
over the Flatirons, it’s a mushroom, a shipcastle, a
               mountain with sunshine and Coasts—
                                   It’s a pile of mist.

*   *   *

Look up, clouds in the sky,
          suddenly their shadows fall where Mrs. Hurst
               on Mapleton Street sprays her front lawn.

*   *   *

Midsummer, green leaves thick on maples
          The front yard, white flowers—
               Cause it’s just so beautiful now!
How sad, to be alive watching the season at its height—

*   *   *

          Spray the lawn, it’s too hot—
Street children call, car radios play muted disco
               Gray clouds umbrella brilliant sun
I used to be young once, bewildered
                         like that barechested little
                              girl across the street.

Industrial Waves

The New Right’s a creepy pre-Fascist fad
Salute the flag & call on Mom & Dad
Shit on the niggers it’s their fault they were slaves
In a free market you can get rich filling graves.

Freedom for the rich to suck off the Work of the Poor
Freedom for Monopoly to corner the market in horse manure
Freedom for the secret police and guys with guns
Freedom for bully buys! Death to the Radical Nuns!

Freedom to buy Judges! Freedom for organized crime!
Freedom for the Military! “I got mine.”
Hundred millions free to starve, isn’t that great?
Freedom for the Neutron bomb to radiate!

Freedom for War! Fight for Peace! Whoopee!
“Government off our backs”—except the Military!
Freedom for Narcs to put junkies in jail!
Freedom to punish sick addicts, all hail!

Freedom to bust you for grass if you please
Freedom to beat you up when you’re down on your knees
Freedom for Capital Punishment, without fail!
Freedom to wiretap your phone & open up your mail.

Freedom for Cosa Nostra’s pornography
Freedom to ban your verse in the high school library
Freedom to stop deaf widows’ food stamps
Freedom to draft-register everyone wearing pants.

Free computerized National Police!
Everybody got identity cards? At Ease!
Freedom for Big Business to eat up the sea
Freedom for Exxon to examine your pee!

Freedom of the air for William Buckley
Freedom for Mobil to buy up TV
Freedom to influence Network News
Freedom for money to make you wear shoes.

Freedom to assemble & get gassed or shot
Freedom to not be allowed to smoke pot
Freedom to drink till you got the DT’s
Freedom to never take LSD.

Freedom to commit a little perjury—
If your name is Richard Helms, you pay a little fee
Then get yourself appointed Ambassador to Iran
They keep calling you Ambassador as long as they can.

Those Two

That tree said
     I don’t like that white car under me,
                         it smells gasoline
That other tree next to it said
          O you’re always complaining
                    you’re a neurotic
               you can see by the way you’re bent over.

July 6, 1981, 8 P.M.

Homage Vajracarya

Now that Samurai bow & arrow, Sumi brush, teacup
& Emperor’s fan are balanced in the hand
—What about a glass of water?
Holding my cock to pee, the Atlantic gushes out.
Sitting to eat, the Sun & the Moon fill my plate.

July 8, 1981

Why I Meditate

I sit because the Dadaists screamed on Mirror Street

I sit because the Surrealists ate angry pillows

I sit because the Imagists breathed calmly in Rutherford and Manhattan

I sit because 2400 years

I sit in America because Buddha saw a Corpse in Lumbini

I sit because the Yippies whooped up Chicago’s teargas skies once

I sit because No because

I sit because I was unable to trace the Unborn back to the womb

I sit because it’s easy

I sit because I get angry if I don’t

I sit because they told me to

I sit because I read about it in the Funny Papers

I sit because I had a vision also dropped LSD

I sit because I don’t know what else to do like Peter Orlovsky

I sit because after Lunacharsky got fired & Stalin gave Zhdanov a special tennis court I became a rootless cosmopolitan

I sit inside the shell of the old Me

I sit for world revolution

July 19, 1981

Love Comes

I lay down to rest
weary at best
of party life
& dancing nights
Alone, Prepared
all I dared
bed & oil
bath, small toil
to clean my feet
place my slippers neat.

Alone, despair—
lighthearted, bare-
bottom trudged about,
listening the shout
of students down below
rock rolling fast and slow
shaking ash for show,
or love, or joy
hairless girl and boy
goldenhaired goy

The door creaked loud
far from the crowd
Upstairs he trod
Eros or some god
come to visit,
Washed in the bath
calm as death
patient took a shit
approached me clean
naked serene

I sat on his thighs
looked in his eyes
I touched his hair
Bare body there
head to foot
big man root
I kissed his chest
Came down from above
I took in his rod
he pushed and shoved
That felt best

My breast relaxed
my belly a sack
my sphincter loosed
to his hard deep thrust
I clenched my gut tight
in full moon light
thru curtained window
for an hour or so
thin clouds in the sky
I watched pass by
sigh after sigh

I’d waited a week
the promise he’d keep
if I trusted the truth
of his love in his youth
and I do love him—
tall body, pale skin
Hot heart within
open blue eyes—
a hard cock never lies.

Old Love Story

Some think the love of boys is wicked in the world, forlorn,
Character corrupting, worthy mankind’s scorn
Or eyes that weep and breasts that ache for lovely youth
Have no mouth to speak for mankind’s general truth
Nor hands to work manhood’s fullest delight
Nor hearts to make old women smile day and night
Nor arms to warm young girls to dream of love
Nor thighs to satisfy thighs, nor breath men can approve—
Yet think back to the time our epic world was new
When Gilgamesh followed the shade of his friend Enkidu
Into Limbo’s dust to talk love man to man
So younger David enamored of young Jonathan
Wrote songs that women and men still chant for calm
Century after century under evergreen or palm
A love writ so sacred on our Bible leaf
That heart-fire warms cold millennial grief.
Same time Akilleos won the war at Troy
Grieving Patroklos’ body, his dead warrior boy
(One nation won the world by reading Greek for this
And fell when Wilde was gaoled for his Bellboy’s kiss)
Marvelous Zeus himself took lightning eagle shape
Down-cheeked Ganymede enjoyed God’s thick-winged rape
And lived a youth forever, forever as can be,
Serving his nectar to the bearded deity
The whole world knew the story, the world laughed in awe
That such Love could be the Thunder of immortal Law.
When Socrates climbed his ladder of love’s degrees
He put his foot in silence on rough Alcibiades
Wise men still read Plato, whoever they are,
Plato whose love-lad Aster was his morning star
Plato whose love-lad was in death his star of Night
Which Shelley once witnessed as Eternal Light.
Catullus and tough Horace were slaves to glad young men
Loved them cursed them, always fell in love again
Caesar conquered the world, top Emperor Power
Lay soft on the breast of his soldier of the hour
Even Jesus Christ loved his young John most
Later he showed him the whole Heavenly Host
Old Rome approved a beautiful bodied youth
Antinöus Hadrian worshipped with Imperial Truth
Told in the calm gaze of his hundred stone
Statues standing figleafed in the Vatican.
Michelangelo lifted his young hand to smooth
The belly of his Bacchus a sixteen-year youth
Whose prick stands up he’s drunk, his eyes gaze side-
Ways to his right hand held up shoulder high
Waving a cup of grape, smart kid, his nose is sharp,
His lips are new, slightly opened as if part-
Ed to take a sip of purple nakedness,
Taste Michelangelo’s mortal-bearded kiss,
Or if a hair-hooved horny Satyr happens to pass
Fall to the ground on his strong little marble ass.
Michelangelo loved him! What young stud
Stood without trousers or shirt, maybe even did
What the creator wanted him to in bed
Lay still with the sculptor’s hand cupped on his head
Feeling up his muscles, feeling down his bones
Palm down his back and thighs, touching his soft stones—
What kind of men were the Slaves he tied to his bed?
And who stood still for David naked foot to head?
But men love the muscles of David’s abdomen
And come with their women to see him again and again.

October 26, 1981

Airplane Blues

I drove out to the airport
                         on a blue sunny day
Smog brown over Denver
                         Horizon dung gray
Look down on Missouri
                         vast river bend south
Dakota sky brilliant
                         Cigarette in my mouth

I’ve had many lovers
                         over half century
I have a new boyfriend
                         Nineteen years, he loves me
But I can’t get it up
                         too timid and shy
Growing old in my heaven
                         Singing blues in the sky

Nothing here to complain of
                         White clouds in the sun
Peace in my heart
                         Empty sky Everyone
But earth I look down on
                         Turns round misery
Green dollars fat
                         with the war industry

Mankind’s great delusions
                         Scrape sky with red rage
Build bombs out of Atoms
                         to blast out the words on this page
Majestical jailhouse
                         our Joy’s in the Cage
Hearts full of hatred
                         will outlast my old age

*   *   *

My mother has perished
                         my father’s long dead
I have a sweet brother
                         healed the pain in his head
I’m going to the Apple
                         to eat with my friends
While the radio chatters
                         what the President intends

I’m alone in the sky
                         where there’s nothing to lose
The Sun’s not eternal
                         That’s why there’s the blues
Majestical jailhouse
                         our Joy’s in the Cage
Hearts full of hatred
                         will outlast my old age

October 30, 1981

Do the Meditation Rock^*

If you want to learn
I’ll tell you now
I’ll tell you how
it’s just that great
If you are an old
or a lama who lives
The first thing you do
is keep your spine
Sit yourself down
or sit in a chair
how to meditate
’cause it’s never too late
’cause I can’t wait
that it’s never too late
fraud like me
in Eternity
when you meditate
your backbone straight
on a pillow on the ground
if the ground isn’t there

Do the meditation          Do the meditation

     Learn a little Patience and Generosity

Follow your breath out
and sit there steady
Follow your breath right
follow it out
Follow your breath
to the thought of yr death
Follow your breath
whatever you think
open your eyes
& sit there wise
outta your nose
as far as it goes
but don’t hang on
in old Saigon
when thought forms rise
it’s a big surprise

Do the meditation          Do the meditation

Learn a little Patience and Generosity

Generosity     Generosity     Generosity & Generosity

All you got to do
you’re sitting meditating
when thoughts catch up
forget what you thought
Laurel Hardy Uncle Don
you don’t have to drop
If you see a vision come
play it dumb
if you want a holocaust
it just went past
is to imitate
and you’re never too late
but your breath goes on
about Uncle Don
Charlie Chaplin Uncle Don
your nuclear bomb
say Hello Goodbye
with an empty eye
you can recall your mind
with the Western wind

Do the meditation          Do the meditation

Learn a little Patience          & Generosity

If you see Apocalypse
or a flying saucer
If you feel a little bliss
give your wife a kiss
If you can’t think straight
it’s never too late
Do the meditation
so your body & mind
in a long red car
sit where you are
don’t worry about that
when your tire goes flat
& you don’t know who to call
to do nothing at all
follow your breath
get together for a rest

THE LITTLE FISH DEVOURS THE BIG FISH

The Little Fish Devours the Big Fish

When the troops
get their poop
at Fort Bragg
how to frag
Sandinistas
Leftist Nicas
or go bomb
Guatemalan
Indians
Make a tomb
for men & boys
ending joys
of villages
and pillage
or burn down
to the ground
little huts
where pigs rut
This costs much
tax money as such
for an error
of red terror

United States
you’re the greatest
Superdick
your big stick
& big mouth
North & South
causes fear—
Armies near
and armies far
or army talk
wherever you are
makes folks here
think you’re queer
Big gun boats
that you float,
big rumors
that you dote
on will be quoted
in Managua
Santiago
Buenos Aires
& Havana
as more dread
threat of war
and Central
America will
Mobilize
militarize
and devise
a defense,
it’s common sense.
Then to complain
that their plan
to fight back
is a pain in the neck
of the Pentagon—
Washington
is crazy, Man.

Happening Now?

Happening now? End of Earth? Apocalypse days?
President says “Armageddon!” $254 Billion Military Budget!
The 5 A.M. subway train leaves Times Square
Crowded with murderers & corpses sitting in dress suits,
Earphones listening to mechanical disco, infinite
Deaf universe of Walkman Happening now
While I drink Perrier at parties in Bel Air
Neutron bomb Nerve Bacteria gas, fruit fly recombinant
Germ plasm, Stratospheric X-ray laser
Anti-rocket beams, MX Cruise Stealth & Pershing missiles
In dream ten years ago I stood on a South Texas crossroad
Walked out alone from what City I couldn’t remember
Half the sky was covered with ink-black cloud
Tanks and bombers moved toward the distant horizon

February 7, 1982

A Public Poetry

The fact is, the Russians are sissies
And Chinese big yellow sissies too
Americans by their nature sissies
Ran away to the New World & beat up Indians,
Now we’re gonna let Peabody Coal take their Four Corners away!
So sissy we exploded Atom Bombs on Japs!

I myself a famous sissy, it takes one to know one

and know State Secretary XYZ a prissy sissy

Gave his nickels to Indian killer Juntas in Guatemala

Too freaked out to look El Salvador Deathsquads in the eye

Yelling tiny Nicaragua’s a big threat to undernourished Mexico!

President ABC’s the biggest sissy

Hollywood sissy

Bechtel Corporation sissy

Such a sissy he gave 200 Billion Dollars to Pentagon Bullies

frightened they’ll beat him up if he don’t let the Generals grab all his money

And the American public’s sissy too

Scared if they don’t give everything in their pockets to Defense Department

the muscle men at the Pentagon and tough guys at CIA’ll

beat up Congress and Supreme Court

and take over the whole Western Block.

April 6, 1982, 2:00 P.M.

“What You Up To?”

“Oh just hanging around
     picking my nose …”
I replied, embarrassed
     in Naropa’s corridor,
the Sanskrit professor’d saluted me
as Americans are wont to do—
What must he think my genius,
     a large red blob on my
     index finger tip—
But I suffer from Bell’s palsy
my lower eyelid slightly paralyzed
no longer conducts tears thru
     my nostril
thus my nose corridors dry up
     & crack, for five years
whenever I lift the handkerchief
     from my face
a spot of red stains the pure
     cotton & shames me.
When I walk with bent spine & cane
     will my nose be caked with
blood black & ulcerous? tears
     running down my cheeks
a bony pinkie picking at the
     scarlet scab that got thick
overnight, I forgot to grease my
     wrinkled snout the nite
     of my eightieth birthday

and dreamed all the red
     mountain of mucus accumulated
     round me
Himalaya of suffering gelatinous
     slop my lifetime since 1976
when the right side my face
     drooped dead muscles
’cause an O.D. on Doctor’s Antibiotic
     inflamed my seventh cranial nerve inside
     its cheekbone
& left me dry-nosed with crooked
     smile & sneaky finger
Probing the irritation in the
     middle of my face
walking daydreaming in the school hall—
That White boy in a two-piece suit
     Hotel Astor bar on Times Square
I took home one night in 1946
     he fucked me naked in the ass
till I smelled brown excrement
     staining his cock
& tried to get up from bed to go to the
     toilet a minute
but he held me down & kept pumping
     at me, serious & said
“No I don’t want to stop I like it dirty
     like this.”

Maturity

Young I drank beer & vomited green bile
Older drank wine vomited blood red
Now I vomit air

July 1982

“Throw Out the Yellow Journalists of Bad Grammar & Terrible Manner”

who report Ten Commandments & Golden Rule forgetting Thou shalt not bear false witness Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you

and say the Man got crucified for insulting the Sanhedrin at a Victory Dance in the bombed out madhouse in Beirut

Out! Out! The Mad Correspondent who headlined “Madman or Messiah? He Died of Bad Pork” the night of Tathagata’s Parinirvana

or the snide reporter with yellow teeth who asked the Big Question, “Kerouac couldn’t write, so what’d he do it for, money?”

or the Time stringer who asks “You could say it was a nostalgia Trip, wouldn’t you?”

as you fly off to the moon on your translucent sexual wings forever

and the wire-service fellow ex-Harvard, “This business about Secret Police, why would you care, successful Abstract Expressionist painter, got a grudge to work out on your parents?”

Out! Out! into the Buddhafields, among stars to wander forever, weightless without a headline, without thought, without newspapers to read by the light of the Galaxies.

August 10, 1982

GOING TO THE WORLD OF THE DEAD

Going to the World of the Dead

Going to the World of the Dead
Stalin & Hitler in Bed
Gone inside of your head
Anybody got any bread?
FBI papers to shred?
Eisenhower’s ghost on a sled
Going to the world of the dead
Everybody gives you good head

Millionaires of Detroit
Millionaires of Chicago
Millionaires of New York
Millionaires of Hollywood
Let go of your money Ho Ho Ho
Let go your Big Poetry Let go Let go

Let go of your cars  Ho Ho Ho
Let go your Cocaine  Ho Ho Ho
Let go your meat Let go Let go
Let go Movie Picture Ho Ho Ho
Let go your Diamonds  Ho Ho Ho
Let go your Dollars Let go yr Gold

Let go your Houses Your Bodies Let go
Let go your Souls  Ho Ho Ho
Let go God  Buddha Let go
Let go Allah  Let go Let go
Let go your Armies  Ho Ho Ho
Let go your war  Ho Ho Ho

Let go your Holy  Land Let go
Let go Palestine  P.L.O.
Jews Let go Let go Let go
Let go Israel  Ho Ho Ho
Let go Apocalypse Let go Let go
Let go Yr Bomb  Ho Ho Ho

Irritable Vegetable

Don’t send me letters  Don’t send me poems
Too busy sick to write poetry  Sky’s covered with gray clouds
Perfect for photography
I have brain metal fatigue  Knee jerk aesthetic tears
So you got a junk habit
So you need a recommendation to Purgatory U.
So you’re working with Fort Collins’ Nuclear Freeze Campaign
So you got hi blood pressure  Your big toe hurts
Someday you’ll die
So you sing Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
          Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
So you work on the top floor of the Empire State Building
You’re a jerk
You’re a hypocrite who eats hot dogs.

October 28, 1982

Thoughts Sitting Breathing II

When I sat in my bedroom for devotions, meditations & prayers

my Gomden on a sheepskin rug beside the mirrored closet,

white curtains morning sunlit, Friday Rocky Mountain News “Market Retreats in Busiest Day”

lying on the table by Nuclear Nightmare issue of Newsweek,

Katherine Mansfield’s thick bio & Addington Symonds’ The Greek Poets

lifting a white lamp above my headboard pillow illuminating Living Country Blues’ small print 1 A.M. last night,

with B complex bottled, green mint massage oil, High Blood Pressure nightly Clonadine Hydrochloric pills,

athlete’s foot Tolnaftate cream, newsclip scissors and a rusty shoe-last bookweight standing on xeroxed Flying Saucer papers,

new ballpoint pens, watch, wallet, loose coins keys Swiss army knife

toothpicks, pencil sharpener & filefolder of Buddhist Analytic Psyche papers

scattered random across this bedstead desk—

As I breathed between white walls, Front Range cliffs resting in the sky outside south windows

I remembered last night’s television suitcoat tie debate, the neat Jewish right wing student outwitted a nervous Dartmouth pimply liberal editor

knowing that boy who swears to “get the Government off our backs” would give my tax money to Army brass bands FBI rather than St. Mark’s Poetry Project—

He can’t read verse with any sense of humor sharp eyed

but then some poets can’t either, did Ed Dorn find me fatuous, can I breathe in hot black anger & breathe out white cool bliss?

Doomed guilty layman all my life! these pills causing impotency?

Could I move bookcases & clothes out of my bedroom, 8 foot desk file cabinets & typewriter

to the small apartment next door N.Y., would that end my hideous Public Karma,

Telephones tingling down my spine, pederast paranoid hypnotic burnt out teenage fruitcake poets

banging the door for protection from Brain Damaged Electric Guitar Police in New Wave Blue Vibration Uniforms?

Be that as it may as blue empty Buddha floats through blue bodied sky,

should I settle down & practice meditation, care for my nervous Self, do nothing,

arrange paper manuscripts, die in Lower East Side peace instead of heart attack in Ethiopia,

What the Sea Throws Up at Vlissingen

Plastic & cellophane, milk cartons & yogurt containers, blue & orange shopping bag nets

Clementine peels, paper sacks, feathers & kelp, bricks & sticks,

succulent green leaves & pine tips, waterbottles, plywood and tobacco pouches

Coffee jartops, milkbottle caps, rice bags, blue rope, an old brown shoe, an onion skin

Concrete chunks white pebbled, sea biscuits, detergent squeezers, bark and boards, a whisk-brush, a box top

Formula A Dismantling Spray-can, a whole small brown onion, a yellow cup

A boy with two canes walking the shore, a dead gull, a blue running shoe,

a shopping bag handle, lemon half, celery bunch, a cloth net—

Cork bottletop, grapefruit, rubber glove, wet firework tubes,

masses of iron-brown-tinted seaweed along the high water mark near the sea wall,

a plastic car fender, green helmet broken in half, giant hemp rope knot, tree trunk stripped of bark,

a wooden stake, a bucket, myriad plastic bottles, pasta Zara pack,

a long gray plastic oildrum, bandage roll, glass bottle, tin can, Christmas pine tree

a rusty iron pipe, me and my peepee.

January 3, 1983

I Am Not

I’m not a lesbian screaming in the basement strapped to a leather spiderweb

I’m not a Rockefeller heart attacked in the paramour bed with pants off

I’m not a radical Stalinist intellectual fairy

not an antisemitic Rabbi with black hat white beard & dirty fingernails

not the San Francisco jail cell poet beaten by minions of yellow police New Year’s eve

not Gregory Corso Orpheus Maudit of these States

nor yet a schoolteacher with marvelous salary

I’m not anyone I know

in fact I’m only here for 80 years

St. Clement’s Church, March 7, 1983

I’m a Prisoner of Allen Ginsberg

Who is this Slave Master makes
     me answer letters in his name
Write poetry year after year, keep up
     appearances
This egotist whose file cabinets
     leave no room for more
     pictures of Me?
How escape his clutches, his public sound,
     bank accounts, Master Charge
     interest
Who’s this politician hypnotized my life
     with his favors
Petty friends & covert Nemesis, dead heroes and
     living ghosts hanging around
waiting Genius handout?
Why’s this guy oblige me to sit
     meditating,
shine rocknroll Moon on Midwest Collegetown
     stages blind in overhead
     spotlights
bawling out of tune into giant microphones
makes me go down suck teenage boys
I declare a new life, how can I pay all
     his debts
next month’s rent on his body,
     bald & panicky, with Pyronie’s disease
Cartilage stuff grown an inch inside
     his cock root,
non-malignant.

Karme-Choling, April 4, 1983, 12:15 A.M.

221 Syllables at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center

Headless husk legs wrapped round a grass spear, an old bee trembles in sunlight.

Since yesterday noon two Brown-eyed Susans stand before the outhouse door.

Tail turned to red sunset high on a spruce crown one lone chickadee tweets.

Moonless thunder—yellow dandelions flash in fields of rainy grass.

Mad at Oryoki in the shrine-room—Thistles blossomed late afternoon.

Put on my shirt and took it off in the sun walking the path to lunch.

A dandelion seed floats above the marsh grass with the mosquitos.

Empty clouds drift above me, birds chirp, a plane roar falls down through blue sky.

Electric noon—pine bough cicadas buzz outside the machineshop door.

At 4 A.M. the two middleaged men sleeping together hold hands.

In the half-light of dawn a few birds warble under the Pleiades.

Sky reddens behind fir trees as larks twitter and sparrows cheep cheep cheep.

July 1983

Caught shoplifting ran out the department store at sunrise and woke up.

August 1983

Fighting Phantoms Fighting Phantoms

Fighting phantoms we have car wrecks on Hollywood Freeway

Fighting phantoms th’Egyptians mummified Pharaohs & rich businessmen

Fighting phantoms a young Scotsman wore tennis shoes on the battleship deck

Fighting phantoms William S. Burroughs wrote umpteen novels

Fighting giant phantoms David picked up his sling

Fighting phantoms Chögyam Trungpa Vidyadara founded Shambhala Kingdom

Fighting phantoms pay federal taxes few write tax refusal forms

Fighting phantoms a Son of God ascended his wooden cross

Fighting summer phantoms muscular young musicians jumped up screaming in the twilit movie theater

Fighting phantoms Siddhartha meditated under a Bo tree

Fighting phantoms mysticism entered into the Catholic Church of Hollywood

Fighting phantoms a hundred thousand kids ordered purple Mohawks

Fighting phantoms various fairies chased adolescent athletes through steam bath locker rooms

Fighting phantoms the ruling class blew up the military budget, 244 Billion dollars 1985—of the tax pie 63% if past military debt interest & pensions’re added in

Fighting phantoms Ronald Reagan sent cocaine armadas to Central America

Fighting phantoms poets who smoked cigarettes denounced cigarettes—

Fighting phantoms New York Times printed thousands of editorial pages

Fighting phantoms Adolf Hitler shot more Methamphetamine & chewed the Bunker rug

Fighting phantoms thousands of poets become rather good at acid satire

Fighting phantoms Jimmy Dean stepped on the gas, Orson Welles ordered another cheesecake

Fighting phantoms Ernest Hemingway shotgunned his brain

Fighting phantoms Ezra Pound hated some Jews some hated Pound

Fighting phantoms Truman dropped two Atom Bombs

Fighting phantoms Einstein invented the theory of relativity

Mid-August 1983

Arguments

I’m sick of arguments
“You threw the butter in the pan”
“I did not you let it melt on the stove”
“You invaded Turkey and killed all the Armenians!”
“I did not! You invaded China got them addicted to Opium!”
“You built a bigger H Bomb than I did”
“You used poison gas in Indochina”
“Your agent orange defoliated ¼ the landmass It isn’t fair”
“You sprayed Paraquat”
“You smoke pot”
“You’re under arrest”
“I declare war!”
Why don’t we turn off the loudspeakers?

September 5, 1983

Sunday Prayer

An itch in the auditory canal scratches for years, use unguent,
Back pain a little, turn my head neck hurts
Balding long ago, gray whiskery hair inside ears
Eyes closed lying in bed, smart on my tongue, delicate
raw gums sore round some tooth roots—
From nineteenth year College chronic active Hepatitis
affects my kidney stones & high-blood pressure
Right cheek paralyzed slightly, eye squints tired,
lethargy dumps, no one’s abdomen to kiss,
cock skewed and lumpy erection aches—
Why show myself these sicknesses? Show anyone?
Wisdom & senescence, sickness and Death come
legended from Buddha to Kerouac—Myself
suddenly older—I made a mistake long ago.

September 25, 1983

Brown Rice Quatrains

Those high lunches needn’t matter
If you’re of businessman’s age
Anyway he enjoyed creating food
drifting across the Fragrant Nation

Who was it that began mouth talk
Gave the citizens thoughtful Saliva
Nature boy came close to Government
but secret police maintained ham & eggs

What tragedy for multiple Chickens
Think how pigs dream butcher night!
Sheep squawked nightmare, goat
fish sent regrets from meadow and sea

If he only could’ve made new Congress
We wouldn’t breathe so much sulfur smog
Sugar dances at the movies, coffee tells you on TV
and Sodium Nitrate & Nicotine Cholesterol

have nothing to do with Foreign policy.
Nature boy drifts into Central American oblivion
with Seminole Patchwork and Albert Einstein,
nobody thought heat rays would end the world.

September 25, 1983

They’re All Phantoms of My Imagining

I needed a young musician take off his pants sit down on the bed and sing me the blues

I needed a teacher could nail me to the Unborn

needed a stepmother’d accomplish my natural mother’s tears

a scared friend of fame wearing locks and T’fillin by the Wall of Tears

I needed a brother was gentle, suffered to protect me from anger

needed a nephew lost, left his rice in the refrigerator with a cold spoon

Comrade farmer cook with me & study Banjo Dharma

Needed Presidents mad so I could write the Nation sane

I needed a father a poet would die

Needed the great companion dark eyes wearied brow tender heart in the grave

needed an intelligent junkie rebuke my shallow thought with dirty wit

an old girlfriend take my picture, give me a bed—

A college to be kicked out Columbia

scandal jail the clang of Iron madhouse to wake my 22’d year

Invented all these companions, wept & prayed them into flesh

needed these Creatures to be Allen Ginsberg this my self

crying the world awake mid oceans of suffering blood

needed to be the liar of Existence in America

Manslaughter showed me the True Falsehood of Law

Needed a Buddha enlightened I be enlightened

a bed to sleep in, a grave to cover my ashes.

October 1, 1983

White Shroud

I found myself again in the Great Eastern Metropolis,
wandering under Elevated Transport’s iron struts—
many-windowed apartments walled the crowded Bronx road-way
under old theater roofs, masses of poor women shopping
in black shawls past candy store news stands, children skipped beside
grandfathers bent tottering on their canes. I’d descended
to this same street from blackened subways Sundays long ago,
tea and lox with my aunt and dentist cousin when I was ten.
The living pacifist David Dellinger walked at my right side,
he’d driven from Vermont to visit Catholic Worker
Tivoli Farm, we rode up North Manhattan in his car,
relieved the U.S. wars were over in the newspaper,
Television’s frenzied dance of dots & shadows calmed—Now
older than our shouts and banners, we explored brick avenues
we lived in to find new residences, rent loft offices
or roomy apartments, retire our eyes & ears & thoughts.
Surprised, I passed the open Chamber where my Russian Jewish
Grandmother lay in her bed and sighed eating a little Chicken
soup or borscht, potato latkes, crumbs on her blankets, talking
Yiddish, complaining solitude abandoned in Old Folks House.
I realized I could find a place to sleep in the neighborhood, what
relief, the family together again, first time in decades!—
Now vigorous Middle aged I climbed hillside streets in West Bronx
looking for my own hot-water furnished flat to settle in,
close to visit my grandmother, read Sunday newspapers
in vast glassy Cafeterias, smoke over pencils & paper,
poetry desk, happy with books father’d left in the attic,
peaceful encyclopedia and a radio in the kitchen.
An old black janitor swept the gutter, street dogs sniffed red hydrants,
nurses pushed baby carriages past silent house fronts.
Anxious I be settled with money in my own place before
nightfall, I wandered tenement embankments overlooking
the pillared subway trestles by the bridge crossing Bronx River.
How like Paris or Budapest suburbs, far from Centrum
Left Bank junky doorstep tragedy intellectual fights
in restaurant bars, where a spry old lady carried her
Century Universal View camera to record Works
Progress Administration newspaper metropolis
double-decker buses in September sun near Broadway El,
skyscraper roofs upreared ten thousand office windows shining
electric-lit above tiny taxis street lamp’d in Mid-town
avenues’ late-afternoon darkness the day before Christmas,
Herald Square crowds thronged past traffic lights July noon to lunch
Shop under Macy’s department store awnings for dry goods
pause with satchels at Frankfurter counters wearing stylish straw
hats of the decade, mankind thriving in their solitudes in shoes.
But I’d strayed too long amused in the picture cavalcade,
Where was I living? I remembered looking for a house
& eating in apartment kitchens, bookshelf decades ago, Aunt
Rose’s illness, an appendix operation, teeth braces,
one afternoon fitting eyeglasses first time, combing wet hair
back on my skull, young awkward looking in the high school mirror
photograph. The Dead look for a home, but here I was still alive.
     I walked past a niche between buildings with tin canopy
shelter from cold rain warmed by hot exhaust from subway gratings,
beneath which engines throbbed with pleasant quiet drone.
A shopping-bag lady lived in the side alley on a mattress,
her wooden bed above the pavement, many blankets and sheets,
Pots, pans, and plates beside her, fan, electric stove by the wall.
She looked desolate, white haired, but strong enough to cook and stare.
Passersby ignored her buildingside hovel many years,
a few businessmen stopped to speak, or give her bread or yogurt.
Sometimes she disappeared into state hospital back wards,
but now’d returned to her homely alleyway, sharp eyed, old
Cranky hair, half paralyzed, complaining angry as I passed.
I was horrified a little, who’d take care of such a woman,
familiar, half-neglected on her street except she’d weathered
many snows stubborn alone in her motheaten rabbit-fur hat.
She had tooth troubles, teeth too old, ground down like horse molars—
she opened her mouth to display her gorge—how can she live
with that, how eat I thought, mushroom-like gray-white horseshoe of
incisors she chomped with, hard flat flowers ranged around her gums.
Then I recognized she was my mother, Naomi, habiting
this old city-edge corner, older than I knew her before
her life diappeared. What are you doing here? I asked, amazed
she recognized me still, astounded to see her sitting up
on her own, chin raised to greet me mocking “I’m living alone,
you all abandoned me, I’m a great woman, I came here
by myself, I wanted to live, now I’m too old to take care
of myself, I don’t care, what are you doing here?” I
was looking for a house, I thought, she has one, in poor
Bronx, needs someone to help her shop and cook, needs her children now,
I’m her younger son, walked past her alleyway by accident,
but here she is survived, sleeping at night awake on that
wooden platform. Has she an extra room? I noticed her cave
adjoined an apartment door, unpainted basement storeroom
facing her shelter in the building side. I could live here,
worst comes to worst, best place I’ll find, near my mother in
our mortal life. My years of haunting continental city streets,
apartment dreams, old rooms I used to live in, still paid rent for,
key didn’t work, locks changed, immigrant families occupied
my familiar hallway lodgings—I’d wandered downhill homeless
avenues, money lost, or’d come back to the flat—But couldn’t
recognize my house in London, Paris, Bronx, by Columbia
library, downtown 8th Avenue near Chelsea Subway—
Those years unsettled—were over now, here I could live
forever, here have a home, with Naomi, at long last,
at long long last, my search was ended in this pleasant way,
time to care for her before death, long way to go yet,
lots of trouble her cantankerous habits, shameful blankets
near the street, tooth pots, dirty pans, half paralyzed irritable,
she needed my middle aged strength and worldly money knowledge,
housekeeping art. I can cook and write books for a living,
she’ll not have to beg her medicine food, a new set of teeth
for company, won’t yell at the world, I can afford a telephone,
after twenty-five years we could call up Aunt Edie in California,
I’ll have a place to stay. “Best of all,” I told Naomi
“Now don’t get mad, you realize your old enemy Grandma’s
still alive! She lives a couple blocks down hill, I just saw her,
like you!” My breast rejoiced, all my troubles over, she was
content, too old to care or yell her grudge, only complaining
her bad teeth. What long-sought peace!
                         Then glad of life I woke
in Boulder before dawn, my second story bedroom windows
Bluff Street facing East over town rooftops, I returned
from the Land of the Dead to living Poesy, and wrote
this tale of long lost joy, to have seen my mother again!
And when the ink ran out of my pen, and rosy violet
illumined city treetop skies above the Flatiron Front Range,
I went downstairs to the shady living room, where Peter Orlovsky
sat with long hair lit by television glow to watch
the sunrise weather news, I kissed him & filled my pen and wept.

Empire Air

Rising above the used car lots & colored dumps of Long Island

stubby white smokestreams drift North above th’ Egyptic Factory roof’d monolith

into gray clouds, Conquer the world!

World Health restored with organic orange juice & Tibetan mule-dung-smelling Pills—Conquer the World Conquer the World

Conquer the World of Ego, Conquer World Anger

Conquer brick Worlds, Mortal Factories!

Conquer the Dewdrop? Conquer white clouded Sky we pass through?—

O ever-rising intelligent Sun conquer the night of Mind

Conquer War O Technologic Warrior

1 ride above the Sun

               I look down into the Sun

I’m equal to Sun, Sun & I on the level

I’ve no appendicitis, I hang a Brooks Brothers tie

My clothes are Salvation Army! Conquer America! Conquer Greed! Conquer warmonger Hands!

Conquer yourself! Conquer your gluttony Ginsberg! Conquer lust for Conquest!

Conquer Conquest at last! All right Jack Number One! Creon wrecks Imperial City!

Conquer by Calm! Conquer by not getting laid, growing younger & older same time!

Conquer by having a hard on! Conquer all space by giving it away! Conquer the Universe by inhabiting it!

Conquer by Dying! By eating decently! Wash yr behind after you move your bowels!

Pronounce your mother American language marvelously, mouth every syllable, savor every vowel, appreciate each consonant!

above the clouds! Conquer Karma, the chain of Cause and Effect

Conquer Cause & Effect, see it work the Cold War!

See it work in your heart!

Insult your girlfriend you’ll feel hurt!

Insult Nicaragua you feel lousy

Insult the President you insult yourself

Conquer the President by not insulting him!

Don’t insult yourself! stop insulting the Russians! stop insulting the enemy!

It costs $220800000000 a year to insult the enemy!

Surprise Mind

How lucky we are to have windows!
          Glass is transparent!
I saw that boy in red bathingsuit
               walk down the street.

July 7, 1984, 8:30 A.M.

Student Love

The boy’s fresh faced, 18, big smile
underwear hangs below his shorts, he’s a kid
                         still growing
legs strong, he hugs me, steps away—
In twenty years thick bellied,
               bright eyes dulled with office work,
     his children’ll pout in the
bathroom—
Better get in bed with him on top of me now
               laughing at my pot belly
before decades pass, bring our bony skulls whispering
                    to the hospital bedside.

July 31, 1984

The Question

When that dress-gray, gray haired and gray-faced
goblin took charge of me then inside the gate,
which closed behind me for a couple years,
I was still cheerful exceedingly
cheerful nodding out (hadn’t slept for days),
cheerful because taking part in real life
action again, two serious gentlemen
at my shoulders in a night-colored car which
special for me rolled across December’s bridge,
cheerful because I’d yelled out in the street
that this one and that one should be notified,
cheerful because I thought the adventure
a minor excursion, but cheerful also,
because such a gray such a small Uncle
I’d never seen yet, he however
wasn’t cheerful, was reassuringly
bored bananas, boringly signed for
my delivery and boringly
turned my seven pockets inside out,
then with a wooden face confiscated
handkerchief, pocketknife, bunch of keys,
next indifferently requested my belt
and examined personally whether
my underpants operated with string,
yawned apathetic patting me down,
last nearly napping asked for the laces
that wagged lighthearted from my shoetops—
“I can’t walk like this”—he shrugged a shoulder.
Left hand holding my pants up, spellbound by
this unprecedented situation, yet
still cavalier I bowed deep presenting
him with the shoelaces in my right hand.
“What’s the point anyhow? I really don’t
intend to hang myself”—I assured him
lighthearted. “You don’t?” he questioned. … “Why not?”
On his sallow face neither mockery nor hate.
That was when the fear caught up with me.

István Eörsi
Translated with author by A. G. September 5, 1984

In My Kitchen in New York

Bend knees, shift weight—
Picasso’s blue deathhead self portrait
     tacked on refrigerator door—
This is the only space in the apartment
     big enough to do T’ai chi—
Straighten right foot & rise—I wonder
     if I should have set aside that garbage
     pail—
Raise up my hands & bring them back to
     shoulders—The towels and pajama
     laundry’s hanging on a rope in the hall—
Push down & grasp the sparrow’s tail—
     Those paper boxes of grocery bags are
     blocking the closed door—
Turn north—I should hang up all
     those pots on the stovetop—
Am I holding the world right?—That
     Hopi picture on the wall shows
     rain & lightning bolt—
Turn right again—thru the door, God
     my office space, a mess of
     pictures & unanswered letters—
Left on my hips—Thank God Arthur Rimbaud’s
     watching me from over the sink—
Single whip—piano’s in the room, well
     Steven & Maria finally’ll move to their
     own apartment next week! His pants’re
     still here & Julius in his bed—
This gesture’s the opposite of St. Francis
     in Ecstasy by Bellini—hands
     down for me—
I better concentrate on what I’m doing—
     weight in belly, move from hips—
No, that was the single whip—that apron’s
     hanging on the North wall a year
     I haven’t used it once
Except to wipe my hands—the Crane
     spreads its wings—have I paid
     the electric bill?
Playing the guitar—do I have enough $
     to leave the rent paid while I’m
     in China?
Brush knee—that was good
     halvah, pounded sesame seed,
     in the icebox a week—
Withdraw & push—I should
     get a loft or giant living room—
The land speculators bought up all
     the square feet in Manhattan,
     beginning with the Indians—
Cross hands—I should write
     a letter to the Times saying
     it’s unethical.

It’s All So Brief

I’ve got to give up
Books, checks, letters
File cabinets, apartment
pillows, bodies and skin
even the ache in my teeth.

September 14, 1984

I Love Old Whitman So

Youthful, caressing, boisterous, tender

Middle aged thoughtful, ten thousand noticings of shore ship or street,

workbench, forest, household or office, opera—

that conning his paper book again to read aloud to those few Chinese boys & girls

who know enough American tongue to ear his hand—

loath to select one leaf from another, loath to reject a sympathetic page

—the tavern boy’s look, a stone prisoner’s mustache-sweat, prostitute in the sun, garrulous old man waving goodbye on the stoop—

I skim Leaves beginning to end, this year in the Middle Kingdom

marvel his swimmers huffing naked on the wave

and touched by his desperado farewell, “Who touches this book touches a man”

tip the hat on my skull

to the old soldier, old sailor, old writer, old homosexual, old Christ poet journeyman,

inspired in middle age to chaunt Eternity in Manhattan,

and see the speckled snake & swelling orb earth vanish

after green seasons Civil War and years of snow

white hair.

Baoding, China, November 20, 1984

Written in My Dream by W. C. Williams

“As Is
you’re bearing

a common
Truth

Commonly known
as desire

No need
to dress

it up
as beauty

No need
to distort

what’s not
standard

to be
understandable.

Pick your
nose

eyes ears
tongue

sex and
brain

to show
the populace

Take your
chances

on
your accuracy

One Morning I Took a Walk in China

Students danced with wooden silvered swords, twirling on hard packed muddy earth

as I walked out Hebei University’s concrete North Gate,

across the road a blue capped man sold fried sweet dough-sticks, brown as new boiled doughnuts

in the gray light of sky, past poplar tree trunks, white washed cylinders topped

with red band the height of a boy—Children with school satchels sang & walked past me

Donkeys in the road, one big one dwarf pulling ahead of his brother, hauled a cart of white stones

another donkey dragged a load of bricks, other baskets of dirt—

Under trees at the crossing, vendors set out carts and tables of cigarettes,

mandarin Tangerines, yellow round pears taste crunchy lemony strange,

apples yellow red-pinked, short bananas half black’d green,

few bunches of red grapes—and trays of peanuts, glazed thumbsized crab-apples 6 on a stick,

soft wrinkled yellow persimmons sat dozens spread on a cloth in wet mud by the curb—

cookpots on charcoal near cornerside tables, noodle broth vegetables sprinkled on top

A white headed barber shook out his ragged towel, mirror hung on red nail in the brick wall

where a student sat, black hair clipped at ears straight across the back of his neck

Soft-formed gritty coal pellets lay drying on the sidewalk and down the factory alley, more black mats spread,

Long green cabbages heaped by the buildingside waiting for home pot, or stacked on hand-tractor carts the market verandah a few yards away—

Leeks in a pile, bright orange carrots thick & rare, green unripe tomatoes, parsley, thin celery stalks awful cheap, potatoes & fish—

little & big heads chopped or alive in a tub, tiny fresh babies or aged carp in baskets—

a half pig on a slab, two trotters stick out, a white burlap shroud covered his body cleaved in half—

meat of the ox going thru a grinder, white fat red muscle & sinew together squeezed into human spaghetti—

Bicycles lined up along the concrete walk, trucks pull in & move out delivering cows dead and fresh green-stalked salad—

Reading Bai Juyi

I

I’m a traveler in a strange country
China and I’ve been to many cities
Now I’m back in Shanghai, days
under warm covers in a room with electric heat—
a rare commodity in this country—
hundreds of millions shiver in the north
students rise at dawn and run around the soccerfield
Workmen sing songs in the dark to keep themselves warm
while I sleep late, smoke too much cough,
turn over in bed on my right side
pull the heavy quilt over my nose and go back
to visit the dead my father, mother and immortal
friends in dreams. Supper’s served me,
I can go out and banquet, but prefer
this week to stay in my room, recovering
a cough. I don’t have to sell persimmons on the streetcurb
in Baoding like the lady with white bandanna’d head
Don’t have to push my boat oars around a rocky corner
in the Yangtze gorges, or pole my way downstream
from Yichang through yellow industrial scum, or carry water
buckets on a bamboo pole over my shoulder
to a cabbage field near Wuxi—I’m famous,
my poems have done some men good
and a few women ill, perhaps the good
outweighs the bad, I’ll never know.
Still I feel guilty I haven’t done more;
True I praised the dharma from nation to nation
But my own practice has been amateur, seedy
—even I dream how bad a student I am—
My teacher’s tried to help me, but I seem
to be lazy and have taken advantage of money
and clothes my work’s brought me, today
I’ll stay in bed again & read old Chinese poets—
I don’t believe in an afterworld of god or even
another life separate from this incarnation
Still I worry I’ll be punished for my carelessness
after I’m dead—my poems scattered and my name
forgotten and my self reborn a foolish workman
freezing and breaking rocks on a roadside in Hebei.

III

IV

V  China Bronchitis

VI

Black Shroud

Kunming Hotel, I vomited greasy chicken sandwiched
in moldy bread, on my knees before the white toilet
retching, a wave of nausea, bowels and bladder loose
black on the bathroom floor like my mother groaning
in Paterson 1937. I went back to bed
on the twelfth floor, city lights twinkling north,
Orion in his belt bright in the sky, I slept again.

She had come into the bathroom her face hidden
in her breast, hair overhanging her figure bent in front
of me, stiff in hypertension, rigor mortis
convulsed her living body while she screamed
at the doctor and apartment house we inhabited.
Some electric current flowing up her spine tortured her,
foot to scalp unbearable, some professional advice
required quick action, I took her wrists, and held her
bound to the sink, beheading her silently with swift
dispatch, one gesture, a stroke of the knife-like ax
that cut thru her neck like soft thick gum, dead quick.

What had I done, and why? Certainly her visage
showed the reason, strain and fright lasting thru death.
But couldn’t leave her body hidden in the toilet, someone
finding her bent over might wait, then push, then
horrified find her headless, skull fallen to the floor.
I picked her up by the shoulders, afraid to look at
the Medusa head

               which I lifted by long hair & set
on the sink before the mirror, but beheld no mad
drawn-cheek wild-eyed or blood-splotched wrinkled forehead—
Calm, beautiful face, tranquil in life’s last moments
as if in prayer, eyes clear and modest, face content
with neither smile or frown but even-browed, eyebrows
in repose, cheeks colored healthy still as when alive.
“I made a mistake” I thought, in following the doctors’ rules,
or where’d I get th’ idea she was screaming and banging
her head on the wall in neural agony? Was that just my thought
or hadn’t others told me so? Why’d I do it so abrupt
without consulting the World or the rest of the family—
Her look at last so tranquil and true made me wonder
why I’d covered her so early with black shroud.
Had I been insane myself and hasty? I left the room.

World Karma

China be China, B.C. Clay armies underground the First Han Emperor’s improvement

on burying his armies alive

Later Ming tombs buried excavator architects

& Mao officially buried 20,000,000 in Shit Freeze & Exile, much Suicide

especially bilingual sophisticates in the molecular structure of surfaces, machine-tool engineers

and Poetic intelligentsia questioned his Imperial vision of Pure Land

future communist afterworld

Russia had Czars & Stalin, all Yiddish Poets shot August 12, 1952 in Lubyanka basement, everybody got drunk afterward,

everyone still whispers on streetcorners

America forever democratic, lawless sheriffs shot Indians, bad men, good men, chinks kikes niggers and each other

Spain always killed bulls & loved blood, matadors & crucifixion, reds & fascists assassinated anarchists—

The Jews always complained, kvetching about false gods, and erected the biggest false God, Jehovah, in middle of western civilization—

For creating the Judge the Jews are judged that’s their world Karma continuing, the Atom bomb

British always had sense of superiority, class, stiff upperlip, the Queen and fuck you ducky up your bloody ’ole

The French, advanced sense of superiority, stiff back, Algérie is always indissolubly a part of La France,

We will not regret the necessity to kill you or anyone who disagrees

They appreciate everything wine women song modern art

O la la they’re so smart, introduced opium cultivation

Indochina will always be an indissoluble addiction to France, the Bourse

Germans had Kaisers Hitlers, orderly meticulous and rational a bunch of beasts

now want Nuclear arms They’re also intelligent Pride themselves on Science

romantic Poetry, their Black Forest mysterious full of Solitude acid rain

Prophecy

As I’m no longer young in life
and there seem to me not
so many pleasures to look forward to
How fortunate to be free
to write of cars and wars, truths of eras,
throw away old useless
ties and pants that don’t fit.

January 9, 1985

Memory Cousins

After Long Absence, I returned from the land of the dead
to visit my stepmother in her suburban apartment.
I looked from a distance, was it a mental hospital
standing on a grass plain far from Manhattan’s skyscrapers
after crossing Washington Bridge, or Jersey’s tract houses
risen gigantic during my exile in China? I’d
been gone so long my relatives’d grown old at their doors—
a neighbor widow come out to empty the black plastic
garbagebag, I’d known her middle age, now with white hair
she gazed at me nodding absently, I’d not been gone long
while her husband’d died, children married with children now—
How dear to see me, where’d I been? I looked down the long hall,
door after door of Aunts and Uncles retired alive
white haired, television bound seeing the doctor, eating
delicatessen salad Sundays, reading best seller
books, dusting furniture, cleaning kitchen floors, happily
visiting Doctors for minor blood pressure, depression
or hernias. Years ahead, they should live so long, they’d die,
I’d never see them again, best settle down while childhood
memory cousins and brothers were old, but still alive,
enjoy each other’s tables and coffee, business gossip.
Where else go off to, unhappy Russia warring Israel?
Here in America, peace, a place to live together.
They were bombing Nicaragua, factories exploding
in India, Cities crowded with Animal muggers
newspapers said, TV had pictures of them every nite—
Peter in fact just came back from Nuclear Buddhaland,
His belly exposed to Radiation a soft yellow
spot near his navel, he smiled rueful pulling his shirt
above his belt to show his mortal sore, what could cure him?
If go away now I’ll be gone forever, Peter,
Stepmother Edith, Aunt Honey & Leo, Aunt Clara
and Uncle Abe, my brother Gene & Connie & the kids,
I may never see them again. Here are their living eyes,
here’s the end of the Immortal Dream.

March 2, 1985, 7:56 A.M.

Moral Majority

Something evil about you Mr. Viguerie Mr. Falwell Robertson Swaggert.

Not evil but ignorance of the delights of the Boy

The 1920s have passed, corsets chastity belts whips

the stake, Lesbian cities aflame in your fiery eyes

—Some old Demon the Satan in possession of your body

a thousand years old, two thousand that burned the parchments of Black Sappho

I’ve seen God as much as any, he doesn’t look like you alone

He looks like me too, all the homosexuals on earth,

in Congo, Cities of North America, Rio Barrios—

He looks like a lavender fairy, Paris salons 1890 the birds & bees,

Like an ambidextrous worm, male dogs coupling in the Alabama parking-lot.

Nothing wrong with Family, Mother Father & Buba.

Nothing wrong with the Babe.

Nothing wrong with Mr. Falwell except a little mean streak

that isn’t god, just a jerk, talks too big for his britches,

inexperienced Bible Salesman

interprets words & letters, not Holy Spirit

ambitious politically, at the expense of the poor,

the thwarted, & happy ruddy kids—

Find out Buddha, enter the great silence

& pass thru the needle’s eye,

then come back happy, laughing, generous

big mouth full of good cheer, not money,

honey.

March 19, 1985

The Guest

I’ve a pain in my back
Fifth lumbar & sacrum
Kidneystones alas alack
can’t drink milk calcium
High blood pressure about
salt I can’t eat
at my age no red meat
sometimes I get gout

My age fifty eight
My friend Peter’s away
I should lose ten pounds weight
Prostrate every day
to my guru who’s Crazy
Prepare for grim death
Exercise for good health
All my life I’ve been lazy

Little gold, lots of fame
Small flat in Manhattan
tho I bank on my name
my wallet won’t fatten
But the thing I want most
to embody my joy
is the belly of a boy
and there I get lost

I met David he undressed
Came naked on my bed
He climbed on my chest
“I love you Allen” he said
He touched and caressed
my stomach, heart and thigh
appreciated my sigh
I slept chaste & blessed.

He visited New York
to sleep a week in my room
watch me at work,
enlighten my gloom—
Body young & strong
shapely from Basketball
Skin muscular stomach small
“I can’t be your lover long.”

Something is missing my hard on
But it’s what I have, it works
I pump him slowly, then start on
moving faster while he jerks
his buttocks up to help me come,
I ask permission, he says “yes,”
I pull his hips up, hold his breast,
spurt my loves deep in his bum

After Antipater

I’ve climbed the Great Wall’s stone steep out of breath

sat on gray columns broken at Acropolis’ marble sill

brushed past morbid scented insect eating plants in Petén Rainforest

Eaten roastbeef with my mother’s cousins atop a World Trade Tower overhanging Hudson River

Slept under the dome echoing lament for Mumtaz Mahal’s white skull

Stood in Red Square snow across from the Kremlin wall-tomb of th’- assassin of millions

Climbed Seville’s gypsy balconies, Sagrada Familia’s crannied spires, gazed through my father’s eyes from San Marco’s high porch

tarried on Brooklyn bridge facing Manhattan dusk’s sparkling Towers, walked Golden Gate’s Pacific promenade

But when you lay on my bed, white sheet covering your loins, your eyes on mine

I forgot these marvels, my heart breathed open, I saw life’s glory look back at me naked.

March 26, 1985
Greek Anthology III, Book IX, Epigram 58, Loeb, p. 31.

Jumping the Gun on the Sun

Sincerity
is the key
to living
in Eternity

If you love
Heav’n above
Hold your ground,
Look around
Hear the sound
of television,
No derision,
Smell your blood
taste your good
bagels & lox
Wash your sox
& touch wood,
It’s understood
This is it
wild wit
Make your love
on earth above,
home of the brave,
Save yr grave
for future days
Present here
nothing to fear
No need to sigh
no need to die
before your time
mentally whine
stupidly dine
on your own meat
That’s what’s neat
Mortally great
Immortally sweet
Incredibly deep
makes you weep
Just this once
Don’t be a dunce
Take your cap
off Hear my rap

Makes you wise
in your own eyes
makes the body
not seem shoddy
Makes your soul
completely whole
empty, final
indefinable
Mobile, totally
undeniable
Affirmative action
for no faction
for all men
women too,
mother brother,
even for you
Dead soul’d, sick
but really quick
with breath & thick
with blood in yr prick
Walking alive
on Riverside Drive
up on Broadway
shining gay
in New York
waving you dork
waving your mind
or living behind
your meaty masque
magnificent task
all you could ask
as if pure space
gave you a place
in Eternity—
To see the City
Stand all day
Shine all night
Bright starlight
streaming the height
Watery lawn
misty at dawn
warmed by the sun
Bathed in the moon
green grasses of June
80 times only
Don’t be lonely
Roses are live
Cockroaches thrive
in plastic garbage
maggots salvage
your dead meat
Horses eat
golden Hay
in golden day
Young kids jump
in the City dump
Take the lump
in your throat
and sing out
yr holy note
of heart’s delight
in living light
Day & Night

Cadillac Squawk

Sitting on the twelfth floor Gomden I heard a wild siren in the garment district

Heard dog scream at dog on park avenue

my head rumbled the Bronx 242’d street Lexington Avenue Express

lonesome sparrows chirped weathered coppergreen cornice 1860

Footstep crash, pocket change jangled the shrine room’s polished floor

traffic waves rushed the shore 1985

Adolf Hitler’s voice in the taxi horn

squeak soprano steely cheep Chevrolet brakeshafts

subway breath rising to Empire State Observation Roof

iron doors slam refrigerators shut

bones creak in my knees’ antechambers

Heard the long Cadillac horn squawk up sidestreet brick buildingsides

elevators ascended and descended a thousand skyscrapers

wheels within wheels rubber and steel revolve on asphalt corridors

Exhaust puffs out monoxide Broadway Manhattan

Heard the sky shut up

Heard conversation in the trees in leafy Bronx

Heard Africa sigh

Asia turned over in its sleepy bunk

blood ran down rocks in South America

Heard Central America squeeze its ribs through iron gates

the Middle East rumbled plates & spoons in wartime bomb rubble

Polynesians danced with bacteria

Heard Japonesia eat with chopsticks chewing rice & peapods

Heard Australia rattle song sticks singing in Simpson Desert at the end of the world

New York Dharmadatu, June 16, 1985, 3:33 P.M.

Things I Don’t Know

Dawn, a mastiff howls on the porch across the street behind the For Sale signed tree

Chatter Chirp Chirp Chatter Chirp Chir Chir Chic Chir chance birdie twitters in a maple tree branch, Twirp!

I wake, what bird’s that, what kind of dog moans so?

Is that a maple or an oak, on Mapleton Street? What flowers weeds & ferns, those in the backyard? What car goes by awhoosh? A Pontiac, swash up the street,

A Chevy, Ford, a Pinto, a Grammarian, a 4 wheel drive GM?

What star I saw last night when clouds lifted & Orion’s belt

Glittered gold on blue? or was that amber on azure? As my eye

followed his arrow past the North Star thru the void, was that a tiny galaxy shimmering?

Where’s Sagittarius, which way is the black hole at center of the Spiral Nebula?

Where’s Sahel where a million children starve? Where’s Libya where Wilson of the CIA trained terrorists?

How many times this century’d the Marines land on Nicaragua’s dirty flag?

Who killed Roque Dalton? What’s the size of U.S. national Debt?

& how much interest we pay each year till the Eighties end?

Now the bird’s quiet & the dog bark’s down, what’s differential calculus? How do you fix electric socket wires?

I used to know the names of all the minerals. I do remember Pectolite gave you like asbestos splinters.

How do people overcome panic driving cars? Are bird bones hollow? didn’t I once know the look of grackle & scarlet tanager?

Cirrus or cumulus, what cloud produces thunder, lightning, rain?

What makes electricity in a battery? How does my wind charger friction become electric?

When water pours into hydraulic ram, what makes it squirt uphill when the valve closes in the Pressure Chamber? Is that it? Something like that?

What’re the 12 pix in Conditioned Co-existent Emergence’s Chain?

Blind man, potter, monkey tree, boat world, house with seven windows, what comes next before the man with arrow in his eye?

What about banks? What’s common stock & preferred? What’s a futures?

How do you hang a door, frame a window? Hold a light chainsaw?

How fix a broken leg? Ease a heart attack, deliver a baby? Breathe in the mouth of a man dying at oceanside?