You Don’t Know It

In Russia the tyrant cockroach mustache ate 20 million souls

and you don’t know it, you don’t know it

In Czechoslovakia the police ate the feet of a generation that can’t walk

and you don’t know it, you don’t know it

In Poland police state double agent cancer grew large as Catholic

Church Frankenstein the state itself a Gulag Ship

and you don’t know it, you don’t know it

In Hungary tanks rolled over words of Politician Poets

and you don’t know it

In Yugoslavia underground partisans of the Great Patriotic War

fought off the Great Patriotic Army of USSR

and you don’t know it,

you know Tito but you don’t know it

between wars from North Yanquis and banquets with Pork & Rum after

with millions of Readers’ Digest copies

On the Conduct of the World Seeking Beauty Against Government

Is that the only way we can become like Indians, like Rhinoceri,

like Quartz Crystals, like organic farmers, live what we imagine

Adam & Eve to’ve been, caressing each other with trembling limbs

before the Snake of Revolutionary Sex wrapped itself round

the Tree of Knowledge? What would Roque Dalton joke about lately

teeth chattering like a machine gun as he debated mass tactics

with his Compañeros? Necessary to kill the Yanquis with big bomb

Yes but don’t do it by yourself, better consult your mother

to get the Correct Line of Thought, if not consult Rimbaud once he got his leg cut off

or Lenin after his second stroke sending a message thru Mrs. Krupskaya to the rude Georgian, & just before his deathly fit when the

Cheka aides outside

his door looked in coldly assuring him his affairs were in good hands

no need to move—What sickness at the pit of his stomach moved up to his brain?

What thought Khlebnikov on the hungry train exposing his stomach to the sun?

Or Mayakovsky before the bullet hit his brain, what sharp propaganda for action

on the Bureaucratic Battlefield in the Ministry of Collective Agriculture in Ukraine?

What Slogan for Futurist architects or epic hymn for masses of Communist Party Card holders in Futurity

on the conduct of the world seeking beauty against Government?

January 27, 1986

Hard Labor

After midnite, Second Avenue horseradish Beef
     at Kiev’s wood tables—
The Kasha Mushrooms tastes good
     as Byelorussia usta when my momma
     ran away from Cossacks 1905
Did the 5 year plan work? How bad Stalin?
Am I a Stalinist? A Capitalist? A
     Bourgeois Stinker? A rotten Red?
No I’m a fairy with purple wings and white halo
     translucent as an onion ring in
the transsexual fluorescent light of Kiev
     Restaurant after a hard day’s work

February 17, 1986, 12:35 A.M.

Velocity of Money

I’m delighted by the velocity of money as it whistles through windows of Lower East Side

Delighted skyscrapers rise grungy apartments fall on 84th Street’s pavement

Delighted this year inflation drives me out on the street

with double digit interest rates in Capitalist worlds

I always was a communist, now we’ll win

as usury makes walls thinner, books thicker & dumber

Usury makes my poetry more valuable

Manuscripts worth their weight in useless gold—

The velocity’s what counts as the National Debt gets trillions higher

Everybody running after the rising dollar

Crowds of joggers down Broadway past City Hall on the way to the Fed

Nobody reads Dostoyevsky books anymore so they’ll have to give passing ear

to my fragmented ravings in between President’s speeches

Nothing’s happening but the collapse of the Economy

so I can go back to sleep till the landlord wins his eviction suit in court

February 18, 1986, 10:00 A.M.

Sphincter

I hope my good old asshole holds out
60 years it’s been mostly OK
Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation
     survived the altiplano hospital—
a little blood, no polyps, occasionally
     a small hemorrhoid
active, eager, receptive to phallus
     coke bottle, candle, carrot
     banana & fingers—
Now AIDS makes it shy, but still
     eager to serve—
out with the dumps, in with the condom’d
     orgasmic friend—
still rubbery muscular,
     unashamed wide open for joy
But another 20 years who knows,
     old folks got troubles everywhere—
necks, prostates, stomachs, joints—
     Hope the old hole stays young
     till death, relax

March 15, 1986, 1:00 P.M.

Spot Anger

Allen when you get angry you got two choices—
Konk your head on the floor with words
Bang the kitchen table, slap taxicab doors,
          insult hotel toilets
Snarl into National microphones, sneer at the
          speedfreak closet girl syringiste—
Why not more subtle, grab your anger by the wings
and bag it in the garbage pail
Look around by the venetian blind
It’s only you in the universe’s kitchen—
A subtler wave of the hand, patience—
Say, I don’t want this Saturn trip, no thanks,
Domo arigato how nice but I’ll not entertain
          Dr. Frankenstein till Monday
These pants don’t fit, may I borrow your library card—
Breathe your typhoonic tantrum in, exhale a gentle
          breath of Ginsberg out the kitchen window
wafting a Springtime Fairy feather-slight
          raising a big iron pipe
to konk Mr. Temper Tantrum on his green bull noodle & fly off
over Manhattan weaving silver laughter
          round skyscraper spires.

April 24, 1986, 6:00 A.M.

London Dream Doors

On London’s Tavern’s wooden table, been reading Kit Smart—
God sent him to sea for pearls—till eyes heavy must sleep—
So went upstairs to my boardinghouse room yet the tall dark
boy that lived across the hall’d just got under covers
in a high Captain’s bed, but left his door wide open,
his room furnished mahogany, oak crowded to the closets—
I gazed alas he was handsome, older than my choice of flesh
smooth boyhood, the lad had dark eyes, long limbs
a little hair on legs and chest, a little beard and smile—
I dozed, woke and returned from the bog, again passing
his room at stairtop— He lay in bed eyes open, I paused—
then turned aside thru his door, an embrace before going
to sleep in my own solid room I’d rented, first night
in this odd town, I’d come to teach a few strangers Love
& Poetry— So cast myself on his chest for a hug goodnight,
a second’s surprise like father-son sweet dreams—
He clasped arms around me, held tight, I stopped a second—
More than I’d hoped for! Refreshing friendliness!—
lay there a minute, his warmth remained, spontaneous—
Grateful hugged his chest & quickly kissed his neck
& face, haste before I must rise— Yet no need to go
so with right leg I pushed the door in, closed,
we were alone. He pulled me on top of him, held each other,
I passed my hand along his side down to his thigh
he shivered, hands on my back, we began to sweat
under covers, his skin like slippery meat, the heat
of our embrace familiar, companionable surprise, I was
to be loved by his strong form, how soon hug his middle?
touch his flaccid glans? My own already thick with pleasure—
chest to his chest, legs intertwined, hard hair felt
uncomfortable under my hand—moved my palm across
his slimy stomach, sweat not unpleasant, close heat
amazed us both, secret freedom in his antique room,
invitation to explore night’s pleasure, fresh conscience,
muscled thoughts, hearts glowing astounded happiness a brief
8 hours in the dark— What to do? I kissed his solar plexus
& belly above loins, he sighed and breathed on my neck in back,
affectionate clasped to his breast, arm round my waist— eyes
closed I lay still, head under white muslin in dim light,
quilt set aside for the heat—
                         The door opened suddenly!
“You’ll have to pay for the night’s furniture” announced
the landlord. “You’ll have to pay for the sink water and extra
covers! We rent or sell!” He fell silent. Hadn’t he noticed
my bulk under thin sheet-cloth? But next instant he was
gone downstairs to write up the bill, door left ajar.
“Into my closet!” my new friend whispered urgent, “the first door!”—
The knob on his mirrored armoire stuck, wouldn’t open,
same horrific closet of old play-movie nightmare blackouts—I saw
my own room entrance across the hall—“I’ll go in there, seconds
to hide,” fast before the old fellow returns! Naked trailing
sheet & blanket I crossed the hall stealthy, closed my bedroom
door behind, just time enough? Alas bed sheets blocked
the door jamb, clogged the landing, pull them through, I strained,
dragged awkward blankets inside in a trice and woke under
springtime sheets and linen cover alone, East Twelfth Street,
last night with Bengali Marathi Urdu poets, Museum of Modern Art.

Cosmopolitan Greetings

Stand up against governments, against God.

Stay irresponsible.

Say only what we know & imagine.

Absolutes are coercion.

Change is absolute.

Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.

Observe what’s vivid.

Notice what you notice.

Catch yourself thinking.

Vividness is self-selecting.

If we don’t show anyone, we’re free to write anything.

Remember the future.

Advise only yourself.

Don’t drink yourself to death.

Two molecules clanking against each other require an observer to become scientific data.

The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal world after Einstein.

The universe is subjective.

Walt Whitman celebrated Person.

We are observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person.

Universe is Person.

Inside skull vast as outside skull.

FIFTH INTERNATIONALE

Fifth Internationale

Arise ye prisoners of your mind-set
Arise Neurotics of the Earth
For Insight thunders Liberation
A sacred world’s in birth

No more Attachment’s chains shall bind us
Mind’s Aggression no more rules
The Earth shall rise on new foundations
We have been jerks we shall be Fools

’Tis the Path of Accumulation
Let each sit on his place
The International Crazy Wisdom School
Could save the Human Race

July 1986
Naropa

EUROPE, WHO KNOWS?

Europe, Who Knows?

All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”
Asphodel’s fine but next year what comes with the rose?
Cabbage smells good but depends which way the wind blows
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Wormwood skies’ll poison the sea: Revelation
Oslo to Athens black clouds’ve enlightened the nations
Cesium mushrooms & milk may mutate the Creation
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Crossing the park in Munich Max Planck Institute
On my forearm and brow a film of invisible soot
Fell on my skin out of heaven, a new set of clothes
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Woke up in Poland, maple leaves just wilted down
Not a cloud in the sky inexplicably cold on the ground
Kids in the yard were playing without any clothes
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Phoned up the doctor, official reply: “Never mind”
Same afternoon suggested we take iodine
Three days later Chernobyl’s error disclosed
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Slaughtered the reindeer in Lapland, Lapps on the dole
Camembert radioactive, in Zurich, the gold
In the Cotswolds of England all the sheep markets were closed
All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

If a liter of water’s one x-ray in Washington State
So in milk bars of Minsk what does it cost a milkshake?
Big apples this year, we still have to eat up what grows
If we didn’t eat poison we’d starve, Brother, everyone knows.

September 12, 1986 (with Steven Taylor)
Warsaw Airport

Graphic Winces

In highschool when you crack your front tooth bending down too fast over the porcelain water fountain

or raise the tuna sandwich to your open mouth and a cockroach tickles your knuckle

or step off the kitchen cabinet ladder on the ball of your foot hear the piercing meow of a soft kitten

or sit on a rattling subway next the woman scratching sores on her legs, thick pus on her fingers

or put your tongue to a winter-frozen porch door, a layer of frightening white flesh sticks to the wooden frame—

or pinch your little baby boy’s fat neck skin in the last teeth of his snowsuit zipper

or when you cross Route 85 the double yellow line’s painted over a dead possum

or tip your stale party Budweiser on the windowsill to your lips, taste Marlboro butts floating top of the can—

or fighting on the second flight of the tenement push your younger sister down the marble stairs she bites her tongue in half, they have to sew it back in the hospital—

or at icebox grabbing the half-eaten Nestlé’s Crunch a sliver of foil sparks on your back molar’s silver filling

or playing dare in High School you fall legs split on opposite sides of a high iron spiked fence

or kicked in the Karate Dojo hear the sound like a cracked twig then feel a slow dull throb in your left forearm,

or tripping fall on the sidewalk & rip last week’s scab off your left knee

You might grimace, a sharp breath from the solar plexus, chill spreading from shoulderblades and down the arms,

or you may wince, tingling twixt sphincter and scrotum a subtle electric discharge.

December 8, 1986

Imitation of K.S.

The young kid, horror buff, monster Commissar, ghoul connoisseur, attic bedroom postered with violet skulls, cigarette butts on the floor, thinks he’d strangle girls after orgasm—pumping iron 13 years old, 175-pound muscleman, his father shot at him, missed, hit the door, he saw his mother’s tiny apron, father clutched his throat, six foot four drunk, today’s in Alcohol Anonymous. Even eyes, symmetric face, aged twenty, acid-free-plastic packages of Ghoul Ghosts, Monsters Nowhere, Evil Demons of the Dead, Frenzy Reanimator, Psycho Nightmare on Elm Street stacked by his mattress; he followed me around, carried my harmonium box, protected me from the drunk Tibetan, came to my bed; head on his shoulder, I felt his naked heart, “my Cock’s half dead,” he thinks he’ll cut it off, can’t stand to be touched, never touches himself, iron legs, “skinny dynamite,” thick biceps, a six-day black fuzz on his even jaw, shining eyes, “I love you too.”

March 22, 1987

I Went to the Movie of Life

In the mud, in the night, in Mississippi Delta roads
outside Clarksdale I slogged along Lights flashed
under trees, my black companion motioned “Here they are,
your company.”—Like giant rhinoceri with painted faces
splashed all over side and snout, headlights glaring in rain,
one after another buses rolled past us toward Book Hotel
Boarding House, up the hill, town ahead.

                              Accompanying me, two girls
pitched in the dark slush garbaged road, slipping in deep ruts
wheels’d left behind sucking at their high heels, staining granny
dresses sequined magic marked with astral signs, Head groupies
who knew the way to this Grateful Dead half-century heroes’
caravan pit stop for the night. I climbed mid-road, a toad
hopped before my foot, I shrank aside, unthinking’d kicked it off
with leather shoe, animal feet scurried back at my sight—
a little monster on his back bled red, nearby this prey a lizard
with large eyes retreated, and a rat curled tail and slithered
in mud wet to the dirt gutter, repelled. A long climb ahead, the girls’d
make it or not, I moved on, eager to rejoin old company.
Merry Pranksters with aged pride in peacock-feathered beds,
shining mylar mirror-paper walls, acid mothers with strobe-lit radios,
long-haired men, gaunt 60s’ Diggers emerged from the night
to rest, bathe, cook spaghetti, nurse their kids,
smoke pipes and squat with Indian sages round charcoal
braziers in their cars; profound American dreamers,
I was in their company again after long years, byways
alone looking for lovers in bar street country towns
and sunlit cities, rain & shine, snow & spring-bud backyard
brick walls, ominous adventures behind the Iron Curtain.
Were we all grown old? I looked for my late boyfriends,
dancing to Electric Blues with their guns and smoke round jukebox walls
the smell of hash and country ham, old newspaper media stars
wandering room after room: Pentagon refugee Ellsberg, old dove
Dellinger bathing in an iron tub with a patch in his stomach wall
Abbie Hoffman explaining the natural strategy of city political saint
works, Quicksilver Messenger musicians, Berkeley orators
with half-grown children in their sox & dirty faces, alcohol
uncles who played chess & strummed banjos frayed by broken fingernails.

                                        The cameras
rolled and followed me, was I the central figure in this film?
I’d known most faces and guided the inevitable cameras room to room,
pausing at candle lit bus windows to view this ghostly caravan of gypsy
intellects passing thru USA, aged rock stars whispering by coal stoves,
public headline artists known from Rolling Stone & N.Y. Times,
actors & actresses from Living Theater, gaunt-faced and eloquent
with lifted hands & bony fingers greeting me on my way
to the bus driver’s wheel, tattered dirty gloves on Neal’s seat
waiting his return from working the National Railroad, young kids
I’d taught saluting me wearily from worn couches as I passed
bus to bus, cameras moving behind me. What was my role?
I hardly knew these faded heroes, friendly strangers
so long on the road, I’d been out teaching in Boulder, Manhattan,
Budapest, London, Brooklyn so long, why follow me thru
these amazing Further bus party reunion corridors tonite?
or is this movie, or real, if I turn to face the camera I’d break
the scene, dissolve the plot illusion, or is’t illusion
art, or just my life? Were cameras ever there, the picture
flowed so evenly before my eyes, how could a crew follow
me invisible still and smoothly noiseless bus to bus
from room to room along the caravan’s painted labyrinth?
This wasn’t cinema, and I no hero spokesman documenting friendship
scenes, only myself alone lost in bus cabins with familiar
strangers still looking for some sexual angel for mortal delights
no different from haunting St. Mark’s Boys Bar again solitary
in tie jacket and grey beard, wallet in my pocket full of
cash and cards, useless.

                                   A glimmer of lights
in the curtained doorway before me! my heart leapt
forward to the Orgy Room, all youths! Lithe and
hairless, smooth skinned, white buttocks ankles, young men’s
nippled chests lit behind the curtain, thighs entwined
in the male area, place I was looking for behind
my closed eyelids all this night—I pushed my hand
into the room, moving aside the curtain that shimmered
within bright with naked knees and shoulders pale
in candlelight—entered the pleasure chamber’s empty door
glimmering silver shadows reflected on the silver curtained veil,
eyelids still dazzling as their adolescent limbs
intangible dissolved where I put my hand into a vacant room,
lay down on its dark floor to watch the lights of phantom arms
pulsing across closed eyelids conscious as I woke in bed
returned at dawn New York wood-slatted venetian blinds over
the windows on E. 12th St. in my white painted room

When the Light Appears

You’ll bare your bones you’ll grow you’ll pray you’ll only know
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You’ll sing & you’ll love you’ll praise blue heavens above
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You’ll whimper & you’ll cry you’ll get yourself sick and sigh
You’ll sleep & you’ll dream you’ll only know what you mean
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You’ll come & you’ll go, you’ll wander to and fro
You’ll go home in despair you’ll wonder why’d you care
You’ll stammer & you’ll lie you’ll ask everybody why
You’ll cough and you’ll pout you’ll kick your toe with gout
You’ll jump you’ll shout you’ll knock your friends about
You’ll bawl and you’ll deny & announce your eyes are dry
You’ll roll and you’ll rock you’ll show your big hard cock
You’ll love & you’ll grieve & one day you’ll come believe
As you whistle & you smile the lord made you worthwhile
You’ll preach and you’ll glide on the pulpit in your pride
Sneak & slide across the stage like a river in high tide
You’ll come fast or come on slow just the same you’ll never know
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears

May 3, 1987, 2:30 A.M.

On Cremation of Chögyam Trungpa, Vidyadhara

I noticed the grass, I noticed the hills, I noticed the highways,

I noticed the dirt road, I noticed car rows in the parking lot

I noticed ticket takers, I noticed the cash and checks & credit cards,

I noticed buses, noticed mourners, I noticed their children in red dresses,

I noticed the entrance sign, noticed retreat houses, noticed blue & yellow Flags—

noticed the devotees, their trucks & buses, guards in Khaki uniforms

I noticed crowds, noticed misty skies, noticed the all-pervading smiles & empty eyes—

I noticed pillows, colored red & yellow, square pillows and round—

I noticed the Tori Gate, passers-through bowing, a parade of men & women in formal dress—

noticed the procession, noticed the bagpipe, drum, horns, noticed high silk head crowns & saffron robes, noticed the three piece suits,

I noticed the palanquin, an umbrella, the stupa painted with jewels the colors of the four directions—

amber for generosity, green for karmic works, noticed the white for Buddha, red for the heart—

thirteen worlds on the stupa hat, noticed the bell handle and umbrella, the empty head of the white clay bell—

noticed the corpse to be set in the head of the bell—

noticed the monks chanting, horn plaint in our ears, smoke rising from atop the firebrick empty bell—

noticed the crowds quiet, noticed the Chilean poet, noticed a Rainbow,

I noticed the Guru was dead, I noticed his teacher bare breasted watching the corpse burn in the stupa,

noticed mourning students sat crosslegged before their books, chanting devotional mantras,

gesturing mysterious fingers, bells & brass thunderbolts in their hands

I noticed flame rising above flags & wires & umbrellas & painted orange poles

I noticed the sky, noticed the sun, a rainbow round the sun, light misty clouds drifting over the Sun—

Nanao

Brain washed by numerous mountain streams
Legs clean after walking four continents
Eyes cloudless as Kagoshima sky
Fresh raw surprisingly cooked heart
Tongue live as a Spring salmon
Nanao’s hands are steady, pen & ax sharp as stars.

With Peter Orlovsky
June 1987

Personals Ad

Poet professor in autumn years
seeks helpmate companion protector friend
young lover w/empty compassionate soul
exuberant spirit, straightforward handsome
athletic physique & boundless mind, courageous
warrior who may also like women & girls, no problem,
to share bed meditation apartment Lower East Side,
help inspire mankind conquer world anger & guilt,
empowered by Whitman Blake Rimbaud Ma Rainey & Vivaldi,
familiar respecting Art’s primordial majesty, priapic carefree
playful harmless slave or master, mortally tender passing swift time,
photographer, musician, painter, poet, yuppie or scholar—
Find me here in New York alone with the Alone
going to lady psychiatrist who says Make time in your life
for someone you can call darling, honey, who holds you dear
can get excited & lay his head on your heart in peace.

October 8, 1987

Proclamation

I am the King of the Universe
I am the Messiah with a new dispensation
Excuse me I stepped on a nail.
A mistake
Perhaps I am not the Capitalist of Heaven.
Perhaps I’m a gate keeper snoring
          beside the Pearl Columns—
No this isn’t true, I really am God himself.
Not at all human. Don’t associate me
          w/that Crowd.
In any case you can believe every word
          I say.

October 31, 1987
Gas Station, N.Y.

To Jacob Rabinowitz

Dear Jacob I received your translation, what kind
favor you paid to have it printed up,
lighthearted the most readable I know—
Glad to be your friend, 2000 years after Catullus,
nothing’s changed poets or poetics, lovers or love
familiar conversation between the three of us,
familiar tears—Remember you leaped in bed naked
and wouldn’t sleep on my floor, decade ago? I was
half century old, you hardly out of puberty gave me
your ass bright eyes and virgin body a whole month
What a little liar you were, how’d I know you were cherry?
Put me down now for not hearing your teenage heartbeat,
think back were you serious offering to kidnap me
to Philadelphia, Cleveland, Baltimore, Miami, God
knows, rescued from boring fame & Academic fortune,
Rimbaud Verlaine lovers starved together in boondock houseflat
stockyard furnished rooms eating pea soup reading E. A. Poe?
First night in each other’s arms you chilled my spine whispering
lies till dawn—pubescent lovelife with a tiny monkey you claim’d
you’d tortured to death—how trust you take me to the moon?
Tho you gave your butt to others in St. Mark’s Baths’ steam room
that year I followed you to Chelsea Hotel kissing your boots
& still lust for your body tho now you’ve grown a red beard.
At thirty still cute, lost interest in my potbelly years ago,
useless to jack off to your youthful shadow anymore.
And I your genius poet first love ignored hypoglycemic,
impotent, gouty, squint-eyed, halfway bald—
Reading this book gives me youth back again, not old
in vain, at last you bring love to Catullus & Poetry
humble enough to print these translations by yourself.

December 2, 1987, 4:30 A.M.

Grandma Earth’s Song

I started down Capitol Hill side along unfamiliar black central avenues warily uncertain which streets thru Fillmore district to City Hall valley center,

and as I passed a block or two I saw a fragile crone marching toward me up hill, Grandma Bag-lady ragged dressed with firm ancient steps Old Ma Earth

dragging a shopping cart filled with cans bottles & plastic newspapers tied

with silk stockings wandering alone singing out loud on way to Civic Center

February 13, 1988, 7:30–9:00 A.M.

Salutations to Fernando Pessoa

Every time I read Pessoa I think
I’m better than he is I do the same thing
more extravagantly—he’s only from Portugal,
I’m American greatest Country in the world
right now End of XX Century tho Portugal
had a big empire in the 15th century never mind
now shrunk to a Corner of Iberian peninsula
whereas New York take New York for instance
tho Mexico City’s bigger N.Y.’s richer think of Empire State
Building not long ago world empire’s biggest skyscraper—
be that as’t may I’ve experienced 61 years’ XX Century
Pessoa walked down Rua do Ouro only till 1936
He entered Whitman so I enter Pessoa no
matter what they say besides dead he wouldn’t object.

What way’m I better than Pessoa?
Known on 4 Continents I have 25 English books he only 3
his mostly Portuguese, but that’s not his fault—
U.S.A.’s a bigger country
merely 2 Trillion in debt a passing freakout,
Reagan’s dirty work an American Century aberration
unrepresenting our Nation Whitman sang in Epic manner
tho worried about in Democratic Vistas
As a Buddhist not proud my superiority to Pessoa
I’m humble Pessoa was nuts big difference,
tho apparently gay—same as Socrates,
consider Michelangelo da Vinci Shakespeare
inestimable comerado Walt
True I was tainted Pinko at an early age a mere trifle
science itself destroys ozone layers this era antiStalinists
poison entire earth with radioactive anticommunism.
Maybe I lied somewhat
rarely in verse, only protecting others’ reputations.
Frankly too Candid about my mother tho meant well
Did Pessoa mention his mother? she’s interesting,
powerful to birth sextuplets
Alberto Cairo Alvaro de Campos Ricardo Reis Bernardo Soares &
          Alexander Search simultaneously
with Fernando Pessoa himself a classic sexophrenic
Confusing personae not so popular
outside Portugal’s tiny kingdom (till recently a second-rate police state)
Let me get to the point er I forget what it was
but certainly enjoy making comparisons between this Ginsberg &
          Pessoa
people talk about in Iberia hardly any books in English
presently the world’s major diplomatic language extended throughout
          China.
Besides he was a shrimp, himself admits in interminable “Salutations to
          Walt Whitman”
whereas 5′7½″ height
somewhat above world average, no immodesty,
I’m speaking seriously about me & Pessoa.
Anyway he never influenced me, never read Pessoa
before I wrote my celebrated Howl already translated into 24 languages,
not to this day’s Pessoa influence an anxiety
Midnight April 12 ’88 merely glancing his book
certainly influences me in passing, only reasonable
but reading a page in translation hardly proves “Influence.”
Turning to Pessoa, what’d he write about? Whitman
(Lisbon, the sea etc.) method peculiarly longwinded,
diarrhea mouth some people say—Pessoa Schmessoa.

April 12, 1988

May Days 1988

I

As I cross my kitchen floor the thought of Death returns,

day after day, as I wake & drink lemon juice & hot water,

brush my teeth & blow my nose, stand at toilet a yellow stream

issuing from my body, look out curtained windows, across the street

Mary Help of Christians R.C. Church, how many years

empty the garbage pail, carry black plastic bags to the sidewalk,

before I boil the last soft egg,

day after day glance my altar sitting pillow a sidelong look & sigh,

pass bookcases’ Greek lyrics & volumes of Military Industrial Secrecy?

How many mornings out the window Springtime’s grey clouds drift over a wooden owl

on the Rectory roof, pigeons flutter off the street lamp to an iron fence, I return to kitchen

oatmeal cooking in an iron pot, sit in a wooden chair, choose a soupspoon, dreaming out the window eat my gruel

as ailanthus trees bud & grow thick green, seaweed in rainy Atlantis,

lose leaves after snowfall, sit bare-branched in January’s rusty winds?

Snap photographs focus’d on the clothesline, courtyard chimneypots a block away?

How many years lie alone in bed and stroke my cock

or read the Times on a pillow midnite, answer telephone talk, my Stepmother

or Joe in Washington, wait for a knock on the door it’s portly Peter sober hesitant

inquiring supper, rarely visiting, rueful a life gone by—you got the monthly rent?

armfuls of mid-morn mail arriving with despairing Secretaries—

rise and tuck my shirt in, turn the doorlock key, go down hallway stairs,

enter New York City, Christine’s Polish restaurant around East 12th Street corner on 1st Avenue

taxi uptown to art museums or visit Dr. Brown, chest x-rays, smoking cough or flu

Turn on the News from Palestine, Listen to Leadbelly’s tape lament, Black Girl, Jim Crow, Irene—and

Call C—— O—— Yiddish translator poetress Zionist yenta?

Numbers in U.S. File Cabinet (Death Waits to Be Executed)

100,000,000 buffalo 17th century on North American Plains

$136,000,000,000 Farm Program costs encouraged chemical overuse 1980s decade

$4,500,000 Agriculture Department research on Natural farm methods 1980s

300,000 National junkies

100,000 alcohol deaths yearly

385,000 tobacco deaths heart attack cancer a year

30,000 deaths “illicit substances” yearly

$11,000,000,000 budget war on drugs 1990

1,000,000,000 people on world malnourished diseased

3,600,000 estimated American Homeless

300,000 mental patients dumped on streets 1970s–1980s

300 homeless slept outdoors Tompkins Park N.Y.C. July 29, 1989

17,000 meals served St. Peter’s soup kitchen Morristown N.J.

110,000,000 man-made deaths Wars holocausts fatality camps XX Century

3°–8° Fahrenheit increase earth temperature next century computers project

Lambert 3-6606 Louis Ginsberg’s phone for 20 years in Paterson N.J.

65 Decibels sound level ordinary speech

100 Decibels rock concert sound level

28,000,000 current cases hearing loss U.S.A.

6,000 workers, Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant

$300,000,000 yearly pay & benefits Rocky Flats Colorado

1% Colorado manufacturing activity’s at Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility

70 FBI agents raided Rocky Flats investigating 10,000 gallon toxic waste tanks 1989

$100,000,000,000 to 200,000,000,000 estimate nuclear weapons complex cleanup costs

Savings & Loan Association bankruptcy taxpayers’ costs it says here $500,000,000,000

70,000 Salvadorians killed in Civil War majority by Government Paramilitary Death Squads funded by U.S.A.

Return of Kral Majales

This silver anniversary much hair’s gone from my head and I am the King of May

And tho I am King of May my howls & proclamations present are banned by FCC on America’s electric airwaves 6 A.M. to midnight

So King of May I return through Heaven flying to reclaim my paper crown

And I am King of May with high blood pressure, diabetes, gout, Bell’s palsy, kidneystones & calm eyeglasses

And wear the foolish crown of no ignorance no wisdom anymore no fear no hope in capitalist striped tie & Communist dungarees

No laughing matter the loss of the planet next hundred years

And I am the King of May returned with a diamond big as the universe an empty mind

And I am the King of May lacklove bouzerant in Springtime with a feeble practice of meditation

And I am King of May Distinguished Brooklyn English Professor singing

All gone all gone all overgone all gone sky-high now old mind so Ah!

April 25, 1990

Elephant in the Meditation Hall

Yes all spiritual groups scandal the shrine room

What about San Francisco Roshi & the board director’s wife

What about high living limousine expense accounts in Moscow?

What about the late Rajneesh & poisoned gefilte fish in Oregon?

What’s hiding under Rajneeshis’ Orange skullcaps? Brains?

Then old L.A. Mountain Roshi even tap’d his young girls

and East Coast Roshi’s semen dribbled from Hawaii to the broom closets of the Catskills

Maezumi Roshi caused grief his senseis’ hearts wrung out with midnight sake & beer

Later he thanked them for A.A.

Veteran Zenmaster with motorcycle & community farm chorale felt up little boys

& a big guy too, tough as nails

Remember a strange Mongolian Russian fruitcake Lama in Polk Gulch Bay Area?

Vajracharya Trungpa! Dont mention the naked poet at the Halloween Party!

And the whispered transmission regent died of AIDS (disciple a straight guy sick they say)

Marxists were right, religion the people’s opium!

But who’re they to talk lookit Mao a Marxist his picture on every Chinese wall & Little Red Book

wherefore everyone stood up bedtime nites reciting his dread slogans?

They still had pictures of Stalin on truckcab windows in Gori 1985 a scandal!

And New Left carried psychedelic pictures of Mao, Che Guevara & Castro up and down Empire State’s stairways

A scandal of the sixties! And marvelous atheist Khmer Rouge read Marx Sartre & Erich Fromm,

how many’d they murder with religious good intentions?

What US President hasn’t sponsored war, Lumumba’s assassination, an H-bomb,

trillion dollar Savings & Loan mistakes? Scandals! taxpayers gotta subsi dize Banks!

Poem in the Form of a Snake That Bites Its Tail

          Oleta (Snake) River!
          Heron, Manatee, Osprey
Canopy of white red &
          black Mangroves
fighting for survival against
          exotics introduced
                    by Europeans
Swamp fern covers the ground
               by this Primordial Tidal
                         Zone,
Brown detritus under the
                    clear water
     feeds animals and trees in
                    high and low tides
          pulled by the moon,
     cycles of lunar
          reproduction following
                    waters flowing
          in and out the
          Intracoastal Waterway—
     Barracuda come
          in with the tides
               Heron we’ll see
Brazilian pepper
          & Malalluca
                    from Australia
brought in by Mr. Gifford
               first Doctor
          of Tropical Agriculture
Malalluca
     to dry out the swamps
          & make truck farms
          to feed the Northeast 1900—
                    Dade County
               tomatoes & cabbage today—

First Indians Tequesta
     for 10–25,000 years—
          left behind shell
                    tools
     to make dugouts
     Mikasuki and Seminole
     were Creek Indians forced down
               from North Carolina
          by Sen. Jesse Helms
          then driven inland from
          Northern Florida
                    by the Army
               —Indian middens
               attest 100
          years’ occupation

Seminole and Mikasuki
     accepted
     runaway slaves
               got in trouble with
               the whites—
Abraham the Runaway showed Chief Osceola
          guerrilla gunpowder—
                    Defied the U.S. Army—
Govt. fought 2 wars
               against them—
     first 1820 Andrew Jackson
               fought in Florida
     pushed Indians south
Second Seminole War
     transported 2,000
          Indians to Oklahoma
               around 1840, the Trail of Tears
—200 managed to
escape into swamp
where white man had
     yet no use for
          the land
Indians
     from before Columbus
                    & runaway slaves
               Strange & perpetual
                    alliance

A brown heron
          flaps along the
               green surface
          to stand sentinel
               beak pointed out
     on a green lawn
               past the big rubber
                         tree—
          tall stalky legs
               rising halfway
heavy slow
               on long wings
               the height of the big
               ficus’ leafy
                         umbrella whose
                    thready prop roots hang
               over the concrete
               bank down to the brackish
                              water surface
Kids’ & crows’ voices
     (crows here for the
          season)

A local issue
                    ecological!
We depend on Everglades
     for water to
                    sustain our days—
     Most of the body is
     made up of water—
     3–4 days without water
     we die—
Everglades filters the
     water Dade Broward
          & Palm Beach County drink—
          (Tricounty fresh water—)

El pato vuela, canta
     y corre, pero
     ninguno de las tres
          los hace bien.

Can live without air
     8 minutes
Can live without water
          2–4 days
can live without food
     40–50 days—
Survive, clean up our
               air
Clean up water
Grow enuf food to
          keep everybody
               alive

Mistaken Introductions

or this marvelous hi Lama followed
          in here by screaming madwoman
          charging she was betrayed 10 years ago
          on one of the moons of Saturn
or, I want to introduce you to this
          universe which unfortunately
          doesn’t quite exist.
We set up luncheon at Rizzoli
          for the Tibetan photog who
          hadnt prepared his
          slides, it was a disaster—
May I introduce you to your
          prospective son-in-law—
          unfortunately today he’s drunk
               unshaven but a good
          businessman tomorrow
It’s a magnificent hotel
          just this week there’s no
          water to flush the toilet
          above the 10th floor
          where you’re staying and
we had a fire in the elevator

January 7, 1991

C.I.A. DOPE CALYPSO

CIA Dope Calypso

In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai-shek’s army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday

Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to sell to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA

Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Rai that’s a railroad town
Sold it next to police chief brain
He took it to town on the choochoo train

Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA

The policeman’s name was Mr. Phao
He peddled dope grand scale and how
Chief of border customs paid
By Central Intelligence’s U.S. A.I.D.

The whole operation, Newspapers say
Supported by the CIA

He got so sloppy & peddled so loose
He busted himself & cooked his own goose
Took the reward for an opium load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold

All these Dealers were decades and yesterday
The Indochinese mob of the U.S. CIA

II
N.S.A. Dope Calypso

Now Richard Secord and Oliver North
Hated Sandinistas whatever they were worth
They peddled for the Contras to ease their pain
They couldn’t sell Congress so Contras sold cocaine

They discovered Noriega only yesterday
Nancy Reagan & the CIA

Now coke and grass were exchanged for guns
On a border airfield that John Hull runs
Or used to run till his Costa Rican bust
As a CIA spy trading Contra coke dust

They discovered Noriega only yesterday
Nancy Reagan & the CIA

Ramón Milian Rodríguez of Medellín Cartel
Laundered their dollars & he did it very well
Hundreds of millions through U.S. banks
Till he got busted and sang in the tank

It was buried in the papers only yesterday
When Bush was Drug Czar U.S.A.

Milian told Congress $3,000,000 coke bucks
Went to Felix Rodríguez, CIA muck-a-muck
To give to the Contras only Hush Hush Hush
Except for Donald Gregg & his boss George Bush

Buried in the papers only yesterday
With Bush Vice President U.S.A.

Rodríguez met Bush in his office many times
They didn’t talk business, they drank lemon & limes
Or maybe they drank coffee or they smoked a cigarette
But cocaine traffic they remembered to forget

III
Just Say Yes Calypso

When Schwarzkopf’s Father busted Iran’s Mossadegh
They put in the Shah and his police the Savak
They sucked up his oil, but got Ayatollah’s dreck
So Thirty years later we hadda arm Iraq

Though he used poison gas, Saddam was still our man
But to aid the Contras, hadda also arm Iran

Mesopotamia was doing just fine
Till the Ottoman Empire blew up on a mine
They had apple orchards in Eden and Ur
Till the Snake advised George Bush “This land is yours”

The Garden foul’d up, brimstone came down
In the good old days we had plenty ozone

The British & Americans & Frenchmen all
Took concessions in the Garden So the Garden took a fall
Got addicted to Emirs and their fossil fuels
Police state Sheiks & Intelligence ghouls

The Sphinx lost his nose, acid ate the Parthenon
Pretty soon the Persian Gulf is dead and gone

The Saudi desert bloomed with oil pipe lines
To push the auto industry It’s yours & it’s mine
L.A. and Osaka got a habit on gas
In a bullet-proof Caddie you can really move your ass

L.A. & Osaka got a habit on gas
In a bullet-proof Caddie you can really move your ass

From a Mickey-Mouse war on cocaine & crack
We dropped a million bombs on the kids in Iraq
How many we killed nobody wants to tell
It’d give a lousy picture of a war they gotta sell

Hum Bom!

I
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!

Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!

What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do!
Who do we bomb?

What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb you!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb you!

Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you hadda bomb?

They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!

Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon does the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon does the job

Supplication for the Rebirth of the Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

Dear Lord Guru who pervades the space of my mind
permeates the universe of my consciousness,
still empties my balding head and’s stabilized my wand’ring thought
to average equanimity in Manhattan & Boulder

Return return reborn in spirit & knowledge in human body
my own or others as continual Teacher of chaotic peace,
Return according to your vow to pacify magnetize enrich destroy
grasping angry stupidity in me my family friends & Sangha

Return in body speech & mind to enlighten my labors
& the labors of your meditators, thousands from L.A. to Halifax
to relieve sufferings of our brothers, lovers
family, friends, fellow citizens, nations and planet.

Remember your vow to be with us on our deathbeds
in living worlds where we dwell in your tender perspective
breathe with your conscious breath, catch ourselves thinking
& dissolve bomb dream, fear of our own skin & yelling argument
                                   in the sky of your mind

Bend your efforts to regroup our community within your thought-body
& mind-space, the effects of your non-thought,
Turbulent ease of your spontaneous word & picture
nonmeditative compassion your original mind

These slogans were writ on the second day of June 1991
a sleepless night my brother’s 70th birthday on Long Island
my own sixty-fifth year in the human realm visiting his house
by the Vajra Poet Allen Ginsberg supplicating protection of his
                                   Vajra Guru Chögyam Trungpa

June 2, 1991, 2:05 A.M.

After the Big Parade

Millions of people cheering and waving flags for joy in Manhattan
Yesterday’ve returned to their jobs and arthritis now Tuesday—
What made them want so much passion at last, such mutual delight—
Will they ever regain these hours of confetti’d ecstasy again?
Have they forgotten the Corridors of Death that gave such victory?
Will another hundred thousand desert deaths across the world be
                                   cause for the next rejoicing?

June 11, 1991, 2:30 P.M.

Big Eats

Big deal bargains TV meat stock market news paper headlines love life Metropolis

Float thru air like thought forms float thru the skull, check the headlines catch the boyish ass that walks

Before you fall in bed blood sugar high blood pressure lower, lower, your lips grow cold.

Sooner or later let go what you loved hated or shrugged off, you walk in the park

You look at the sky, sit on a pillow, count up the stars in your head, get up and eat.

August 20, 1991

Not Dead Yet

Huffing puffing upstairs downstairs telephone
     office mail checks secretary revolt—
The Soviet Legislative Communist bloc
     inspired Gorbachev’s wife and Yeltsin
to shut up in terror or stand on a tank
     in front of White House denouncing Putschists—
September breezes sway branches & leaves in
     a calm schoolyard under humid grey sky,
Drink your decaf Ginsberg old communist New
     York Times addict, be glad you’re not Trotsky.

September 16, 1991

Yiddishe Kopf

I’m Jewish because love my family matzoh ball soup.

I’m Jewish because my fathers mothers uncles grandmothers said “Jewish,” all the way back to Vitebsk & Kaminetz-Podolska via Lvov.

Jewish because reading Dostoyevsky at 13 I write poems at restaurant tables Lower East Side, perfect delicatessen intellectual.

Jewish because violent Zionists make my blood boil, Progressive indignation.

Jewish because Buddhist, my anger’s transparent hot air, I shrug my shoulders.

Jewish because monotheist Jews Catholics Moslems’re intolerable intolerant—

Blake sd. “6000 years of sleep” since antique Nobodaddy Adonai’s mind trap—Oy! such Meshuggeneh absolutes—

Senior Citizen Jewish paid my dues got half-fare card buses subways, discount movies—

Can’t imagine how these young people make a life, make a living.

How can they stand it, going out in the world with only $10 and a hydrogen bomb?

October 1991

John

I
No one liked my hair
Mother pulled it toward the movies
Father hit the top of my head
Street gangs set it afire
My dry hair, my
short hair, black hair, drab hair
my stupid hair—frizzled!
Till I met John,
John loved my hair
Twined his fingers in my delicate curly locks
Told me let it grow
John buried his face in my hair
kissed my hair
Murmured endearments “Oh oh oh” to the top of my skull
Patted me on the head
Stroked me from crown to neck nape—
Sat across from me on the subway and gazed at me lovingly—

II
They were whispering, elbows leaned on the wide marble balustrade
balcony lobby of the Majestic Theater—
talking Jerusalem, Moscow, Ballet, Quasars, Interest rates—
John came down from his seat, stopped at the top stair—
sat down, hands on his ears in despair—“I’ve stymied my feet!”
“What” they asked, “you’ve stymied your feet? Whazzat mean?”
John nodded his head, eyes closed, hands against his head as before,
“I’ve stymied my feet,” he repeated dolefully.

III
John had AIDS.
First, he began talking to himself.
The psychiatrist said:
“If you’re going to talk to yourself,
do it in the form of poetry.”

A Thief Stole This Poem

These days steal everything

People steal your wallet, your watch

Break into your car steal your radio suitcase

Break in your house, your Sony Hi 8 your CD VCR Olympus XA

People steal your life, catch you on the street & steal your head off

Steal your sneakers in the toilet

Steal your love, mug your boyfriend rape your grandmother on the subway

Junkies steal your heart for medicine, they steal your credibility gap over the radio

Cokeheads & blackmen steal your comfort, peace of mind walking Avenue A your laundry package

steal your spirit, you gotta worry

Puerto Ricans steal white skin from your face

Wasps steal your planet for junk bonds, Jews steal your Nobodaddy and leave their dirty God in your bed

Arabs steal your pecker & you steal their oil

Everybody’s stealing from everyone else, time sex wristwatch money

Steal your sleep 6 A.M. Garbage Trucks boomboxes sirens loud arguments hydrogen bombs

steal your universe.

December 19, 1991, 8:15 A.M.

Lunchtime

Birds chirp in the brick backyard Radio
piano chopping gentle chords next door
A rush of tires & car exhaust on 14th Street
Delighted to be alive this cloudy Thursday
February window open at the kitchen table,
Senior Citizen ready for next week’s angiogram.

February 20, 1992, 1:15 P.M.

Deadline Dragon Comix

After Lalon

I
It’s true I got caught in
                    the world
When I was young Blake
          tipped me off
Other teachers followed:
Better prepare for Death
Don’t get entangled with
          possessions
That was when I was young,
          I was warned
Now I’m a Senior Citizen
and stuck with a million
          books
a million thoughts a million
               dollars a million
                    loves
How’ll I ever leave my body?
Allen Ginsberg says, I’m
          really up shits creek

II
I sat at the foot of a
               Lover
     and he told me everything
Fuck off, 23 skidoo,
          watch your ass,
          watch your step
exercise, meditate, think
          of your temper—
Now I’m an old man and
          I won’t live another
20 years maybe not another
          20 weeks,
maybe the next second I’ll
          be carried off to
                    rebirth
     the worm farm, maybe it’s
          already happened—
How should I know, says
          Allen Ginsberg
Maybe I’ve been dreaming
               all along—

III
It’s 2 A.M. and I got to
          get up early
and taxi 20 miles to satisfy
          my ambition—
How’d I get into this fix,
this workaholic show
     biz meditation market?
If I had a soul I sold it
     for pretty words
If I had a body I used
     it up spurting my essence
If I had a mind it got
     covered with Love—
If I had a spirit I forgot
     when I was breathing
If I had speech it was
     all a boast
If I had desire it went
     out my anus
If I had ambitions to
     be liberated
how’d I get into this
          wrinkled person?
With pretty words, Love essences,
          breathing boasts, anal
          longings, famous crimes?
What a mess I am, Allen Ginsberg.

V
     4 A.M.
Then they came for me,
     I hid in the toilet stall
They broke down the toilet door
     It fell in on an innocent boy
Ach the wooden door fell
     in on an innocent kid!
I stood on the bowl & listened,
     I hid my shadow,
they shackled the other and
     dragged him away
in my place— How long can
     I get away with this?
Pretty soon they’ll discover
     I’m not there
They’ll come for me again, where
     can I hide my body?
Am I myself or some one else
     or nobody at all?
Then what’s this heavy flesh this
     weak heart leaky kidney?
Who’s been doing time
     for 65 years
in this corpse? Who else went
     into ecstasy besides me?
Now it’s all over soon,
          what good was all that come?
Will it come true? Will
          it really come true?

VI
I had my chance and lost it,
many chances & didn’t
     take them seriously enuf.
Oh yes I was impressed, almost
     went mad with fear
I’d lose the immortal chance,
     One lost it.
Allen Ginsberg warns you
     dont follow my path
     to extinction.

Get It?

Angelic Black Holes

Soul to crotch the streets commit hara-kiri,
Burnt-out stores chessboard moonlit households,
The City of Angels stares into black holes—
See down through Earth to scorched Nagorno-Karabakh.
How long is the tunnel of pain?
Does God need Welfare?

Even so, remembering the sheen on Peredelkino’s black gooseberries,
Rodney King’s name sounds Russian, rodnik for ground-spring.
As for me who crapped up my own homeland
How lay the blame on anybody else?
Rain & ashes seal my lips.
The two superpowers left the Little Man supersufferings.
Us—blown to hell. You—immolate yourselves in flame?

Any light at the end of the tunnel of pain?

Translated by Allen Ginsberg and Nina Bouis
May 17, 1992
Los Angeles

Research

Research has shown that black people have inferiority complexes regarding white folks

Research has shown that Jews are exclusively concerned with financial lasciviousness

Research has shown Socialism to be a universal failure wherever practiced by secret police

Research has shown that Earth was created 4004 B.C., a Divine Bang

Research has shown that sparrows, bees, lizards, chickens, pigs & cows exhibit signs of homosexual behavior when in prison

Research has shown Southern Baptist Inerrancy Confession the most virulent form of Christian Truth

Research has shown that 90% of people going to Dentists have bad teeth

brush your teeth violently 3 times a day after meals wear away the roots

Research has shown that Hollywood makes the best films ever, the sexually degenerate

that the U.N. is Good ? Bad ? Indifferent ? for American interests Check One

Research has shown that Christian Reconstructionist homosexuality is Sin, Lesbianism crime against nature, AIDS a plague sent to punish gay Angelmakers

bisexuality disapproved by 51% Americans

Research has shown that teen headshakers watching TV get more IQ tests than natives of Amazon & Ucayali rivers who have no antennae

Research has shown whales & porpoises to subscribe to a Higher Intelligence

Research has shown that Elitist Individualism Spiritual Corruption & Degenerate Art caused Dictatorships in Soviet Union China and Germany

that possession of pornography by American Family Institute has resulted in 35% increase in sex crimes among institute librarians

PUT DOWN YOUR CIGARETTE RAG

Put Down Your Cigarette Rag (Dont Smoke)

Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke
Dont smoke
It’s a nine billion dollar
Capitalist Communist joke
     Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke
                         Dont smoke

Smoking makes you cough,
You cant sing straight
You gargle on saliva
& vomit on your plate
     Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke,
               Dont smoke smoke smoke smoke

You smoke in bed
You smoke on the hill
Smoke till yr dead
You smoke in Hell
     Dont smoke dont smoke in living Hell Dope Dope
          Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke

You puff your fag
You suck your butt
You choke & gag
Teeth full of crud
     Smoke smoke smoke smoke Dont dont dont
          Dont Dont Dope Dope Dope Dont Smoke Dont Dope

Pay your two bucks
          for a deathly pack
Trust your bad luck
          & smoke in the sack
     Dont Smoke Dont Smoke Nicotine Nicotine No
     No dont smoke the official Dope Smoke Dope Dope

Four Billion dollars in Green
’swat Madison Avenue gets
t’ advertise nicotine
& hook you radical brats
          Dont Smoke Dont Smoke Dont Smoke
               Nope Nope Dope Dope Hoax Hoax Hoax Hoax
          Dopey Dope Dopey Dope Dope Dope dope dope

Nine billion bucks a year
a Southern Industry
Buys Senator Jesse Fear who pushes Tobacco subsidy
In the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
     Dope smokes dope smokes dont smoke dont smoke
          Cloak cloak cloak room cloak & dagger
          smoke room cloak room dope cloak
          cloak room dope cloak room dope dont smoke

Twenty-four hours in bed
& give your boyfriend head
Put something in your mouth
Like skin not cigarette filth
     Suck tit suck tit suck cock suck cock
          suck clit suck prick suck it
          but dont smoke nicotine dont smoke
          dont smoke nicotine nicotine it’s
          too obscene dont smoke dont smoke
          nicotine suck cock suck prick suck tit
          suck clit suck it But don’t smoke shit nope
          nope nope nope Dope Dope Dope Dope
               the official dope Dont Smoke

VIOLENT COLLABORATIONS

Violent Collaborations

Trespass against me
& penetrate deeply
Spare me not even your rape
Tie me up quickly
make me smile sickly
Seal up my mouth with scotch tape

—AG

Piss on me Crap on me
Wipe your fat ass on me
Make me a creature you loathe
Sorely harass me
Dont even ask me
But deal me your ultimate blow

Calm Panic Campaign Promise

End of Millennium
                    Earth’s decay—
Fire Air Water tainted
          We’re the Great Beast—
                    Dark bed thoughts
Can’t do anything to stop it—
Denial in Government, in Newspapers of Record—
Like watching gum disease & not brushing teeth
Getting heart failure, no rest much stress
Putting salt on your greasy pork
Putting sugar in coffee you’re diabetic
          Dysesthesia on foot soles
Poor circulation smoke more cigarettes
Kick your son under the table have another beer
Need President who’ll reverse the denial—
                    The Calm Panic Party
               to restore nature’s balance.

July 9, 1992, 12:55 A.M.

Now and Forever

I’ll settle for Immortality—
Not thru the body
     Not thru the eyes
          Star-spangled high mountains
               waning moon over Aspen peaks
But thru words, thru the breath
          of long sentences
loves I have, heart beating
          still,
inspiration continuous, exhalation of
          cadenced affection
These immortal survive America,
               survive the fall of States
          Departure of my body,
               mouth dumb dust
This verse broadcasts desire,
               accomplishment of Desire
Now and forever boys can read
               girls dream, old men cry
Old women sigh
               youth still come.

July 19, 1992
Aspen

Who Eats Who?

A crow sits on the prayerflagpole,
her mate blackwinged walks the wet green grass, worms?
Yesterday seagulls skimmed the choppy waves,
     feet touching foamed breakers
               looking for salmon? halibut? sole?
Bacteria eat parameciums or vice versa,
viruses enter cells, white cell count low—
Tooth & claw on TV, lions strike down antelope—
Whales sift transparent krill thru bearded teeth.
Every cannibal niche fulfilled, Amazon
     headhunters eat testicles—
               Enemy’s powers & energy become mine!

August 13, 1992
Gampo Abbey, Nova Scotia

The Charnel Ground

Upstairs Jenny crashed her car & became a living corpse, Jake sold grass, the white-bearded potbelly leprechaun silent climbed their staircase

Ex-janitor John from Poland averted his eyes, cheeks flushed with vodka, wine who knew what

as he left his groundfloor flat, refusing to speak to the inhabitant of Apt. 24

who’d put his boyfriend in Bellevue, calling police, while the artistic Buddhist composer

on sixth floor lay spaced out feet swollen with water, dying slowly of AIDS over a year—

The Chinese teacher cleaned & cooked in Apt. 23 for the homosexual poet who pined for his gymnast

thighs & buttocks— Downstairs th’ old hippie flower girl fell drunk over the banister, smashed her jaw—

her son despite moderate fame cheated of rocknroll money, twenty thousand people in stadiums

cheering his tattooed skinhead murderous Hare Krishna vegetarian drum lyrics—

Mary born in the building rested on her cane, heavy-legged with heart failure on the second landing, no more able

to vacation in Caracas & Dublin— The Russian landlady’s husband from concentration camp disappeared again—nobody mentioned he’d died—

tenants took over her building for hot water, she couldn’t add rent & pay taxes, wore a long coat hot days

alone & thin on the street carrying groceries to her crooked apartment silent—

so cars bottlenecked wait minutes to pass the M14 bus stopped mid-road, heavy dressed senior citizens step down in red rubble

High school youth the inside skin of my thighs was silken smooth tho

Everyday

The Lama sat
     in bed
with bamboo
backscratcher
his false teeth
in a big
glass of water
on the sunny
windowsill.

August 1992

Fun House Antique Store

I’d been motoring through States &
stopped at a country antique store, an
old-fashioned house, in excellent condition—
Flower’d wallpaper, polished banisters
lampshades dusted, candelabra burnished
flaming quiet by the cloak closet
under the stairs, pitcher of water & white
washbowls beside the french doors
embroidered doilies & artificial flowers
ivory & light brown on mahogany
side tables, a brass bowl for cards,
kitchen with polished stove cold ready
at Summer’s end to light up with split
wood & kindling in buckets beside
the empty fireplace, tongs & screen
in neat order. The second floor as
perfectly appointed as the foyer
(set with hat & cane rack & mirror)
stairway rugs & oaken doors, down beds
a glass-front bookcase, brown shiny bureaus,
drawers crammed with old ties & bloomers,
celluloid collars, some long-sleeved underwear, silk
& paisley shirts & shawls—and the stairs
to the third-floor attic rose five steep steps
into a blank wall nicely wallpapered with roses.
     What a delicate touch, trompe l’oeil
artistry, what charming care & magical consciousness
arranged this antique shop, so practical
for display as Bed-and-Breakfast wayfarer’s
stop-over & lampshade collector’s twee daydream—
Yet it was a modern commercial establishment
we’d entered casually on our own road
through Maryland to see our lawyer in D.C.—
One attendant who observed us admiring his home
appointments watched us turn to go—
I wished to make a speech: “Congratulations
on your work of Ahrt, your antique care
& delicate intelligence, as if Messrs. McDermott
& McGough photographed the 1880s entire
& built it in 3-D renewed at millennium’s end—”

News Stays News

Diana & Roger Napoleon’s real estate empire
extended up to the Napoleon Castle Hotel’s penthouse
stainless steel & gold doorknobs bathtubs bars & windowsills
But Roger got Alzheimer’s & couldn’t keep his money books straight
Diana went to jail for back taxes & cheating at cards
Lost control of her castle, lawyers ate her Empire
She got sick & spent years maintaining her body,
skin growths, liver failure, kidney disturbances, upset stomach
But the castle of flesh ceased to function
She was left inside with her soul.
What is that? Where will it go? Who am I?
asked Napoleon in bed, eyes closing for the last time on St. Helena.

September 7, 1992, 3:00 P.M.

Autumn Leaves

At 66 just learning how to take care of my body

Wake cheerful 8 A.M. & write in a notebook

rising from bed side naked leaving a naked boy asleep by the wall

mix miso mushroom leeks & winter squash breakfast,

Check bloodsugar, clean teeth exactly, brush, toothpick, floss, mouthwash

oil my feet, put on white shirt white pants white sox

sit solitary by the sink

a moment before brushing my hair, happy not yet

to be a corpse.

September 13, 1992, 9:50 A.M.

In the Benjo

Reading No Nature in the toilet
Sitting down, absorbed
     page after page, forgetting
time, forgetting my bottom
     relax, detritus
          flopping out into water
—better than pushing and squeezing,
     nervous, self-conscious—
better forget and read a book,
     let your behind take care of itself
better than hemorrhoids, a good volume
                    of poetry.

October 23, 1992, 11:00 A.M.

American Sentences

Four skinheads stand in the streetlight rain chatting under an umbrella.

1987

*   *   *

Bearded robots drink from Uranium coffee cups on Saturn’s ring.

May 1990

*   *   *

At sunset Apollo’s columns echo with the bawl of the One God.

*   *   *

Crescent moon, girls chatter at twilight on the busride to Ankara.

*   *   *

The weary Ambassador waits relatives late at the supper table.

*   *   *

To be sucking your thumb in Rome by the Tiber among fallen leaves …

June 1990

*   *   *

Rainy night on Union Square, full moon. Want more poems? Wait till I’m dead.

August 8, 1990, 3:30 A.M.

*   *   *

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