Collected Poems 1947

New Democracy Wish List

for President Clinton White House

Retro Axioms:

“Progress” ended in XX century.

Hyper-rationalism reduces natural complexity of nature through narrow thought abstraction; Hyper-rationalization, hyper-industrialization & Hyper-technology create chaos.

U.S. command economy subsidizes fossil fuel and nuclear Energy & Science, Agriculture, Air & Motor Transport, Banking, Communications, Military Industrial Complex, licit & illicit psychoactive Drugs, also rules Mass Media via FCC. American Free Market is hi-tech myth with national socialist centralized regulation implicit everywhere except small business & little magazines.

Muscle Power connected to appropriate hi-tech might rehabilitate Earth.

Lacks & Needs:

Fossil Fuels retard the planet. Detoxify America: tainted Fire poisons Earth, fouls Air & pollutes Water.

Emphasize prevention & alternative medicine with medical insurance rebates for not using Self-insured health credits: like mythic China, “Only pay Doctor when you are well.”

Fund Ryan White Care Act, separate Church & State in Center for Disease Control, fund bleach kits, needle exchange & plainspoken AIDS education, build infrastructure of decentralized community based health care preventative medicine early intervention clinics for poverty class disease-prone high-risk teens women & men living with AIDS & TB inner city plagues.

Coordinate National crash program to research inexpensive anti-AIDS medicines.

Separate Church & State in arts, education & civil law. Restore National Endowment for the Arts & FCC freedom from Fundamentalist political intrusion.

Sexuality’s loose not fixed. Legalize it.

Decriminalize addictive drug problem, doctors can cure addiction or provide maintenance if no cure. Reduce mass-million expense on narcotics-addicted political prisoners overcrowding courts & jails, Medicalize drug trade.

Decriminalize marijuana, its disadvantages are minor; reserve hemp grass as unadvertised private small cash crop for failing family farms, encourage hemp fabric industries.

Privatize & entrust psychedelics to medical educational priestly professions. End Military monopoly on LSD research and development.

End tobacco farming subsidies, cut use. Ex-Nicotine lobbyists working in Clinton’s new White House can stop smoking.

Shift agricultural subsidies toward grain beans & vegetable diet. Tax meat as a nutritional agronomic & ecologic disaster.

With massive scale reforestation rural & in wilderness, plant also universal urban tree rows.

Establish Civilian Conservation Corps for Urban homesteading, thin out corrupt local bureaucracies obstructing populist housing reconstruction.

Encourage international trade in Eco-technology in place of enabling codependency on weapons trade.

Inaugurate National “Limits of Growth” Program for Population/Land Use/Pollution.

Jump start national state & city human and industrial waste compost & recycling.

Honor primary and secondary school teachers, elevate respect, reward educators as handsomely as Plumbers, reduce class crowding to human size, under 15 students; encourage national child-care projects.

Take back money from SLA bankruptcy profiteer goniffs.

Purge U.S. military death squad subsidies in Salvador, Guatemala, etc. We backed up dictators in Zaire, Somalia, Liberia, Sudan, Angola, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Salvador, we’re responsible: admit it then figure ways out.

Open CIA & FBI & NSA archives on Cointelpro raids, Government drug dealing, Kennedy/King assassinations, Iranian Contragate, Panama Deception, Vatican, Hand & Lavoro Bank thuggery, etc. including Bush-Noriega relations and other CIA client-agent scandals.

Open all secret files on J. Edgar Hoover-Cardinal Spellman-Roy Cohn-Joe McCarthy alcoholic Closet-Queen Conspiracy with Organized Crime to sabotage the U.S. Labor Movement, Native African-American Hispanic & Gay minority leaderships; and blackmail U.S. Presidents Congress each other for half century.

Get Government Secret Police (DEA CIA FBI NSA etc.) off our backs by the next millennium.

January 17, 1993

Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina

General Mother Teresa
     Emperor Dalai Lama XIV
          Chief of Staff Thich Nhat Hanh
               Army Chaplain John Paul II
     followed by the shades of Gandhi
          Sakharov, Sartre & his uncle
                    Albert Schweitzer
went to the bombed out streets
talked to Moslem Bosnians in
          the burnt out grocery stores
parlayed with Croatian & Serbian Generals & Parliament
asked them to quit shooting & firing
          artillery from the mountainside
overlooking villages
          emptied of grandmothers—
So now there was quiet—a few fires
          smoldered in back alleys
a few corpses stank in wet fields
—But who owns these houses? The
          cinema theaters with broken doors?
Who owns that grocery store, that City Hall,
          that windowless school with broken
          rooftiles?
Who owns these little apartments, now
          all worshippers of Allah
pray in towns besieged 100 miles away
overcrowded in tenements & tents, with
          U.N. portosans at the crossroads?
Who owns these abandoned alleys &
          drugstores with shattered bottle shards over
          the sidewalk & inside the door?
Who’ll be the judge, attorney, file
          legal briefs,
bankruptcy papers, affidavits of ownership,
          deeds, old tax receipts?
Who’ll council who lives where in the rubble,
          who’ll sleep in what brokenwalled hut
in the full moonlight when spring clouds
          pass over the face
of the man in the moon at the end of May?

May 6, 1993, 3 A.M.

After the Party

amid glasses clinking, mineral water, schnapps
among professors’ smiling beards,
sneaker’d classicists, intelligent lady millionaire
          literary Patron fag hags
          earth mothers of Lambeth, Trocadero,
          Hyde Park, 5th Avenue
blond haired journalists with bracelets, grand
          readers of Dostojevsky & Gogol—
senior editor escorts from Trotskyite weeklies,
lesbians sitting on glossy magazine covers—
what have we here? a kid moving from
          foyer to bathroom, thin body,
Pale cheeked with red cap, 18 year old window washer,
          came with Señora Murillo
She admired his impudence, amused by his
          sincere legs
as I admire his glance, he turns aside to
          gaze at me, I’m
happy to guess he’ll show his
          naked body in bed
where we talk the refined old doctrine,
          Coemergent Wisdom

Lódz’, October 5, 1993
9:15 P.M. at “Construction in Process”poetry reading

After Olav H. Hauge

Some live on islands, hills near Trondheim
Some in St. Moritz, or the forest depths
Some lonely have beautiful wives
castles, fine carpets on Wall Street
Buy & sell currencies, solitary on marble floors
consumed by a passion for fossil fuel
magnetized by cannons, lasers, bombsights, enriched uranium
or together play the stock market
They live & die at the throw of the dice
They’re all businessmen
who have found eachother.

Fermented Jungle

North wind blows
Fish fly around the room
wind dies down
Fish fly under water.

III

Sometimes the Godliness
strikes me as heroic
People mill about
Bodø won the Norwegian soccer cup
It’s so crowded, fans are drunk
People’s feet get mixed up
That big man wanders around
lost, barefoot
he can’t find his feet—
Finally he goes out, late
on his way home
not sure if he’s on
his own two feet

Trondheim, October 25, 1993

These knowing age

These knowing age
fart
These knowing age
walk slowly
these knowing age
remind themselves of their grandmothers
these knowing age
take waterpills, high blood pressure,
          watch their sugar and salt
these knowing age eat less meat, some
          stopped smoking a decade ago
Some quit coffee, some drink it strong
These knowing age saw
best friends’ funerals, telephoned
          daughters & granddaughters
Some drive, some don’t, some cook, some
          do not
These knowing age often
keep quiet.

Munich, November 5, 1993

C’mon Pigs of Western Civilization Eat More Grease

Eat Eat more marbled Sirloin more Pork’n
          gravy!
Lard up the dressing, fry chicken in
          boiling oil
Carry it dribbling to gray climes, snowed with
          salt,
Little lambs covered with mint roast in racks
          surrounded by roast potatoes wet with
          buttersauce,
Buttered veal medallions in creamy saliva,
          buttered beef, by glistening mountains
          of french fries
Stroganoffs in white hot sour cream, chops
          soaked in olive oil,
surrounded by olives, salty feta cheese, followed
          by Roquefort & Bleu & Stilton
          thirsty
for wine, beer Cocacola Fanta Champagne
          Pepsi retsina arak whiskey vodka
Agh! Watch out heart attack, pop more
          angina pills
order a plate of Bratwurst, fried frankfurters,
couple billion Wimpys’, McDonald’s burgers
          to the moon & burp!
Salt on those fries! Hot dogs! Milkshakes!
Forget greenbeans, everyday a few carrots,
          a mini big spoonful of salty rice’ll
          do, make the plate pretty;
throw in some vinegar pickles, briny sauerkraut
          check yr. cholesterol, swallow a pill
and order a sugar Cream donut, pack 2 under
          the size 44 belt
Pass out in the vomitorium come back cough
          up strands of sandwich still chewing
          pastrami at Katz’s delicatessen
Back to central Europe & gobble Kielbasa
          in Lódz
swallow salami in Munich with beer, Liverwurst
on pumpernickel in Berlin, greasy cheese in
          a 3 star Hotel near Syntagma, on white
          bread thick-buttered
Set an example for developing nations, salt,
          sugar, animal fat, coffee tobacco Schnapps
Drop dead faster! make room for
          Chinese guestworkers with alien soybean
          curds green cabbage & rice!
Africans Latins with rice beans & calabash can
          stay thin & crowd in apartments for working
          class foodfreaks—

Not like Western cuisine rich in protein
          cancer heart attack hypertension sweat
          bloated liver & spleen megaly
Diabetes & stroke—monuments to carnivorous
          civilizations
presently murdering Belfast
          Bosnia Cypress Ngorno Karabach Georgia
mailing love letter bombs in
          Vienna or setting houses afire
          in East Germany—have another coffee,
          here’s a cigar.
And this is a plate of black forest chocolate cake,
          you deserve it.

Athens, December 19, 1993

Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush

I got old & shit in my pants
                    shit in my pants
                    shit in my pants
I got old & shit in my pants
                    shit in my pants again

We got old & shit in our pants
                    shit in our pants
                    shit in our pants
We got old & shit in our pants
                    shit in our pants again

You’ll be lucky if you get old
                    & shit in your pants
                    & shit in your pants
You’ll be lucky if you get old
                    & shit in your pants again

January 1, 1994

Tuesday Morn

Waking with aching back at base of spine, walked stiffly to kitchen toilet to pee,

more limber returned to unmade bed, sat to write, dreamlike yesterdays recorded—

From pill dispenser 60 mg Lasix, water pills brings blood to kidney to relieve heart stressed by lung liquid

one white Lanoxin something further steadies the heart, one brown Vasotec for high blood pressure

a round blue potassium pill set aside for breakfast

Next another quaff of water for sleep-dried tongue

& check stove water boiling Tibetan medical powders

Quarter tsp. directly in mouth with hot water, morn & night

Next make the bed—pull out mattress, lift up sheets ballooning in air to settle all four corners,

lay on the orange-diamonded Mexican wool blanket & 3 pillows—push mattress back in place

brush teeth—then prick my finger

a drop, Exac-Tech blood sugar teststrip results noted morn & eve

98 today, a little low, swab pinkie with alcohol pad, another sip medicinal tea—

replace reading glasses with bifocals, brush teeth at front-room sink & looking out window, church door passers-by four floors below

while noon bells ring, clock ticking on the kitchen wall above the toilet cabinet—pull chain

worked this morning, flushed a wobbly porcelain throne—needa get Mike the Super fix pipes—

Back to front room, brush teeth, bowels begin to stir relief, electric shave,

brush out gray dust from razor head, wash face, clear throat’s pale yellow phlegm, blow nose

in paper towel, stick pinkie end with white cream Borofax drop in each nostril, wipe mustache, put on teashirt

Vitalis on short hair around bald head, brush back small beard—& ready for breakfast

in boxer shorts alone at home, pee again, gray sky out window

Sparrows on courtyard dirt, bare Heaven Trees—yesterday’s Times half read on the table where

red tulip blossoms dry in a glass jar—Time to crap & finish Exquisite Corpse—not much came down—

flush, climb ladder and fix the water ball, wash ass change shorts and choose fresh sox—

At last it’s time to eat, clear & safe in the morning—1 P.M.

Salt-free cornflakes from the icebox, brown rice, shredded wheat in a Chinese bowl

filled thereafter with Rice Dream milk—banana that!

Chew and wonder what to read, answer phone, yes, “Peter’s flown to Colorado, Huncke’s rent is due” to patron Hiro—

Finish cereal reading yesterday’s Times “How Mental Patients Sleep Out of Doors”

“ ‘Last time, I was just walking in the rain,’ he said, his hands and lips quivering slightly from the medication he takes.”

Slip a multivitamin pill in my mouth, grab a dish, fruit stewed two nites ago—

Ring Ring the telephone—the office, Bob Rosenthal, Debbie for Jewel Heart Benefit,

Ysrael Lubavitcher fairy returned from his Paris year

Edith not home, Aunt Honey leaving for Australia next week,

she had stroke & splenectomy 1942, long story—

David Rome preparing arts program Halifax during Sawang’s Shambhala confirmation

—Finally 3 P.M. I get dressed go to office couple hours—

Phone Robert Frank? Yup, he’s out, call early evening. I’m free.

January 23, 1994

God

The 18 year old marine “had made his Peace with God.”

A word. A capitol G. Who is God? I thought I saw him once

and heard his voice, which now sounds like my own,

and I’m not God, so who’s God? Jesus Bible God?

Whose Bible? Old JHVH? The 4 letter one without vowels or the 3 letter word God? G-O-D?

Allah? Some say Allah’s great, tho’ mock his name you’re dead!

Zoroaster’s Wise One used to be great, & Mormons’ version got absolute pedigrees & Genealogies.

Is Pope’s God same as Southern Baptist Inerrancy televangelists?

How’s that square with the Ayatollah’s Allah, Billy Graham Nixon’s on his knees, Ronald Reagan’s Armageddon deity?

What of Lubavitcher Rabbi’s God refusing land for peace exchange?

Is Yassir Arafat’s God same as Shamir’s? What about Magna Mater?

What happened to Aphrodite, Hecate, Diana many breasted at Ephesus,

round bottom’d Willendorf Venus older than Jahweh & Allah & Zoroaster’s dream!

older than Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddha & the 39 patriarchs.

Is any God real? Is there one God? How come so many Gods—

Fighting eachother, poor Mayans, Aztecs, Peruvian sun worshippers? Hopi peyote dreamers round the half moon fire.

Am I God after all, made the universe, we dreamed it up together

or got tumbled out of the Chute onto the Planet, looking for progenitors?

I know I’m not God, are you? Don’t be silly.

God? God? Everybody’s God? Don’t be silly.

February 25, 1994

Ah War

Ah War bigness addiction
Alchemized thru meta-industrial
Labor-Intensive permanent tree
Crop protein energy system
recycling Urban Wastes
in Meditative Egoless non
Theistic Space

Lisner Auditorium
Monday, March 21, 1994, 8:00 P.M.

Excrement

Everybody excretes different loads
To think of it—
Marilyn Monroe’s pretty buttocks,
               Eleanor Roosevelt’s bloomers dropt
     Rudolf Valentino on the seat, taut
                    muscles relaxing
Presidents looking down the bowl
                         to see their state of health
     Our White House rosy-cheeked dieter,
               One last, gaunt sourpuss
                    striped pants ankle’d
                         in the Water Chamber

Name it? byproduct of
          vegetables, steak, sausages, rice
     reduced to a brown loaf in the watery tureen,
                    splatter of dark mud on highway
                         side cornfields
          studded with peanuts & grape seeds—

March 24, 1994

New Stanzas for Amazing Grace

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone

O homeless hand on many a street
Accept this change from me
A friendly smile or word is sweet
As fearless charity

Woe workingman who hears the cry
And cannot spare a dime
Nor look into a homeless eye
Afraid to give the time

So rich or poor no gold to talk
A smile on your face
The homeless ones where you may walk
Receive amazing grace

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone

April 2, 1994

Composed at the request of Ed Sanders for his production of The New Amaz
ing Grace, performed November 20, 1994, at the Poetry Project in St. Mark’s
Church in-the-Bouwerie.

City Lights City

On Via Ferlinghetti & Kerouac Alley young heroes muse melancholy 2025 A.D.

Musicians brood & pace Bob Kaufman Street and practice future jazz on Rexroth place

Spiritual novelists sit rapt in contemplation under the street sign at Saroyan Place before they cross to Aram Alley

Loves’ eyes gaze sparkling on Bay waters from McClure Plaza at the foot of Market

Old Market itself as Robert Duncan Boulevard teems with theosophic shops & Hermetic Department Stores

& crossing Duncan Blvd.: First DiPrima Second Henry Miller Third Corso Street

Fourth Jeffers Street & Fifth on John Wieners Street the Greyhound Terminal stands

surrounded by Bookstore Galleries, Publishers Rows, and Artists lofts

Sightseers in tourist buses breathe fresh foggy air on Harold Norse & Hirschman Peaks—oldies but goldies

Ken Kesey’s name makes Bayshore famous as you barrel up past Brother Everson Memorial Stadium

Whalen Bridge sits meditating all the way to Oakland

Snyder Bridge connects the East-West Gate between S.F & Marin

Commuters crowd exhausted into the Neal Cassady R.R. Station on Corso

Czeslaw Milosz Street signs shine bright on Van Ness

Poet Jack Micheline gets Tenderloin, Philip Lamantia Tower crowns Telegraph Hill

where international surrealist tourists climb to see the view—

& I’ll take Alcatraz (to return to Native Americans along with Treasure Island)

April 21, 1994

Newt Gingrich Declares War on “McGovernik Counterculture”

Does that mean war on every boy with more than one earring on the same ear?

against every girl with a belly button ring? What about nose piercing? a diamond in right nostril?

Does that mean more plainclothesmen high on LSD at Dead concerts?

What about MTV—no more Michael Jackson, no Dylan Subterranean Homesick Blues? Yoko & John no more Give Peace a Chance

Will there be laws against Punk, Generation X, the Voidoids, Slackers, Grunge?

Blues, Jazz, Bebop, Rocknroll? Where did it get countercultural?

What about Elvis’ Pelvis? Sonic Youth dumbed, Cobain’s screams banished from Nirvana?

No more grass on college campuses, Mushrooms stomped to death by the Elephant Party?

What about African-Americans? That’s a terrific Counterculture, & what about the Yellow Peril, Chinese restaurants? New Age Cooking? is Japanese Sushi too much Zen?

Sitting meditation, that be frowned satanic in Congress? Tai Chi, Tai Kwando, Karate, Martial Arts? Ballet? Opera, La Bohème?

Don’t mention us cocksuckers?! Is eating pussy countercultural?

Sappho, Socrates, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Proust in or out the canon?

J. E. Hoover’s name wiped off FBI granite in the Capital?

Poetry slams, is poetry countercultural, like a Third Party?

Is ecology pro or counter culture? Astronomy determining the Universe’s age & size?

Long hair, relativity, is Einstein countercultural?

January 1995

Pastel Sentences (Selections)

Mice ate at the big red heart in her breast, she was distracted in love.

Bowed down by the weight of nebulae he crouches underneath the hill.

A bat that’s bigger than your ear watches you sleep while you dream him there.

A round blue eye woke red lipped ’neath this century’s gigantic lightbulb.

Lantern-jawed Bismarck dreams a rich red rose blossoms thorn-stemmed through his skull.

In an oval blue womb a full-grown girl curled up eyes closed dreams her birth.

Big little people do yab yum in their ten petal’d yellow daisy.

Long hand over left eye Mother Sudan sees big bellied kids’ thin ribs.

In midst of coition a blood-red worm spurts out his heaving rib-cage.

The one eyed moon-whale watches you weep, drifting brown seas in a pale boat.

Thirty Kingdoms’ keys chainmailed down his chest, the Pope dreams he’s St. Peter.

Jeannie Duval’s cheek tickled by a Paris fly, 1852.

Puff a cigarette between skullfleshed lips, smoke gets in your empty eyes.

Sphincter-wound in his chest, he kneels and lifts both hands in surprise to pray.

All mixed up breasts feet genitals nipples & hands, both fall into sleep.

Adam contemplates his navel covered with a bush of jealous hearts.

Body spread open, black legs held down, she eats his ice cream—white sex-tongue.

One centaur palm raised thru earth-crust lifts a red live dog barking at stars.

Her dog licks the live red heart of th’ African lady curled up in bed.

Naked in solitary prison cell he looks down at a hard-on.

Hands hold her ass tight with joy to lick & eat the blue star ’twixt her thighs.

Small pink-winged Lady-Heart hovers, rose-cunt legs spread nigh his stiff black dick.

Chic shoes rest in a black rose vortex of sociable fashion money.

She poses self-confident, blue sky & clouds borne in her oval womb.

Lady Buddha sleeps on blue air in a green leaf, knees raised spread naked.

Repose open-eyed on starry blue pillows under a star-roofed sky.

The black guy steps in the shade, glancing back at the sunlit boy he screwed.

Legs behind neck, arms hung down, Yogi’s solar anal navel burns red.

Blowing bubbles in blue sky he squats on his own blue bubble planet.

Star, bird, cane & big thigh bones, the ghost baby dreams life beyond the womb.

Regarding their long thick tails, blue demons wrestle with golden scissors.

He steps on his own breast lying in bed with red half hard-on.

Lady snails delicately climb naked thighs to stir his genitals.

Left forefinger probed into his own left hand proves a Doubting Thomas.

They exchange glances, a bee shadows her tail, a rose grows on his hip.

William Burroughs’ skeleton twists a towel, he’s got the bloody rag on.

The rose-girl kneels weighed down, iron tanks on shoulder, coccyx, calves & footsoles.

Horse stands on horse upon horse, lie back on top & take your forty winks.

He dives from naked sky past the sun’s nimbus into space-blue ocean.

Curtains part on a nail and its shadow, Samsara’s drama Act I.

The red lip’d fat billionaire appeals you try out his wee twat or dick.

Arms to neck, his tit, her belly, prong-twat, the President and his wife.

Pale green headless phantoms upside-down dipsy-doodle with thin hard-ons.

Lady Day bows her neck under a pyramid of oily black rocks.

Beneath breast-eyed wasp-beaks the pink rose opens, better get in there quick!

Inside her red womb the hermaphrodite fetus closes a third eye.

Wiping blood-black tears from hard labor, try holding up your big sad head.

Jealousy! Jealousy! Chin in hand he ponders the Unfaithful Muse.

Young Don Juan bravely displays his girlish red-sexed lips and eyeshadow.

Caught in the burning house of my brown body I fainted openeyed.

Big phallus, black womb lined with reddish flesh, look at the monkey we birthed.

One bird pecks her double’s breast on a ghost-white lingam’s unblinking head.

She flies down thousands of stone steps for years, aged climbs them all back up.

for Francesco Clemente
Château Chenonceau, June 24, 1995
Naropa Institute, July 5, 1995
Lawrence, Kansas, July 22, 1995

Nazi Capish

Catholicism capish
Catholicism capish
Catholicism abortion capish
Capish capish capish

Christian capish
Christian capish
Christian sin capish

Islamic capish
Islamic capish
Islamic Jihad capish

Zionist capish
Zionist capish
Zionist nationalist capish

Fundamentalism capish
Fundamentalism capish
Fundamentalism absolutism
Fundamentalism capish

Hunkie Honkie Aryan Frog
Jap & Gook & Limey Wog
Afric Chink capish

Nazi capish
Nazi capish
Nazi capish capish

Commie capish
Commie capish
Commie capish capish

Capitalist capish
Capitalist capish
Capitalist capish capish

Fascisti capish
Fascisti capish
Fascisti shit capish

September 21, 1995

Is About

Dylan is about the Individual against the whole of creation

Beethoven is about one man’s fist in the lightning clouds

The Pope is about abortion & the spirits of the dead …

Television is about people sitting in their living room looking at their things

America is about being a big Country full of Cowboys Indians Jews Negroes & Americans

Orientals Chicanos Factories skyscrapers Niagara Falls Steel Mills radios homeless Conservatives, don’t forget

Russia is about Tzars Stalin Poetry Secret Police Communism barefoot in the snow

But that’s not really Russia it’s a concept

A concept is about how to look at the earth from the moon

without ever getting there. The moon is about love & Werewolves, also Poe.

Poe is about looking at the moon from the sun

or else the graveyard

Everything is about something if you’re a thin movie producer chainsmoking muggles

The world is about overpopulation, Imperial invasions, Biocide, Genocide, Fratricidal Wars, Starvation, Holocaust, mass injury & murder, high technology

Super science, atom Nuclear Neutron Hydrogen detritus, Radiation Compassion Buddha, Alchemy

Communication is about monopoly television radio movie newspaper spin on Earth, i.e. planetary censorship.

Universe is about Universe.

Allen Ginsberg is about confused mind writing down newspaper headlines from Mars—

The audience is about salvation, the listeners are about sex, Spiritual gymnastics, nostalgia for the Steam Engine & Pony Express

Hitler Stalin Roosevelt & Churchill are about arithmetic & Quadrilateral equations, above all chemistry physics & chaos theory—

Who cares what it’s all about?

I do! Edgar Allan Poe cares! Shelley cares! Beethoven & Dylan care.

Do you care? What are you about

or are you a human being with 10 fingers & two eyes?

New York City,
October 24, 1995

The Ballad of the Skeletons

Said the Presidential Skeleton
I won’t sign the bill
Said the Speaker skeleton
Yes you will

Said the Representative Skeleton
I object
Said the Supreme Court skeleton
Whaddya expect

Said the Military skeleton
Buy Star Bombs
Said the Upperclass Skeleton
Starve unmarried moms

Said the Yahoo Skeleton
Stop dirty art
Said the Right Wing skeleton
Forget about yr heart

Said the Gnostic Skeleton
The Human Form’s divine
Said the Moral Majority skeleton
No it’s not it’s mine

Said the Buddha Skeleton
Compassion is wealth
Said the Corporate skeleton
It’s bad for your health

Said the Old Christ skeleton
Care for the Poor
Said the Son of God skeleton
AIDS needs cure

Said the Homophobe skeleton
Gay folk suck
Said the Heritage Policy skeleton
Blacks’re outa luck

Said the Macho skeleton
Women in their place
Said the Fundamentalist skeleton
Increase human race

Said the Right-to-Life skeleton
Foetus has a soul
Said Pro Choice skeleton
Shove it up your hole

Said the Downsized skeleton
Robots got my job
Said the Tough-on-Crime skeleton
Tear gas the mob

Said the Governor skeleton
Cut school lunch
Said the Mayor skeleton
Eat the budget crunch

Said the Neo Conservative skeleton
Homeless off the street!
Said the Free Market skeleton
Use ’em up for meat

Said the Think Tank skeleton
Free Market’s the way
Said the S&L skeleton
Make the State pay

Said the Chrysler skeleton
Pay for you & me
Said the Nuke Power skeleton
& me & me & me

Said the Ecologic skeleton
Keep Skies blue
Said the Multinational skeleton
What’s it worth to you?

Said the NAFTA skeleton
Get rich, Free Trade,
Said the Maquiladora skeleton
Sweat shops, low paid

Said the rich GATT skeleton
One world, high tech
Said the Underclass skeleton
Get it in the neck

Said the World Bank skeleton
Cut down your trees
Said the I.M.F skeleton
Buy American cheese

Said the Underdeveloped skeleton
Send me rice
Said Developed Nations’ skeleton
Sell your bones for dice

Said the Ayatollah skeleton
Die writer die
Said Joe Stalin’s skeleton
That’s no lie

Said the Middle Kingdom skeleton
We swallowed Tibet
Said the Dalai Lama skeleton
Indigestion’s whatcha get

Said the World Chorus skeleton
That’s their fate
Said the USA skeleton
Gotta save Kuwait

Said the Petrochemical skeleton
Roar Bombers roar!
Said the Psychedelic skeleton
Smoke a dinosaur

Said Nancy’s skeleton
Just say No
Said the Rasta skeleton
Blow Nancy Blow

Said Demagogue skeleton
Don’t smoke Pot
Said Alcoholic skeleton
Let your liver rot

Said the Junkie skeleton
Can’t we get a fix?
Said the Big Brother skeleton
Jail the dirty pricks

Said the Mirror skeleton
Hey good looking
Said the Electric Chair skeleton
Hey what’s cooking?

Said the Talkshow skeleton
Fuck you in the face
Said the Family Values skeleton
My family values mace

Said the N.Y. Times skeleton
That’s not fit to print
Said the C.I.A. skeleton
Cantcha take a hint?

Said the Network skeleton
Believe my lies
Said the Advertising skeleton
Don’t get wise!

Said the Media skeleton
Believe you Me
Said the Couch-potato skeleton
What me worry?

Said the TV skeleton
Eat sound bites
Said the Newscast skeleton
That’s all Goodnight

February 12–16, 1995

“You know what I’m saying?”

I was shy and tender as a 10 year old kid, you know what I’m saying?

Afraid people’d find me out in Eastside H.S. locker room you know what I’m saying?

Earl had beautiful hips & biceps when he took off his clothes to put on gym shorts you know what I’m saying?

His nose was too long, his face like a ferret but his white body

Proportioned thin, muscular definition thighs & breasts, with boy’s nipples you know what I’m saying? uncircumcised

& strange, goyishe beauty you know what I’m saying, I was dumbstruck—

at Golden 50th H.S. Reunion I recognized him, bowed, & exchanged pleasant words, you know what I’m saying?

He was retired, wife on his arm, you know what I’m saying?

& Millie Peller “The Class Whore” warmest woman at our last Silver 25th Reunion alas had passed away

She was nice to me a scared gay kid at Eastside High, you know what I’m saying?

December 23, 1995

Bowel Song

You’ve been coughing for weeks
still you don’t sit on your cushion & visualize Bam
You’ve been in the hospital just last week
still you read the newspapers
Recovered from congestive heart failure,
you took 7 hours last week to read the Sunday N.Y Times
Listen, your days are numbered, why waste the essence of your clock
How will you feel when you can’t breathe?
What’ll you do the last six minutes?
Where’ll you go for the next 6 hours?
What good, half dozen gay porno films then?
You can hardly catch your breath now, why jack off limp prick?
Your master gives good advice, you listen, follow it couple weeks
then lapse into old habits, waste time on the toilet reading books,
at the kitchen sink 3am washing dishes daydreaming.
If you don’t get ready now, what’ll you do at the Black Hole
You wanna get born a pretty little girl & go through agony?
Wanna get caught between snakes coupling?
In between death and life, still wanna get laid?
What makes you lazy? you’re not on your deathbed yet,
if you’ve an ounce of strength, use it to look inside.
Clear your mind, you won’t escape the Great Sickness
the Immortal Plague, Grand Disaster continuous to eternity—
Whatever it is, whyn’cha figure it out?
Wanna drift off & become a newspaper headline,
what good favorable publicity in the bardo?
Allen Ginsberg says, these words’ll get you nowhere
these jokes won’t be funny when everyone leaves the seven exits.

January 2, 1996

Popular Tunes

What do I hear in my ear
          approaching my 70th year—
Echoes of popular tunes, old rhymes
                         familiar runes
Songs my mother taught me
               “O tell me pretty maiden
                    are there any more at home
                         like you?”
Cousin Claire heard on the Newark radio
Aunt Elanor played on her Bronx phonograph
piercing Bell Song soprano notes,
               sostenuto Amelita Galli-Curci & Rosa Ponselle
Wind up Victrola Yiddish Monologues
          Cohen On The Telephone,
                    The Wind the Wind,
“Last night da vind, da vind blew down da shutters.”
               “No I didn’t say shuddup!”
The fugitive words of a Scots contralto
          woman’s chant “McCushla,
     McCushla my dark eyed McCushla”
Ask Aunt Honey age 83, ask Stepmother Edith just 90,
          they’ll know—
               they’ll remember
     “The March of the Wooden Soldiers,” tin drums
          & pipes of Babes in Toyland
“Comin’ thru the rye” new generations of
          folksing kids never remember sung
     when they play Guitar on Union Square’s
               L train subway platform—
or “Auchichornya, auchimolinka, rasdrivyminya,
          molijeninka,” with Mandolins or Balalaikas
and “Tis the last rose of Summer” by Thomas Moore—
     echoing thru Time’s skull as my beard’s
          turned white, sugar high in my blood
               coughing weeks on end fall to winter,
          Chronic bronchitis the rest of my days?
& “Down will come baby cradle and all”
          as 1930’s all fell down with
          mournful Peat Bog Soldiers’
               “Lied des Concentrationslagers”

February 9, 1996

Five A.M.

Élan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmitted into words
                    Transmuted back to breath
          in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho’s 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing—beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars,
chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind—but where’s it come from?
Inspiration? The muses drawing breath for you? God?
Nah, don’t believe it, you’ll get entangled in Heaven or Hell—
Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night
flooding mind with space, echoing thru future cities, Megalopolis or
Cretan village, Zeus’ birth cave Lassithi Plains—Otsego County
          farmhouse, Kansas front porch?
Buddha’s a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana—
coffee, alcohol, cocaine, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas?
Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky
at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street—
Where does it come from, where does it go forever?

May 1996

Power

The N Power, the feminine power
          the woman power the
          flower power, the power of Marigolds
          & roses, Sequoia power,
          Nature’s power
wont blossom in this lifetime
          or the next, this Yuga’s finished,
          seeds shot, entered the earth
          gestating with alligators & waterworms
          in swamps where planes crash,
Next lifetimes after, watch roses turn
          red, Marigolds yellow, little
          sequoias begin to climb the sky
Millions of African kids’ll grow up
          amid green bushes & radiant
                    camelopards again—
Down 12th Street corner Avenue A midnight police
          lean against Bodega shutters looking for
          last week’s swarthy crack pushers

May 15, 1996, 11 A.M.

Anger

How’d I get angry? Analytic approach:
M’I still angry with Carolyn? forty three years ago
          kicked me out of bed with
               naked Neal their house San Jose—
Disadvantaged hating Podhoretz
               for put-down of Beat writers
                         queers nineteen fifty eight
               later defense of death-squad drug-dealer
                    Generals in El Salvador
                         & op-ed B2 Bombers
Angrily sat an hour adamant
          Thangka-thief meth-head Gaiton’s apt.
               E. Houston Street nineteen sixty three
                    never got my Dancing Skeletons back—
Never forgave late Alan Marlowe nineteen seventy five
               stole back my $100 loan gift
               to Jyoti Datta Calcutta four years earlier
Lost my telephone temper with critic Walter
               Goodman
          insulting Gunther Grass’ visit to poor South Bronx
     International PEN Congress nineteen eighty five
               & my own handmade Nicaraguan
                    Contra-War peace petition mocked
                         as “all the news that’s fit to print.”

May 18, 1996

Multiple Identity Questionnaire

“Nature empty, everything’s pure; Naturally pure, that’s what I am.”

I’m a jew? a nice Jewish boy?
A flaky Buddhist, certainly
Gay in fact pederast? I’m exaggerating?
Not only queer an amateur S&M fan, someone should spank me for
          saying that
Columbia Alumnus class of ’48, Beat icon, students say.
White, if jews are “white race”
American by birth, passport, and residence
Slavic heritage, mama from Vitebsk, father’s forebears Grading in
          Kamenetz-Podolska near Lvov.
I’m an intellectual! Anti-intellectual, anti-academic
Distinguished Professor of English Brooklyn College,
Manhattanite, Another middle class liberal,
but lower class second generation immigrant,
Upperclass, I own a condo loft, go to art gallery Buddhist Vernissage
          dinner parties with Niarchos, Rockefellers, and Luces
Oh what a sissy, Professor Four-eyes, can’t catch a baseball or drive a
          car—courageous Shambhala Graduate Warrior
addressed as “Maestro” Milano, Venezia, Napoli
Still student, chela, disciple, my guru Gelek Rinpoche,
Senior Citizen, got Septuagenarian discount at Alfalfa’s Healthfoods
          New York subway—
Mr. Sentient Being!—Absolutely empty neti neti identity, Maya Nobo-
          daddy, relative phantom nonentity

July 5, 1996, Naropa Tent,
Boulder, CO

Don’t Get Angry with Me

for Chödok Tulku

Don’t get angry with me
You might die tomorrow
I’m an empty hungry ghost
Any spare change I can borrow?

Don’t get angry with me
Full of God tomorrow
Could get sorry you got mad,
wanna be the God of sorrow?

Don’t get angry with me
War starts tomorrow
I’ll get bombed You’ll get shot
in the eye with Interdependent Arrow

Don’t get angry with me
Hell’s hot tomorrow
If we’re burned up now inflamed
Could pass aeons in cold horror

Don’t get angry with me
We’ll be worms tomorrow
Both wriggling in the mud
cut in two by the ploughman’s harrow

          Don’t get angry with me—
          Who’ll we be tomorrow?
who knows who we are today?
Better meditate & pray,
          Tila, Mila, Marpa, Naro.

August 27, 1996

Swan Songs in the Present

“Swan songs in the present
moon systems in gleeps
Don’t hang on to the essence
the refrigerator’s for keeps
the Hot house vernacular
Sets up on the moldy hill
you and I climb the ribcage
& look for a heart to kill

you can do whatcha want with Europe
Eat Bananas with your dung
Whistle while you wonk the Pope
Breathe out of a spastic lung
but you’ll live forever anyway
in birds’ beasts hungry ghosts
& various Boddhisattvas
Drinking morning coffee
eating loxes & toasts

Hypnogogi Twaddle
anytime I can
But 70 years I’ll sleep
like other old men

October 29, 1996, 3:50 A.M.

Gone Gone Gone

“The wan moon is sinking under the white wave
and time is sinking with me, O!”

—Robert Burns

November 10, 1996

Reverse the rain of Terror …

Reverse the rain of Terror on street consciousness U.S.A.

Death Penalty! Electric Chair! A roomsful of poison gas! Lethal injections! Mortal Hanging! Beheading the Idiot killer!

Dogs slaver over airport luggage! Suitcase bottoms caked with hash! Strip search the sick opium addict, medicine’s up his anus in a finger stall

arriving from legal India, cozy England, lax Morocco, face 12 billion Dollars worth of cops

Sniffing bodies for illegal medicine! Vomiting in a stone cell, abdominal convulsions, muscle spasms thigh & foot, sleepless cold-turkey torture—

Puerto Rican kid needs a doctor, young black man needs his girlfriend’s fix, white boy didn’t know his habit was immortal!

The octogenarian schmecker’s liver & kidneys failed, wants a deathbed shot of M

Half mad lady on the street had a fight with her daughter the whore!

The old boy lies on the sidewalk hands dirty red faced in his own saliva.

The delicate youth’s in his halfway house a decade, thorazine eyes glazed over

His brother’s Christmas card arrives at Binghampton State Hospital!

The elder hides in a furnished room drinks wine delivers newspapers, didn’t wanna work on the neutron bomb!

The salesman’s product went off the market, recycling coke bottles he cries at kitchen tables blaming Jews

An auto worker shoveling snow curses six African-Americans mugged him twenty years ago—

A black man walked the street with his B.A. pager, clubbed down giving lip to a cop car

The young fruit dies body with sores he challenged the Senate on the plague.

The homeless jewish guitarist sings on the 14th Street’s L Train Subway platform, blows harmonica, taps tambourine with one foot, with another drums

then back to his graybeard cocksucker’s apartment fries eggs

Streetcorner boys and girlfriends hang round the butcher shop corner, “Smoke smoke?”

Rocky Flats engineers tear their hair, Plutonium waste’ll outlast an otherworldly God

December 1996

Sending Message

They are sending a message to the youth of America

Smoking medical marijuana’s all right

They’re sending a message in cartoon saloons hard-ass blokes look like camels smoke Camels at the bar, 5 year olds love it,

To the youth of America they’re sending a message

CIA no official connections to Contra coke dealers in New York Times Washington Post expert crackheads send same messages to adolescent Senior citizen crackhead readers

They’re sending a message to American youth, African youth can starve to death we can’t care

too much money, far over the Atlantic, our boys’ll never die, politically unpopular, they’ll become dependent, it won’t fly

They’re sending message by Bronco, Honda, 4 by 4, cinema MG, Land Rover & half million gas stations

youth of this nation fossil fuel’s neat, hella cool, admirable dope really rad, as if—what valley girls think when their fathers drive them to Highschool—

They’re sending the message to Saturn, American Democracy works over the globe, spin that round your rings

To Chinese youth, eat like us, we do flesh & fries,

Don’t sleep on streets, dangerous off-duty death-squad police send this message to Brazilian kiddies

Someone sent naked pretty boys on FCC Internet, Don’t!

No Forbidden Planet Swedish sex? Got the message pretty girls?

Got the message clean old men? Michelangelo got the message? Da Vinci got it? Phidias, Socrates, Shakespeare, J. Edgar Hoover at the Plaza, Cardinal Francis Spellman on Roy Cohn’s yacht, Senator Jesse Helms in your gut, duh

got the message teeny-weenies? They’re sending a message right below your belly button.

A message to the youth of America, “Diminished expectations,” they’s too many people,

native gooks work cheaper, rich get richer, North hemispheric whites live longer, Black high-blood pressure rules Kentucky Fried Chicken

Across the highway from Arbie’s Barbecue Palace, Roy Rogers’ Horsechops, or McDonalds Amazon Treeburgers

you heard about on Television serves the message Eat your meat

or beat your meat, safe sex with ketchup, Whatever

The message now’s pay 4 trillion dollars debt Reagan pissed away on Military,

promised before you born, sit in school waterclosets study yr Latin

They’re sending youth a message look at TV football baseball hypnotic soccer basketball sports, sport!

General Rios-Montt & Pat Robertson sent a message to Guatemalan Indians

so 200,000 dropped dead with delight at sight of Christ’s military

pistol machete machinegun baseball bat & Inerrant Bible

700 Club’s Antichrist sends U.S. youth this message Despise the poor & piss on liberal Jesus

The message is Compassion’ll cause a Wall Street crash

& Networks send me messages Shut the fuck up.

December 3, 1996, 4:30 A.M.
New York City

No! No! It’s Not the End

No! No!
     Not the end of
               Civilization
     Not the end of
               Civilization

Blast of industrial
     Gas in Bhopal
          No! No! Not the end of
               Civilization

Dropt one bomb
     killed one
               hundred thousand
     Hiroshima nineteen forty five