I have some things to do, and I hope you are strong again, stems and hair warm in the sun, breathing salt.
love,
Buk
sunday/ 11/dec/60 pobx 46 san gregorio calif
buk/ ’s all right—the post card/ hell I am afraid that remaining anonymous now is out of question…one just L O O K S emcipated somehow—I donno—and the art of incoming & outgoing correspondence/ stamps etc/ now dear buk’s card saying almost ANYthing…oye/ ’s all right tho’…I am certain Buk that yr card will be “mystery-wise” without any trying…and…just where & how did that fashion of putting “wise” on back words start? & means what?
Of course—that IS the process of life—becoming MORE what we are/ or Buk growing into Buk…all this hammering & pounding on us must be from a natural occurrence…as fish in a sea/ it must not have any personal significance except mayhap to clear out the sea plants or weeds or fish that’d weaken its life-force by not holding on strongly enough…I see the debris cast up by the sea movements—and the flies hop on the great beauties dying without their element & I cannot throw them back…beautiful sea plants still gasping & breathing & seals all torn up and great enormous birds like the rose-sucked-tit-pink bill’d pelican one saw…must be like that…our sea of air/ we graduated into then beyond/ I saw it once—half saw it & never knew what it was/ don’t know how I got there & not a dream but a journey some sort—& was sitting on a very kind of “modernistic” ice berg or hunk of something very white but not cold & just plopped there & was aware of presences & talk without words & one cd say one ‘felt’ rather than ‘heard’ them…and I had a flash vision of me—in that upper kingdom I’d come to somehow—that there I was as a mermaid wd be here—I mean I was half what they recognised as being ‘human’ & half fish or animal…so I know we are in a sea of some kind & my fellow fish keep reporting giant tidal waves & storms…they receive thru their nervous systems…they think of as emotional…and the memory of the Orderly; the Good; the Beautiful; the Serene can calm even during a storm…my sister Elva after the hurricane hit…walking down the street with a flashlight & one heard her…“hmmm looks like the roof to my house…well…it IS the roof to my house…” & it was…I wasn’t frightened by the hurricane…it was sort of natural & normal…in the middle of it without thinking at all of anything but me & my american thousand of stores open at all times…wanted ice cream very badly & put on a swim suit…& started out…the ocean was up to arm pit; then chin…& kept on going…surely a store wd be open for the citizenry! then a coast guard in a boat…havin’ a hellifa time keeping rightside up…shrieked…“where are YOU going?” “to get some ice cream you nut” I said “nut…me the nut” he said “don’t you know there’s a hurricane going on?” “so what” I said “I want some ice cream” but the dirty bastard chased me home & then I sort of ‘came to’ & looked around me & sure enough there was a hurricane going on…the sea was washing over big buildings a few blocks down Atlantic Avenue & furniture was floating all around & broken lumber & the roof was blowing off my sister’s house & I was swimming in the middle of Atlantic Avenue looking for a store that wd be open so I cd get some ice cream/ but somehow I wasn’t shook/ it was lovely & just wild enough to suit me…the wind singing & the ocean being an ocean & all the buildings going down & no violence to we insects…just knocking off a lot of useless junk…it was a beautiful sight…the next day…the whole town was a wreck…beautiful…not a single person was harmed…just the junk…my town looked just right then…one cd see for miles…
I cant imagine how I got poisoned/ all we know is that we burned the wrappings from that chicken & suddenly a gorgeous smell of almonds flowering…& the next day I recalled from somewhere…that arsenic either smells or tastes like almonds, that sweet haunting fragrance—who’d mind being killed by it? but my god, Buk…throwing up violently in a freezing cold house…I cdn’t take my poor little head out of the sleeping bag long enough to throw up without freezing…my Botticelli belly was hard & swollen almost pregnant size/ I cdn’t talk without choking and after one rid oneself of it via the throat…then it turned my bowels into a shit factory…oh that was fun…my yes it sure WAS FUN…to have to get up & shit that burning watery stinking shit…for 3 hours…oh that was real country life…shitting in a pot…& one had to put it outside the door each time…I mean Gib protested at the stench…it was not veddy artistic…moi lamb…so although the smell of arsenic is a treat…the EFFECT it produces sure aint/ now I am recovered & you’d never even suspect that this dainty little elf…had to live through that stinking night…
I aint gonna become a saint by any other’s sins…dear childtttttt
the people out here do like me/ the post master is now “on the map” because one don’t have a day go by without business as usual & one buys stamps from him in great car lots full & he is happy & one discusses the political situation with those who stand around the post office & one knows a deal about the political situation to be sure/ and one’s mail is filled with the most life & the people like me…I am a stage they live upon/
Thorne is a woman/ well that’s better than being a bugger/ I think you sent me the Epos did you? and I stashed it in the collection at Yale with Pearson/
I do agree with you about Ginsberg/ “will suffer from it without ever knowing it”
I KNOW that the Zionists are not going to & NEVER had ANY intention of ever allowing the American Jews to rule/ so any effort on the part of an American to help destroy the existing order shall be wasted effort as far as he is concerned because Jew or no Jew…he is now an American & nobody likes any of us…only the niggers got any support back home/ even the Jews were betrayed…paid for Israel & got Zion…their old lag…so Allen doth not betray the ang-sax order…with that Castro visit…he betrays his own people unless he is a Zionist and I do not know & gorHELLup me I don’t wanna know…I know too damm much already
all right my dear Buk/ wear silk—it must be of a colour & natural fibre to attract certain rays from our sun’s rays…certain rays that build our bone marrow & that is where the warmth comes from…I will find something for you…a red silk shirt & then you’d be like maestro in st. liz who just HAD to have a red shirt after the new negro attendant turned up in one…& old dr. karpman called gramps “th’ cardinal”…o.k. Cardinal…gimmi some time…this sat. i will hunt down a large red wotever—don’t flip if it’s of the female race of clothes…as the GoodWill is my first stop but I’ll masculinize it for you…we must get Buk’s bones warm/
please my dear Buk/ no titles like that…I believe that we run the world by our secret thoughts feelings & spoken words & written words & images painted…like a sort of magnetic bunch of wheels going constantly around…it is a kind of machine you know…this fluid cosmic world…a perpetual machine…no wonder the Jews of old were so flip’d on building one…imagine what you’d SEE if you cd build one! I believe the magnetic wheels come from our own wot you’d call projections/ and if you project any titles like that baby how cd they help us any? I work & stand & paint & write & live…for Pure Love/ because I want it running that way…not for me…but for them because it wd have been so nice for me…if I’d have had it/ Hate & any side-effect of it…is T A B U now…do not break a TABU Cardinal!
I am not going to say “look wot Hezra didtttt” because he is after all only another male & therefore competition…but he was useful…wistfully useful and he does so want us to use what he thought useful…and he did try to leave us a picture in Edge, Rockdrill, Agenda & lots of things he named/ and taking the Canto out of Kantor…that was all he gave the Jews in the Cantos besides a lotta hell for usury etc…& a few other rackets…wdn’t put nary a bit of Hebrew in the Cantos…but out of Kantor…Ezra the Kantor
THINGS ARE WHAT THEY DO/ what is your poetry doing? Allen Ginsberg’s Howl was certainly good because it IS a HOWL from HELL/ I am trying to imagine what yr poetry is doing/
Gib said call it: The Triple Carburater or just Triple Carburaters or Double Adrenal
in Gland Sounds
I mean dig down to the most basic what-iz-happening & I do think buk that you’ve got double adrenalin glands & it makes you highly perceptive & sensitive to what is going on…twice as much as the rest of us…oh that poor payne chap is he a bugger? or a mis-guided xtian? of some kind…he is so squishy…
poor Allen Ginsberg…I wonder what the Devil will give him for that poor string of fish he caught in our Pond—a bunch of little weak christian fish…dumb as worms—so dumb…they actually were fool’d into sucking dick or asshole fuck just so they could print poetry…man dig that/ that is too wild…imagine printing sacred poetry in this world by selling one’s ass…even the Devil will have to laugh at them…poor string of fish caught with the net of their own blind greed…
that is why it is a sin to be ambitious as dissociated from dedicated/ it was a middle-ages sin & it is now also…thou’rt dedicated buk…but damm—some of wot moves yr spirit…dedicated as it is…scares the rest of that arsenic shit out of me…
Listen to me Buk/ re: the stomach & broke open—now do this/ always keep some cooked rice around…not polished white rice but get some UNpolished rice & keep it around/ cook a lot when you feel well & then keep it & eat it sort of nibble like yr bread…or get that black bread…you are of a race of grain eaters…remember…so go on a rice diet…& don’t eat much meat…the best way to eat meat is to chop chop it fine fine & cook tenderly & make a gravy…very easy to make/ buy box corn starch in supermark/ chopchop finefine meat…slowly cook in corn oil/ soon’s it browns/ then turn up high fire…sprinkle corn starch in pan…remove meat or leave in…but spoon meat in ring away from center where corn starch sprinkled…let turn light brown…then put milk suddenly into hot cornstarch & spoon furiously without spilling…or splashing as that’s a waste…then flavour with chinese soy sauce & a bit of hot sauce…then you can keep or throw away meat because its essence is in that gravy—put gravy over the cooked UNpolished rice (health store has it) & you will have a soothing liner for yr stomach…now gottammitt do this because I hate to lose my time…
& I will get you a red silk wotever for yr bones next sat. when we go into frisco to pick up ernie who visits for about 5 days…that means a 5-day love battle with all of us…2 husbands are a trial especially when one has to raise both of them! I feel fatally bound to help Ernie & I MUST help Gib…and only Love can help any of us…sometimes Love is when you got to bounce them off a wall for their own good/ Mamma Sheri/ oye…oye…oye…and Gib is a Slant & Ernie is a Jew…I yam some ‘racist’ Buk…a disappointment to all Zion/
I am strong again & sun shines on me…(Tu Fu said: “The sun stretches his legs & walks upon the earth”) Gib’s out front fixing the hot rod of a kid from work/ kid is all insect buzz & just wants to “go fast”…inherited a fast world he did that kid/ working in sun half clad…that is how come Triple Carburators title for you…because hot rod got triple carburators to spit gasoline faster/ damn kid is 16 & drives 110 miles an hr in drag race down HalfMoon/ now Lamb be good & I go…and love love love…
from
yew Love Baby
Sheri
note/ I mean the flies on the sea storm debris & one thought of North Beach & how the lice there hop on any of us who get blown in by a storm…Bomkoff & me when I’d go over in a lonely fit/ but it was not the beach/ only back water/ still those flies/ listen Buk—there is a natural ‘room’ outside made by the grove of trees & I just made an altar out there by some weird set of perfect circumstances that one led to another…it has a rug & an altar & My Ladye & will take foto for you…in 1954 Ezra prayed for an “altar in the grove” for me & I just today received it…it is most important to have faith because otherwise you’d never know what it was when it did arrive and I didn’t mind at all being blown away from Ezra’s beautiful Life into the back waters…I needed to KNOW more about Life that I’d not have known safely with him—the wilde storm took me away & led me to my Altar in the Grove…we have all heard a strange melodic whistle out here…Gib, Ernie & myself…I heard it about 3 a.m. one night it woke me up…not a bird sound…too human & Ernie heard it & Gib & we all flashthought the samethought…Pan…Pan’s here & he will visit my altar…I know it…I just put Narcissis & orange vine flowers & pine branches & spruce…for him/ he will come…I have a sort of bed-chair there & that persian rug…he will come to my grove’s altar…& we shall have a painting of the Great God Pan…and if it’s suspiciously like Ernie…ah/ what’s that but a manifestation of the strange ways the Gods work…aaaaaaaah??? but we shall have it…no one has seen him now these thousand ages…my Pan my beautiful God Goat…
3 carburators & no brains just pulled out with my number one husband tearing light-speed down the highway to test their job…man what a generation they are these 16yrolds…they did not produce thinking men but thinking machines…that car had the intelligence…the 16 yr old is just a collection of wornout negro slang…oye…our future…buk for xt’s sake don’t split & leave ME here…to face growing old with that as ‘gootttt government’ even Barny Baruch will despair…
oh my altar the gods gave me…Buk I will see the Lady there & entertain the Great God Pan…we hear his music & very early sat a.m. pre-dawn I went out to wet myself in the mistair & that melodic whistle went right past my ears with no earthly body to it of any sort I fled wildly laughing but fear-fulled panic stricken nymph…Pan is returned—the Great God pan returns…ANYthing may happen now…and back to this dream of life…
Love
Sheri
Middle of Dec. [12] 1960
Yes, Sheri: got your letta and cards…hoy! which I am duly stashing and filing in my own future groan box for this thing eternity, which I am leery ooov…eternity being a WORD, a working-word put on the table to explain away heavy measurements. Put a mouse in a box and he will not think ETERNITY, he will think: sides of box, sides of box, I must get the hell out. I am mouse-thoughts rather than people-thoughts, yas, so they do not trap me out in the purple clouds looking for golden rain.
There is not a lot of drama or future looking down at the end of your fingernails and that is why I am MAEOMAD, mad.
Your cards will have Buk rereading Gramps while cracking his beer. Yes, I just opened one—and your side went SISSSK! ’n my side went BRRACK!, which shows u the female ear hears one thing and the male another.
Rec. letta today from Literary Artpress—Eastern Washington College of Education—saying they are taking a poem of mine called Anthony, which as usual, I don’t remember writing. Suppose I was thinking Cleopatra in terms of modernity 1960…Some poems I remember writing and some I don’t and I think the ones I don’t—they are the best. I guess it’s because the mouse-thoughts are not then at work.
Mystery-wise, I guess I mean like edge-wise, as edge as u can get, the thing slanting at you in green sunshine.
I do not like to see the dead birds and seals; I know it is all necsry and they do not grieve, just the drunken man walking the sand standing against the forces, music and chills running wild…one man, and the sun is armies and the bones of the dead knit the earth like crabgrass…ah shit!, and I am awakened today by 2 old gals in the hall, high-dead voices: YES, IT GOES ON WHEN YOU TURN IT THIS WAY AND IT GOES OFF WHEN YOU TURN IT THIS WAY, SEE…HERE! LET ME SHOW YOU! NOW WATCH! WHEN YOU TURN IT THIS WAY…
on and on and one keeps thinking: the same thing, how fk can they keep on with the same thing…15, 20 minutes…but they do, yes…NOW SEE, DID YOU SEE IT? CAN YOU TURN IT? TRY IT. NOW TURN IT.
I got up and threw some clothes on and came out the door with a three day beard. I had only slept about 5 hours in 4 days.
They were turning a dusty old floor lamp. Out in the hall.
“How you doin’, kid?” one of them asked me.
“Oh great,” I said. “Just great.”
…You’ve had some visions. I’ve had two, both of which scared me. Tell you some time. Right now left thumb cut, makes it hard to type.
Aye, then Gib lived through your
excrements!
Ginsburg. Well, I could never get through reading Howl. I hadda give up early. But then, I have these troubles. I could never get through War and Peace. Or the lesser novels of our times: The Naked and the Dead, or such very badly written books as From Here to Eternity. And James was the OTHER way…he wrote so well, I couldn’t bear him.
I figured u wouldn’t like my titles because I know your mind. But u evidently don’t know mine yet…when I say whore, gambler and imbecile the terms are endearment, and when I say I want to give them trinkets, those are my poems. I cannot say what my poems are (pomes?) like Triple Carburater what, so I say where to send them and what to do with them, and say a title like Rockdrill is very strong but I do not feel so very strong when they turn and babble about the lamp in the halls.
There is no them. There is no future. My bones will sleep in the mud. Yet I understand what you are trying to say and I enjoy your saying it. It does me good. I respect your flow. You are a good one, Sheri, and you may yet get us out of the mud. But I’ve seen so many dead on the altars and the sun is coming down on the bone face and they do not feel the sun and they do not feel me, just as if you died, Shed, your voice would stop, and maybe you’ve left me some pieces of paper and I’ve eaten a can of cookies made by your hands, but don’t you see…that makes me angry: THE CAT*KILL bird, and yet it is childish to want to go on; I do not even want to go on; life barely interests me; I guess the death thing I need, and we’ve got to face it. I am a stone face upon a stone altar, and the larvae and the grub are hunting lovers from Tristan to an indication of lightning.