Mexico City Blues

  and I had no idea

  what I was thinking about

  and abided

  in blank ecstasy

  112th Chorus

  Dont sound reasonable,

  dont sound possible,

  when you bring it up

  But if you dont bring it up,

  everything is alright.

  Dont believe Mr. Believe Me?

  Dont think about him

  and boy

  you’ll see how he vanishes

  in morning’s mist

  when the moon

  is a crescent a banana

  and birds jump

  and far over the Atlantic

  where Red Amida is Shining

  you’ll hear the Call Trumpet

  of East is Alright with the West

  In the Orb of the Womb

  of Tathagata

  so round

  so empty

  so unbelievably

  false-lyingly

  empty of persimonny

  113th Chorus

  Got up and dressed up

  and went out & got laid

  Then died and got buried

  in a coffin in the grave,

  Man –

  Yet everything is perfect,

  Because it is empty,

  Because it is perfect

  with emptiness,

  Because it’s not even happening.

  Everything

  Is Ignorant of its own emptiness –

  Anger

  Doesnt like to be reminded of fits –

  You start with the Teaching

  Inscrutable of the Diamond

  And end with it, your goal

  is your startingplace,

  No race was run, no walk

  of prophetic toenails

  Across Arabies of hot

  meaning – you just

  numbly dont get there

  114th Chorus

  Everything is perfect, dear friend.

  When you wrote the letter

  I was writing you one,

  I checked on the dates,

  Just about right, and One.

  You dont have to worry

  about colics & fits

  From me any more

  or evermore either

  You dont have to worry bout death.

  Everything you do, is like your hero

  The Sweetest angelic tenor of man

  Wailing sweet bop

  On a front afternoon

  When not leading the band

  And every note plaintive,

  Every note Call for Loss

  of our Love and Mastery –

  just so, eternalized –

  You are a great man

  I’ve gone inside myself

  And there to find you

  And little ants too

  115th Chorus

  LANGUID JUNKEY SPEECH WITH LIDDED EYES

  So bleakly junk hit me never.

  Must be something wrong with the day.

  “How you feel?” – “Um – Ow” –

  Green is the wainscot, wait

  For the vaquero, 1, 2, 3 –

  all the faces of man

  are torting on one

  neck

  Lousy feeling of never-get-high,

  I could swallow a bomb

  And sit there a-sighing,

  T’s a Baudelairean day,

  Nothing goes right – millions

  Of dollars of letters from home

  And the feeling of being,

  Ordinary, sane, sight –

  Arm muscles are tense

  Nothing ever right

  You cant feel right

  Hung in Partiality

  For to feel the unconditional

  No-term ecstasy

  Where, of nothing,

  I mean, of nothing,

  That would be best

  116th Chorus

  The Jews Wrote American Music

  Niki Niki Niki- la

  Che wa miena

  Pee tee Wah

  Song of Lil Mexico Children

  Kitchi Kitchi

  Kitchy val

  Big fat mustachio’d businessmen

  Have just to finish their commercial

  And go home, saw em at five

  Drinking beer at Bar’s Alive

  While old Canuck Pot

  Looked white & cold

  In corner, countin candles

  Music

  It’s an Aztec Radio

  with the sounds thick & guttural

  kicking out of the teeth

  The Great Jazz Singer

  was Jolson the Vaudeville Singer?

  No, and not Miles, me.

  117th Chorus

  Me, Paraclete, you. Ye –

  Me, Paraclete, Thee –

  Thou Maitreya Love of the Future

  – Me.

  Me Santiveda me, saint,

  Me sinner me – Me baptist

  A-traptist of Lower

  Absafactus

  Me – You

  Me, alone in understandin old

  void of I love you,

  feel fine

  Me, you gotta love yourself,

  love, somethin,

  thass all I can say

  The witchcraft Indiana girls

  that didnt sing with their hearts,

  where never in a better

  shock of hay hocks

  than the oldtime

  singer with dusty feet

  that chased death

  comes and enfolds you

  118th Chorus

  It’s all the same to me.

  The radio I dont wanta hear

  And cant have to hear

  Plays one thing and another

  Of great Sarah Vag

  but no I stop

  and grasp

  and I forget

  that it’s my own fault

  See how you do it?

  And having grasped

  go on singing

  because I wouldnt

  be writing these poems

  if I didnt know

  That I grasp I sing

  I’ve had times of no-singing,

  they were the same

  Music is noise, Poetry dirt

  119th Chorus

  Self be your lantern,

  Self be your guide –

  Thus Spake Tathagata

  Warning of radios

  That would come

  Some day

  And make people

  Listen to automatic

  Words of others

  and the general flash of noises,

  forgetting self, not-self –

  Forgetting the secret …

  Up on high in the mountains so high

  the high magic priests are

  swabbing in the deck

  of broken rib torsos

  cracked in the rack

  of

  Kallaquack

  tryin to figure yr way

  outa the calamity of dust and

  eternity, buz, you better

  get on back to your kind

  boat

  120th Chorus

  Junkies that get too high

  Shoot up their old stock of stuff

  And sit stupidly on edge

  Of bed nodding over

  The single sentence in the paper

  They been staring at all night –

  Six, seven hours they’ll do this,

  Or get hungup on paragraphs:

  “You go on the nod,

  Then you come up,

  Then you start readin

  it again

  Then you go on the nod again

  and everytime you read it

  it gets better”

  You dont remember the next

  rebirth

  but you remember

  the experience

  “Took me all evening to read

  3 or 4 pages, ossified,

  on the nod”


  121st Chorus

  Everything is in the same moment

  It doesnt matter how much money you have

  It’s happening feebly now,

  the works

  I can taste the uneaten food

  I’ll find

  In the next city

  in this dream

  I can feel the iron railroads

  like marshmallow

  I cant tell the difference

  between mental and real

  It’s all happening

  It wont end

  It’ll be good

  The money that was to have been spent

  on the backward nations

  of the world, has already been

  spent in Forward Time

  Forward to the Sea,

  and the Sea Comes back to you

  and there’s no escaping

  when you’re a fish

  the nets of summer destiny

  122nd Chorus

  We cannot break

  Something that doesnt exist

  Derange pas ta tendresse,

  Dont break your tenderness

  Is advice that comes to “me”

  What a poem the knowledge

  that Time

  With its Pasts & Presents

  & Appurtenant

  Futures, is One Thing

  THE THING ONE WHOLE MASS

  Getting dimmer and dimmer

  to the feel

  What glorious repose knowing

  What a Golden Age

  of Silent Darkness

  in my Happy Heart

  as I lay contemplating

  the fact that I shall die

  anyhow regardless of race

  regardless of grace

  123rd Chorus

  The essence is realizable in words

  That fade as they approach.

  What’s to be done Bodhisattva?

  O live quietly; live to love

  Everybody.

  Be devout under trees

  At midnight on the ground.

  No hope in a room

  of dispelling the gloom

  that’s assembled

  Since Moses

  Life is the same as death

  But the soul continues

  In the same blinding light.

  Eating is the same as Not Eating

  But the stomach continues,

  The thinking goes on.

  You’ve got to stop thinking,

  stop breathing.

  How can you travel from Muzzy

  to

  Muzzy?

  Forgive everyone for yr own sins

  And be sure to tell them

  You love them which you do

  124th Chorus

  The tall thin rawboned fellow

  Come up to Paw and me

  On the misty racetrack.

  “Got a good one in the fourth.”

  “How do YOU know”

  says my Dad

  “I’m a jockey”

  His hat waved over his eyes

  In the rain.

  I saw Arkansaw

  behind him.

  He looked too big to be a jockey

  to me –

  “Just put 4 dollars to win

  And give me half

  the winnings.”

  I dont remember now

  whether my father fell

  And got laid by that line,

  But “too big

  man

  he too big

  to be a jockey”

  was my thought

  125th Chorus

  He shoulda been a football coach,

  Joe McCarthy – the guy

  that was a turncoat

  at the assistant editor

  of the Daily Worker?

  – the tenement marble

  sculptured Attican column

  in the moonlight illuminating

  my eyes – the ross

  osh dewey bilbo long

  scatter de crash talk

  of Fascist BWAS!

  -CLAP TRAP

  the machinegunners of Goa

  are in the Street mashing

  the Saints of McCarthy

  Cohn Captus & Company

  and all I gotta say is,

  remove my name

  from the list

  And Buddha’s too

  Buddha’s me, in the list,

  no-name.

  126th Chorus

  Like running a stick thru water

  The use and effect

  Of tellin people that

  their house

  is burning,

  And that the Buddha, an old

  And wise father

  Will save them by holy

  subterfuge,

  Crying: “Out, out, little ones,

  The fire will burn you!

  I promise to give you fine

  carts

  Three in number, different,

  Charming, the goat cart,

  The deer cart, and

  The cart of the bullock

  Gayly bedecked – With oranges,

  Flowers, holy maidens & trees,”

  So the children rush out, saved,

  And he gives them

  The incomparable single Greatcart

  Of the White Bullock, all snow.

  127th Chorus

  Nobody knows the other side

  of my house,

  My corner where I was born,

  dusty guitars

  Of my tired little street where

  with little feet

  I beetled and I wheedled

  with my sisters

  And waited for afternoon sunfall

  call a kids

  And ma’s to bring me back

  to supper mainline

  Hum washing line tortillas

  and beans,

  That Honey Pure land,

  of Mominu,

  Where I lived a myriad

  kotis of millions

  Of incalculable

  be-aeons ago

  When white while joyous

  was also

  Center of lake of light

  128th Chorus

  How solid our ignorance –

  how empty our substance

  and the conscience

  keeps bleeding

  and decay is slow –

  children grow.

  The toothbone goes

  Out of mushy pulp

  And you cry

  As if rocks

  Had been dumped

  From a truck

  On your back

  And whimper,

  saying

  ‘O Lord,

  Mercy on Mission.’

  129th Chorus

  We’ve all been sent

  On a mission

  To conquer the desert

  So that the Shrouded

  Traveller

  Behind us

  Makes tracks in the dust

  that dont exist,

  He’ll, or We’ll,

  All end in Hell

  All end in Heaven

  For sure –

  Unless my guess is wrong,

  We are all in for it

  And our time

  Is Life,

  The Penalty,

  Death.

  The Reward

  To the Victor

  Then Goes.

  The Victor is Not Self

  130th Chorus

  And the Victor is Not Pride

  And the Victor is not.

  Thus Spake Tathagata

  But I get tired

  Of waiting in pain

  In a situation

  Where I aint sure.

  Where I am not sure

  Where I am Wolfe

  Sorrow

  Whitman Free

  Melville dark

  Mark Twain Mark

  Twain

  where I am

  wild

  Where I am Mild
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  131st Chorus

  Where I aim

  And do not Miss

  Dawdlers.

  Alla them are dawdlers.

  Poets.

  Call themselves poets

  Call themselves Kings

  Call themselves Free

  Calls themself

  Hennis free

  Calls themself

  Calls themself

  Calls themself catshit

  Calls themself mean

  Calls themself me

  132nd Chorus

  Innumeral infinite songs.

  Great suffering of the atomic

  in verse

  Which may or not be

  controlled

  By a consciousness

  Of which you & the

  ripples of the waves

  are a part.

  That’s Buddhism.

  That’s Universal Mind

  Pan Cosmodicy

  Einstein believed

  In the God of Spinoza

  (– Two Jews

  – Two Frenchmen)

  133rd Chorus

  “Einstein probably put a lot

  of people in the bughouse by

  saying that

  All those pseudo intellectuals

  went home & read Spinoza

  then they dig in

  to the subtleties

  of Pantheism –

  After 10 years of research

  they wrap it up

  & sit down on a bench

  & decide to forget

  all about it.

  Because Pantheism’s

  Too Much for Em.

  They wind up trying to

  find out Plato, Aristotle,

  they end up in a

  vicious Morphine circle”

  134th Chorus

  “The only cure for

  morphine poisoning

  Is more morphine.”

  This is the real morphine.

  Now it’s after supper

  And the little kids

  Are out on the street

  Yelling “Mo perro,

  Mo perro, mo perro”

  And the sky is purple

  In old hazish Mexico

  of Hashisch, Shaslik

  And Veal Parmezan.

  Russian Spy Buses

  Tooting

  “Salud”

  135th Chorus

  The ants are gone asleep

  By now, out on those plains

  Of pulque and rice

  Beyond Pascual

  And the Cactus Town

  Matador pan

  Pazatza cuaro

  Mix-technique

  Poop

  Indio

  Yo yo catlepol

  Moon Yowl

  Indian

  Town & City