Mexico City Blues

  of meat & cabbage,

  All starving,

  on floor are iron plates

  hot, not too hot,

  They all start slowly

  cooking, but keep moving up

  as men with central

  hotplate heat

  get impatient & eat

  meat half raw –

  so he keeps pushing up

  his little meat

  towards the center –

  These people are all bums –

  Hang around in restaurants

  Where there’s nothing to eat

  And you sit a table

  And suddenly there’s a guy

  165th Chorus

  under the table

  cooking your leg

  in some kind of steam

  – much quicker job

  with the steam on the leg

  than central radiant

  wildheat of cabbage

  plates

  in Grand C Station

  And I see: “Everybody’s eatin you.

  You eat them,

  makes no difference,

  the essence does not pass

  From mouth to mouth

  And craw to craw,

  it’s ignorance does.

  ignorant form.

  the essence is not

  disturbed

  really,

  Like the sudden thought

  of India is a dream”

  166th Chorus

  A home for unmarried fathers.

  He said I must investigate

  some day, that –

  Homefront married fathers,

  – some whacky idea –

  like a home for unmarried fathers

  would be.

  Pegler and the Cabinet

  of Peligroso FDR

  – Firstbase, Perkins;

  Eleanor, Right field;

  Pitching, Cervantes

  the Cuban Newcomer

  from downriver

  Harlem

  riding a white

  horse riot

  Picasso

  in his helmet

  Jesus

  167th Chorus

  The details are all the same,

  Like honey stored in beehives,

  Like atomic power, so many

  Atoms, the details per

  Square inch are the life of it

  And the death of it

  The critical mass collapses

  And like a tumbled Sand castle

  When the tide of disintegration

  And its conception rise,

  Flops into the sea softmaw

  Sand salvaging, bells

  Toll it not offshore.

  The Castle was a Dream.

  Now learn

  that the water is a dream

  For when the Tide of Disaster

  Rises water will disintegrate

  And all will be left

  Is the Successful Savior

  Abiding Everywhere in

  Beginningless Ecstatic Nobody

  168th Chorus

  Asking questions and listening

  is sincerity;

  Asking questions and listening

  without really listening

  Is a kind of sincerity; but

  Talking about yourself alia

  time, is not insincere.

  It’s all the same thing

  In the long run, the short run

  the no run

  Whitman examinated grass

  and concluded

  It to be the genesis

  & juice, of pretty girls.

  “Hair of Graves,” footsteps

  Of Lost Children,

  Forgotten park meadows,

  – Looking over your shoulder

  At the beautiful maidens –

  169th Chorus

  Lie down

  Rest

  Breathe slowly

  Dead in Time

  You’re dead already

  What’s a little bit more time got to do

  with it

  So you’re dead

  So the Living Loathe the Dead,

  themselves –

  So forgive, reassure, pat, protect,

  and purify them

  Whatever way is best.

  Thus Spake, Tathagata.

  The girls are pretty

  But their cherries are itty

  And if they aint got cherries

  Sleep in the Park anyway

  And if you dont go near them

  You dont get that sensation

  Of their inexhaustible delicacy

  Dead in Time – Rest in Time

  170th Chorus

  Rest in Delicacy

  The far border of the puff lace

  clouds of Amida’s Western

  Heaven of Diamond Repose

  is Delicate

  And delicate is the Spanish

  language, delicate the Spanish

  they speak in Upper Bleak

  where King Sariputra

  holds forth a tablet of ice

  (I mean diamonds)

  to be read by the highest

  most delicate Bodhi papa

  in the whole confraternity

  – Old Buddha of Old

  In his Magic Selves

  Commingled as One, Maitri,

  Coos delicate songs

  To the lyres & guitars

  Of the minds of the Lapis

  Lazuli old Saints

  171st Chorus

  When I hear that serenade

  in blue –

  Tell me darling are these things

  the same

  That we had always known

  Well all alone

  And true, it’s that serenade

  O serenade,

  In the blue, in the blue.

  Oopli da da

  Aow dee a dee e-da-ha

  You never had no chance

  Fate dealt you wrong hands

  Romance never came back

  Crashing interruptions

  So I’m with you

  happy once again

  and singing all my blues

  in tune with you

  with you

  172nd Chorus

  When I hear that

  serenade in bleu,

  OO dee de ree,

  – a song I could sing

  in a low new voice

  to be recorded

  on quiet microphones

  of the Roman Afternoon,

  tape, a new kind of voice,

  sung for the self

  sung for yourself

  to hear in a room

  where you dont

  want to be

  interrupt

  ed

  Or made to sing dirges

  Of suicide & main

  in the candle of the handle

  of the coffin to blame

  173rd Chorus

  The funerals of the doornails

  Gay Chocolateers with sadness

  of Marshes across

  their Germany

  Hope of Eleanoras of Russia

  rising from

  the railroad

  Nevsky track

  Loud upturned chocolate bedpans

  of Saturday Night

  Drugstore Windows

  showing rubber

  and the sexfiend

  watching

  Oldtime childhood shoesheens

  The Music of the uninhabited spheres

  being played & developed

  over ages for no one

  That’s the Radio to me

  The Ultimo Actual Soundbody

  discriminating in the air

  by means of men tubes

  invented by the 95 devils

  174th Chorus

  The freshwater eels of Europe

  That climb up their rivers

  And presumably raid fjords

  And eat up pools, curious

  Proustian visitors from up the br />
  mountain

  Of the sea, which, when they die,

  they re-cross, to Bermuda,

  from whence they came, to die.

  Must be that these eel

  Have a yen to explore

  The veins of Old Atlantis

  From their sunken mountaintop

  This side Canaryas

  But no – they slide

  From Europe to Ukraine

  And down the Belgian Rivers,

  And blankly in the void

  Swim back to spawn

  And die with longfaced pouts

  – Poor fish.

  175th Chorus

  Cunalingus

  My sister’s playin piana in Vienna

  The Jews are Genius Gypsies

  The Moors are Poor.

  Aristotle, Isabel,

  Ferdinand the Bull.

  Ferdinand was no Dumb-Bell –

  Piano high was Vienna

  When Freud interviewed

  The oversexed Rothschilds

  And Richjews of Vienna

  And the Gypsies were camped

  In apartments – with lamps –

  All the wealth of Europe

  had poured

  Into Vienna – Freud was there –

  So his Psychoanalysis Sex

  Chart of Mad talk

  Was accepted as Gospel

  By undermined golfcourses

  of the River West –

  The multiple too-much of the world

  176th Chorus

  The reason why there are so many things

  Is because the mind breaks it up,

  The shapes are empty

  That sprung into come

  But the mind wont know this

  Till a Buddha with golden

  Lighted finger, hath pointed

  To the thumb, & made an aphorism

  In a robe on the street,

  That you’ll know what it means

  For there to be too many things

  In a world of no-thing.

  One no-thing

  Equals

  All things

  When sad sick women

  Sing their sex blues

  In yr ear, have no fear

  have no fear –

  the moon is true, enough,

  but, but, but, but, but,

  it keeps adding up

  177th Chorus

  Farewell, tendril

  I dont wanta play like that

  when I find you

  as a world

  In my heart

  I dont want

  To talk it lightly

  And make jokes

  And find myself

  Paranoically

  Grunting loud huge grunt

  Of Gordo Exer-

  Indian-Cise,

  I’d – O Christ –

  wouldn’t want to be cool

  in hot hell

  and be goofing

  when yr sweet attentions

  all me, thee,

  describe, self-descried

  in one essential

  l i g h t ,

  the holy gold so-called

  178th Chorus

  Put the blame on intelligence –

  the reason, no,

  not the bloody reason,

  the asskissed burned

  Chicago Putdown

  talk of time –

  who was it maimed

  the rescue,

  and made – the mistake –

  and held

  the loft

  and lost

  and got lost

  and knew nothing –

  What knew the blame?

  Who put the blame?

  Who’s trying to throw me

  out?

  Who am I?

  do I exist?

  (I don’t even exist anyhow)

  179th Chorus

  Glenn Miller and I were heroes

  When it was discovered

  That I was the most beautiful

  Boy of my generation,

  They told Glenn Miller,

  Whereby he got inspired

  And wrote the saxophone

  Wrote the reed sections –

  like sautergain & finn –

  and then they all did dance

  and kissed me mooning stars

  and I became the Yokum

  of the wall-gang, flowers,

  and believed in truth & loved

  the snowy earth

  and had no truck

  and no responsibility

  a bhikku in my heart

  waiting for philosophy’s

  dreadful murderer

  BUDDHA

  180th Chorus

  When you work on that railroad

  You gotta know what old boy’s

  sayin

  In that en-gyne,

  When you head brakie

  just showin up for work

  on a cold mist dusk

  ready to roll

  to on down the line

  lettuce fields

  of Elkhorn

  & sea-marshes

  of the hobo highriding

  night, flash Salinas –

  “Somebody asked me where

  I come from

  I tell them it’s none a their

  business,

  Cincinnatta”–

  Poetry just doesnt get there

  181st Chorus

  The girls go for that long red

  tongue,

  From the pimp with the long red

  car,

  They lay it in his hand

  The profits’ curfew

  He takes it “The Yellow Kid”

  – He’s the Man –

  She goes home and hustles,

  Remembering Caroline,

  The hills when little

  The raw logcabin

  rotting in the piney woods

  where the mule was mush

  and pup-dog howled

  for no owner

  all one owl-hoot night

  and watermelon flies

  on the porch

  But she love that long red tongue

  And the Man

  is a Sucker

  “SOMEONE LOWER THAN SHE IS”

  182nd Chorus

  The Essence of Existence

  is Buddhahood –

  As a Buddha

  you know

  that all the sounds

  that wave from a tree

  and the sights

  from a sea of fairies

  in Isles of Blest

  and all the tastes

  in Nectar Soup

  and all the odors

  in rose arbour

  – ah rose, July rose –

  bee-dead rose –

  and all the feelings

  in the titwillow’s

  chuckling throat

  and all the thoughts

  in the raggedy mop

  of the brain –

  one dinner

  183rd Chorus

  “Only awake to Universal Mind

  And realize that there is nothing

  Whatever to be attained. This

  Is the real Buddha.”

  Thus spake Hsi Yun

  to P’ei Hsiu

  Names so much like each other

  You know it cant be wrong

  You know that sweet Hsi Yun

  Had eyes to see the Karma

  Wobbling in the balloon

  – shiney –

  millions of dollars damage

  from rains and floods –

  vast fading centers of a Kansas

  central standard time

  buss-i-ness

  my fron

  Only awake to Universal Mind,

  accept everything,

  see everything,

  it is empty,

  Accept as thus – the Truth.

  184th Chorus

  “Men are afraid to forget

  thei
r own minds,

  Fearing to fall thru the void

  With nothing to which they can cling.

  They do not know

  that the void

  is not really void

  but the real realm

  of the Dharma”–

  Wow, I thought reading that,

  when I start falling

  in that inhuman pit

  of dizzy death

  I’ll know (if

  smart enough t’remember)

  that all the black

  tunnels of hate

  or love I’m falling

  through, are

  really radiant

  right eternities

  for me

  185th Chorus

  Farewell, pistil –

  “as old as space”

  “without the faintest tendency

  towards rebirth”

  No-self, no-self, no-self,

  Dass iss the order of the day,

  Virya, Zeal, Wednesday,

  When I can turn this old

  patayo Matago dun’s

  nest of hornet toad

  shoot bewallopers

  worrying in Finnegan’s

  Whorehouse about nothing,

  into a Pagoda of Bright

  Jesus Lace Snow

  Japana dreams,

  with showers of aura

  arras flower rose

  bepetalling pet by pet

  from the holy dispenser

  of dogs –

  Farewell, puppy

  186th Chorus

  It’s all happening in snow

  But I shudder.

  Now there’s no reason for that.

  Now argue the sky saints.

  And down below, I mourn

  and low like an old cow

  in a rastro slaughterhouse

  in the I-Dont-Know

  district of Hellavides’

  Devil Dang –

  No, hmf, damn, boy,

  boom – hell’s clutters

  that meated dante

  when he virgilized

  his poign –

  bom –

  om, atva,

  svaha, snatva,

  Holy Old Howl Who’ll

  Ya

  Is Okay

  187th Chorus

  Do not Seek,

  and Eliminate nothing,

  concluded the Chinese

  Master of 840 B.C.

  “Observe the Void which lies

  before your eyes

  How can you set about

  eliminating it?”

  Buddhism is a big bomb on the head

  and it hurts

  After which comes I know

  the milky fliss,

  fluff, soft AW eternities,

  skyrockets,

  snowflakes, hope revealed,