Then such knower will delight in secret weapon official Intelligence kodaked in his telegraphic brain
Home of the Brave thou gavest birth to the Steel Age before the Hydrogen Age the
Cobalt Age earning power over entire planets all futurity Male-female spouse of the solar system
Ah me why then shall I not prophesy glorious truths for Thee Ah me folks worship many other
countries beside you they are brainwashed but I of my own uncontrollable lust for you
lay my hands on your Independence enter your very Constitution my head absorbed in the lips of your
Bill of Rights O Liberty whose bliss is union with each individual citizen intercourse
Alaskan Oklahoman New Jerseyesque dreaming of embraces even Indonesian Vietnamese & those Congolese
O Liberty Imagewife of Mankind of thy Mercy show thy favor toward each me everywhere helpless
before thy manifest Destiny by grace may I never be reborn American I and all I’s
neither Russian Peruvian nor Chinese Jew never again reincarnate outside Thee Mother
Democracy O Formless One take me beyond Images & reproductions spouse beyond disunion
absorbed in my own non-Duality which art Thou.
He O mother American Democracy who in the cremation ground of nations with disheveled hair in sweat of intensity meditates on thee
And makes over his pubic hair to thee in poetry or electrical engineering he alone knows thy Cosmic You-Me.
O America whoever on Tuesday at midnite utters This My Country ’Tis of Thee in the basement men’s room
of the Empire State Building becomes a Poet Lord of Earth and goes mounted on Elephants
to conquer Maya the Cold War whoever recites this my country ’tis of thee with the least halfhearted
conviction he becomes himself Big Business & Giant Unions flowing with production and is after
death father of his country which is the Universe itself and will at night in union with Thee
O mother with eyes of delightful movies enter at last into amorous play united with all Presidents of US.
Bombay, 1962
To P.O.
The whitewashed room, roof
of a third-rate Mohammedan hotel,
two beds, blurred fan
whirling over yr brown guitar,
knapsack open on floor, towel
hanging from chair, Orange Crush,
brown paper manuscript packages,
Tibetan tankas, Gandhi pajamas,
Ramakrishna Gospel, bright umbrella
a mess on a rickety wooden stand,
the yellow wall-bulb lights up
this scene Calcutta for the thirtieth night—
Come in the green door, long Western gold
hair plastered down your shoulders
from shower: “Did we take our pills
this week for malaria?” Happy birthday
dear Peter, your 29th year.
Calcutta, July 8, 1962
Heat
Forty feet long sixty feet high hotel
Covered with old gray for buzzing flies
Eye like mango flowing orange pus
Ears Durga people vomiting in their sleep
Got huge legs a dozen buses move inside Calcutta
Swallowing mouthfuls of dead rats
Mangy dogs bark out of a thousand breasts
Garbage pouring from its ass behind alleys
Always pissing yellow Hooghly water
Bellybutton melted Chinatown brown puddles
Coughing lungs Sound going down the sewer
Nose smell a big gray Bidi
Heart bumping and crashing over tramcar tracks
Covered with a hat of cloudy iron
Suffering water buffalo head lowered
To pull the huge cart of year uphill
Calcutta, July 21, 1962
Describe: The Rain on Dasaswamedh Ghat
Kali Ma tottering up steps to shelter tin roof, feeling her way to curb, around bicycle & leper seated on her way—to piss on a broom
left by the Stone Cutters who last night were shaking the street with Boom! of Stone blocks unloaded from truck
Forcing the blindman in his gray rags to retreat from his spot in the middle of the road where he sleeps & shakes under his blanket
Jai Ram all night telling his beads or sex on a burlap carpet
Past which cows donkeys dogs camels elephants marriage processions drummers tourists lepers and bathing devotees
step to the whine of serpent-pipes & roar of car motors around his black ears—
Today on a balcony in shorts leaning on iron rail I watched the leper who sat hidden behind a bicycle
emerge dragging his buttocks on the gray rainy ground by the glove-bandaged stumps of hands,
one foot chopped off below knee, round stump-knob wrapped with black rubber
pushing a tin can shiny size of his head with left hand (from which only a thumb emerged from leprous swathings)
beside him, lifting it with both ragbound palms down the curb into the puddled road,
balancing his body down next to the can & crawling forward on his behind
trailing a heavy rag for seat, and leaving a path thru the street wavering
like the Snail’s slime track—imprint of his crawl on the muddy asphalt market entrance—stopping
to drag his can along stubbornly konking on the paved surface near the water pump—
Where a turban’d workman stared at him moving along—his back humped with rags—
and inquired why didn’t he put his can to wash in the pump altarplace—and why go that way when free rice
Came from the alley back there by the river—As the leper looked up & rested, conversing curiously, can by his side approaching a puddle.
Kali had pissed standing up & then felt her way back to the Shop Steps on thin brown legs
her hands in the air—feeling with feet for her rag pile on the stone steps’ wetness—
as a cow busied its mouth chewing her rags left wet on the ground for five minutes digesting
Till the comb-&-hair-oil-booth keeper woke & chased her away with a stick
Because a dog barked at a madman with dirty wild black hair who rag round his midriff & water pot in hand
Stopped in midstreet turned round & gazed up at the balconies, windows, shops and city stagery filled with glum activity
Shrugged & said Jai Shankar! to the imaginary audience of Me’s,
While a white robed Baul Singer carrying his one stringed dried pumpkin Guitar
Sat down near the cigarette stand and surveyed his new scene, just arrived in the Holy City of Benares.
Benares, February 1963
Death News
Visit to W.C. W. circa 1957, poets Kerouac Corso Orlovsky on sofa in living room inquired wise words, stricken Williams pointed thru window curtained on Main Street: “There’s a lot of bastards out there!”
Walking at night on asphalt campus
road by the German Instructor with Glasses
W. C. Williams is dead he said in accent
under the trees in Benares; I stopped and asked
Williams is Dead? Enthusiastic and wide-eyed
under the Big Dipper. Stood on the Porch
of the International House Annex bungalow
insects buzzing round the electric light
reading the Medical obituary in Time.
“out among the sparrows behind the shutters”
Williams is in the Big Dipper. He isn’t dead
as the many pages of words arranged thrill
with his intonations the mouths of meek kids
becoming subtle even in Bengal. Thus
there’s a life moving out of his pages; Blake
also “alive” thru his experienced machines.
Were his last words anything Black out there
in the carpeted bedroom of the gabled wood house
in Rutherford? Wo
nder what he said,
or was there anything left in realms of speech
after the stroke & brain-thrill doom entered
his thoughts? If I pray to his soul in Bardo Thodol
he may hear the unexpected vibration of foreign mercy.
Quietly unknown for three weeks; now I saw Passaic
and Ganges one, consenting his devotion,
because he walked on the steely bank & prayed
to a Goddess in the river, that he only invented,
another Ganga-Ma. Riding on the old
rusty Holland submarine on the ground floor
Paterson Museum instead of a celestial crocodile.
Mourn O Ye Angels of the Left Wing! that the poet
of the streets is a skeleton under the pavement now
and there’s no other old soul so kind and meek
and feminine jawed and him-eyed can see you
What you wanted to be among the bastards out there.
Benares, March 20, 1963
Vulture Peak: Gridhakuta Hill
I’ve got to get out of the sun
mouth dry and red towel wrapped
round my head
walking up crying singing ah sunflower
Where the traveler’s journey
closed my eyes is done in the
black hole there
sweet rest far far away
up the stone climb past where
Bimbisara left his armies
got down off his elephant
and walked up to meet
Napoleon Buddha pacing
back and forth on the platform
of red brick on the jut rock crag
Staring out Lidded-eyed beneath
the burning white sunlight
down on Rajgir kingdom below
ants wheels within wheels of empire
houses carts streets messengers
wells and water flowing
into past-future simultaneous
kingdoms here gone on Jupiter
distant X-ray twinkle of the eye
myriad brick cities on earth and under
New York Chicago Palenque Jerusalem
Delphos Macchu Picchu Acco
Herculaneum Rajagriha
here all windy with the tweetle
of birds and blue rocks
leaning into the blue sky—
Vulture Peak desolate bricks
flies on the knee hot shadows
raven-screech and wind blast
over the hills from desert plains
south toward Bodh Gaya—
All the noise I made with my mouth
singing on the path up, Gary
Thinking all the pale youths and
virgins shrouded with snow
chanting Om Shantih all over the world
and who but Peter du Peru
walking the streets of San Francisco
arrived in my mind on Vulture Peak
Then turned round and around on my heels
singing and plucking out my eyes
ears tongue nose and balls as I whirled
longer and longer the mountains stretched
swiftly flying in circles
the hills undulating and roads speeding
around me in the valley
Till when I stopped the earth
moved in my eyeballs
green bulge slowly
and stopped
*
My thirst in my cheeks and tongue
back throat drives me home.
Benares, April 18, 1963
Patna-Benares Express
Whatever it may be whoever it may be
The bloody man all singing all just
However he die
He rode on railroad cars
He woke at dawn, in the white light of a new universe
He couldn’t do any different
He the skeleton with eyes
raised himself up from a wooden bench
felt different looking at the fields and palm trees
no money in the bank of dust
no nation but inexpressible gray clouds before sunrise
lost his identity cards in his wallet
in the bald rickshaw by the Maidan in dry Patna
Later stared hopeless waking from drunken sleep
dry mouthed in the RR Station
among sleeping shoeshine men in loincloth on the dirty concrete
Too many bodies thronging these cities now
Benares, May 1963
Last Night in Calcutta
Still night. The old clock Ticks,
half past two. A ringing of crickets
awake in the ceiling. The gate is locked
on the street outside—sleepers, mustaches,
nakedness, but no desire. A few mosquitoes
waken the itch, the fan turns slowly—
a car thunders along the black asphalt,
a bull snorts, something is expected—
Time sits solid in the four yellow walls.
No one is here, emptiness filled with train
whistles & dog barks, answered a block away.
Pushkin sits on the bookshelf, Shakespeare’s
complete works as well as Blake’s unread—
O Spirit of Poetry, no use calling on you
babbling in this emptiness furnished with beds
under the bright oval mirror—perfect
night for sleepers to dissolve in tranquil
blackness, and rest there eight hours
—Waking to stained fingers, bitter mouth
and lung gripped by cigarette hunger,
what to do with this big toe, this arm
this eye in the starving skeleton-filled
sore horse tramcar-heated Calcutta in
Eternity—sweating and teeth rotted away—
Rilke at least could dream about lovers,
the old breast excitement and trembling belly,
is that it? And the vast starry space—
If the brain changes matter breathes
fearfully back on man—But now
the great crash of buildings and planets
breaks thru the walls of language and drowns
me under its Ganges heaviness forever.
No escape but thru Bangkok and New York death.
Skin is sufficient to be skin, that’s all
it ever could be, tho screams of pain in the kidney
make it sick of itself, a wavy dream
dying to finish its all too famous misery
—Leave immortality for another to suffer like a fool,
not get stuck in the corner of the universe
sticking morphine in the arm and eating meat.
May 22, 1963
Understand That This Is a Dream
Real as a dream
What shall I do with this great opportunity to fly?
What is the interpretation of this planet, this moon?
If I can dream that I dream / and dream anything dreamable / can I dream
I am awake / and why do that?
When I dream in a dream that I wake / up what
happens when I try to move?
I dream that I move
and the effort moves and moves
till I move / and my arm hurts
Then I wake up / dismayed / I was dreaming / I was waking
when I was dreaming still / just now.
and try to remember next time in dreams
that I am in dreaming.
And dream anything I want when I’m awaken.
When I’m in awakeness what do I desire?
I desire to fulfill my emotional belly.
My whole body my heart in my fingertips thrill with some old fulfillments.
Pages of celestial rhymes burning fire-words
unconsumable but disappear.
Arcane parchments my own and the universe the answer.
Belly to Belly and knee to knee.
The hot spurt of my body to thee to thee
old boy / dreamy Earl / you Prince of Paterson / now king of me / lost Haledon
first dream that made me take down my pants
urgently to show the cars / auto trucks / rolling down avenue hill.
That far back what do I remember / but the face of the leader of the gang
was blond / that loved me / one day on the steps of his house blocks away
all afternoon I told him about my magic Spell
I can do anything I want / palaces millions / chemistry sets / chicken coops / white horses
stables and torture basements / I inspect my naked victims
chained upside down / my fingertips thrill approval on their thighs
white hairless cheeks I may kiss all I want
at my mercy. on the racks.
I pass with my strong attendants / I am myself naked
bending down with my buttocks out
for their smacks of reproval / o the heat of desire
like shit in my asshole. The strange gang
across the street / thru the grocerystore / in the wood alley / out in the open on the corner /
Because I lied to the Dentist about that chickencoop roofing / slate stolen off his garage
by me and the boy I loved who would punish me if he knew
what I loved him.
That now I have had that boy back in another blond form
Peter Orlovsky a Chinese teenager in Bangkok ten years twenty years
Joe Army on the campus / white blond loins / my mouth hath kisses /
full of his cock / my ass burning / full of his cock
all that I do desire. In dream and awake
this handsome body mine / answered
all I desired / intimate loves / open eyed / revealed at last / clothes on the floor
Underwear the most revealing stripped off below the belly button in bed.
That’s that / yes yes / the flat cocks the red pricks the gentle pubic hair / alone with me
my magic spell. My power / what I desire alone / what after thirty years /
I got forever / after thirty years / satisfied enough with Peter / with all I wanted /
with many men I knew one generation / our sperm passing
into our mouths and bellies / beautiful when love / given.
Now the dream oldens / I olden / my hair a year long / my thirtyeight birthday approaching.
I dream I
am bald / am disappearing / the campus unrecognizable / Haledon Avenue
will be covered with neon / motels / Supermarkets / iron