Collected Poems 1947-1997

  remembered it all today—many years thinking of Kali-Ma and other matters—

  a big surprise it was Me—Dear Reader, I seem strange to myself—

  You recognize everything all over again where you are, it’s wonderful

  to be introduced to strangers who know you already—

  like being Famous—a reverberation of Eternal Consciousness—

  Today heraldic of Today, archetypal mimeograph machines reprinting everybody’s poetry,

  like finishing a book of surrealism which I haven’t read for years—

  Benjamin Péret & René Crevel heroic for real—the old New Consciousness reminded

  me today—how busy I was, how fatal like a man in the madhouse, distracted with presence of dishes of food to eat—Today’s “ stringbeans in the moonlight”

  Like today I brought home blueberry pie for the first time in years—

  Also today bit by a mosquito (to be precise, toward dawn)

  (toward dusk ate marshmallows at the News Stand and drank huge cold grape soda eyeing:

  this afternoon’s Journal headline FBI IN HARLEM, what kind of Nasty old Epic

  Afternoons I imagine!) Another event, a $10 bill in my hands, debt repaid,

  a café espresso smaller event—Feeling rich I bought a secondhand record of Gertrude Stein’s actual Voice—

  My day was Harmonious—Though I heard no mechanic music—

  I noticed some Nazi propaganda—I wrote down my dream about Earth dying—I wanted to telephone Long Island—I stood on a street corner and didn’t know where to go—

  I telephoned the Civil Liberties Union—discussed the Junk Problem & Supreme Court—

  I thought I was planting suggestions in everybody’s Me-ity—

  thought a few minutes of Blake—his quatrains—I climbed four flights &

  stood at Fainlight’s Chinatown door locked up—I’m being mysterious—

  What does this mean? Don’t ask me today, I’m still thinking,

  Trying to remember what happened while it’s still happening—

  I wrote a “poem,” I scribbled quotation marks everywhere over Fate passing by

  Sometimes I felt noble, sometimes I felt ugly, I spoke to man and woman

  from Times & Time, summarized hugely—plots, cinematic glories, I boasted a little, subtly—

  Was I seen thru? Too much happened to see thru All—

  I was never alone except for two blocks by the park, nor was I unhappy—

  I blessed my Guru, I felt like a shyster—told Ed how much I liked being made love to by delicate girl hands—

  It’s true, more girls should do that to us, we chalked up another mark what’s wrong

  and told everybody to register to vote this November—I stopped on the street and shook hands—

  I took a crap once this day—How extraordinary it all goes! recollected, a lifetime!

  Imagine writing autobiography what a wealth of Detail to enlist!

  I see the contents of future magazines—just a peek Today being hurried—

  Today is slowly ending—I will step back into it and disappear.

  New York, July 21, 1964

  Message II

  Long since the years

  letters songs Mantras

  eyes apartments bellies

  kissed and gray bridges

  walked across in mist

  Now your brother’s Welfare’s

  paid by State now Lafcadio’s

  home with Mama, now you’re

  in NY beds with big poetic

  girls & go picket on the street

  I clang my finger-cymbals in Havana, I lie

  with teenage boys afraid of the red police,

  I jack off in Cuban modern bathrooms, I ascend

  over blue oceans in a jet plane, the mist hides

  the black synagogue, I will look for the Golem,

  I hide under the clock near my hotel, it’s intermission

  for Tales of Hoffmann, nostalgia for the 19th century

  rides through my heart like the music of The Moldau,

  I’m still alone with long black beard and shining eyes

  walking down black smoky tramcar streets at night

  past royal muscular statues on an old stone bridge,

  Over the river again today in Breughel’s wintry city,

  the snow is white on all the rooftops of Prague,

  Salute beloved comrade I’ll send you my tears from Moscow.

  March 1965

  Big Beat

  The Olympics have descended into

  red velvet basement

  theaters of Centrum

  long long hair over skeleton boys

  thin black ties, pale handsome

  cheeks—and screams and screams,

  Orchestra mob ecstasy rising from

  this new generation of buttocks and eyes

  and tender nipples

  Because the body moves again, the

  body dances again, the body

  sings again

  the body screams new-born after

  War, infants cursed with secret cold

  jail deaths of the Fifties—Now

  girls with new breasts and striplings

  wearing soft golden puberty hair—

  1000 voices scream five minutes long

  clapping thousand handed in great ancient measure

  saluting the Meat God of XX Century

  that moves thru the theater like the

  secret rhythm of the belly in

  Orgasm

  Kalki! Apocalypse Christ! Maitreya! grim

  Chronos weeps

  tired into the saxophone,

  The Earth is Saved! Next number!

  SHE’S A WOMAN

  Electric guitar red bells!

  and Ganymede emerges stomping

  his feet for Joy on the stage

  and bows to the ground, and weeping, GIVES.

  Oh the power of the God on his throne

  constantly surrounded by white drums

  right hand Sceptered beating brass cymbals!

  Prague, March 11, 1965

  Café in Warsaw

  These spectres resting on plastic stools

  leather-gloved spectres flitting thru the coffeehouse one hour

  spectre girls with scarred faces, black stockings thin eyebrows

  spectre boys blond hair combed neat over the skull little chin beards

  new spectres talking intensely crowded together over black shiny tables late afternoon

  the sad soprano of history chanting thru a hi-fidelity loudspeaker

  —perspective walls & windows 18th century down New World Avenue to Sigmund III column’d

  sword upraised watching over Polish youth 3 centuries—

  O Polish spectres what’ve you suffered since Chopin wept into his romantic piano

  old buildings rubbled down, gaiety of all night parties under the air bombs,

  first screams of the vanishing ghetto—Workmen step thru prewar pink-blue bedroom walls demolishing sunny ruins—

  Now spectres gather to kiss hands, girls kiss lip to lip, red witch-hair from Paris

  & fine gold watches—to sit by the yellow wall with a large brown briefcase—

  to smoke three cigarettes with thin black ties and nod heads over a new movie—

  Spectres Christ and your bodies be with you for this hour while you’re young

  in postwar heaven stained with the sweat of Communism, your loves and your white smooth cheekskin soft in the glance of each other’s eye.

  O spectres how beautiful your calm shaven faces, your pale lipstick scarves, your delicate heels,

  how beautiful your absent gaze, legs crossed alone at table with long eyelashes,

  how beautiful your patient love together sitting reading the art journals—

  how beautiful your entrance thru the velvet-curtained door, laughing into the overcrowded room,

  how you wait in your hats, measure the
faces, and turn and depart for an hour,

  or meditate at the bar, waiting for the slow waitress to prepare red hot tea, minute by minute

  standing still as hours ring in churchbells, as years pass and you will remain in Novy Swiat,

  how beautiful you press your lips together, sigh forth smoke from your mouth, rub your hands

  or lean together laughing to notice this wild haired madman who sits weeping among you a stranger.

  April 10, 1965

  The Moments Return

  a thousand sunsets behind tramcar wires in open skies of Warsaw Palace of Culture chinese peaks blacken against the orange-clouded horizon—

  an iron trolley rolling insect antennae sparks blue overhead, hat man limping past rusty apartment walls—

  Christ under white satin gleam in chapels—trembling fingers on the long rosary—awaiting resurrection

  Old red fat Jack mortal in Florida—tears in black eyelash, Bach’s farewell to the Cross—

  That was 24 years ago on a scratchy phonograph Sebastian Sampas bid adieu to earth—

  I stopped on the pavement to remember the Warsaw Concerto, hollow sad pianos crashing like bombs, celestial tune

  in a kitchen in Ozone Park—It all came true in the sunset on a deserted street—

  And I have nothing to do this evening but walk in a fur coat on the cool gray avenue years later, a melancholy man alone—

  the music fading to another universe—the moments return—reverberations of taxicabs arriving at a park bench—

  My beard is misery, no language to these young eyes—that I remember myself naked in my earliest dream—

  now sat by the car-crossing rueful of the bald front of my skull and the gray sign of time in my beard—

  headache or dancing exhaustion or dysentery in Moscow or vomit in New York—

  Oh—the Metropol Hotel is built—crowds waiting on traffic islands under streetlamp—the cry of tramcars on Jerusalemski—

  Roof towers flash Red State—the vast stone avenue hung with yellow bulbs —stop lights blink, long trolleys grind to rest, motorcycles pass exploding—

  The poem returns to the moment, my vow to record—my cold fingers—& must sit and wait for my own lone Presence—the first psalm—

  I also return to myself, the moment and I are one man on a park bench on a crowded streetcorner in Warsaw—

  I breathe and sigh—Give up desire for children the bony-faced white bearded Guru said in Benares—am I ready to die?

  or a voice at my side on the bench, a gentle question—worn young man’s face under pearl gray hat—

  Alas, all I can say is “No Panamay”—I can’t speak.

  Easter Sunday, April 18, 1965

  Kral Majales

  And the Communists have nothing to offer but fat cheeks and eyeglasses and lying policemen

  and the Capitalists proffer Napalm and money in green suitcases to the Naked,

  and the Communists create heavy industry but the heart is also heavy

  and the beautiful engineers are all dead, the secret technicians conspire for their own glamour

  in the Future, in the Future, but now drink vodka and lament the Security Forces,

  and the Capitalists drink gin and whiskey on airplanes but let Indian brown millions starve

  and when Communist and Capitalist assholes tangle the Just man is arrested or robbed or had his head cut off,

  but not like Kabir, and the cigarette cough of the Just man above the clouds

  in the bright sunshine is a salute to the health of the blue sky.

  For I was arrested thrice in Prague, once for singing drunk on Narodni street,

  once knocked down on the midnight pavement by a mustached agent who screamed out BOUZERANT,

  once for losing my notebooks of unusual sex politics dream opinions,

  and I was sent from Havana by plane by detectives in green uniform,

  and I was sent from Prague by plane by detectives in Czechoslovakian business suits,

  Cardplayers out of Cézanne, the two strange dolls that entered Joseph K’s room at morn

  also entered mine, and ate at my table, and examined my scribbles,

  and followed me night and morn from the houses of lovers to the cafés of Centrum—

  And I am the King of May, which is the power of sexual youth,

  and I am the King of May, which is industry in eloquence and action in amour,

  and I am the King of May, which is long hair of Adam and the Beard of my own body

  and I am the King of May, which is Kral Majales in the Czechoslovakian tongue,

  and I am the King of May, which is old Human poesy, and 100,000 people chose my name,

  and I am the King of May, and in a few minutes I will land at London Airport,

  and I am the King of May, naturally, for I am of Slavic parentage and a Buddhist Jew

  who worships the Sacred Heart of Christ the blue body of Krishna the straight back of Ram

  the beads of Chango the Nigerian singing Shiva Shiva in a manner which I have invented,

  and the King of May is a middleeuropean honor, mine in the XX century

  despite space ships and the Time Machine, because I heard the voice of Blake in a vision,

  and repeat that voice. And I am King of May that sleeps with teenagers laughing.

  And I am the King of May, that I may be expelled from my Kingdom with Honor, as of old,

  To show the difference between Caesar’s Kingdom and the Kingdom of the May of Man—

  and I am the King of May, tho’ paranoid, for the Kingdom of May is too beautiful to last for more than a month—

  and I am the King of May because I touched my finger to my forehead saluting

  a luminous heavy girl trembling hands who said “one moment Mr. Ginsberg”

  before a fat young Plainclothesman stepped between our bodies—I was going to England—

  and I am the King of May, returning to see Bunhill Fields and walk on Hampstead Heath,

  and I am the King of May, in a giant jetplane touching Albion’s airfield trembling in fear

  as the plane roars to a landing on the gray concrete, shakes & expels air,

  and rolls slowly to a stop under the clouds with part of blue heaven still visible.

  And tho I am the King of May, the Marxists have beat me upon the street, kept me up all night in Police Station, followed me thru Springtime Prague, detained me in secret and deported me from our kingdom by airplane.

  Thus I have written this poem on a jet seat in mid Heaven.

  May 7, 1965

  Guru

  It is the moon that disappears

  It is the stars that hide not I

  It’s the City that vanishes, I stay

  with my forgotten shoes,

  my invisible stocking

  It is the call of a bell

  Primrose Hill, May 1965

  Drowse Murmurs

  … touch of vocal flattery

  exists where you wake us

  at dawn with happy sphinx

  lids eyeball heavy anchored

  together in mysterious Signature,

  this is the end of the world

  whether Atom bomb hits

  it or I fall down death

  alone no body help help

  It’s me myself caught in throes

  of Ugh! They got me whom you lately loved

  of soft cloth beds to stick his cock

  in the wrong way lost animal, what wd Zoology

  say on Park Bench watching the Spectacle

  of this time Me it’s my body going to die,

  it’s My ship sinking forever, O Captain

  the fearful trip is done! I’m all alone,

  This is human, and the cat that licks its ass

  also hath short term to be furry specter

  as I do woken by last thought leap

  up from my pillow as the cat leaps up

  on the desk chair to resolve its foot lick,

/>   I lick my own mind observe the pipe

  crawling up the brick wall, see picture

  room-sides hung with nails emblem

  abstract oil funny glyphs, girls

  naked, letters & newspapers the World

  Map colored over for emphasis somebody born—

  my thoughts almost lost, I absorb the big

  earth lamps hung from the ceiling for ready light,

  hear the chirp of birds younger than I

  and faster doomed, that jet plane whistle

  hiss roar above roofs stronger winged

  than any thin-jawed bird—the precise robot

  for air flying’s stronger than me even,

  tho’ metal fatigue may come before I’m 90—

  I scratch my hairy skull and lean on elbow bone

  as alarm clock Sat Morn rings next door

  and wakes a sleeper body to face his day.

  How amazing here, now this time newspaper

  history, when earth planet they say revolves

  around one sun that on outer Galaxy arm

  revolves center so vast slow pinwheel

  big this speckless invisible molecule I am

  sits up solid motionless early dawn thinking

  high in every direction photograph spiral nebula

  photograph death BLANK photograph this wakened

  brick minute bird-song pipe-flush elbow lean

  in soft pillow to scribe the green sign Paradis.

  June 1965

  Who Be Kind To

  Be kind to your self, it is only one

  and perishable

  of many on the planet, thou art that

  one that wishes a soft finger tracing the

  line of feeling from nipple to pubes—

  one that wishes a tongue to kiss your armpit,

  a lip to kiss your cheek inside your

  whiteness thigh—

  Be kind to yourself Harry, because unkindness

  comes when the body explodes

  napalm cancer and the deathbed in Vietnam

  is a strange place to dream of trees

  leaning over and angry American faces

  grinning with sleepwalk terror over your

  last eye—

  Be kind to yourself, because the bliss of your own

  kindness will flood the police tomorrow,