because the cow weeps in the field and the
mouse weeps in the cat hole—
Be kind to this place, which is your present
habitation, with derrick and radar tower
and flower in the ancient brook—
Be kind to your neighbor who weeps
solid tears on the television sofa,
he has no other home, and hears nothing
but the hard voice of telephones
Click, buzz, switch channel and the inspired
melodrama disappears
and he’s left alone for the night, he disappears
in bed—
Be kind to your disappearing mother and
father gazing out the terrace window
as milk truck and hearse turn the corner
Be kind to the politician weeping in the galleries
of Whitehall, Kremlin, White House
Louvre and Phoenix City
aged, large nosed, angry, nervously dialing
the bald voice box connected to
electrodes underground converging thru
wires vaster than a kitten’s eye can see
on the mushroom shaped fear-lobe under
the ear of Sleeping Dr. Einstein
crawling with worms, crawling with worms, crawling
with worms the hour has come—
Sick, dissatisfied, unloved, the bulky
foreheads of Captain Premier President
Sir Comrade Fear!
Be kind to the fearful one at your side
Who’s remembering the Lamentations
of the bible
the prophecies of the Crucified Adam Son
of all the porters and char men of
Bell gravia—
Be kind to your self who weeps under
the Moscow moon and hide your bliss hairs
under raincoat and suede Levi’s—
For this is the joy to be born, the kindness
received thru strange eyeglasses on
a bus thru Kensington,
the finger touch of the Londoner on your thumb,
that borrows light from your cigarette,
the morning smile at Newcastle Central
station, when longhair Tom blond husband
greets the bearded stranger of telephones—
the boom bom that bounces in the joyful
bowels as the Liverpool Minstrels of
Cavern Sink
raise up their joyful voices and guitars
in electric Afric hurrah
for Jerusalem—
The saints come marching in, Twist &
Shout, and Gates of Eden are named
in Albion again
Hope sings a black psalm from Nigeria,
and a white psalm echoes in Detroit
and reechoes amplified from Nottingham to Prague
and a Chinese psalm will be heard, if we all
live out our lives for the next 6 decades—
Be kind to the Chinese psalm in the red transistor
in your breast—
Be kind to the Monk in the 5 Spot who plays
lone chord-bangs on his vast piano
lost in space on a bench and hearing himself
in the nightclub universe—
Be kind to the heroes that have lost their
names in the newspaper
and hear only their own supplication for
the peaceful kiss of sex in the giant
auditoriums of the planet,
nameless voices crying for kindness in the orchestra,
screaming in anguish that bliss come true
and sparrows sing another hundred years
to white haired babes
and poets be fools of their own desire—O Anacreon
and angelic Shelley!
Guide these new-nippled generations on space
ships to Mars’ next universe
The prayer is to man and girl, the only
gods, the only lords of Kingdoms of
Feeling, Christs of their own
living ribs—
Bicycle chain and machine gun, fear sneer
& smell cold logic of the Dream Bomb
have come to Saigon, Johannesburg,
Dominica City, Phnom Penh, Pentagon
Paris and Lhasa—
Be kind to the universe of Self that
trembles and shudders and thrills
in XX Century,
that opens its eyes and belly and breast
chained with flesh to feel
the myriad flowers of bliss
that I Am to Thee—
A dream! a Dream! I don’t want to be alone!
I want to know that I am loved!
I want the orgy of our flesh, orgy
of all eyes happy, orgy of the soul
kissing and blessing its mortal-grown
body,
orgy of tenderness beneath the neck, orgy of
kindness to thigh and vagina
Desire given with meat hand
and cock, desire taken with
mouth and ass, desire returned
to the last sigh!
Tonite let’s all make love in London
as if it were 2001 the years
of thrilling god—
And be kind to the poor soul that cries in
a crack of the pavement because he
has no body—
Prayers to the ghosts and demons, the
lackloves of Capitals & Congresses
who make sadistic noises
on the radio—
Statue destroyers & tank captains, unhappy
murderers in Mekong & Stanleyville,
That a new kind of man has come to his bliss
to end the cold war he has borne
against his own kind flesh
since the days of the snake.
June 8, 1965
Studying the Signs
After Reading Briggflatts
White light’s wet glaze on asphalt city floor,
the Guinness Time house clock hangs sky misty,
yellow Cathay food lamps blink, rain falls
on rose neon Swiss Watch under Regent archway,
Sun Alliance and London Insurance Group stands
granite—“Everybody gets torn down” … as a high
black taxi with orange doorlight passes around
iron railing blazoned with red sigma Underground—
Ah where the cars glide slowly around Eros
shooting down on one who stands in Empire’s Hub
under his shining silver breast, look at Man’s
sleepy face under half-spread metal wings—
Swan & Edgar’s battlement walls the moving Circus,
princely high windows barred (shadow bank
interior office stairway marble) behind castiron
green balconies emblemed with single swans afloat
like white teacups what—Boots’ blue sign lit up
over an enamel weight-machine’s mirror clockface
at door betwixt plateglass Revlon & slimming biscuit
plaques and that alchemical blood-crimson pharmacy
bottle perched on street display. A Severed Head
“relished uproariously” above the masq’d Criterion
marquee, with Thespis and Ceres plaster Graces lifting
white arms in the shelled niches above a fire gong
on the wooden-pillared facade whose mansard gables
lean in blue-black sky drizzle, thin flagpole.
Like the prow of a Queen Mary the curved building
sign Players package, blue capped center
Navvy encircled by his life-belt a sweet bearded
profile against 19th century sea waves—
last a giant red delicious Coca-Cola signature
covers half the building back to gold Cathay.
Cars stop three abreast for the light, race forward,
turt
leneck youths jump the fence toward Boots,
the night-gang in Mod slacks and ties sip
coffee at the Snac-A-Matic corner opendoor,
a boy leaned under Cartoon Cinema lifts hand
puffs white smoke and waits agaze—a wakened
pigeon flutters down from streetlamp to the fountain,
primly walks and pecks the empty pave—now deep
blue planet-light dawns in Piccadilly’s low sky.
June 12, 1965
Portland Coliseum
A brown piano in diamond
white spotlight
Leviathan auditorium
iron rib wired
hanging organs, vox
black battery
A single whistling sound of
ten thousand children’s
larynxes asinging
pierce the ears
and flowing up the belly
bliss the moment arrived
Apparition, four brown English
jacket christhair boys
Goofed Ringo battling bright
white drums
Silent George hair patient
Soul horse
Short black-skulled Paul
wit thin guitar
Lennon the Captain, his mouth
a triangular smile,
all jump together to End
some tearful memory song
ancient two years,
The million children
the thousand worlds
bounce in their seats, bash
each other’s sides, press
legs together nervous
Scream again & claphand
become one Animal
in the New World Auditorium
—hands waving myriad
snakes of thought
screech beyond hearing
while a line of police with
folded arms stands
Sentry to contain the red
sweatered ecstasy
that rises upward to the
wired roof.
August 27, 1965
VIII
THE FALL OF AMERICA
(1965–1971)
Thru the Vortex West Coast to East (1965–1966)
Zigzag Back Thru These States (1966–1967)
Elegies for Neal Cassady (1968)
Ecologues of These States (1969–1971)
Bixby Canyon to Jessore Road (1971)
Thru the Vortex West Coast to East
(1965–1966)
Beginning of a Poem of These States
Memento for Gary Snyder
Under the bluffs of Oroville, blue cloud September skies, entering U.S. border, red red apples bend their tree boughs propt with sticks—
At Omak a fat girl in dungarees leads her big brown horse by asphalt highway.
Thru lodgepole pine hills Coleville near Moses Mountain—a white horse standing back of a 2 ton truck moving forward between trees.
At Nespelem, in the yellow sun, a marker for Chief Joseph’s grave under rilled brown hills—white cross over highway.
At Grand Coulee under leaden sky, giant red generators humm thru granite & concrete to materialize onions—
And gray water laps against the gray sides of Steamboat Mesa.
At Dry Falls 40 Niagaras stand silent & invisible, tiny horses graze
on the rusty canyon’s mesquite floor.
At Mesa, on the car radio passing a new corn silo, Walking Boogie teenager’s tender throats, “I wish they could all be California girls”—as black highway curls outward.
On plains toward Pasco, Oregon hills at horizon, Bob Dylan’s voice on airways, mass machine-made folksong of one soul—Please crawl out your window—first time heard.
Speeding thru space, Radio the soul of the nation. The Eve of Destruction and The Universal Soldier.
And tasted the Snake: water from Yellowstone under a green bridge; darshana with the Columbia, oilslick & small bird feathers on mud shore. Across the river, silver bubbles of refineries.
There Lewis and Clark floated down in a raft: the brown-mesa’d gorge of Lake Wallula smelling of rain in the sage, Greyhound buses speeding by.
Searching neither for Northwest Passage, nor Gold, nor the Prophet who will save the polluted Nation, nor for Guru walking the silver waters behind McNary Dam.
Roundup time in Pendleton, pinched women’s faces and hulking cowboy hats in the tavern, I’m a city slicker from Benares. Barman murmurs to himself, two hands full of beer, “Who wanted that?”
Heavy rain at twilight, trumpets massing & ascending repeat The Eve of Destruction, Georgia Pacific sawmill burners lift smoke thru the dusky valley.
Cold night in Blue Mountains, snow-powdered tops of droopy Tamarack and Fir at gray sunrise, coffee frozen in brown coffeepot, toes chilled in Czechoslovakian tennis sneakers.
Under Ponderosa pine, this place for sale—45th Parallel, half way between equator and North Pole—Tri-City Radio broadcasting clear skies & freezing nite temperatures; big yellow daisies, hay bales piled in square stacks house-high.
“Don Carpenter has a real geologist’s hammer, he can hit a rock & split it open & look inside & utter some mantra.”
Coyote jumping in front of the truck, & down bank, jumping thru river, running up field to wooded hillside, stopped on a bound & turned round to stare at us—Oh-Ow! shook himself and bounded away waving his bushy tail.
Rifles & cyanide bombs unavailing—he looked real surprised & pointed his thin nose in our direction. Hari Om Namo Shivaye!
Eat all sort of things & run solitary—3 nites ago hung bear dung on a tree and laughed
—Bear: “Are you eating my corpses? Say that again!”
Coyote: “I didn’t say nothing.”
Sparse juniper forests on dry lavender hills, down Ritter Butte to Pass Creek, a pot dream recounted: Crossing Canada border with a tin can in the glove compartment, hip young border guards laughing—In meadow the skeleton of an old car settled: Look To Jesus painted on door.
Fox in the valley, road markers dript with small icicles, all windows on the white church broken, brown wooden barns leaned together, thin snow on gas station roof.
Malheur, Malheur National Forest—signs glazed snowfrost, last night’s frozen dreams come back—staring out thru skull at cold planet—Mila-Repa accepted no gifts to cover his jeweled penis—Strawberry Mountain top white under bright clouds.
Postcards of Painted Hills, fossil beds near Dayville, Where have all the flowers gone? flowers gone? Ra and Coyote are hip to it all, nailed footpaw tracks on Day River bottom, cows kneeled at rest in meadow afternoon.
Ichor Motel, white tailfins in driveway, isolate belfried brown farmhouse circled with trees, chain saws ringing in the vale.
Rilled lava overgrown with green moss cracked in cold wind—Blue Heron and American white egret migrate to shrunken waters of Unhappy —mirage lakes wrongside of the road, dust streaming under Riddle Mountain, Steen Range powder white on horizon—
Slept, water froze in Sierra cup, a lake of bitter water from solar plexus to throat—Dreamt my knee was severed at hip and sutured back together—
Woke, icy dew on poncho and saffron sleep bag, moon like a Coleman lantern dimming icicle-point stars—vomited on knees in arroyo grass, nostrils choking with wet red acid in weak flashlight—
Dawn weakness, climbing worn lava walls following the muddy spring, waterfowl whistling sweetly & a tiny raccoon
pawed forward daintly in green mud, looking for frogs burrowed away from Arctic cold—disappeared into a silent rock shelf.
Climbed up toward Massacre Lake road—sagebrush valley-floor stretched South—Pronghorn abode, that eat the bitterroot and dry spice-bush, hunters gathering in trucks to chase antelope—
A broken corral at highway hill bottom, wreck of a dead cow in cold slanting sun set rays, eyes eaten out, neck twisted to ground, belly caved on kneebone, smell of sweet dread flesh and acrid new sage.
Slept in rusty t
in feeding trough, Orion belt crystal in sky, numb metal-chill at my back, ravens settled on the cow when sun warmed my feet.
Up hills following trailer dust clouds, green shotgun shells & beer-bottles on road, mashed jackrabbits—through a crack in the Granite Range, an alkali sea—Chinese armies massed at the borders of India.
Mud plate of Black Rock Desert passing, Frank Sinatra lamenting distant years, old sad voic’d September’d recordings, and Beatles crying Help! their voices woodling for tenderness.
All memory at once present time returning, vast dry forests afire in California, U.S. paratroopers attacking guerrillas in Vietnam mountains, over porcelain-white road hump the tranquil azure of a vast lake.
Pyramid rocks knotted by pleistocene rivers, topheavy lava isles castled in Paiute water, cutthroat trout; tomato sandwiches and silence.
Reno’s Motel traffic signs low mountains walling the desert oasis, radio crooning city music afternoon news, Red Chinese Ultimatum 1 A.M. tomorrow.
Up Donner Pass over concrete bridge superhighways hung with gray clouds, Mongolian Idiot chow-yuk the laughable menu this party arrived.
Ponderosa hillsides cut back for railroad track, I have nothing to do, laughing over Sierra top, gliding adventurer on the great fishtail iron-finned road, Heaven is renounced, Dharma no Path, no Saddhana to fear,
my man world will blow up, humming insects under wheel sing my own death rasping migrations of mercy, I tickle the Bodhisattva and salute the new sunset, home riding home to old city on ocean
with new mantra to manifest Removal of Disaster from my self, autumn brushfire’s smoky mass in dusk light, sun’s bright red ball on horizon purple with earth-cloud, chanting to Shiva in the car-cabin.
Pacific Gas high voltage antennae trailing thin wires across flatlands, entering Coast Range 4 lane highway over last hump to giant orange Bay glimpse, Dylan ends his song “You’d see what a drag you are,” and the Pope
cometh to Babylon to address United Nations, 2000 years since Christ’s birth the prophecy of Armageddon
hangs the Hell Bomb over planet roads and cities, year-end come, Oakland Army Terminal lights burn green in evening darkness.
Treasure Island Naval Base lit yellow with night business, thousands of red tail lights move in procession over Bay Bridge,
San Francisco stands on modern hills, Broadway lights flash the center gay honky-tonk Elysium, Ferry building’s sweet green clock lamps black Embarcadero waters, negroes screaming over radio.
Bank of America burns red signs beneath the neon pyramids, here is the city, here is the face of war, home 8 o’clock