Collected Poems 1947-1997

  gliding down freeway ramp to City Lights, Peter’s face and television, money and new wanderings to come.

  September 1965

  Carmel Valley

  Grass yellow hill,

  small mountain range blue sky

  bright reservoir below road tiny cars

  The wing tree green wind sigh

  rises, falls—

  Buddha, Christ, fissiparous

  Tendencies—

  White sun rays pierce my eyeglasses—

  gray bark animal arms,

  skin peeling,

  sprig fingers pointing, twigs trembling

  green plate-thins bobbing,

  knotted branch-sprouts—

  No one will have to announce New Age

  No special name, no Unique way,

  no crier by Method or

  Herald of Snaky Unknown,

  No Messiah necessary but the Country ourselves

  fifty years old—

  Allah this tree, Eternity this Space Age!

  Teenagers walking on Times Sq. look up

  at blue planets thru neon metal

  buildingtops,

  Old men lie on grass afternoons

  old Walnut stands on green mountain hide,

  ants crawl the page, invisible

  insects sing, birds

  flap down,

  Man will relax on a hill remembering tree friends.

  Chez Baez, November 1965

  First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels

  Cool black night thru the redwoods

  cars parked outside in shade

  behind the gate, stars dim above

  the ravine, a fire burning by the side

  porch and a few tired souls hunched over

  in black leather jackets. In the huge

  wooden house, a yellow chandelier

  at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers

  hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles

  Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths

  dancing to the vibration thru the floor,

  a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet

  tights, one muscular smooth skinned man

  sweating dancing for hours, beer cans

  bent littering the yard, a hanged man

  sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,

  children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.

  And 4 police cars parked outside the painted

  gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

  December 1965

  Continuation of a Long Poem of These States

  S.F. Southward

  Stage-lit streets

  Downtown Frisco whizzing past, buildings

  ranked by Freeway balconies

  Bright Johnnie Walker neon

  sign Christmastrees

  And Christmas and its eves

  in the midst of the same deep wood

  as every sad Christmas before, surrounded

  by forests of stars—

  Metal columns, smoke pouring cloudward,

  yellow-lamp horizon

  warplants move, tiny

  planes lie in Avionic fields—

  Meanwhile Working Girls sort mail into the red slot

  Rivers of newsprint to soldiers’ Vietnam

  Infantry Journal, Kanackee

  Social Register, Wichita Star

  And Postoffice Christmas the same brown place

  mailhandlers’ black fingers

  dusty mailbags filled

  1948 N.Y. Eighth Avenue was

  when Peter drove the mailtruck 1955

  from Rincon Annex—

  Bright lights’ windshield flash,

  adrenalin shiver in shoulders

  Around the curve

  crawling a long truck

  3 bright green signals on forehead

  Jeweled Bayshore passing the Coast Range

  one architect’s house light on hill crest

  ……………… negro voices rejoice over radio

  Moonlit sticks of tea

  Moss Landing Power Plant

  shooting its cannon smoke

  across the highway, Red taillight

  speeding the white line and a mile away

  Orion’s muzzle

  raised up

  to the center of Heaven.

  December 18, 1965

  These States: into L.A.

  Organs and War News

  Radio static from Saigon

  “And the Glory of the Lord”

  Newscaster Voice thru Aether—

  The Truce—

  12 hours, 30 hours?

  Thirty Days, said Mansfield.

  Cars roll right lane,

  bridge lights

  rising & falling on night-slope—

  headlights cross speeding reflectors

  Handel rejoicing

  chorus whine Requiem, roar in yr Auto

  window shoulders

  Memories of Christmas—

  and the deep Christmas begins:

  U.S. 101 South

  The President at home

  in his swinging chair on the porch

  listening to Christmas Carols

  Vice-President returning from Far East

  “Check into yourself that you are wrong—

  You may be the Wrong” says Pope His

  Christmas Message—

  Overpopulation, overpopulation

  Give me 3 acres of land

  Give my brother how much?

  Each man have fine estate?

  settle giant Communes?

  LSD Shakti-snake settles like gas into Consciousness

  —Brightest Venus I’ve ever seen

  Canyon-floor road, near

  bursting tides

  & caves they’d slept in earlier years

  covered with green water

  height of a man.

  A stranger walked that ground.

  Five years ago we picnicked

  in this place.

  Auto track by a mud log, Bixby Creek

  wove channels

  thru the shifting sands.

  I saw the ghost of Neal

  pass by, Ferlinghetti’s ghost

  The ghost of Homer roaring at the surf

  barking & wagging his tail

  My own footprint at the sea’s lips

  white foam to the rock where I sang Harekrishna

  sand garden drying, kelp

  standing head upward in sunlight.

  Dinosaur hard, scabrous

  overgrown with seaweed tendrils,

  Professors of rock …

  Where’s Stravinsky? Theda Bara? Chaplin? Harpo Marx?

  Where’s Laurel and his Hardy?

  Laughing phantoms

  going to the grave—

  Last time this town I saw them in movies

  Ending The Road to Utopia‘O Carib Isle!’

  Laurel aged & white-haired Hardy

  Hydrogen Comic smoke billowing

  up from their Kingdom—

  Grauman’s Chinese Theater’s drab sidewalk front’s

  concrete footprints, stood there

  stupid, anal, exciting

  upside down, Crosseyed moviestar’d

  I craned my neck at Myrna Loy & Shirley Temple shoe-marks—

  Raccoon crouched at road-edge, praying—

  Carlights pass—

  Merry Christmas to Mr. & Mrs.

  Chiang Kai Shek

  Merry Christmas to President Johnson & pray for Health

  Merry Christmas to MacNamara, State Secretary Rusk,

  Khrushchev hid in his apartment house,

  to Kosygin’s name, to Ho Chi Minh grown old,

  Merry Christmas to rosycheeked Mao Tze Tung

  Happy New Year Chou En Lai & Laurel and Hardy

  Merry Christmas to the Pope

  & to the Dalai Lama Rebbe Lubovitcher

  to the highest Priests of Benin,

  to the Chiefs of the Faery Ch
urches—

  Merry Christmas to the Four Shankaracharyas,

  to all Naga Sadhus, Bauls & Chanting Dervishes from Egypt to

  Malaya—

  Black Sign Los Angeles 140 Miles

  stifling car-heat—

  Music on the tacky radio,

  senseless, senseless coughs of emotion—

  The Ally Cease-Fire Will Not Be Extended

  “……. on a densely populated area”

  “… —Peking will never join the United Nations as long

  as it remains under what it termed American Domination.”

  MOBILIZE THE NATIONAL GUARD, sd Senator Anderson

  IY Mental Rejectees will be reexamined

  for service in Vietnam.

  Bradley high on acid

  drawing pictures on Army Forms?

  Peter classified Psycho telling his Sergeant

  “An Army is an Army against Love.”

  Xmas day work stack of papers on the President’s desk

  a foot high!

  he has to finish them tonight!

  this determined NBC News entering Lompoc, famed of

  W. C. Fields

  who proved that Everyman’s a

  natural bullshit artist:

  “spends about 75% of his time on Foreign Matters and is,

  uh, very involved …”

  “and all letters are answered.”

  WHAT no Xmas message from the

  Texas White House?

  The President must be very down—

  He’s maintaining his communications networks

  circling the Planet.

  Mambo canned music mush

  Ventura radio Xmas sound

  Commercial announcements,

  Few minutes of live speech, little joy or thanksgiving,

  no voice from Himalayas

  Good Cheer Happy Kalpa

  for Dominica Vietnam Congo China India America

  Tho England rang with the Beatles!

  “healing all that was oppressed with the Devil.”

  & at Santa Barbara exit

  the Preacher hollered in tongues

  YOUR NAME IS WRITTEN IN HEAVEN

  passing 38th Parallel

  Lodge spoke from Saigon “We are morally right,

  we are Morally Right,

  serving the cause of freedom forever giving these people

  an opportunity … almost like thinking”—

  He’s broadcasting serious-voice on Xmas Eve to America

  Entering Los Angeles space age

  three stations simultaneous radio—

  Cut-Up Sounds that fill Aether,

  voices back of the brain—

  The voice of Lodge, all well, Moral—

  voice of a poor poverty worker,

  “Well they dont know anybody dont

  know anything about the poor all

  the money’s going to the politicians

  in Syracuse, none of it’s going to the poor.”

  Evers’ voice the black Christmas March

  “We want to be treated like Men, like human …”

  Mass Arrest of Campers Outside LBJ Ranch

  Aquamarine lights revolving along the highway,

  night stars over L.A., exit trees,

  turquoise brilliance shining on sidestreets—

  Xmas Eve 1965

  A Methedrine Vision in Hollywood

  Here at the atomic Crack-end of Time XX Century

  History swifting past horse chariot earth wheel

  So I in mid-age, finished with half desire

  Tranquil in my hairy body, familiar beard face,

  Same fingers to pen

  as twenty years ago began

  scribbled Confession to fellow Beings

  Americans—

  Heavenly creatures,

  This universe a thing of dream

  substance naught & Keystone void

  vibrations of symmetry Yes No

  Foundation of Gold Element Atom

  all the way down to the first Wave

  making opposite Nothing a mirror

  which begat a wave of Ladies marrying

  waves of Gentlemen till I was born in 1926

  in Newark, New Jersey under the sign of

  sweet Gemini—

  Whole universes hived upon the first

  dumb Jerk

  that wasn’t there—The

  Only One escape from the black Not Ever

  was Itself,

  a extra click of Life woke

  because Nothing had no hand to switch off

  the Light.

  The first dumb Jerk,

  one wave, Forward! one way too many—

  So forward got backward, & Sideways both

  got there simultaneous with up

  and down who got each other

  Meanwhile the first Being got its non-Being

  Opposite which never had to be there before

  This calamity, this accident, this Goof,

  this Imperceptible Sneak of Dimension,

  Some Move-Push tickle, Aleph or Aum

  swallowed before uttered,

  one-eyed sparkle, giant glint, any tiny fart

  or rose-whiff before roses were

  Thought Impossible

  filled every corner of Emptiness with Symmetries of

  Impossible Universe with no Idea

  How Come, & Opposite Possible Kosmoses assembled Doubtless—

  One makes two, symmetry’s infinite touch

  makes Sound bounce, light sees

  waves reproduce oceans,

  vibrations are red white & blue—

  All like a 3 dimensional TV dream

  like Science-fiction opera

  sung by inexistent Gas-brains

  in their N-dimensional bag,

  Some what a bubble, some what dewdrop

  Some what a blossom, some what lightning flash,

  Some what the old Jew in the Hospital—

  snap of dying fingers,

  “Where did it all go?”

  Made of Ideas, waves, dots, hot projectors

  mirror movie screens,

  Some what the Shadow cast at Radio City

  Music Hall Xmas 1939

  gone, gone, utterly completely gone

  to a world of Snow

  White and the Seven Dwarfs—

  Made up of cartoon picture clouds, papier-mâché

  Japanese lantern stage sets strung

  with moon lights, neon arc-flames,

  electric switches, thunder

  reverberating from phonograph record tape machine

  Tin sheets of Zeus on

  the Microphone jacked to gigantic Amplifiers, gauge

  needle jumping, red lights warning Other

  Dimensions off the overloaded public address Sound

  Systems feedback thru blue void

  echoing the Real of Endless Film.

  Xmas 1965

  Hiway Poesy: L.A.-Albuquerque-Texas-Wichita

  up up and away!

  we’re off, Thru America—

  Heading East to San Berdoo

  as West did, Nathanael,

  California Radio Lady’s voice

  Talking about Viet Cong—

  Oh what a beautiful morning

  Sung for us by Nelson Eddy

  Two trailer trucks, Sunkist oranges / bright colored

  piled over the sides

  rolling on the road

  Gray hulk of Mt. Baldy under

  white misted skies

  Red Square signs unfold, Texaco Shell

  Harvey House tilted over the superhighway—

  Afternoon Light

  Children in back of a car

  with Bubblegum

  a flight of birds out of a dry field like mosquitoes

  “… several battalions of U.S. troops in a search and destroy operation in the Coastal plain near Bong Son, 300 mi. Northeast of Saigon. Thus far the fighting has been a series of small cla
shes. In a related action 25 miles to the South, Korean troops killed 35 Viet Cong near Coastal highway Number One.”

  “For he’s oh so Good

  and he’s oh so fine

  and he’s oh so healthy

  in his body and his mind”

  The Kinks on car radio

  In Riverside,

  a 1920s song—

  “It’s the only words I know / that you’ll

  understand”

  For my uncle Max dead 5 years ago

  it’s settled—buried

  under the blue mountain wall,

  Veined with snow at the top

  clouds passing

  icy remote heights

  Palmtrees on valley floor

  stick up toothpick hairheads—

  Toy automobiles piled crushed and mangled

  topped by a hanging crane,

  The planet hanging,

  the air hanging,

  Trees hang their branches,

  A dirt truck hanging on the highway—

  Spectacle of Afternoon,

  giant pipes glistening in the universe

  Magic that weighs tons and tons,

  Old bum with his rough

  tattered pack hunched

  walking up the hill hanging

  to Ukipah

  cloth cap pulled over his head

  black fingernails.

  A wall, a wall, a Mesa Wall, There’s desert

  flat mountain shadows

  miles along the pale pink floor

  —Indio in space.

  The breath of spring, the breath of fear

  Mexican border …

  The LSD cube—

  silence.

  There’s those Hellies again,

  over hiway, as over Mekong

  belly lights blinking red

  prob’ly surveying the border—

  shotguns stickin’ out all over

  —Two birds swoop under car dashboard.

  Purple Mist,

  motor tire drone.

  Sacrifice for Prosperity, says Johnson.

  Joshua Tree Monument

  Blue dusk.

  Bomb China

  says Southern Senator Stennis—

  Mobil’s neon Pegasus flying overhill.

  Colorado River border,

  Two lemons an orange seized,

  Scaly Mites

  and the cube of acid smuggled into Arizona …

  “It all comes from Crystal hill”—

  The whole countryside’s Quartzite hereabouts—

  Huntley’s Perspective on the News

  Sukarno a Nut? A wildman?

  or potential friend?

  Brought to you by Mercury

  boasting “sweet

  success taste”—

  They can go around saying things about people,