Collected Poems 1947-1997

  and once their policy’s adopted it’ll rule a decade—

  Somebody decided “he’s a nut!”

  official policy, re-echoed to 14 Million Readers of Time

  as we drive along in the Bat-mobile thru Arizona—

  Approaching Hope, dream maps unfolded

  Waves with larger & larger loops,

  Tree-posts flashing auto headlights

  hit my retina

  I saw what it was

  light saw light,

  a flash in the pan.

  Eyes register, nerves send waves along to the brain

  Finger touch is electric waves

  carlights glare thru eyes—

  Voice repeating itself,

  wavering over the microphones—

  Meditation passing Hope …

  Horrific outskirts’ Eastern Traffic Sign,

  Turn backward…

  Dull sleep on my eyes

  * * * *

  Morning Phoenix Gazette, editorial January 27, ’66

  “No time for probe of CIA

  No Good Purpose would be served—

  Why poke on the Nose?

  … Virtual epidemic of attacks,

  Pacifists let Reds take over the world, rather than

  Fighting Against Them—

  well meaning people … distasteful intelligence

  Sacrosanct… scuttle … demand an investigation …

  Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

  Righto! The Navaho trail—

  Crescent moon setting on low hills West—

  Military forces over radio

  push bombing N. Vietnam.

  Lifelines, sponsored by Henry L. Hunt, Beans.

  Dead voiced announcer, denouncing

  “a communist conspiracy among the youth …

  speakers on campuses / trained to condition

  idealistic brains …”

  It’s Chase Manhattan Bank lends money to South African

  White government—Rockfeller boy!

  Unless Chase Bank quits I prophesy blood violence.

  Ford has a factory,

  Ford has a factory there—

  “they’re aw-fly proud

  of being South African.”

  “… A hotbed of anti Semitism too?”

  PAINTED DESERT,

  petrified forest

  Leslie Howard’s scratchy ’30s image

  … eating jurassic steak

  Petroglyphs over there the Man in the Moon,

  the guy with four fingers …

  over there, this is the sun, with two spikes out the North,

  two spikes South, two spikes ray East & West

  Milky way over here, the Moon,

  … and all the animal tentacles

  Nebula spiraled “… Roger 1943”

  And I hit Julius for eating his avocado cheese sandwich too fast.

  Gas flares, oil refinery night smoke,

  high aluminum tubes winking red lights

  over space ship runways

  petrochemical witches’ blood boiling underground—

  “Looks like they’re gettin ready to go to Mars.”

  Approaching Thoreau—

  Fort Wingate Army Depot entrance—

  and there’s the Continental Divide.

  Anti Vietnam War Demonstrator soldiers sentenced

  For Contempt of President:

  Hard Labor—

  Learn thyself in Shell Refinery’s Oil Storage Seaboard Rackets,

  Lying back on the car seat,

  eyelids heavy,

  legs spread leaned against the table,

  Oh that I were young again and the skin in my anus folds rose,

  “La illaba el (lill) Allah bu”

  Finally bored,

  Over a hill, singing Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram

  Albuquerque Sparkling blue brilliant

  more diamonds & pearls of electricity

  running out of power-plants than ever heard of

  Turkey or Israel—

  intense endless iridescence on black

  velvet desert—

  Ah what a marvel

  orange blue Neon Circling itself Solar System’d

  Speed Wash Texaco 19¢ Famous Hamburgers

  Lion House Italian Village Pizza ah!

  radio warbles Electronic noise

  echo chamber vibrations—

  Albuquerque streets’ fantastic Neon Stars

  collapsing to bright red blinks

  Satellite Globes plunging their

  tiny lamps in and out—

  the eyeball.

  * * * *

  Space stretching North dotted with silver gastanks

  to Sandia Range

  Hitchhiking student

  supported by National Defense Fund

  with his black horn rimmed glasses,

  thin blond hair,

  “If your country calls you, would you go?”

  “If my country drafted me …

  then I would go.”

  Selfish young american always interested in his own skin

  —and blue car speeding along the highway

  sticker on back

  “I’m proud I’m an American”

  right front seat, a 10 gallon hat

  driver a fat car salesman—

  Sitting icy tipped

  distant earth peaks over Hilltops

  & here’s an ugly little oasis, used car tractors

  fenced off by barbed wire

  below roadside—

  Evenings cool clear, sharp

  brilliant blue stars—

  Just what we needed, State Penitentiary!

  Two miles off into the brown furze rolling

  East of the highway

  “This is Ford Country what are you driving?” Be a Ford dealer?

  Great snow meadows roof Sangre De Cristo

  clouds, North, dipping misty rivulet tails of pointy fog.

  ………………………………………………………

  It’s a hard question …

  which would you rescue, your mother-in-law

  or the last text of Shakespeare?

  * * * *

  Two hitchhikers, one Cajun dumb mouth

  who sang brown voiced

  blues his travelin’ baby.

  T’other highschool smart

  wavy hair, unbeautiful, unbeautiful and gentle

  pinched pachuco face

  had ideas of his own philosophy—

  thumbing out of Albuquerque

  To New Orleans Mardigras

  $900 a week, working rolling drunks, or

  fixin signs with ladders and hammers

  had spent 3 youth years in Siam,

  Champagne & Pussy 50¢

  kindly eyes

  “I love to eat, and I love girls.”

  Sang them Prajnaparamita Sutra

  entering Panhandle,

  left them back at Tukumkarie—

  talking in the truckstop booth,

  fat truck drivers

  headed south.

  On Radio entering Texas

  Please For Jesus!

  Grunts & Screams & Shouts,

  Shouts for the Poison Redeemer,

  Shouts for the Venomous Jesus of Kansas.

  Onward to Wichita!

  Onward to the Vortex!

  To the Birchite Hate Riddles,

  cock-detesting, pussy-smearing

  dry ladies and evil Police

  of Central Plains State

  Where boredom & fury

  magick bars and sirens around

  the innocent citykid eye

  & Vampire stake of politics Patriotism’s driven

  into the white breast of Teenage

  joyful murmurers

  in carpet livingrooms

  on sidestreets—

  Beautiful children’ve been driven from Wichita

  McClure & Branaman gone

  J. Alan Whit
e departed left no address

  Charlie Plymell come Now to San Francisco

  Ann Buchanan passing thru,

  Bruce Conners took his joke to another coast—

  in time the White Dove Review

  fluttered up from Tulsa

  Flatland entering Great Plains

  Evil gathers in Cities,

  Eye mouth newspapers

  Television concentrates its blue

  flicker of death in the frontal lobe—

  Police department sirens wail,

  The Building Department inspector Negates

  What the Fire Department has failed to burn down—

  Students departing for Iowa & Chicago,

  New York beckoning at the end of the stage—

  While Soviets have made soft landing on the moon

  Today, be it rock or dust?

  Now’s Solar System born anew?

  Red lights, red lights at highway end,

  glass reflectors,

  there’s no one On the Road.

  “… Don’t know what will happen to the proud

  American soldiers in Vietnam”

  said Ex Ambassador Ex General Taylor—

  In this great space, Murchison & Hunt,

  Texas millionaires

  sit in Isolate skyscrapers

  on flatland dotted with lights

  or, from cities, isolate from fairies

  and screaming european dowagers & sopranos,

  plot conspiracies against Communists,

  send messages to New York, Austin, Wichita

  Vancouver, Seattle, to Los Angeles—

  Radio programs about the Federal Octopus—

  Seraphs of Money Power on Texas plains

  huge fat-bellied power-men

  shoving piles of Capital

  by train

  across grasslands—

  Shoving messages into myriad innocent-cleaned ears

  Spiritual messages about spiritual war—

  Come to Jesus

  where the money is!

  Texas voice

  singing Vietnam Blues

  Twanging

  “I don’t like to die / a man I ain’t about t’ crawl”

  In Vital-heart,

  Big truck slowly lumbers through town—

  Hotels raise signs, neon winks.

  Liberal’s the beginning of Kansas

  Martial music filling airwaves—

  only the last few weeks

  waves of military music

  drum taps drum beats trumpets

  pulsing thru radiostations

  not even sad,

  bald Sopranos

  Sacred Tenors from 1920s

  Singing antique music style

  What Patriot wrote that shit?

  Something to drive out the Indian

  Vibrato of Buffy Sainte-Marie?

  Doom call of McGuire?

  The heavenly echo of Dylan’s despair

  before the silver microphone

  in his snake suit,

  a reptile boy

  disappearing in Time—

  soft shoe dancing on the Moon?

  It’ll be a relief when the Chinese take over Texas!

  Lifeline pumping its venom “Communist Conspiracy”

  Secret documents Infiltrate & smash Vatican—

  broadcast to these empty plains,

  Isolate farmhouses with radios

  hearing the Horror Syndicate

  take over the Universe!

  Radiostations whistling & crashing against each other on autoradio—

  Full moonlight on blue snow

  Loudspeaker blasting midnite static

  thru some European Swansong,

  Dit dat dits of outerspace communication

  blanking out Ear’s substance

  Vatican whistles undertone

  bloops and eeeeeps, trillion-antennae’d

  grid of the Shabda

  If it’s silent it isn’t there—

  * * * *

  Entering Kansas

  little red towers blink distance,

  Lifeline, continued over 7 stations—

  H. L. Hunt his books read,

  Cold reasoning voice over Kansas plains—

  O that’s Liberal Spread before us!

  Truck stopped by roadside Weighing Station

  *

  Heavy Jewish voice heard over Kansas Radio

  Varning the Jews, Take safety in Christ

  —Dr. Michaelson

  and the Hebrew-Christian Hour

  —P.O.B. 707 Los Angeles 53—

  In 1866 & 1881 the Carbon Companies paid

  $2,500,000 for the bones of Buffalos

  Representing 31,000,000 Buffalos.

  Handful of Buffalo, lightbrown back shining in the sun

  Grazing at the edge of River Ginnesca—

  Peter says Oooo! What

  visions they must have of human beings—

  silent tolerant, head bent,

  cropping grass—

  ‘Right now they’re trying to take the Indian territories

  away, near Hopiland.’

  Wanna build subdivisions,

  Mineral rights—

  The last lands of the redskins—

  Saw it in the paper t’other day

  on the Highway near Tucson—

  Blue morning in Kansas,

  black lambs dotted in snow

  Ice gleaming in brown grass at roadside

  Corn stacks, small

  lined up around tree groves—

  Kingman Salvage, rusty autos under rusty hill,

  Jodrell Bank reporting Sensational pictures Rocks on the Moon,

  “it’s a hard surface—”

  information about Hog Scallops at Birth,

  Meat prices, Grain prices

  Steer Meat Dollar values,

  Appeal to end Property Tax

  Green signs,

  Welcome to Wichita

  Population 280,000

  January 28–29, 1966

  Chances “R”

  Nymph and shepherd raise electric tridents

  glowing red against the plaster wall,

  The jukebox beating out magic syllables,

  A line of painted boys snapping fingers

  & shaking thin Italian trouserlegs

  or rough dungarees on big asses

  bumping and dipping

  ritually, with no religion but the

  old one of cocksuckers

  naturally, in Kansas center of America

  the farmboys in Diabolic bar light

  alone stiff necked or lined up

  dancing row on row like Afric husbands

  & the music’s sad here, whereas Sunset Trip or

  Jukebox Corner it’s ecstatic pinball machines—

  Religiously, with concentration and free

  prayer; fairy boys of the plains

  and their gay sisters of the city

  step together to the center of the floor

  illumined by machine eyes, screaming drumbeats,

  passionate voices of Oklahoma City

  chanting No Satisfaction

  Suspended from Heaven the Chances R

  Club floats rayed by stars

  along a Wichita tree avenue

  traversed with streetlights on the plain.

  Wichita, February 1966

  Wichita Vortex Sutra

  I

  Turn Right Next Corner

  The Biggest Little Town in Kansas

  Macpherson

  Red sun setting flat plains west streaked

  with gauzy veils, chimney mist spread

  around christmas-tree-bulbed refineries—aluminum

  white tanks squat beneath

  winking signal towers’ bright plane-lights,

  orange gas flares

  beneath pillows of smoke, flames in machinery—

  transparent towers at dusk

  In advance of the Cold Wave

/>   Snow is spreading eastward to

  the Great Lakes

  News Broadcast & old clarinets

  Watertower dome Lighted on the flat plain

  car radio speeding acrost railroad tracks—

  Kansas! Kansas! Shuddering at last!

  PERSON appearing in Kansas!

  angry telephone calls to the University

  Police dumbfounded leaning on

  their radiocar hoods

  While Poets chant to Allah in the roadhouse Showboat!

  Blue eyed children dance and hold thy Hand O aged Walt

  who came from Lawrence to Topeka to envision

  Iron interlaced upon the city plain—

  Telegraph wires strung from city to city O Melville!

  Television brightening thy rills of Kansas lone

  I come,

  lone man from the void, riding a bus

  hypnotized by red tail lights on the straight

  space road ahead—

  & the Methodist minister with cracked eyes

  leaning over the table

  quoting Kierkegaard “death of God”

  a million dollars

  in the bank owns all West Wichita

  come to Nothing!

  Prajnaparamita Sutra over coffee—Vortex

  of telephone radio aircraft assembly frame ammunition

  petroleum nightclub Newspaper streets illuminated by Bright

  EMPTINESS—

  Thy sins are forgiven, Wichita!

  Thy lonesomeness annulled, O Kansas dear!

  as the western Twang prophesied

  thru banjo, when lone cowboy walked the railroad track

  past an empty station toward the sun

  sinking giant-bulbed orange down the box canyon—

  Music strung over his back

  and empty handed singing on this planet earth

  I’m a lonely Dog, O Mother!

  Come, Nebraska, sing & dance with me—

  Come lovers of Lincoln and Omaha,

  hear my soft voice at last

  As Babes need the chemical touch of flesh in pink infancy

  lest they die Idiot returning to Inhuman—

  Nothing—

  So, tender lipt adolescent girl, pale youth,

  give me back my soft kiss

  Hold me in your innocent arms,

  accept my tears as yours to harvest

  equal in nature to the Wheat

  that made your bodies’ muscular bones

  broad shouldered, boy bicept—

  from leaning on cows & drinking Milk

  in Midwest Solitude—

  No more fear of tenderness, much delight in weeping, ecstasy

  in singing, laughter rises that confounds

  staring Idiot mayors

  and stony politicians eyeing

  Thy breast,

  O Man of America, be born!

  Truth breaks through!

  How big is the prick of the President?

  How big is Cardinal Vietnam?

  How little the prince of the FBI, unmarried all these years!