green winter’s brown vegetable
hair—washed by transparent trickling
ice water freshets
earth’s rusty slough bathed clean,
streams ripple leaf-bottomed
channels sounded vocal, white light
afternoon sky end—
Goat bells move, black kids bounce,
butting mother’s hairy side & tender tit
one maa’ing child hangs under Bessie’s udder
ducks waggle yellow beaks, new grass flooded,
tiger cat maeows on barn straw,
herb patch by stone wall’s a shiny marsh,
dimpling snow water glimmers, birds whistle
from icecrystal beds under bare bushes,
breeze blows rooster crow thru chill light
extended from the piney horizon.
1969
Falling Asleep in America
We’re in the Great Place, Fable Place, Beulah, Man wedded to Earth, Planet of green Grass
Tiny atomic wheels spin shining, worlds change Heavens inside out, the planet’s reborn in ashes,
Sun lights sparkle on atomic cinder, plants levitate, green moss precedes trees trembling sentient,
Stone eats blue skies solar dazzle with invisible mouths & flowers are the rocks’ excrement—
Each million years atoms spin myriad reversals, worlds in worlds interchange populations—
from worm to man’s a tiny jump from earth to earth souls are borne ever forgetful—
populations eat their own meat, roses smell sweet in the faeces of horses risen red-fac’d.
Consciousness changes nightly, dreams flower new universes in brainy skulls.
Lying in bed body darkened ear of the bus roar running, only the eye flickering grass green returns me to Nashville.
April 1969
Northwest Passage
Incense under Horse Heaven Hills
Empty logger trucks speed
Lake Wallula’s flatness shimmering
Under Hat Rock painted w/
white highschool signs.
Chemical smoke boils up
under aluminum-bright cloud-roof—
Smog assembling over railroad
cars parked rusting on thin rails—
Factory looming vaster than Johnson
Butte—Look at that Shit!
Smell it! Got about 30 smokestacks going!
Polluting Wallula! Boise Cascade
Container Corp!
The Package is the Product, onomatopoeticized
McLuhan in ’67—
Wall Street Journal Apr. 22 full
page ad Proclaimed:
We got the trees! We got
the land beneath!
We Gotta invent More Forms
for Cardboard Country!
We’ll dig forests for Genius
Spirit God Stuff Gold-root
for Sale on Wall Street. Give
us your money! order
our cardboard Wastebaskets!
We just invented throwaway Planets!
Trees crash in Heaven! Sulphurous Urine
pours thru Boise, Chevron & Brea
Wastepipes where Snake & Wallula
ripple shining
Where Sakajawea led White Men thru blue sky
fresh sweet water roads
Towards mountains of juicy
telepathic pine & open Thalassa
Thalassa! Green salt waves
washing rock mountains, Pacific Sirhan lives!
to hear his jury say
“We now fix the penalty at Death.”
Green salt waves washing Wall Street.
Rain on gray sage near Standard
Oil junction Eltopia,
Static at Mesa! Yodeling ancient
Prajnaparamita
Gaté Gaté Paragaté Parasamgaté
Bodhi Svaha!
Way Down Yonder in the Bayoux
Country in Dear old Louisian,
Hank Williams chanting to country
Nature, electric
wires run up rolling brownplowed wheatfields—
Wallula polluted! Wallula polluted! Wallula polluted!
“For most large scale gambling enterprises to continue over any extended period of time, the cooperation of corrupt Police or local officials is necessary.” P. 1 Oregonian, “Mapping a $61 million war against organized crime, President Nixon suggested …”
“Even Jesus Christ couldn’t have
saved me.” Sirhan …
“shed no tears.
His face was ashen” AP
America’s heart Broken,
Chessman, Vietnam, Sirhan.
52% People thought the War
always had been a mistake,
by April 1969. Gallup Poll.
May Day parade canceled for Prague
says Police Radio to
the old King of May faraway—
SDS chanting thru consciousness megaphones
in every university.
By now, Beatles & Beach Boys have
entered the Sublime
thru Acid The Crist of Kali Yuga, thru
Transcendental Meditation, Chanting Hare Krishna climbing Eiffel Tower,
Apollinaire & Mira Bai headless
together with Kabir transmitted
over Apocalyptic Radios, their voice-
vibrations roaring
thru a million loudspeakers in Green
Autos on the world’s roads—
Matter become so thick, senses so sunk
in Chickens & Insulation
“Love aint gonna die, I’m gonna haveta
kill it”
god cries to himself, Christ merging with
Krishna in Car Crash Salvation!
“Prosecutor John Howard called Sirhan a cold-blooded political
assassin with ‘no special claim to further preservation.’ ”
Mao reelected Chinese Premier.
Where the Mullan Rd
meets route 26
by 2 giant Sycamores
approaching Hooper,
Has anyone here any “Special
claim to further preservation”?
These lambs grazing thru springtime
by Cow Creek, quiet in
American yellow light—
“Even J.C. couldn’t have saved me.”
Magpie, Meadowlark, rainbow
apparitions shafted transparent
down from gray cloud.
Dogs see
in black & white.
A complete half-rainbow
hill to hill across the highway
pots of gold anchoring the pretty bridge,
tumbleweed passing underneath
“Saigon (AP) U.S. B52 bombers made their heaviest raids of the Vietnam War last night near the Cambodian border, dropping more than 2,000 tons of bombs along a 30 mile stretch Northwest of Saigon, the US COMMAND reported. ‘They are harassing enemy troops so as not to let them get organized,’ an American SPOKESMAN said.”
Czech student strikes unreported in Prague
Howard Marquette & George Washington U. sit-in:
Hail on new-plowed brown hilltops—
Black rainclouds and rainbows over Albion way—
Drive down valley to Main Street
Seattle First National Motor
next to Everybody’s Bank.
April 24, 1969
Sonora Desert-Edge
“Om Ah Hu? Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hu?”
—Drum H. from Gary S. from Tarthang Tulku
Brown stonepeaks rockstumps
cloudless sunlight
Saguaro green arms praying up
spine ribs risen
woodpecker-holed
nose-pricked limbs
lifted salutation—
orange flower eyes lifted on
needly Ocotillo stalk
Jumping Cholla pistils closing pollened
eyebrow-vagina bud
s to the
poked pinkie—
Palo Verde smooth forked branch
above prickly-pear ears
Smoke plumed up white
from scratched desert plain,
chemical smoke, military copper
airplanes rotting,
4% Copper Smelter smog
—in wire cage, ivory hook-beaked
round black pupiled
Bald Eagle’s head, tailfeathers
hung below claw’d branch, symmetric
body plumes brown webbed like dollarbills,
insecticides sterilized many
adults
—green duck neck sheen spectral as
moon machines
Raven hopping curious black beaked
Coyote’s nose sensitive lifted to air
blinking eye sharp
as the rose bellied Cardinal’s ivory whistle
—tiny bright statues of Buddha
standing, blue desert valley haze—
cactus lessons in sentience,
Trees like mental carrots—Anaconda
smelters white plumesmoke in
San Manuel, or Phelps-Dodge
in Douglas?—
Yellow’d Creosote bushes in granular
dust, hills jeep tracked,
Prairie dogs stand quivering-spined in
cactus-shade. A museum,
minds in Ashramic City—tweetling
bird radios—Hopi Rain:
April 29, 1969
Reflections in Sleepy Eye
For Robert Bly
3,489 friendly people
Elm grove, willow, Blue Earth County’s
red barns, tiny feoff with
gas nozzle snout on hillock,
Large beetles & lizards—
orange-painted steel
cranes & truck cabs,
Green seeder down-pointed
Science Toy earth-cock.
Thin floods, smooth planted acres
upturned, brown
cornstubble plowed under,
tractor pulling discs over fenced land.
Old box-alder fallen over
on knees in pond-flood,
white painted gas tanks by
Springfield’s rail yard woods,
tiny train parade by Meats
Groceries North Star Seeds
Our Flag at full mast
TV antennae, large leafy antennaed
trees upstretched green,
trunks standing sunlit
Sheep on stormfenced knoll,
green little wood acres—
one forest from Canada to these
plains—Corn silage in net bins,
Windmills in Tracy,
Blue enamel silos cap’d
aluminum, minarets in white sunbeam.
Cannabis excellent for drying lymph-
glands, specific relief for
symptoms of colds, flu,
ear pressure grippe &
Eustachian tube clogging—
A tree, bent broken mid-trunk
branches to ground— Much land, few folk, excelsior grave
yard stones
silver tipp’d phalloi to heaven—
Aum, Om, Ford, Mailbox
telephone pole wire strung
down road. Lake house
fence poles, tree shade
pine hill grave, Ah
Lake Benton’s blue waved waters—
finally, Time came to
the brick barn! collapsed!
Old oak trunk sunk thick
under ground.
Farm car plowman rolling discs,
iron cuts smooth ground even,
hill plains roll—
Cows browse under alder shoot,
bent limbs arch clear brown
stream beds, trees stand
on banks observing
shade, peculiar standing up or kneeling
groundward
Car graveyard fills eyes
iron glitters, chrome fenders
rust—
White crosses, Vietnam War Dead
churchbells ring
Cars, kids, hamburger stand
open, barn-smile
white eye, door mouth.
May 9, 1969
Independence Day
Orange hawkeye stronger than thought winking above a thousand thin grassblades—
Dr. Hermon busted in Texas for green weed garden-grown
licensed Federal, Municipal-cop-prosecuted natheless—
Sweet chirrup from bush top to bush top, orange wing’d
birds’ scratch-beaked telegraphy signaled to and fro buttercup earlets—
warbles & sweet whistles swifting echo-noted by fly buzz,
jet-roar rolling down thru clouds—
So tiny a grasshopper climbing timothy stub the birds can’t tell they’re there—
intense soft leaf-spears budding symmetric,
breeze bending gentle flowerheads against yarrow their persons—
eyelids heavy, summer heavy with fear, mapletrunks heavy with green leafmass—
closed buds of hawkeye stronger than thought tremble on tall hairy stems.
•
Red shelled bedbugs crawl war sheets,
city garbage spoils wet sidewalks where children play—
A telephone call from Texas tells the latest police-state bust.
O Self tangled in TV wires, white judges and laws
your jet-thunder echoes in clouds, your DDT spread thru firmament waters poisons algae & brown pelican—
Smog veils Maya, paranoia walks great cities in blue suits with guns,
—are all these billion grassblades safe?
My stomach’s bitter, city haste & money loss—
Hawkeye stronger than thought! Horsefly and bee!
St. John’s wort nodding yellow bells at the sun! eyes close in your presence, I
lie in your soft green bed, watch light thru red lid-skin, language persistent as birdwarble in my brain.
Independence Day! the Cow’s deep moo’s an Aum!
1969
In a Moonlit Hermit’s Cabin
Watching the White Image, electric moon, white mist drifting over woods
St. John’s Wort & Hawkeye wet with chance Yarrow on the green hillside
“D’ya want your Airline Transport Pilot to smoke grass? Want yr moonmen to smoke loco weed?”
What Comedy’s this Epic! The lamb lands on the Alcohol Sea—Deep voices
“A Good batch of Data”—The hours of Man’s first landing on the moon—
One and a Half Million starv’d in Biafra—Football players broadcast cornflakes—
TV mentioned America as much as Man—Brillo offers you free Moon-Map —2 labels—
And CBS repeats Man-Epic—Now here again is Walter Cronkite,
“How easy these words … a shiver down the old spine …
Russia soundly beaten! China one Fifth of Mankind, no word broadcast …”
The Queen watched the moon-landing at Windsor Castle—
Pulling a fast one on Hypnosis at Disneyland, the Kerchief-headed Crowd
Waving to the TV Camera—Ersatz Moon—
“No place gives you history today except the Moon”—
Running behind time entering Space Suits—
And a Moon-in at Central Sheep Meadow—
Western Electric’s solemn moment!
And rain in the woods drums on the old cabin!
I want! I want! a ladder from the depths of the forest night to the silvery moon-wink—
A flag on the reporter’s space-suit shoulder—
Peter Groaning & Cursing in bed, relieved of the lunatic burden at last—
’Tis Tranquillity base where the Tragedy will settle the Eve.
Alert for solar flares, clock ticks, static from Antennae—swift as death.
I didn’t think we’d see this Night.
Plant the flag and you’re doomed! Life
a dream—slumber in eyes of woods,
Antennae scraping the ceiling. Static & Rain!
Saw the earth in Dream age 37, half cloud-wrapped, from a balcony in outer-space—
Méliès—giddiness—picture tube gaga—
“Men land on Sun!” decennial sentences—
Announcers going goofy muttering “142—”
Alone in space: Dump Pressure in the LEM!
Hare Krishna! Lift m’ Dorje on the kitchen table!
No Science Fiction expected this Globe-Eye Consciousness
Simultaneous with opening a hatch on Heaven.
A moth in the Déjà Vu!
This is the instant—open the hatch—every second is dust in the hourglass —Hatch open!
The Virus will grow green slime reptiles in sixty centuries,
& gobble up their fathers as we ate up God—
Imagine dying Tonight! Closing the eyes on the man in the Moon!
Sighing away forever… everyone got sleepy… On the moon porch—
A 38 year old human American standing on the surface of the moon—
Footprint on the Charcoal dust—stepped out
and it’s the old familiar Moon, as undersea or mountaintop, a place—
“Very pretty on the Moon!” oh, ’twere Solid Gold—
Voices calling “Houston to Moon”—Two “Americans” on the moon!
Beautiful view, bouncing the surface—“one quarter of the world denied these pix by their rulers”!
Setting up the flag!
Cherry Valley, July Moon Day 1969
Rain-wet asphalt heat, garbage curbed cans overflowing
I hauled down lifeless mattresses to sidewalk refuse-piles,
old rugs stept on from Paterson to Lower East Side filled with bed-bugs,
gray pillows, couch seats treasured from the street laid back on the street
—out, to hear Murder-tale, 3rd Street cyclists attacked tonite—
Bopping along in rain, Chaos fallen over City roofs,
shrouds of chemical vapour drifting over building-tops—
Get the Times, Nixon says peace reflected from the Moon,
but I found no boy body to sleep with all night on pavements 3 A.M. home in sweating drizzle—
Those mattresses soggy lying by full five garbagepails—
Barbara, Maretta, Peter Steven Rosebud slept on these Pillows years ago,
forgotten names, also made love to me, I had these mattresses four years on my floor—
Gerard, Jimmy many months, even blond Gordon later,
Paul with the beautiful big cock, that teenage boy that lived in Pennsylvania,