forgotten numbers, young dream loves and lovers, earthly bellies—
many strong youths with eyes closed, come sighing and helping me come—
Desires already forgotten, tender persons used and kissed goodbye
and all the times I came to myself alone in the dark dreaming of Neal or Billy Budd
—nameless angels of half-life—heart beating & eyes weeping for lovely phantoms—
Back from the Gem Spa, into the hallway, a glance behind
and sudden farewell to the bedbug-ridden mattresses piled soggy in dark rain.
August 2, 1969
Death on All Fronts
“The Planet Is Finished”
A new moon looks down on our sick sweet planet
Orion’s chased the Immovable Bear halfway across the sky
from winter to winter. I wake, earlier in bed, fly corpses
cover gas lit sheets, my head aches, left temple
brain fibre throbbing for Death I Created on all Fronts.
Poisoned rats in the Chickenhouse and myriad lice
Sprayed with white arsenics filtering to the brook, City Cockroaches
stomped on Country kitchen floors. No babies for me.
Cut earth boys & girl hordes by half & breathe free
say Revolutionary expert Computers:
Half the blue globe’s germ population’s more than enough,
keep the cloudy lung from stinking pneumonia.
I called in Exterminator Who soaked the Wall floor with
bed-bug death-oil: Who’ll soak my brain with death-oil?
I wake before dawn, dreading my wooden possessions,
my gnostic books, my loud mouth, old loves silent, charms
turned to image money, my body sexless fat, Father dying,
Earth Cities poisoned at war, my art hopeless—
Mind fragmented—and still abstract—Pain in
left temple living death—
Cherry Valley, September 26, 1969
Memory Gardens
covered with yellow leaves
in morning rain
—Quel Deluge
he threw up his hands
& wrote the Universe dont exist
& died to prove it.
Full Moon over Ozone Park
Airport Bus rushing thru dusk to
Manhattan,
Jack the Wizard in his
grave at Lowell
for the first nite—
That Jack thru whose eyes I
saw
smog glory light
gold over Mannahatta’s spires
will never see these
chimneys smoking
anymore over statues of Mary
in the graveyard
Black misted canyons
rising over the bleak
river
Bright doll-like ads
for Esso Bread—
Replicas multiplying beards
Farewell to the Cross—
Eternal fixity, the big headed
wax painted Buddha doll
pale resting incoffined—
Empty-skulled New
York streets
Starveling phantoms
filling city—
Wax dolls walking park
Ave,
Light gleam in eye glass
Voice echoing thru Microphones
Grand Central Sailor’s
arrival 2 decades later
feeling melancholy—
Nostalgia for Innocent World
War II—
A million corpses running
across 42d street
Glass buildings rising higher
transparent
aluminum—
artificial trees, robot sofas,
Ignorant cars—
One Way Street to Heaven.
•
Gray Subway Roar
A wrinkled brown faced fellow
with swollen hands
leans to the blinking plate glass
mirroring white poles, the heavy car
sways on tracks uptown to Columbia—
Jack no more’ll step off at Penn Station
anonymous erranded, eat sandwich
& drink beer near New Yorker Hotel or walk
under the shadow of Empire State.
Didn’t we stare at each other length of the car
& read headlines in faces thru Newspaper Holes?
Sexual cocked & horny bodied young, look
at beauteous Rimbaud & Sweet Jenny
riding to class from Columbus Circle.
“Here the kindly dopefiend lived.”
and the rednecked sheriff beat the longhaired
boy on the ass.
—103d street Broadway, me & Hal abused for sidewalk
begging twenty-five years ago.
Can I go back in time & lay my head on a teenage
belly upstairs on 110th Street?
or step off the iron car with Jack
at the blue-tiled Columbia sign?
at last the old brown station where I had
a holy vision’s been rebuilt, clean ceramic
over the scum & spit & come of quarter century.
•
Flying to Maine in a trail of black smoke
Kerouac’s obituary conserves Time’s
Front Paragraphs—
Empire State in Heaven Sun Set Red,
White mist in old October
over the billion trees of Bronx—
There’s too much to see—
Jack saw sun set red over Hudson horizon
Two three decades back
thirtynine fortynine fiftynine
sixtynine
John Holmes pursed his lips,
wept tears.
Smoke plumed up from oceanside chimneys
plane roars toward Montauk
stretched in red sunset—
Northport, in the trees, Jack drank
rot gut & made haiku of birds
tweetling on his porch rail at dawn—
Fell down and saw Death’s golden lite
in Florida garden a decade ago.
Now taken utterly, soul upward,
& body down in wood coffin
& concrete slab-box.
I threw a kissed handful of damp earth
down on the stone lid
& sighed
looking in Creeley’s one eye,
Peter sweet holding a flower
Gregory toothless bending his
knuckle to Cinema machine— and that’s the end of the drabble tongued
Poet who sounded his Kock-rup
throughout the Northwest Passage.
Blue dusk over Saybrook, Holmes
sits down to dine Victorian—
& Time has a ten-page spread on
Homosexual Fairies!
Well, while I’m here I’ll
do the work—
and what’s the Work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow.
October 22–29, 1969
Flash Back
In a car Gray smoke over Elmira
The vast boy reformatory brick factory
Valed below misty hills 25 years ago
I sat with Joe Army visiting and murmured green Grass.
Jack’s just not here anymore, Neal’s ashes
Loneliness makes old men moan, God’s solitude,
O women shut up, yelling for baby meat more.
November 10, 1969
Graffiti 12th Cubicle Men’s Room Syracuse Airport
11 November 1969
I am married and would like to fuck someone else
Have a strange piece (Go Home)
USN ’69
I want to suck a big cock Make Date
Support Third World Struggle Against US Imperialism
I fucked Mom and got VD
All power to the Viet Con
g!
Yeah! Max Voltage up the Ass!! O
Perhaps Man needs—But to kill is only brown butter Wax
April 20, 1965 Mike Heck & Salena Bennett
Keep on Chugglin
Eat prunes and be a regular guy.
I would like to suck a big cock.
So would I.
War is good business Invest your son.
Help me J.P.
John Wayne flunked basic training.
Pat Miller ’69 Home on Leave
My wife sucks cock.
Chickenman Lives Yes somewhere in Argentina
Peace & Love Sucks
I want a blow job Who do I call
What if someone gave a war & Nobody came?
Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be Itself again.
J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. is a Voyeur.
Man, I’m really stoned out of my skull really O-Zoned—good old LSD the colors in here are so nice really fine colors and the floor tile is really outasight if you haven’t tried it you ought to since it is the only way to really get your head together by first getting it apart LSD Forever.
CH2CH2N(CH3)2
After Thoughts
When he kissed my nipple
I felt elbow bone thrill—
When lips touched my belly
tickle ran up to my ear
When he took my cock head to tongue
a tremor shrunk sphincter, joy
shuddered my reins
I breathed deep sighing ahh!
•
Mirror looking, combing
gray glistening beard
Were I found sharp eyed
attractive to the young?
Bad magic or something—
Foolish magic most likely.
November 1969
G. S. Reading Poesy at Princeton
Gold beard combd down like chinese fire gold hair braided at skullnape—
gold turning silver soon—worn face young forehead wrinkled, deep-boned smile,
tiny azure earring, turquoise finger stone, Paramita beads centered by ivory skull-nut—
On Deer Mountain, in ship’s iron belly, sat crosslegged on Princeton couch,
body voice rumbling Bear Sutra to younger selves—her long hair to rug, dungareed legs lotus-postured;
or that half-Indian boy his face so serious woe’d by tree suffering he’s
more compassionate to bear, skunk, deer, coyote, hemlock, whale
than to his own new-sprung cock. O Lizard Dharma
what doth breath, that Aums thru elm bough & rock canyon loud as thru mammal skull hummed,
hymn to bone-chaliced minds now multiplied over planet colleges
so many, with such hollow cheek gaze-eye tenderness, Fitzgerald himself’d weep to see
student faces celestial, longhaired angelic Beings planet-doomed to look thru too many human eyes—?
Princeton in Eternity! Long years fall, December’s woods in snow
Old poets half century ago their bones cracked up in death
alcohol trembling in immortal eyes, Fitzgerald & Kerouac weeping, on earth once—
earth’s voice moves time, old vows and prophecies remembered, mountain prayers repeated,
Gary’s voice echoes hollow under round electric lamps.
1970
Friday the Thirteenth
Blasts rip Newspaper Gray Mannahatta’s mid day Air Spires,
Plane roar over cloud, Sunlight on blue fleece-mist,
I travel to die, fellow passengers silk-drest & cocktailed burn oil NY to Chicago—
Blasting sky with big business, billion bodied Poetry Commerce,
all Revolution & Consumption, Manufacture & Communication
Bombburst, vegetable pie, rubber donut sex accessory & brilliant TV Jet-plane CIA Joke Exorcism Fart Mantra
or electronic war Laos to AID Gestapo training in Santo Domingo
equally massacre grass, exhaust flower power in coal factory smokedust
—O how beautiful snowy fields earth-floored below cloud-holes
glimpsed from air-roads smogged thru heavens toward Illinois—
What right have I to eat petrol guns & metal from earth heart
What right have I to burn gas air, screech overground rubber tired round midnight stoplight corners in Peoria, Fort Wayne, Ames—
What prayer restores freshness to eastern meadow, soil to cindered acres, hemlock to rusty hillside,
transparency to Passaic streambed, Blue whale multitudes to coral gulfs—
What mantra bring back my mother from Madhouse, Private Brakefield from Leavenworth, Neal from the Streets of Hades,
Hampton, King, Gold, murdered suicided millions from the War-torn fields of Sheol
where bodies twitch arm from leg torn heart beat spasmed brainless in dynamite Napalm rubble Song-My to West 11th Street Manhattan
as war bomb-blast burns along neckbone-fused nations Hanoi to Chicago Tu-Do to Wall Street,
Dynamite metastasis heading toward earth-brain cankering human world forms—
Banks burn, boys die bullet-eyed, mothers scream realization the vast tonnage of napalm
rolling down Grand Concourse, Fragmentation nails bounced off Haiphong walls
rattling machine-gunned down Halstead, the Karma of State Violence
washing terror-waves round earth-globe back to suburb TV home night kitchens
The image 3 years ago, prophetic shriek of electric screen dots bursting thru bathroom walls,
tile & pipes exploded in NY as on Saigon’s Embassy Street
—“Northrop is favorite in hot bidding on a jet fighter for a fat market overseas”—Business Week March 7, 1970
Earth pollution identical with Mind pollution, consciousness Pollution identical with filthy sky,
dirty-thoughted Usury simultaneous with metal dust in water courses
murder of great & little fish same as self besmirchment short hair thought control,
mace-repression of gnostic street boys identical with DDT extinction of Bald Eagle—
Mothers’ milk poisoned as fathers’ thoughts, all greed-stained over the automobile-body designing table—
What can Poetry do, how flowers survive, how man see right mind multitude, hear his heart’s music, feel cockjoys, taste
ancient natural grain-bread and sweet vegetables, smell his own baby body’s tender neck skin
when 60% State Money goes to heaven on gas clouds burning off War Machine Smokestacks?
When Violence floods the State from above, flowery land razed for robot proliferation
metal rooted & asphalted down 6 feet below topsoil,
then when bombcarrying children graduate from Grammar-school’s sex-drenched gymnasia
terrified of Army Finance Meatbones, busted by cops for grassy hair,
Who can prophesy Peace, or vow Futurity for any but armed insects,
steeltip Antennaed metal soldiers porting white eggbombs where genitals were,
Blue-visor’d spray-bugs, gasmasked legions in red-brick Armory Nests—
(bearded spiders ranged under attick & roof with home-brew Arsenic mercury dung plastic readied for the Queen Bee’s Immolation
in Sacramento, Trenton, Phoenix, Miami?)
The State set off a plague of bullets bombs & burning words
two decades back, & seeded Asia with Mind-thoughts excreted in Washington bathrooms—
now the Great Fear’s rolled round the world & washes over Newspaper Gray air
rolling waved through cloud-smogbanks in Heaven
as the gas-burning TWA Jet house crashes thru sound barriers over Manhattan.
Chicago Chicago Chicago Trials, screams, tears, Mace, coalgas, Mafia highways—old Massacres in suburb garages!
Autos turn to water City Halls melt in Aeon-flood,
Police & revolutionaries pass as gas cloud by eagle wing.
“What’s your name?” asks badge-man as machines eat all Name & Form,
History’s faster than thought, poetry obsolete in tiny decades tho maybe slow tunes dance eternal—
war language comes, bombblasts last a minute, coalmines exhaust earth-heart,
Chicago suburb blocks stretch new-bared earthskin under sun eye,
autos speed myriad thru gray air to jet port.
Slaves of Plastic! Leather-shoe chino-pants prisoners! Haircut junkies! Dacron-sniffers!
Striped tie addicts! short hair monkeys on their backs! Whiskey freaks bombed out on 530 billion cigarettes a year—
twenty Billion dollar advertising Dealers! lipstick skin-poppers & syndicate
Garbage telex-Heads!
Star-striped scoundrelesque flag-dopers! Car-smog hookers Fiendish on superhighways!
Growth rate trippers hallucinating Everglade real estate! Steak swallowers zonked on Television!
Old ladies on Stockmarket habits—old Wall Street paper Money-pushers!
Central Intelligence cutting Meo opium fields! China Lobby copping poppies in Burma!
How long this Addict government support our oil-burner matter-habit
shooting gasoline electric speed before the blue light blast & eternal Police-roar Mankind’s utter bust?
Robot airfields soulless Market electronic intelligence business skyscraper streets
empty-soul’d, exploding.
Sheer matter crackling, disintegrating back to void,
Sunyatta & Brahma undisturbed, Maya-cities blow up like Chinese firecrackers,
Samsara tears itself apart—Dusk over Chicago, light-glitter along boulevards,
insect-eyed autos moving slow under blue streetlamps,
plane motor buzz in eardrum, city cloud roof filling with gray gas on up into clear heaven—planet horizon auroral twilight-streaked,
blue space above human truck-moil, Empty sky
Empty mind overhangs Chicago, the universe suspended entire overhanging
Chicago.
O Jack thou’st scaped true deluge.
Smart cock, to turn to shade, I drag hairy meat loss thru blood-red sky
down thru cloud-floor to Chicago, sunset fire obliterate in black gas.
March 13, 1970
Anti-Vietnam War Peace Mobilization
White sunshine on sweating skulls
Washington’s Monument pyramided high granite clouds
over a soul mass, children screaming in their brains on quiet grass
(black man strapped hanging in blue denims from an earth cross)—