Collected Poems 1947-1997

  Emerges in old maples

  Goat bells near the house, not much in the

  garden they can eat now anyway,

  & cow got beet tops and mangles already—

  What do dogs hear?

  Birds squeak & chatter as Rooster call

  echoes round house wall

  Civilization’s breaking down! Freezertray’s

  lukewarm, who knows why?

  The year-old Toilet’s leaking at the heel—Wind

  Charger’s so feeble batteries are almost down—

  Hundreds of black spotted tomatoes

  waiting near the kitchen wood stove

  “Useless! useless! the heavy rain driving into the sea!”

  Kerouac, Cassady, Olson ash & earth, Leary the Irish

  coach on the lam,

  Black Magicians screaming in anger Newark to Algiers,

  How many bottles & cans piled up in our garbage pail?

  Fall 1970

  Guru Om

  October 4, 1970

  Car wheels roar over freeway concrete

  Night falls on Dallas, two buildings shine under sickle moon

  Many boys and girls in jail for their bodies poems and bitter thoughts

  My belly’s hollow breath sighs up thru my heart

  Guru Om Guru Om enlarges in the vast space of the breast

  The Guru has a man’s brown belly and cock long hair white beard short hair orange hat no person

  The bliss alone no business for my body but to make Guru Om dwell near my heart

  shall I telephone New York and tell my fellows where I am silent

  shall I ring my own head & order my own voice to be silent but

  How giant, silent and feather-soft is the cave of my body eyes closed

  To enter the body is difficult, the belly’s full of bad smelling wind

  the body’s digesting last weekend’s meat thinking of Cigarettes, bright eyes of boys

  What Acid eight hours equals eight hours’ Om continuous attention—

  the Guru is equal to the Om of the Seeker

  Guru Guru Guru Guru Guru Guru Guru Sitaram Omkar Das Thakur thin voic’d recommended “Give up desire for children”

  Dehorahava Baba sat on the Ganges and described eat & drinking pranayam

  Nityananda floated thru his giant photo body

  Babaji’s hand the hand of a dead man in my dead man’s fingers

  Out the plane window brown gas rises to heaven’s blue sea

  —how end the poetry movie in the mind?

  how tell Kabir Blake & Ginsberg shut their ears?

  Folded in silence invisible Guru waits to fill his body with Emptiness

  I am leaving the world, I will close my eyes & rest my tongue and hand.

  October 5, 1970

  To look in the City without hatred

  the orange moon edge sunk into blue Cloud

  a second night autos roar to and fro Downtown towers’ horizon

  airplane moving between moon and white-lit bank towers

  lightning haze above twinkling-bulbed man city flats

  It is mind-City risen particularly solid.

  What elder age grew such cities visioned from these far towers’ windows

  Seraph armchaired in Babylonic Déjà Vu from Hilton Inn?

  October 6, 1970

  Dallas buildings’ heaped rock tangled steel electric lit under quarter moon

  Cars crash at dusk at Mockingbird Lane, Drugstore Supermarket signs revolve with dumb beckoning persistence over North Central Freeway

  Leary leaped over the wall with a sword, Errol Flynn’s in the grave, flags & bombs fly over Dallas’ stock exchange

  oil flows thru the Hilton Faucets, gasoline fumes smother Neem trees in Ganeshpuri—

  Maya revolves on rubber wheels, Samsara’s glass buildings light up with neon, Illusion’s doors open on aluminum hinges—

  my mother should’ve done asanas & Kundalini not straightjackets & Electroshock in the birthdays of Roosevelt’s FBI—

  Where in the body’s the white thumbsize subtle corpus, in the neck they say

  where’s the half-thumbjoint black causal body, down in the heart hidden?

  where’s the lentil-sized Cosmic Corpse, a tiny blue speck in the navel?

  All beings at war in the Gross body, armor’d Cars & Napalm, rifles & grass huts burning, Mace on Wall Street, tear gas flooding the fallen stockmarket.

  Look in halls of the head, nervous leg halls, universe inside Chest dark baby kingdom in the skull.

  “Have You Seen This Movie?”

  Old maple hairytrunks root asphalt grass marge, November branches rare leaved,

  Giant woodlegged wiretowers’ threads stretch above pond woods highway, white sun fallen hills West.

  Car rolling underpass, radio hornvoice “the sight of Bobby Seale bound & gagged at Trial” denied lawyer presum’d innocent?

  MDA Love Drug Cure Junk Habit? Rochester Exit one mile flashing out Volkswagen window—

  Blue sky fring’d with clouds’ whale-ghost-blue schools north drift—

  High, high Manson sighed on Trial, how many folk in jail for grass Ask Congressman?

  Highway Crash! Politics! Police! Dope! armed robbery Customary E. 10th street, no insurance possible.

  —Brown deer tied neat footed dead eye horned across blue Car trunk, old folks Front seat, they’re gonna eat it!

  Help! Hurrah! What’s Going on here? Samsara? Illusion? Reality?

  What’re all these trailers row’d up hillside, more people? How can Lyca sleep?

  Cows on Canandaigua fields lactate into rubber stainless steel plastic milk-house machinery vats ashine—

  Revolutionary Suicide! Driving on Persian gasoline?

  Kill Whale & ocean? Oh one American myself shits 1000 times more Chemical waste into freshwater & seas than any single Chinaman!

  America Suicide Cure World Cancer! Myself included dependent on Chemicals, wheels, dollars,

  metal Coke Cans Liquid propane batteries marijuana lettuce avocados cigarettes plastic pens & milkbottles—electric

  in N.Y.C. heavy habit, cut airconditioners isolation from street nightmare smog heat study decentralized Power sources 10 years

  not atomic thermopollutive monolith. Om. How many species poisoned biocided from Earth realms?

  O bald Eagle & Blue Whale with giant piteous Cat Squeak—Oh Wailing whale ululating underocean’s sonic roar of Despair!

  Sing thy Kingdom to Language deaf America! Scream thy black Cry thru Radio electric Aether—

  Scream in Death America! Or did Captain Ahab not scream Curses as he hurled harpoon

  into the body of the mother, great White Whale Nature Herself,

  thrashing in intelligent agony innocent vast in the oil-can sick waters?

  All Northvietnam bomb-Cratered ruined topsoil Laos in secrecy more bombs than many W W II’s!

  Mekong swamp lethicided by Monsanto Pentagon Academy Death-brains!

  What wisdom teaching this? What Mafia runs N.J.? What Mafia knew J. Edgar FBI?

  What’s Schenley’s Whiskey trader Fleischmann’s Hoover Institute?

  What opium’s passed thru CIA Agents’ airplane’s luggage in Saigon, Bangkok, Athens, Washington?

  What narcotic agent’s not dependent on Shit for a living?

  What Bank’s money created ex nihil serves orphan, widow, monk, philosopher?

  or what Bank’s money serves real Estate Asphalt over widow’s garden? Serves old Nick in the Pentagon?

  Old Indian prophecies believe Ghost Dance peace will Come restore prairie Buffalo or great White Father Honkie

  be trampled to death in his dreams by returning herds’ thundering reincarnation!

  Oh awful Man! What have we made the world! Oh man capitalist exploiter of Mother Planet!

  Oh vain insect sized men with metal slaves by Great Lake Erie, tenderest Passaic & Hudson poisoned by dollars!

  bid tampering probed in lackawanna Buffalo News
headline folded on rubber floor, car vibrating smooth to sun ruddy woods’ dusk quiet—

  Radio hissing cough words dashboard noisemusic—Any minute Apocalypse Rock!

  Brown Pelican eggs softened by DDT. Seal’s livers poisoned to Northman. Oceans Dead 2000 A.D.?

  Television Citizen 6% Earths human Americans ingest half the planet’s raw matter as alchemized by Syracuse Gen. Electric Power brown robot palace near 8 Lane Thruway’s Exit before Ramada Inn.

  HXL Trucks sleeping on brokenearthed embankment past Iron-strutted passages,

  fields aglitter with damp metallic garbage under th’electricwire trestles—

  And woods survive into another Thanksgiving’s brown sacred silence—

  Lights on cars front Western Lane gray twilight falls on rolling robotland.

  November 1970

  Milarepa Taste

  Who am I? Saliva,

  vegetable soup,

  empty mouth?

  Hot roach, breathe smoke

  suck in, hold, exhale—

  light as ashes.

  Over Laramie

  Western Air boat bouncing

  under rainclouds stippled

  down gray Rockies

  Springtime dusk,

  Look out on Denver, Allen,

  mourn Neal no more,

  Old ghost loves departed

  New lives whelm the plains, rains

  wash Rocky mountainsides

  World turns under sun eye

  Man flies a moment Cheyenne’s

  dry upland highways

  A tiny fossil brachiapod in pocket

  Precambrian limestone clam

  fingernail small

  four hundred fifty million years old

  Brain gone, flesh passed thru myriad

  phantom reincarnations,

  the tiny-ridged shell’s delicate

  as hardened thought.

  —over Laramie, Front Range

  pine gully snow pockets,

  Monolith Cement plume smoke

  casting dust gas over

  the red plateau

  into the New World.

  April 12, 1971

  Bixby Canyon to Jessore Road (1971)

  Bixby Canyon Ocean Path Word Breeze

  Tiny orange-wing-tipped butterfly

  fluttering sunlit

  from violet

  blossom to violet

  blossom

  Ocean is private

  you have to visit

  her to see her

  Garden undercliff

  Dewey Pinks,

  bitter Mint,

  Sea Sage,

  Orange flaming

  Paintbrush

  greenspiked fleurs,

  Thick dainty stalked

  Cow Parsley,

  Starleaf’d violet bushes,

  yelloweyed blue

  Daisy clump—

  red brambled mature sour

  blackberry briars,

  yellow budded

  Lupine

  nodding stalkheads

  in Sunwarm’d

  breezes

  by the brooks tricklet

  wash in the ravine

  Bridged with cloud

  Ruddy withwine morning

  glory’s tiny tender

  cowbells,

  guarded by poison oak sprigs

  oily hands

  Green horned little

  British chickweed,

  waxlight-leafed black

  seed stalk’s

  lilac sweet budcluster

  Ah fluted morning

  glory bud

  oped

  & tickled to yellow

  tubed stamen root

  by a six legged

  armed mite

  deeping his head

  into sweet pollened

  crotches,

  Crawls up yr veined

  blossom wall

  to petal lip in

  sunshine clear

  and dives again

  to your tongue-stamen’s

  foot-pipe, your

  bloom unfolded

  to light—

  Above ye the

  Spider’s left

  his one strand

  catgut silk

  shining

  bridge

  between

  cuckoospitted

  mint leafheads

  & newgreen leafsprig’d

  seedy lilac

  Granite Sagely

  Browed above the Path’s

  black pepper peapod marge—

  Gray rock dropping

  seed,

  withered bush-fingers

  tangled up

  stoneface

  —cracked with

  green stalk

  sprout—

  Brooktrickle deep

  below Airplane

  Bridge

  Concrete

  arches balcony’d

  Pendant over

  Oceancrash

  waves

  falling empty eyed

  breathing water

  wash afar

  Morning Night shade

  in alder shadow’d

  Pathside—Nettle plant

  Leaf-shoulder

  vegetable wing’d

  baby faces,

  green earmouths

  sprouting

  Celery handspread

  Heal-All mudras

  open asking why me.

  Sunlight trembling

  branch-leafy willow,

  yellow haired wingy bee’s

  black horn

  bowed into threadpackt mauve

  round thistle mouth,

  dewey web throat

  green needle collar’d,

  Symmetric little

  Cathead erect

  electric thorn’d

  under giant hogweed

  stalked parasol blossoms—

  Ash branch’s tender

  pinecone cluster

  proffered by leathery

  sawtooth rib leafs

  red browed beedle

  perched on Egyptian

  bridge of Spider fern’s

  soft-jointed spike-sticks

  Brown water

  streaming

  underbrush

  sparrowsong

  winged brown

  whistling above

  cold water pebble

  silver pour …

  Shrouded

  under the

  Ash spread, on

  damp leafwither,

  shield tubes

  & condensers

  of small Sony

  TV machine enwired

  rusty w/resistances

  giant grass

  leafspears

  morning glory hillside

  perched over clearing

  All branches lifting up

  papery seedhusks,

  parasolspiked Fern

  Tramping together

  upright pushing

  a thistle aside,

  groundwheat leaned

  by beach path—

  Oh ocean white-

  waved pouring

  foamy noises over

  rocky sandshore

  Chevrolet writ

  on radiatormouth

  Set above

  Private Land

  Do Not Enter

  incised wood

  Sign-beams

  Frying chickens from

  Arkansas!

  Musselshells’

  Briared graveyard

  footplot—

  Dewey round bushes

  guarding ocean

  path with

  myriad greenstar’d

  leafarms

  cradling white-walled

  dewdrops

  Telephone

  pole trunk

  stuck

  out of old

  landslide head

  Covered with iceplant

  green lobsterclaw

  trefoil
solid

  edged,

  pinked with

  hundredfingerpetaled

  Sea vine blossoms

  Dry brown kelp

  ribs washed

  in a heap at

  streamside in

  wet brown sand

  to listen to

  oceanroar

  and wait the

  slow moon

  tide.

  Stream water

  rushing flat through

  beachmound

  Sand precipices,

  tiny wet arizonas

  flood lips

  —cliffs

  cradling the last

  graysmooth boulders

  shat by the rains

  pissed out

  by spring storm

  from

  the forests

  bladder

  hills

  Small granite

  blackpocked

  hearthstones

  washed to last rest

  Ocean wavelet’s

  salt tongue

  touching

  forward thru

  sand throated

  streambed

  to lave foam &

  pull back bubbles

  from the iron

  Car’s rusty

  under carriage

  kelp pipes

  & brown chassis,

  one rubber wheel

  black poked from

  Sand mattresses

  rock wash

  O Kerouac

  thy broken

  car Behold

  Digested in

  Saltwater

  sandbottom

  giant soulless

  Chicken

  sea gizzard filled

  with unthinking

  marble rocks—

  Poured down

  road in

  avalanche!

  to the granite

  snout of the

  seacliff

  O see the great

  Snake kelp’s

  beet green head still lettuce-

  haired

  stretch forth

  a fingerthick tailroot

  above seaweed broider

  wavelets

  rushing foam

  tongued—

  Was that kelp

  Intelligent

  Einstein hairleafed

  faceless bulbhead

  Oh father

  Welcome!

  The seal’s

  head lifted

  above the wave,

  eyes watching

  from black

  face

  in waterfroth

  floating!

  Come back again!

  Huge white

  waves rolling

  in gray mist

  birds flocking