Collected Poems 1947-1997

  Near Newark Airport my father’ll be

  Under a Winston Cigarette sign buried

  On Exit 14 Turnpike NJ South

  Through the tollgate Service Road 1 my father buried

  Past Merchants Refrigerating concrete on the cattailed marshes

  past the Budweiser Anheuser-Busch brick brewery

  in B’Nai Israel Cemetery behind a green painted iron fence

  where there used to be a paint factory and farms

  where Pennick makes chemicals now

  under the Penn Central power Station

  transformers & wires, at the borderline

  between Elizabeth and Newark, next to Aunt Rose

  Gaidemack, near Uncle Harry Meltzer

  one grave over from Abe’s wife Anna my father’ll be buried.

  July 9, 1976

  VII

  What’s to be done about Death?

  Nothing, nothing

  Stop going to school No. 6 Paterson, N.J., in 1937?

  Freeze time tonight, with a headache, at quarter to 2 A.M.?

  Not go to Father’s funeral tomorrow morn?

  Not go back to Naropa teach Buddhist poetics all summer?

  Not be buried in the cemetery near Newark Airport some day?

  Paterson, July 11, 1976

  “Junk Mail”

  I received in mail offer beautiful certificate National Conference Synagogue Youth

  invites subscriber Monthly Review Independent Socialist Mag

  Congressman Koch reports on collapse of our cities

  Epilepsy Foundation misdelivered for Mr. Pantonucci light candle understanding 4 million Americans

  Dear Mr. Orlovsky put Salvation Army on your Christmas List $50 return enclosed envelope

  American Friends Service Committee act now meet urgent human needs hungry families Prisoners

  in remote penal institutions Rehabilitation Vietnam Laos Northern Great Plains Indians block land-destruction by energy seeking industries Contact between Israeli Jews & Arabs

  Psychoenergetics workshops in Vermont Green Mountain Quarterly’s Imperialist Ideology in Donald Duck with a new bibliography Sri Aurobindo and the Mother protected by Intnl. copyright laws News of Auroville

  Dear Friend: we are Michael & Robert Meeropol, sons of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg executed by U.S. Government 22 years ago.

  Sue the Government for the Files duplicating fees alone Twenty-five

  Thousand Dollars

  Christmas Greetings Help Hospitalized Veterans art or craft Kit enthused busily working for days Bob Hope helps.

  Fund For Peace if your blood boils Press accounts C.I.A. blackmail assassination a powerful alternative to World Violence Private Citizens acting Global

  Gay Peoples Union NYU faces bankruptcy Dance Halloween

  Boycott Gallo Grapes lettuce United Farmworkers of America Our struggle is not over make checks payable Si Se Puede Cesar E. Chavez Union Label

  Announcing Energy & Evolution Quarterly how to make harps lyres & dulcimers Quantum Theory Tantra & land reform organic gardening

  Give Poets & Writers’ CODA to a friend subscribe United Nations Childrens’ Fund severe malnutrition Starvation faces 400 to 500 million children poorer countries. Dwarfism

  disease blindness mental retardation stunted growth crop failures drought flood exhausted wheat rice reserves skyrocketing fuel costs fertilizer shortages Desperately need your help.

  Racial motives lead to Innocent Marine’s conviction in Georgia murder trial a thick envelope from Southern Poverty Law Center Julian Bond

  “I didn’t mean to harm anyone. I only went into that Police Station to see what they were doing to my brother…” sd Marine Sgt. Roy Patterson

  Won’t you help millions in desperate need Thanksgiving urgently bless Carl’s Holiday Food Crusade “Yes! use my tax deductible donation to keep them alive.”

  Catholic Peace Fellowship Activist Fund’s special appeal help the Staff to foster Christian Pacifist Continental Walk Disarmament & Social Justice

  () I have no money at present but I wish to remain on the mailing list () Please take my name off your mailing list

  An important message from Robert Redford about the Environment 80 separate legal actions Dirty air you pay your life Aerosol Spray cancer the National Resources Defense Council needs your support

  The Continental Walk itself: the Nations spent $4.5 Trillion military security since 1946 This year $240 Billion join us walk across ? of the Planet’s surface Nonviolent resistance Unilateral Disarmament

  Aum Sri Ganeshaya Namah Tantra Non-salacious in tone & intent lecturer Dr. Thackur George Washington Hotel Lexington Avenue NYC

  Dear Friend: the War Resisters International is in a desperate financial situation

  Nuclear Age pacifist work must advance leafleting soldiers British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign

  We are in need of the kind of Miracle you can bring to pass. The huge influx of Russian Immigrants upon Bikur Cholem Hospital in the heart of Jerusalem—Don’t turn your back on the Herculean efforts …

  First priority reservation on new gold $100 Canadian Olympic Coin now available at just $110! for American Express Cardmembers—

  Ad Hoc Coalition for a New Foreign Policy (formerly Coalition to Stop Funding the War) hopes you will join the network by filling out the enclosed envelope

  Human Rights Amendment, end Vietnam Trade Embargo, cut foreign military assistance encourage people to people Friendshipments to Vietnam

  A literary miracle 843 poems written in 24 hours by Indian Yogi Sri Chinmoi Aum Publications

  If you haven’t joined the Great Falls Development Corp. now’s the time to do so

  & subscribe to the William Carlos Williams Newsletter. Penmaen Press: Two fascinating heretofore unpublished letters written in 1956 to Richard Eberhart by Allen Ginsberg …

  Please won’t you help Central America Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Subcontinent? Give generously to Planned Parenthood—World Population

  Confidential—Memo to supporters of Open Housing from Fund for Open Society a nonprofit mortgage Co. to advance equal housing: fight racial steering

  Dear Citizen of the World: First days explosion bomb radioactivity starve Ozone layer? Isn’t it time we did something?

  1) Send cooperators ten addresses w/ zip codes 2) Mail friends endorsement 3) Write your Congressman President Newspaper editor & Presidential Candidate.

  As a final move, the World Authority would destroy all Nuclear Weapons.

  Opened Midnight, New York, September 4, 1976

  “You Might Get in Trouble”

  Opening a bus window in N.Y.

  with the left hand in front of

  Bellevue you might get a

  hernia.

  Walking across First avenue

  you might stumble in a

  pothole

  & get your head run over by

  taxicab

  Plowing the field by Cherry

  Creek your trailer might

  turn over & fall on your ear

  you might get your ear cut off

  arresting a junkie

  or having an angry conversation with

  a speedfreak on E. 10 street

  or arguing your case before the

  supreme court

  someone might shoot you in

  the brain

  There’s nothing you can do to

  keep your nose clean

  taking baths plunging in the

  ice & snow

  you might catch cold, the

  flu Swine epidemic’s

  “in” this year

  according to the Authorities.

  September 18, 1976

  Land O’Lakes, Wisc.

  Buddha died and

  left behind a

  big emptiness.

  October 1976

  “Drive All Blames into One”

  It’s everybody’s fault but me.

  I didn’t do it. I
didn’t start the universe.

  I didn’t steal Dr. Mahler’s tiles from his garage roof for my chicken coop

  where I had six baby chicks I paid for so I could attract

  my grammar school boyfriends to play with me in my backyard

  They stole the tiles I’m going across the street to the candystore

  and tell the old uncle behind the glass counter I’m mad at my boyfriends

  for stealing that slate I took all the blame—

  Last night I dreamt they blamed me again on the streetcorner

  They got me bent over with my pants down and spanked my behind I was ashamed

  I was red faced my self was naked I got hot I had a hard on.

  New York, October 25, 1976

  Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin: Vajrayana Seminary

  Candle light blue banners incense

  aching knee, hungry mouth—

  any minute the gong—potatoes and sour cream!

  Sunlight on the red zafu,

  clank of forks & plates—

  I’ll never be enlightened.

  *

  Did you ever see yourself

  a breathing skull

  looking out the eyes?

  *

  Under wooden roof beams

  a hundred people

  sit

  sniffling, coughing, clearing throat

  sneezing, sighing

  breathing through nose

  shifting on pillows in clothes

  swallowing saliva,

  listening.

  November 11, 1976

  For Creeley’s Ear

  The whole

  weight of

  everything

  too much

  my heart in

  the subway

  pounding

  subtly

  head ache

  from smoking

  dizzy

  a moment

  riding

  uptown to see

  Karmapa Buddha

  tonight.

  New York, December 13, 1976

  Haunting Poe’s Baltimore

  I POE IN DUST

  Baltimore bones groan maliciously under sidewalk

  Poe hides his hideous skeleton under church yard

  Equinoctial worms peep thru his mummy ear

  The slug rides his skull, black hair twisted in roots of threadbare grass

  Blind mole at heart, caterpillars shudder in his ribcage,

  Intestines wound with garter snakes

  midst dry dust, snake eye & gut sifting thru his pelvis

  Slimed moss green on his phosphor’d toenails, sole toeing black tombstone—

  O prophet Poe well writ! your catacomb cranium chambered

  eyeless, secret hid to moonlight ev’n under corpse-rich ground

  where tread priest, passerby, and poet

  staring white-eyed thru barred spiked gates

  at viaducts heavy-bound and manacled upon the city’s heart.

  January 10, 1977

  II HEARING “ LENORE ” READ ALOUD AT 203 AMITY STREET

  The light still gleams reflected from the brazen fire-tongs

  The spinet is now silent to the ears of silent throngs

  For the Spirit of the Poet, who sang well of brides and ghouls

  Still remains to haunt what children will obey his vision’s rules.

  They who weep and burn in houses scattered thick on Jersey’s shore

  Their eyes have seen his ghostly image, though the Prophet walks no more

  Raven bright & cat of Night; and his wines of Death still run

  In their veins who haunt his brains, hidden from the human sun.

  Reading words aloud from books, till a century has passed

  In his house his heirs carouse, till his woes are theirs at last:

  So I saw a pale youth trembling, speaking rhymes Poe spoke before,

  Till Poe’s light rose on the living, and His fire gleamed on the floor—

  The sitting room lost its cold gloom, I saw these generations burn

  With the Beauty he abandoned; in new bodies they return:

  To inspire future children ’spite his Ravens “Nevermore”

  I have writ this antient riddle in Poe’s house in Baltimore.

  January 16, 1977

  Contest of Bards

  For Jonathan Robbins

  I

  THE ARGUMENT: Old bard lived in solitary stone house at ocean edge three decades retired from the world, Young poet arrives naked interrupting his studies & announces his own prophetic dreams to replace the old Bard’s boring verities. Young poet had dreamed old poet’s scene & its hidden secret, an Eternal Rune cut in stone at the hearth-front hidden under porphyry bard-throne. Young bard tries to seduce old Boner with his energy & insight, & makes him crawl down on the floor to read the secret riddle Rhyme.

  And the youth free stripling bounding along the Hills of Color

  And the old man bearded, wrinkled, browed in his black cave

  Meet in the broken house of stone, walls graven by Prophet Hands,

  & contend for the Mysteries, vanity against vanity, deciphering

  Eternal runes of Love, & Silence, & the Monster of Self

  Covered with Blood & Lilies, covered with bones and hair and skin:

  They glory in Night & Starvation the Fat Bright Cherub of Resurrection,

  Bliss & God: Terrible Mental Cherub of Chemistry Imagination & Vanity

  Bard after Bard orating and perishing, casting his image behind on men’s brains

  thru sounds symboled on the mind’s stone walls reverberating Syllables Visionary

  Perfect formed to ’dure Millennia, but Phantom is such Rock,

  Phantom as the Cellular Believer in’s own tangible re-creation.

  “I hear the Bard’s stone words Build my Immortal Architecture:

  This body stone hands and genitals this Heart stone Tenderness

  and Delight This head Stone language to Rafter the Stone Bed of Love.

  Come lay down on this rock pillow, kid, lay down your tender breast,

  Pale face, red hair, soft belly hairy tender foot and Loins

  Under the hard immortal blanket, mattress of Rock sheeted with Vocables!

  In twenty years I’ll vanish from this shore & Solitary Eternal Cave—

  Here I studied & Deciphered the Granite Alphabet surrendered

  from Graves from Sands that swirled at the door, from star-fish

  spotted boulders in seas’ low tide when full-moon-gleam

  Pulls bones of Leviathan & tiny bass-fins tide-pool’d

  many in ancient nights.” So one spoke, ocean serpents curl’d around

  his whitened beard, eyes wide in horror he be left by the Dark Shore,

  to burn his memories in the rocky hearth & keep his cold loins warm

  in winter-rain days or in snowy night’s vastness filled

  with stars and planets, spring summer & autumn mortality.

  Sly, craven, conquering he spoke, his words like rainbows,

  or firelight, or shadows, moving humorous thru his beard,

  falling in the air, clothing his body in hypocritic webs of truth,

  to hide his shame, his empty nakedness. He meditated

  remembering deeper Buddhic prophecies, abhoring his own runes solid

  immovable but by time and storm inexorable, half visible on his walls.

  The youth the color of the hills laughed delighted at his Vanity

  and cried, “Under the hearth stone’s a rune, old Bard of Familiarity,

  your eyes forgot, or tempest-addled brain, so busy boiling meat

  and tending to your threadbare cares and household hermitage

  & fishing day by day for thirty years for thoughts! Behold!”

  He naked bent and moved the porphyry-smooth red fire-seat aside:

  “Read what’s writ on earth here before you Ignorant Prophet,

  Learn in your age what True Magicians spelled for
all Futurity,

  Cut in the vanity of rock before your feeble hand grasped iron Pen

  Or feather fancy tickled your gross ear: There have been sages here

  before you, and I am after to outlive your gloomy miserous

  hospitality. I loved you Ungrateful Unimaginative Bard

  And Came over hills thru small cities to companion your steadfast study.

  I dreamed of your eyes and beard and rocks and oceans, I dreamed

  this room these pitted moss green walls & runes you scraped

  deciphered and memorized, pillars worn by tide and smoke

  of your lamp You Grow near blind reading mind on your own house walls,

  I dreamt you sitting on your fire-seat reading the vaporous language of flame tongues

  nescient to the airy rune cut in the Bedrock under yr very Shamanic Throne

  You stare at the ceiling half asleep, or sit on your pillow with heavy eyelid

  murmuring old bards Truths to your brain, repetitive

  imagining me, or some other red-buttocked stripling savior come

  to yr stone bed naked to renew your old body’s intelligence

  and help you read again when blind now what you already memorized

  and forgot, peering like a boor illiterate in Shadows 30 years—

  Yes I have come but not for your feeble purpose, come of my own dreamed will

  To show you what you forgot dreamt, Immortal Text neglected

  under your groaning seat as you sat self-inspired by your mortal fire.

  O Self Absorbed vulgar hungry Demon, leave your body & mine

  Take eyes off your own veined hands and worm thoughts, lower

  Your watery selfish infatuate eyes from my breast to my feet

  & read me aloud in Bardic Voice, that Voice of Rock you boast so well so many decades,

  Yea Face inland to the fields and railroads skyscrapers & Viaducts.

  Youths maddened by Afric jukeboxes & maidens simpering at Picture shows

  Read thru smoky air to a hopeless hundred million fools!

  Read what young mind’s Pearl Majesty made round oracular Beauteous

  More unworldly than your own self-haunted snaily skull & stony household shell.”

  Pointing downward, his arm stiff in disdain dismissing lesser Beauty,