William, see Burroughs, William S.
Williams, Godfather, 601
Williams, Hank, 527
Williams, William Carlos, 213, 237, 305, 640
Winslow, Don, 553
Wisdom, Ignaz (pseud.), 182
Woodford, Jack, 81
Woodpecker, Woody, 198
W. S. B., see Burroughs, William S.
X, Malcolm, 590, 605
Xerxes, 697
Xochopili, 746, see n.
Yamantaka, 335
Yeats, William Butler, 351
Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 451, see n.
Zarathustra, 475
Zeus, 389, 475, 602, 611
Zhdanov, Andrei Aleksandrovich, 224, see n.
Zwingli, 605
WHITE SHROUD POEMS 1980–1985
“Old lovers yet may have
All that Time denied—
Grave is heaped on grave,
That they be satisfied—”
Thanks to hospitable editors, variants of these writings were printed first in: Action, American Poetry Review, Apartment, Art contre/against Apartheid, The Atlantic, Big Scream, Bombay Gin, Christopher Street, Folger Library Broadside, Full Circle, Here Now, Hidrogenski Dzuboke, L. A. Weekly, Long Shot, Mag City, Nagyvilag, NAMBLA Journal, Naropa Institute Bulletin, National Lampoon, New Age, New Blood, Northern Literary Quarterly, Open, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Peace or Perish, Poesi 1 (Oslo), Poetry, Poetry East, Portable Lower East Side, riverrun, Spao Spassiba, Sulfur, The New York Times Magazine, Tribu, United Press International, Vajradhatu Sun, Vanity Fair, White Shroud (Kunsthalle, Basle).
To
Edith Ginsberg
Acknowledgments
Steven Taylor: Lead sheets; Walter Taylor: Lyric calligraphy.
Harry Smith: Archetype design for cover, executed by Julie Metz.
Bill Morgan, Bob Rosenthal, Juanita Lieberman, Gary Allen and Vicki Stanbury helped assemble typescript texts.
Aaron Asher & Terry Karten, Editors; Marge Horvitz, Copy Editor; Bill Monroe, Surveyor of Detail.
Porch Scribbles
Balmy, hotter outside than in the living room—
Wind rustles the rattlesnake reeds.
Didja see the Perseus star shower last night?
* * *
Bright on Flatirons, sunshine gleams
on clouds, on brown shake shingles,
tree limbs rock,
So bright on the car roof, I gotta sleep—
* * *
I want that brick house on Mapleton,
it’s for sale “Moore Real Estate”—
But price too high,
I’m too drowsy to go to the telephone.
* * *
Clouds float up from the end of the world—
Have we enough room for population explosion?
Call up Gary, let’s find out what he thinks.
July 11, 1980
That tree stands higher than a house
like a dog with hair drooping over its mouth—
green long beanpods hang from its branches
* * *
It’s a whale that big gray-bottom cloud floating
over the Flatirons, it’s a mushroom, a shipcastle, a
mountain with sunshine and Coasts—
It’s a pile of mist.
* * *
Look up, clouds in the sky,
suddenly their shadows fall where Mrs. Hurst
on Mapleton Street sprays her front lawn.
* * *
Midsummer, green leaves thick on maples
The front yard, white flowers—
Cause it’s just so beautiful now!
How sad, to be alive watching the season at its height—
* * *
Spray the lawn, it’s too hot—
Street children call, car radios play muted disco
Gray clouds umbrella brilliant sun
I used to be young once, bewildered
like that barechested little
girl across the street.
* * *
Where I sit, leg over my knee
listening to the whippoorwill call of a distant ambulance,
the thin tree’s little leaves startle and jump,
raindrops fall thicker & the smell of ozone
wafts across the porch.
* * *
Everyone loves the rain, except those caught in their
business suits,
birds whistle, tree leaves shake excited, electric smells
rise across the City to the watchers on the balcony—
August 2, 1980
Did the Ecologist chop his girl with an ax in Philadelphia
& hide her corpse a year in the trunk?
What does that red-haired boy half-naked on the sidewalk
with his Frisbee think of that?
Boulder, August 3, 1980
Industrial Waves
Tune: Capitol Air
The New Right’s a creepy pre-Fascist fad
Salute the flag & call on Mom & Dad
Shit on the niggers it’s their fault they were slaves
In a free market you can get rich filling graves.
Freedom for the rich to suck off the Work of the Poor
Freedom for Monopoly to corner the market in horse manure
Freedom for the secret police and guys with guns
Freedom for bully buys! Death to the Radical Nuns!
Freedom to buy Judges! Freedom for organized crime!
Freedom for the Military! “I got mine.”
Hundred millions free to starve, isn’t that great?
Freedom for the Neutron bomb to radiate!
Freedom for War! Fight for Peace! Whoopee!
“Government off our backs”—except the Military!
Freedom for Narcs to put junkies in jail!
Freedom to punish sick addicts, all hail!
Freedom to bust you for grass if you please
Freedom to beat you up when you’re down on your knees
Freedom for Capital Punishment, without fail!
Freedom to wiretap your phone & open up your mail.
Freedom for Cosa Nostra’s pornography
Freedom to ban your verse in the high school library
Freedom to stop deaf widows’ food stamps
Freedom to draft-register everyone wearing pants.
Free computerized National Police!
Everybody got identity cards? At Ease!
Freedom for Big Business to eat up the sea
Freedom for Exxon to examine your pee!
Freedom of the air for William Buckley
Freedom for Mobil to buy up TV
Freedom to influence Network News
Freedom for money to make you wear shoes.
Freedom to fink out Nicaraguan liberty
Freedom to shove them into Soviet economy!
Freedom for Costa Rica to eat our military scenes
Freedom in Honduras for Contras & Marines!
Freedom for Indonesia to murder half million
Freedom for South Africa to stabilize the Bullion
Freedom for South Africa to slave her Blacks
Freedom for Korea’s corrupt party hacks.
Freedom for America to kick plenty Ass
Allende Lumumba yass yass yass!
Freedom for Martin Luther King it’s a gas
Freedom to forget our bloody Indochinese past!
Freedom to be Macho to be Number One
Freedom to boast the heaviest nuclear gun!
Freedom to kill for KKK
If you got a White Jury you might get away.
Freedom to work if you don’t Unionize
Freedom to listen to Presidential lies
Freedom to have your name in Secret Service file
Freedom to run with the Mob for a while.
Freedom from government regulation!
Freedom to not be allowed an abortion!
Freedom for old folks to enjoy inflatio
n
Freedom to destabilize the Chilean Nation!
Freedom to abandon Latin Human Rights
To deport John Lennon for his Political delights
Freedom to ban Genius entering the Land
& slap Nobel Prize novelists on the hand.
Freedom for overt Covert War sleaze
Freedom for Death Squads to chop off your knees
Freedom to put pederasts in Prison
Freedom to stop Fairies from eating Gyzym.
Freedom to assemble & get gassed or shot
Freedom to not be allowed to smoke pot
Freedom to drink till you got the DT’s
Freedom to never take LSD.
Freedom to smoke & have your Utah Cancer
Freedom to shake down a bottomless Dancer
Freedom to be forbidden Peyote Vision
Freedom to censor Howl on Television.
Freedom to farm if you’re a big bank
Freedom to go bankrupt or land in the tank
If you’re a small farmer who grows a little grass
Freedom to be arrested & kicked in the ass.
Freedom to cut down world’s oldest trees
Freedom to make Indians get down on their knees
And pray to your God and obey your FBI
And freedom to protest if you’re not too scared to die.
Freedom to persecute the Underground Press
& Murder Malcolm X if that’s what you think’s best
Freedom to Assassinate, & never go to jail
If the CIA Protects you, and they hardly ever fail.
Freedom to squirt Mace in a little boy’s face
If you’re on the TAC Squad & you don’t like his race
Freedom to shoot him if he makes you nervous
And he’s 12 years old and you’ve just joined the service.
Freedom to bribe Japan if you’re Lockheed
You won’t go to jail unless you’re smoking weed
Freedom to buy Iran if you want
At least we used to, right now we can’t.
Freedom to foment a Strike in Chile
And lie to Congress if you’re Pres. of ITT
Freedom to kill an elected President
If you’re a CIA stringer, that’s how it went.
Freedom to commit a little perjury—
If your name is Richard Helms, you pay a little fee
Then get yourself appointed Ambassador to Iran
They keep calling you Ambassador as long as they can.
Freedom to sell dope if you’re CIA
Or a Narc on the Street you can do it anyway
Or the sister of the Shah or informer for the law—
If your name is Abbie Hoffman you might take a fall.
Freedom to announce what you want to the Press
They print what they hear, it’s anybody’s guess
The public is free not to hear what you meant
But there’s freedom for full-page advertisement
If you’re Mobil, if you’re Dow, or a millionaire Jerk
Buy a column on the Op Ed page for your work
If you’re rich as Rockefeller you can die without your pants
Sniffing poppers and the papers won’t give yr corpse another glance.
If you’re AT&T you have plenty Liberty
To wave your flag all over the land of the free
You can take the back page of The News in Review
To say what’s good for America’s nothing else but you.
If you got a million from a Texas millionaire
You can buy television time, get yrself on the air
Freedom to shut up if you’re Powerful Poor
Freedom to wait outside the Police Station door.
You’re free to denounce any Pinko that you please!
You can ask for Moral Money, give your God’s heart ease!
Free to attack the producers in a rage
Free to land in Jail, get beat up on the back page.
Freedom to be one of the few that count
Freedom to be “Serious,” that freedom’ll amount
To the fact that you’re free to agree to more Cold War—
Flakes & Losers are free to go ’way sore.
March 1981
Those Two
That tree said
I don’t like that white car under me,
it smells gasoline
That other tree next to it said
O you’re always complaining
you’re a neurotic
you can see by the way you’re bent over.
July 6, 1981, 8 P.M.
Homage Vajracarya
Now that Samurai bow & arrow, Sumi brush, teacup
& Emperor’s fan are balanced in the hand
—What about a glass of water?
Holding my cock to pee, the Atlantic gushes out.
Sitting to eat, the Sun & the Moon fill my plate.
July 8, 1981
Why I Meditate
I sit because the Dadaists screamed on Mirror Street
I sit because the Surrealists ate angry pillows
I sit because the Imagists breathed calmly in Rutherford and Manhattan
I sit because 2400 years
I sit in America because Buddha saw a Corpse in Lumbini
I sit because the Yippies whooped up Chicago’s teargas skies once
I sit because No because
I sit because I was unable to trace the Unborn back to the womb
I sit because it’s easy
I sit because I get angry if I don’t
I sit because they told me to
I sit because I read about it in the Funny Papers
I sit because I had a vision also dropped LSD
I sit because I don’t know what else to do like Peter Orlovsky
I sit because after Lunacharsky got fired & Stalin gave Zhdanov a special tennis court I became a rootless cosmopolitan
I sit inside the shell of the old Me
I sit for world revolution
July 19, 1981
Love Comes
I lay down to rest
weary at best
of party life
& dancing nights
Alone, Prepared
all I dared
bed & oil
bath, small toil
to clean my feet
place my slippers neat.
Alone, despair—
lighthearted, bare-
bottom trudged about,
listening the shout
of students down below
rock rolling fast and slow
shaking ash for show,
or love, or joy
hairless girl and boy
goldenhaired goy
The door creaked loud
far from the crowd
Upstairs he trod
Eros or some god
come to visit,
Washed in the bath
calm as death
patient took a shit
approached me clean
naked serene
I sat on his thighs
looked in his eyes
I touched his hair
Bare body there
head to foot
big man root
I kissed his chest
Came down from above
I took in his rod
he pushed and shoved
That felt best
My behind in his groin
his big boyish loin
stuck all the way in
That’s how we began
Both knees on the bed
his head to my head
he shoved in again
I loved him then
I pushed back deep
Soon he wanted to sleep
He wanted to rest
my back to his chest
My rear went down
I rolled it around
He pushed to the bottom
Now I
’ve got ’em
He took control
made the bed roll
I relaxed my inside
loosed the ring in my hide
Surrendered in time
whole body and mind
and heart at the sheet
He continued to beat
his meat in my meat,
held me around
my chest love-bound
sighed without sound
My breast relaxed
my belly a sack
my sphincter loosed
to his hard deep thrust
I clenched my gut tight
in full moon light
thru curtained window
for an hour or so
thin clouds in the sky
I watched pass by
sigh after sigh
He fucked me in the East
he fucked me in the West
he fucked me South
my cock in his mouth
he fucked me North
No sperm shot forth
He continued to love
I spread my knees
pushed apart by his
so that he could move
in and out at ease,
Knelt on the bed
pillow against my head
I wanted release
Tho’ it hurt not much
a punishment such
as I asked to feel
back arched for the real
solid prick of control
a youth 19 years old
gave with deep grace,
body fair, curly gold
hair, angelic face
I’d waited a week
the promise he’d keep
if I trusted the truth
of his love in his youth
and I do love him—
tall body, pale skin
Hot heart within
open blue eyes—
a hard cock never lies.
July 4-October 11, 1981
Old Love Story
Some think the love of boys is wicked in the world, forlorn,
Character corrupting, worthy mankind’s scorn
Or eyes that weep and breasts that ache for lovely youth
Have no mouth to speak for mankind’s general truth
Nor hands to work manhood’s fullest delight