At Joel the doctor’s wedding party the family’d gathered
whoever was left alive. Yes of course they found her corpse,
they knew she was crazy, but didn’t announce a murder,
just whispered among themselves she was dead in the bathroom
causes unknown, tho headless, hard for her to suicide herself,
a further investigation would clarify this big mistake.
In fact my cousin my publisher with troubled frown
put the matter to rest, saying he’d call on the police
after the wedding guests go home. I said—
“I might be able to clear up the mystery. You saw
her head?” He looked at me surprised, how did I know
she was dead with her head cut off? I realized
I’d given myself away, but risked it, why lie more,
build up Karma nightmare another year & then get caught?
Police find my fingerprints on Naomi’s dead neck? or my blade
be found under my bed, in the dust behind the refrigerator
on East 12th Street Lower East Side, I be arrested
in newspaper scandal? “You saw the head?” I asked
again, giving my knowledge away. “But are you sure?”
he asked. Dressed in his Harvard suit and silken tie
striped red and gold, “We have our legal staff, perhaps you should
consult with them, no fee, fortunate contract,
our clients we value, you for your Collected Works we do
protect without question.” Helpful, alas, too late for me
to undo the murder of my mother, I must confess, I had
confessed, too late to undo confession and truth, I woke.
December 21, 1984, 5:12 A.M.
World Karma
China be China, B.C. Clay armies underground the First Han Emperor’s improvement
on burying his armies alive
Later Ming tombs buried excavator architects
& Mao officially buried 20,000,000 in Shit Freeze & Exile, much Suicide
especially bilingual sophisticates in the molecular structure of surfaces, machine-tool engineers
and Poetic intelligentsia questioned his Imperial vision of Pure Land
future communist afterworld
Russia had Czars & Stalin, all Yiddish Poets shot August 12, 1952 in Lubyanka basement, everybody got drunk afterward,
everyone still whispers on streetcorners
America forever democratic, lawless sheriffs shot Indians, bad men, good men, chinks kikes niggers and each other
Spain always killed bulls & loved blood, matadors & crucifixion, reds & fascists assassinated anarchists—
The Jews always complained, kvetching about false gods, and erected the biggest false God, Jehovah, in middle of western civilization—
For creating the Judge the Jews are judged that’s their world Karma continuing, the Atom bomb
British always had sense of superiority, class, stiff upperlip, the Queen and fuck you ducky up your bloody ’ole
The French, advanced sense of superiority, stiff back, Algérie is always indissolubly a part of La France,
We will not regret the necessity to kill you or anyone who disagrees
They appreciate everything wine women song modern art
O la la they’re so smart, introduced opium cultivation
Indochina will always be an indissoluble addiction to France, the Bourse
Germans had Kaisers Hitlers, orderly meticulous and rational a bunch of beasts
now want Nuclear arms They’re also intelligent Pride themselves on Science
romantic Poetry, their Black Forest mysterious full of Solitude acid rain
hi tech civilization First the ovens of Auschwitz now goodbye ancient trees
we have to keep up with the vulgar Americans
Italy the trains never ran on time, they got good shoes & Pope & Mafia
also good tomatoes and Angelico Beato, who’d want to complain in Naples or Uffizi?
In 200 years America’ll have a billion people like neon China
Computerized students’ll sleep six abed and hawk their mucus on the morning floor
before fighting to get into the shower—much less a piece of soap
and half stick of bacon with their petrochemical Wheaties & eggs— That’s because
we had to Get Back to America, let’s Stand Up Tall
so we can insult the rest of the world.
More!—The Moslems expansionist monotheists will go Jihad whenever able
Always their god best god only god only name Allah and
die like a dog if you don’t believe me! From Morocco to Java
heathen dogs and cats go barking and meow after terrific Nobodaddy
in Paradise the Western lands Heaven Pure Land Garden of Sky,
other side of Eternal Dreamtime I vote for Australian Aborigines!
Let them run the world after Hi Tech’s annihilated all other species & genetic strains
from whale to donkey sperm.
Kunming, December 24, 1984, Midnight-12:49
Prophecy
As I’m no longer young in life
and there seem to me not
so many pleasures to look forward to
How fortunate to be free
to write of cars and wars, truths of eras,
throw away old useless
ties and pants that don’t fit.
January 9, 1985
Memory Cousins
After Long Absence, I returned from the land of the dead
to visit my stepmother in her suburban apartment.
I looked from a distance, was it a mental hospital
standing on a grass plain far from Manhattan’s skyscrapers
after crossing Washington Bridge, or Jersey’s tract houses
risen gigantic during my exile in China? I’d
been gone so long my relatives’d grown old at their doors—
a neighbor widow come out to empty the black plastic
garbagebag, I’d known her middle age, now with white hair
she gazed at me nodding absently, I’d not been gone long
while her husband’d died, children married with children now—
How dear to see me, where’d I been? I looked down the long hall,
door after door of Aunts and Uncles retired alive
white haired, television bound seeing the doctor, eating
delicatessen salad Sundays, reading best seller
books, dusting furniture, cleaning kitchen floors, happily
visiting Doctors for minor blood pressure, depression
or hernias. Years ahead, they should live so long, they’d die,
I’d never see them again, best settle down while childhood
memory cousins and brothers were old, but still alive,
enjoy each other’s tables and coffee, business gossip.
Where else go off to, unhappy Russia warring Israel?
Here in America, peace, a place to live together.
They were bombing Nicaragua, factories exploding
in India, Cities crowded with Animal muggers
newspapers said, TV had pictures of them every nite—
Peter in fact just came back from Nuclear Buddhaland,
His belly exposed to Radiation a soft yellow
spot near his navel, he smiled rueful pulling his shirt
above his belt to show his mortal sore, what could cure him?
If go away now I’ll be gone forever, Peter,
Stepmother Edith, Aunt Honey & Leo, Aunt Clara
and Uncle Abe, my brother Gene & Connie & the kids,
I may never see them again. Here are their living eyes,
here’s the end of the Immortal Dream.
March 2, 1985, 7:56 A.M.
Moral Majority
Something evil about you Mr. Viguerie Mr. Falwell Robertson Swaggert.
Not evil but ign
orance of the delights of the Boy
The 1920s have passed, corsets chastity belts whips
the stake, Lesbian cities aflame in your fiery eyes
—Some old Demon the Satan in possession of your body
a thousand years old, two thousand that burned the parchments of Black Sappho
I’ve seen God as much as any, he doesn’t look like you alone
He looks like me too, all the homosexuals on earth,
in Congo, Cities of North America, Rio Barrios—
He looks like a lavender fairy, Paris salons 1890 the birds & bees,
Like an ambidextrous worm, male dogs coupling in the Alabama parking-lot.
Nothing wrong with Family, Mother Father & Buba.
Nothing wrong with the Babe.
Nothing wrong with Mr. Falwell except a little mean streak
that isn’t god, just a jerk, talks too big for his britches,
inexperienced Bible Salesman
interprets words & letters, not Holy Spirit
ambitious politically, at the expense of the poor,
the thwarted, & happy ruddy kids—
Find out Buddha, enter the great silence
& pass thru the needle’s eye,
then come back happy, laughing, generous
big mouth full of good cheer, not money,
honey.
March 19, 1985
The Guest
I’ve a pain in my back
Fifth lumbar & sacrum
Kidneystones alas alack
can’t drink milk calcium
High blood pressure about
salt I can’t eat
at my age no red meat
sometimes I get gout
My age fifty eight
My friend Peter’s away
I should lose ten pounds weight
Prostrate every day
to my guru who’s Crazy
Prepare for grim death
Exercise for good health
All my life I’ve been lazy
Little gold, lots of fame
Small flat in Manhattan
tho I bank on my name
my wallet won’t fatten
But the thing I want most
to embody my joy
is the belly of a boy
and there I get lost
I met David he undressed
Came naked on my bed
He climbed on my chest
“I love you Allen” he said
He touched and caressed
my stomach, heart and thigh
appreciated my sigh
I slept chaste & blessed.
He visited New York
to sleep a week in my room
watch me at work,
enlighten my gloom—
Body young & strong
shapely from Basketball
Skin muscular stomach small
“I can’t be your lover long.”
Mind tender, he loves girls
Sees me as poetry master
His pubic hair’s soft curls
press my breast to rapture
His smooth cock grows thick
my heart beats at his loin
He presses with his groin
His hands caress my neck
I touch around his buttocks
smooth, firm and warm.
“I’ve never been fucked”
he encourages, as my arm
reaches up his spine
passes down his back
presses into his open crack
He turns on his belly to try.
I enter slow, he’s soft
no pain, he raises his behind
no hard on, hips aloft
I push, he doesn’t mind.
My trouble is, I’m old
and tho this young kind boy
gives me a chance for joy
I’m not hard enough to be bold.
Yet I’m in, “How does it feel now?”
“It’s O.K., it’s kind of different.”
Ruddy face, eyes open on the pillow,
he lies before me prone, no effort—
I’m afraid to move, what’ll he say?
But he humps his rear up more
to take what’s in store,
I stick it in all the way.
Something is missing my hard on
But it’s what I have, it works
I pump him slowly, then start on
moving faster while he jerks
his buttocks up to help me come,
I ask permission, he says “yes,”
I pull his hips up, hold his breast,
spurt my loves deep in his bum
Next night we hugged and slept
Chaste again and affectionate
I answered the phone all day but kept
winding him in my mental net—
He wasn’t excited by my body
I couldn’t expect his sexual love
After this week would I approve
his visiting, if I had to sleep lonely?
March 24, 1985
After Antipater
I’ve climbed the Great Wall’s stone steep out of breath
sat on gray columns broken at Acropolis’ marble sill
brushed past morbid scented insect eating plants in Petén Rainforest
Eaten roastbeef with my mother’s cousins atop a World Trade Tower overhanging Hudson River
Slept under the dome echoing lament for Mumtaz Mahal’s white skull
Stood in Red Square snow across from the Kremlin wall-tomb of th’- assassin of millions
Climbed Seville’s gypsy balconies, Sagrada Familia’s crannied spires, gazed through my father’s eyes from San Marco’s high porch
tarried on Brooklyn bridge facing Manhattan dusk’s sparkling Towers, walked Golden Gate’s Pacific promenade
But when you lay on my bed, white sheet covering your loins, your eyes on mine
I forgot these marvels, my heart breathed open, I saw life’s glory look back at me naked.
March 26, 1985
Greek Anthology III, Book IX, Epigram 58, Loeb, p. 31.
Jumping the Gun on the Sun
Sincerity
is the key
to living
in Eternity
If you love
Heav’n above
Hold your ground,
Look around
Hear the sound
of television,
No derision,
Smell your blood
taste your good
bagels & lox
Wash your sox
& touch wood,
It’s understood
This is it
wild wit
Make your love
on earth above,
home of the brave,
Save yr grave
for future days
Present here
nothing to fear
No need to sigh
no need to die
before your time
mentally whine
stupidly dine
on your own meat
That’s what’s neat
Mortally great
Immortally sweet
Incredibly deep
makes you weep
Just this once
Don’t be a dunce
Take your cap
off Hear my rap
Sincerity
is the key
to living in
Eternity
Makes you wise
in your own eyes
makes the body
not seem shoddy
Makes your soul
completely whole
empty, final
indefinable
Mobile, totally
undeniable
Affirmative action
for no faction
for all men
women too,
mother brother,
even for you
/> Dead soul’d, sick
but really quick
with breath & thick
with blood in yr prick
Walking alive
on Riverside Drive
up on Broadway
shining gay
in New York
waving you dork
waving your mind
or living behind
your meaty masque
magnificent task
all you could ask
as if pure space
gave you a place
in Eternity—
To see the City
Stand all day
Shine all night
Bright starlight
streaming the height
Watery lawn
misty at dawn
warmed by the sun
Bathed in the moon
green grasses of June
80 times only
Don’t be lonely
Roses are live
Cockroaches thrive
in plastic garbage
maggots salvage
your dead meat
Horses eat
golden Hay
in golden day
Young kids jump
in the City dump
Take the lump
in your throat
and sing out
yr holy note
of heart’s delight
in living light
Day & Night
Sincerity
is the key
to Bliss in this
Eternity
April 5, 1985
Cadillac Squawk
Sitting on the twelfth floor Gomden I heard a wild siren in the garment district
Heard dog scream at dog on park avenue
my head rumbled the Bronx 242’d street Lexington Avenue Express
lonesome sparrows chirped weathered coppergreen cornice 1860
Footstep crash, pocket change jangled the shrine room’s polished floor
traffic waves rushed the shore 1985
Adolf Hitler’s voice in the taxi horn
squeak soprano steely cheep Chevrolet brakeshafts
subway breath rising to Empire State Observation Roof
iron doors slam refrigerators shut
bones creak in my knees’ antechambers
Heard the long Cadillac horn squawk up sidestreet brick buildingsides
elevators ascended and descended a thousand skyscrapers
wheels within wheels rubber and steel revolve on asphalt corridors
Exhaust puffs out monoxide Broadway Manhattan
Heard the sky shut up
Heard conversation in the trees in leafy Bronx
Heard Africa sigh