or pinch your little baby boy’s fat neck skin in the last teeth of his snowsuit zipper
or when you cross Route 85 the double yellow line’s painted over a dead possum
or tip your stale party Budweiser on the windowsill to your lips, taste Marlboro butts floating top of the can—
or fighting on the second flight of the tenement push your younger sister down the marble stairs she bites her tongue in half, they have to sew it back in the hospital—
or at icebox grabbing the half-eaten Nestlé’s Crunch a sliver of foil sparks on your back molar’s silver filling
or playing dare in High School you fall legs split on opposite sides of a high iron spiked fence
or kicked in the Karate Dojo hear the sound like a cracked twig then feel a slow dull throb in your left forearm,
or tripping fall on the sidewalk & rip last week’s scab off your left knee
You might grimace, a sharp breath from the solar plexus, chill spreading from shoulderblades and down the arms,
or you may wince, tingling twixt sphincter and scrotum a subtle electric discharge.
December 8, 1986
Imitation of K.S.
The young kid, horror buff, monster Commissar, ghoul connoisseur, attic bedroom postered with violet skulls, cigarette butts on the floor, thinks he’d strangle girls after orgasm—pumping iron 13 years old, 175-pound muscleman, his father shot at him, missed, hit the door, he saw his mother’s tiny apron, father clutched his throat, six foot four drunk, today’s in Alcohol Anonymous. Even eyes, symmetric face, aged twenty, acid-free-plastic packages of Ghoul Ghosts, Monsters Nowhere, Evil Demons of the Dead, Frenzy Reanimator, Psycho Nightmare on Elm Street stacked by his mattress; he followed me around, carried my harmonium box, protected me from the drunk Tibetan, came to my bed; head on his shoulder, I felt his naked heart, “my Cock’s half dead,” he thinks he’ll cut it off, can’t stand to be touched, never touches himself, iron legs, “skinny dynamite,” thick biceps, a six-day black fuzz on his even jaw, shining eyes, “I love you too.”
March 22, 1987
I Went to the Movie of Life
In the mud, in the night, in Mississippi Delta roads
outside Clarksdale I slogged along Lights flashed
under trees, my black companion motioned “Here they are,
your company.”—Like giant rhinoceri with painted faces
splashed all over side and snout, headlights glaring in rain,
one after another buses rolled past us toward Book Hotel
Boarding House, up the hill, town ahead.
Accompanying me, two girls
pitched in the dark slush garbaged road, slipping in deep ruts
wheels’d left behind sucking at their high heels, staining granny
dresses sequined magic marked with astral signs, Head groupies
who knew the way to this Grateful Dead half-century heroes’
caravan pit stop for the night. I climbed mid-road, a toad
hopped before my foot, I shrank aside, unthinking’d kicked it off
with leather shoe, animal feet scurried back at my sight—
a little monster on his back bled red, nearby this prey a lizard
with large eyes retreated, and a rat curled tail and slithered
in mud wet to the dirt gutter, repelled. A long climb ahead, the girls’d
make it or not, I moved on, eager to rejoin old company.
Merry Pranksters with aged pride in peacock-feathered beds,
shining mylar mirror-paper walls, acid mothers with strobe-lit radios,
long-haired men, gaunt 60s’ Diggers emerged from the night
to rest, bathe, cook spaghetti, nurse their kids,
smoke pipes and squat with Indian sages round charcoal
braziers in their cars; profound American dreamers,
I was in their company again after long years, byways
alone looking for lovers in bar street country towns
and sunlit cities, rain & shine, snow & spring-bud backyard
brick walls, ominous adventures behind the Iron Curtain.
Were we all grown old? I looked for my late boyfriends,
dancing to Electric Blues with their guns and smoke round jukebox walls
the smell of hash and country ham, old newspaper media stars
wandering room after room: Pentagon refugee Ellsberg, old dove
Dellinger bathing in an iron tub with a patch in his stomach wall
Abbie Hoffman explaining the natural strategy of city political saint
works, Quicksilver Messenger musicians, Berkeley orators
with half-grown children in their sox & dirty faces, alcohol
uncles who played chess & strummed banjos frayed by broken fingernails.
Where’s Ken Kesey, away tonite in another megalopolis hosting
hypnosis parties for Hell’s Angels, maybe nail them down on stage
or radio, Neal must be tending his daughters in Los Gatos,
pacifying his wife, coming down amphetamines in his bedroom,
or downers to sleep this night away & wake for work
in the great Bay Carnival tented among smokestacks, railroad
tracks and freeways under box-house urban hills.
Young movie stars with grizzled beards passed thru bus corridors
looking for Dylan in the movie office, re-swaggering old roles,
recorded words now sung in Leningrad and Shanghai, their wives
in tortoise shell glasses & paisley shawls & towels tending
cauldrons bubbling with spaghetti sauce & racks of venison,
squirrel or lamb; ovens open with hot rhubarb pies—
Who should I love? Here one with leather hat, blond hair
strong body middle age, face frowned in awful thought,
beer in hand by the bathroom wall? That Digger boy I knew
with giant phallos, bald head studying medicine walked by,
preoccupied with anatomy homework, rolling a joint, his
thick fingers at his chest, eyes downcast on paper & tobacco.
One by one I checked out love companions, none whose beauty
stayed my heart, this place was tired of my adoration,
they knew my eyes too well. No one I could find to give me
bed tonite and wake me grinning naked, with eggs scrambled
for breakfast ready, oatmeal, grits, or hot spicy sausages
at noon assembly when I opened my eyelids out of dream. I
wandered, walking room to room thru psychedelic buses
wanting to meet someone new, younger than this crowd of wily
wrinkled wanderers with their booze and families, Electronic
Arts & Crafts, woe lined brows of chemical genius music
producers, adventurous politicians, singing ladies & earthy paramours
playing rare parts in the final movie of a generation.
The cameras
rolled and followed me, was I the central figure in this film?
I’d known most faces and guided the inevitable cameras room to room,
pausing at candle lit bus windows to view this ghostly caravan of gypsy
intellects passing thru USA, aged rock stars whispering by coal stoves,
public headline artists known from Rolling Stone & N.Y. Times,
actors & actresses from Living Theater, gaunt-faced and eloquent
with lifted hands & bony fingers greeting me on my way
to the bus driver’s wheel, tattered dirty gloves on Neal’s seat
waiting his return from working the National Railroad, young kids
I’d taught saluting me wearily from worn couches as I passed
bus to bus, cameras moving behind me. What was my role?
I hardly knew these faded heroes, friendly strangers
so long on the road, I’d been out teaching in Boulder, Manhattan,
Budapest, London, Brooklyn so long, why follow me thru
> these amazing Further bus party reunion corridors tonite?
or is this movie, or real, if I turn to face the camera I’d break
the scene, dissolve the plot illusion, or is’t illusion
art, or just my life? Were cameras ever there, the picture
flowed so evenly before my eyes, how could a crew follow
me invisible still and smoothly noiseless bus to bus
from room to room along the caravan’s painted labyrinth?
This wasn’t cinema, and I no hero spokesman documenting friendship
scenes, only myself alone lost in bus cabins with familiar
strangers still looking for some sexual angel for mortal delights
no different from haunting St. Mark’s Boys Bar again solitary
in tie jacket and grey beard, wallet in my pocket full of
cash and cards, useless.
A glimmer of lights
in the curtained doorway before me! my heart leapt
forward to the Orgy Room, all youths! Lithe and
hairless, smooth skinned, white buttocks ankles, young men’s
nippled chests lit behind the curtain, thighs entwined
in the male area, place I was looking for behind
my closed eyelids all this night—I pushed my hand
into the room, moving aside the curtain that shimmered
within bright with naked knees and shoulders pale
in candlelight—entered the pleasure chamber’s empty door
glimmering silver shadows reflected on the silver curtained veil,
eyelids still dazzling as their adolescent limbs
intangible dissolved where I put my hand into a vacant room,
lay down on its dark floor to watch the lights of phantom arms
pulsing across closed eyelids conscious as I woke in bed
returned at dawn New York wood-slatted venetian blinds over
the windows on E. 12th St. in my white painted room
April 30, 1987, 4:30–6:25 A.M.
When the Light Appears
Lento
You’ll bare your bones you’ll grow you’ll pray you’ll only know
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You’ll sing & you’ll love you’ll praise blue heavens above
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You’ll whimper & you’ll cry you’ll get yourself sick and sigh
You’ll sleep & you’ll dream you’ll only know what you mean
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You’ll come & you’ll go, you’ll wander to and fro
You’ll go home in despair you’ll wonder why’d you care
You’ll stammer & you’ll lie you’ll ask everybody why
You’ll cough and you’ll pout you’ll kick your toe with gout
You’ll jump you’ll shout you’ll knock your friends about
You’ll bawl and you’ll deny & announce your eyes are dry
You’ll roll and you’ll rock you’ll show your big hard cock
You’ll love & you’ll grieve & one day you’ll come believe
As you whistle & you smile the lord made you worthwhile
You’ll preach and you’ll glide on the pulpit in your pride
Sneak & slide across the stage like a river in high tide
You’ll come fast or come on slow just the same you’ll never know
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
May 3, 1987, 2:30 A.M.
On Cremation of Chögyam Trungpa, Vidyadhara
I noticed the grass, I noticed the hills, I noticed the highways,
I noticed the dirt road, I noticed car rows in the parking lot
I noticed ticket takers, I noticed the cash and checks & credit cards,
I noticed buses, noticed mourners, I noticed their children in red dresses,
I noticed the entrance sign, noticed retreat houses, noticed blue & yellow Flags—
noticed the devotees, their trucks & buses, guards in Khaki uniforms
I noticed crowds, noticed misty skies, noticed the all-pervading smiles & empty eyes—
I noticed pillows, colored red & yellow, square pillows and round—
I noticed the Tori Gate, passers-through bowing, a parade of men & women in formal dress—
noticed the procession, noticed the bagpipe, drum, horns, noticed high silk head crowns & saffron robes, noticed the three piece suits,
I noticed the palanquin, an umbrella, the stupa painted with jewels the colors of the four directions—
amber for generosity, green for karmic works, noticed the white for Buddha, red for the heart—
thirteen worlds on the stupa hat, noticed the bell handle and umbrella, the empty head of the white clay bell—
noticed the corpse to be set in the head of the bell—
noticed the monks chanting, horn plaint in our ears, smoke rising from atop the firebrick empty bell—
noticed the crowds quiet, noticed the Chilean poet, noticed a Rainbow,
I noticed the Guru was dead, I noticed his teacher bare breasted watching the corpse burn in the stupa,
noticed mourning students sat crosslegged before their books, chanting devotional mantras,
gesturing mysterious fingers, bells & brass thunderbolts in their hands
I noticed flame rising above flags & wires & umbrellas & painted orange poles
I noticed the sky, noticed the sun, a rainbow round the sun, light misty clouds drifting over the Sun—
I noticed my own heart beating, breath passing thru my nostrils
my feet walking, eyes seeing, noticing smoke above the corpse-fir’d monument
I noticed the path downhill, noticed the crowd moving toward buses
I noticed food, lettuce salad, I noticed the Teacher was absent,
I noticed my friends, noticed our car the blue Volvo, a young boy held my hand
our key in the motel door, noticed a dark room, noticed a dream
and forgot, noticed oranges lemons & caviar at breakfast,
I noticed the highway, sleepiness, homework thoughts, the boy’s nippled chest in the breeze
as the car rolled down hillsides past green woods to the water,
I noticed the houses, balconies overlooking a misted horizon, shore & old worn rocks in the sand
I noticed the sea, I noticed the music, I wanted to dance.
May 28, 1987, 2:30–3:15 A.M.
Nanao
Brain washed by numerous mountain streams
Legs clean after walking four continents
Eyes cloudless as Kagoshima sky
Fresh raw surprisingly cooked heart
Tongue live as a Spring salmon
Nanao’s hands are steady, pen & ax sharp as stars.
With Peter Orlovsky
June 1987
Personals Ad
“I will send a picture too if you will send me one of you”
—R. CREELEY
Poet professor in autumn years
seeks helpmate companion protector friend
young lover w/empty compassionate soul
exuberant spirit, straightforward handsome
athletic physique & boundless mind, courageous
warrior who may also like women & girls, no problem,
to share bed meditation apartment Lower East Side,
help inspire mankind conquer world anger & guilt,
empowered by Whitman Blake Rimbaud Ma Rainey & Vivaldi,
familiar respecting Art’s primordial majesty, priapic carefree
playful harmless slave or master, mortally tender passing swift time,
photographer, musician, painter, poet, yuppie or scholar—
Find me here in New York alone with the Alone
going to lady psychiatrist who says Make time in your life
for someone you can call darling, honey, who holds you dear
can get excited & lay his hea
d on your heart in peace.
October 8, 1987
Proclamation
For Carlos Edmondo de Ory
I am the King of the Universe
I am the Messiah with a new dispensation
Excuse me I stepped on a nail.
A mistake
Perhaps I am not the Capitalist of Heaven.
Perhaps I’m a gate keeper snoring
beside the Pearl Columns—
No this isn’t true, I really am God himself.
Not at all human. Don’t associate me
w/that Crowd.
In any case you can believe every word
I say.
October 31, 1987
Gas Station, N.Y.
To Jacob Rabinowitz
Dear Jacob I received your translation, what kind
favor you paid to have it printed up,
lighthearted the most readable I know—
Glad to be your friend, 2000 years after Catullus,
nothing’s changed poets or poetics, lovers or love
familiar conversation between the three of us,
familiar tears—Remember you leaped in bed naked
and wouldn’t sleep on my floor, decade ago? I was
half century old, you hardly out of puberty gave me
your ass bright eyes and virgin body a whole month
What a little liar you were, how’d I know you were cherry?
Put me down now for not hearing your teenage heartbeat,
think back were you serious offering to kidnap me
to Philadelphia, Cleveland, Baltimore, Miami, God
knows, rescued from boring fame & Academic fortune,
Rimbaud Verlaine lovers starved together in boondock houseflat
stockyard furnished rooms eating pea soup reading E. A. Poe?
First night in each other’s arms you chilled my spine whispering
lies till dawn—pubescent lovelife with a tiny monkey you claim’d
you’d tortured to death—how trust you take me to the moon?
Tho you gave your butt to others in St. Mark’s Baths’ steam room
that year I followed you to Chelsea Hotel kissing your boots
& still lust for your body tho now you’ve grown a red beard.
At thirty still cute, lost interest in my potbelly years ago,