& built it in 3-D renewed at millennium’s end—”
So I orated on but the attendants conferred,
minds elsewhere, only one scion of the house
moon-faced thirtysomething sat legs spread
on the fake stairway & applauded our appreciation
& delight—& so we left to go, our party
on its way to the postmodern Capital.
August 31, 1992
News Stays News
Diana & Roger Napoleon’s real estate empire
extended up to the Napoleon Castle Hotel’s penthouse
stainless steel & gold doorknobs bathtubs bars & windowsills
But Roger got Alzheimer’s & couldn’t keep his money books straight
Diana went to jail for back taxes & cheating at cards
Lost control of her castle, lawyers ate her Empire
She got sick & spent years maintaining her body,
skin growths, liver failure, kidney disturbances, upset stomach
But the castle of flesh ceased to function
She was left inside with her soul.
What is that? Where will it go? Who am I?
asked Napoleon in bed, eyes closing for the last time on St. Helena.
September 7, 1992, 3:00 P.M.
Autumn Leaves
At 66 just learning how to take care of my body
Wake cheerful 8 A.M. & write in a notebook
rising from bed side naked leaving a naked boy asleep by the wall
mix miso mushroom leeks & winter squash breakfast,
Check bloodsugar, clean teeth exactly, brush, toothpick, floss, mouthwash
oil my feet, put on white shirt white pants white sox
sit solitary by the sink
a moment before brushing my hair, happy not yet
to be a corpse.
September 13, 1992, 9:50 A.M.
In the Benjo
To G.S.
Reading No Nature in the toilet
Sitting down, absorbed
page after page, forgetting
time, forgetting my bottom
relax, detritus
flopping out into water
—better than pushing and squeezing,
nervous, self-conscious—
better forget and read a book,
let your behind take care of itself
better than hemorrhoids, a good volume
of poetry.
October 23, 1992, 11:00 A.M.
American Sentences
Tompkins Square Lower East Side N.Y.
Four skinheads stand in the streetlight rain chatting under an umbrella.
1987
* * *
Bearded robots drink from Uranium coffee cups on Saturn’s ring.
May 1990
* * *
On Hearing the Muezzin Cry Allah Akbar While Visiting the Pythian Oracle at Didyma Toward the End of the Second Millennium
At sunset Apollo’s columns echo with the bawl of the One God.
* * *
Crescent moon, girls chatter at twilight on the busride to Ankara.
* * *
The weary Ambassador waits relatives late at the supper table.
* * *
To be sucking your thumb in Rome by the Tiber among fallen leaves …
June 1990
* * *
Rainy night on Union Square, full moon. Want more poems? Wait till I’m dead.
August 8, 1990, 3:30 A.M.
* * *
Approaching Seoul by Bus in Heavy Rain
Get used to your body, forget you were born, suddenly you got to get out!
August 1990
* * *
Put on my tie in a taxi, short of breath, rushing to meditate.
November 1991
New York
* * *
Taxi ghosts at dusk pass Monoprix in Paris 20 years ago.
* * *
The young stud who dreamt I “dick’d his ass” asked me to take him to supper.
* * *
Two blocks from his hotel in a taxi the fat Lama punched out his mugger.
* * *
I can still see Neal’s 23-year-old corpse when I come in my hand.
January 1992
Amsterdam
* * *
Naropa Hot Tub
The ocean is full of naked young boys and Neptune-bearded old men.
July 1992
* * *
He stands at the church steps a long time looking down at new white sneakers—
Determined, goes in the door quickly to make his Sunday confession.
September 21, 1992
* * *
The midget albino entered the hairy limousine to pipi.
September 25, 1992
Modesto
* * *
That grey-haired man in business suit and black turtleneck thinks he’s still young.
December 19, 1992
Notes
These reference notes may be of use to younger readers & translators not familiar with ephemeral news situations or translated & esoteric texts.
Title page epigraph
Section 2, “Discussion on Making All Things Equal,” Chuang Tzu Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 42.
(p. 937) Improvisation in Beijing
Discourse at Chinese Writers Association conference with American Academy of Arts and Letters on “Sources of Inspiration,” Beijing, October 1984. Improvised from notes, transcribed from tape, lightly edited.
(p. 941) Prologue: Visiting Father & Friends
See “At the Grave of My Father,” Louis Ginsberg, Collected Poems, ed. Michael Fournier, Introduction Eugene Brooks, Afterword Allen Ginsberg (Orono, Maine: Northern Lights, 1992).
(p. 947) On the Conduct of the World
Roque Dalton: Salvadorian poet-hero-martyr (1935–1975) was liquidated by fellow FMLN revolutionists for tactical differences of opinion.
Velemir Khlebnikov (1885–1922), Snake Train (Ann Arbor: Ardis House, 1976). The classic Futurist poet perished after returning by train from Pyatigorsk to Moscow, “weakened by malnutrition and repeated bouts of typhus and malaria.” See The King of Time, Selected Writings of the Russian Futurian, trans. Paul Schmidt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).
(p. 951) Spot Anger
“Drive All Blames into One”—i.e., oneself. Jamgon Kongtrul, The Great Path of Awakening. A Commentary on the Mahayana Teaching of the Seven Points of Mind Training, trans. Ken McLeod (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1987). Original text by Atisa.
(p. 952) London Dream Doors
“God sent him to sea for pearls”: “For in my nature I quested for beauty, but God, God hath sent me to sea for pearls.” Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno, ed. W. H. Bond (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969).
(p. 954) Cosmopolitan Greetings
Response to Macedonian request for message to Struga Evenings of Poetry festival, on receiving 1986 Golden Laurel Wreath prize.
“Molecule/clinking against molecule.”: See “Winter Night,” Attila Józef’s Selected Poems and Texts, trans. John Bátki (Iowa City: International Writing Program, University of Iowa, 1976).
First Thought, Best Thought, Chögyam Trungpa (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1984).
“If the mind is shapely, the art will be shapely”: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, conversation 1958, Cherry Plains, N.Y.
(p. 957) Fifth Internationale
See the “Internationale,” former Soviet national anthem:
“Arise ye prisoners of starvation,
Arise ye wretched of the earth,
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world’s in birth,” etc.
Crazy Wisdom: i.e., wild wisdom “whispered lineage,” characteristic of Kagyu school, Tibetan Buddhism. See Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, Crazy Wisdom (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1992).
(p. 959) Europe, Who Knows?
Russian Chernobyl translates l
iterally as “wormwood.”
(p. 960) “Graphic Winces”
Collaboration with Brooklyn College M.F.A. Writing Workshop, Fall 1986, and Bob Rosenthal.
(p. 961) Imitation of K.S.
Jack Micheline, Skinny Dynamite (San Francisco: Second Coming Press, 1980). Story by the poet-painter.
(p. 967) On Cremation of Chögyam Trungpa
Cremation ceremony took place at Karme-Chöling Retreat Center, Barnet, Vermont.
(p. 969) Nanao
Written for back jacket copy, Break the Mirror: The Poems of
Nanao Sakaki (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987).
(p. 976) Salutations to Fernando Pessoa
See “Salutation to Walt Whitman,” The Poems of Fernando Pessoa, trans. Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown (New York: Ecco Press, 1987).
(p. 979) May Days 1988
“Arabs should throw words not stones,” Elie Wiesel, quoted in New York Post sometime 1988.
(p. 984) Return of Kral Majales
See “Kral Majales,” p. 353 and notes, Collected Poems 1947–1980 (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).
Sen. Jesse Helms & Heritage Foundation’s October 1988 law directed Federal Communications Commission to enforce 24-hour ban on “indecent” language over all airwaves, declared unconstitutional by subsequent court decisions. At poem’s writing, ban extended 6:00 A.M. to midnight. Court decisions 1993 froze ban as of 6:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M., leaving as “safe harbor” late evening to 6:00 A.M. Daytime broadcast for students (& adults) reading the author’s “questionable” poems in schools is now forbidden by law.
All gone all gone …: version of Prajnaparamita, Highest Perfect Wisdom, 17-syllable Sanskrit mantra: “Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.”
(p. 985) Elephant in the Meditation Hall
“As late as 1988, 333 House members and 61 Senators hosted significant donations from Savings & Loan lobbyists.” “S & L Scandal: The Gang’s all Here,” by Mary Fricher and Steve Pizzo, New York Times Op-Ed, July 27, 1990.
(p. 987) Poem in the Form of a Snake That Bites Its Tail
Ojus: hard coral limestone formations, North Miami area, Florida.
(p. 997) CIA Dope Calypso
See New York Times, March 12, 1989:
HULL BAILED OUT IN COSTA RI CA
San Jose, Costa Rica, March 10 (AP)—American-born John Hull, who has been linked to Nicaraguan rebel supply network, was released from prison Friday after he posted $37,000 bail, his attorney said. The 69-year-old Mr. Hull, who was jailed on Jan. 13 on charges of drug trafficking and violating Costa Rican security, was freed soon after friends collected bail money. Mr. Hull has lived in Costa Rica for 20 years. He is accused of allowing his ranch to be used by the Nicaraguan contras and of narcotics trafficking between 1982–1985.
Part I originally published in First Blues (New York: Full Court Press, 1979). Here two additional sections update events. For scholarly history of government intelligence involvement with drug trafficking to aid or fund “off-the-shelf” secret & illegal operations, including most references in “CIA Dope Calypso,” see Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin (Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), to which poet contributed research.
(p. 1002) Just Say Yes Calypso
After aiding CIA overthrow of Iran’s legal Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, General N. Schwarzkopf’s father, Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr., trained the Shah’s dreaded secret police, the Savak. See “Capitol Air,” Collected Poems 1947–1980; Lies of Our Times, vol. 2, no. 2 (February 19, 1991) (New York: Sheridan Square Press); and James Breslin, “A Son Follows Suit in the Matter of Oil,” New York Newsday, September 9, 1990.
(p. 1004) Hum Bom!
Part I and shorter version of Part II were published in Collected Poems 1947–1980. Additional verses added 1991.
(p. 1011) Big Eats
Mahamudra poetics exercise suggested by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso, Rinpoche, Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, Summer 1991. The first of five verses, 21 syllables each, begins in “neurotic confusion” (Samsara), the last concludes grounded in “ordinary mind” (Dharmakaya).
(p. 1019) After Lalon
Lalon Shah (1774–1890), Bengali Baul singer, devotional forerunner of Rabindranath Tagore. See Songs of Lalon Shah, trans. Abu Rushd (Dhaka: Bangla Academy Press, 1991).
(p. 1024) Get It?
Verse 1: Ref Rodney King videotape beating and police trials, Los Angeles 1992–93.
Verse 3: Ref. Police frame-up of political poet Amiri Baraka, 1966, later thrown out of court.
Verse 4: Ref. J. Edgar Hoover’s amative relationship with assistant Clyde Tolson and his withholding of Kennedy assassination information from Warren Commission. See Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets (New York: Penguin, 1991); and Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: Putnam, 1993).
Verse 5: Ref Oswald’s role as government intelligence informant within Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Verse 6: Ref. Jack Ruby, courier to Cuba for Mafioso boss Santos Trafficante, Jr., former drug lord of Havana.
Verse 7: See “N.S.A. Dope Calypso” pp. 58–59, stanzas 3–6, and note.
Verse 8: Ref. Oliver North, Richard Secord, etc.
Verse 9: Ref. Elliott Abrams, former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, pardoned by outgoing President Bush 1992 after guilty plea to withholding Iran-contra scam information from Congress.
Verse 13: Charles H. Keating, Jr., 69, founder, Cincinnati Citizens for Decent Literature, later Citizens for Decency Through Law, was convicted 1993 on state and federal charges of swindling investors, fraud, and racketeering in collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. “The collapse of Lincoln, which was based in Irvine, California, in early 1989 is estimated to have cost taxpayers $2.5 billion” (New York Times, September 4, 1992). Along with pedophile Father Joseph Ritter, former director of wayward youths’ Covenant House, Keating was outstanding homophobe on President Reagan’s Meese Commission on Pornography.
(p. 1026) Research
Verse 6: Rev. W. A. Criswell, mentor of TV Bible evangelist fundraising theopoliticians Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, decrees the Bible 100 percent “Inerrant.”
Verse 11: John Rousas Rushdoony, fundamentalist author, leader of Chalcedon Foundation’s Christian Reconstructionist exertions, disapproves homosexual emotions.
(p. 1029) Put Down Your Cigarette Rag
Originally published in First Blues (New York: Full Court Press, 1975). Here updated statistics, additional stanzas.
(p. 1033) Violent Collaborations
Epigraph remembered from 1940s college days, heard by classmate from his mother, perhaps 1920s flappers’ ditty.
(p. 1038) The Charnel Ground
Epigraph and final quotation, “The whole point seems to be the idea of giving away the giver,” taken from lectures on The Sadhana of Mahamudra, by Ven. Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, Karma Dzong, December 1973, privately printed.
(p. 1047) In the Benjo
Gary Snyder, No Nature: New and Selected Poems (New York: Pantheon, 1992).
(p. 1048) American Sentences
On Hearing the Muezzin Cry Allah Akbar While Visiting the Pythian Oracle at Didyma Toward the End of the Second Millennium
Didyma, Asia Minor’s shore site where Magna Mater and Pythian oracle were displaced by Judeo-Christian-Islamic Father God. In response to imperial Roman request for prophecy circa 4th century A.D., the oracle’s last utterance declared the gods had departed, Apollo no longer inhabited the temple’s pillars.
Rainy night on Union Square … Answering office mail late night, response to request from little magazine.
(p. 1049) Approaching Seoul by Bus in Heavy Rain
Bus over steep mountains from Kangnung to Seoul one rainy night was delayed along precipice by a mile of ambulance lights marking crash of bus I’d missed, scheduled an hour earlier.
Monoprix, familiar department store, onetime rig
ht bank of Seine across from Place St. Michel.
DEATH & FAME POEMS 1993–1997
Edited by Bob Rosenthal, Peter Hale, and Bill Morgan
Foreword by Robert Creeley
Afterword by Bob Rosenthal
Thanks to the hospital editors, variants of these writings were printed first in: Aftonbladet, Allen Ginsberg e Il Saggiatore, The Alternative Press, American Poetry Review, American Sentences, Ballad of the Skeletons [recording], The Best American Poetry 1997, Bombay Gin, Booglit, City Lights Review, Cuaderno Carmin, Davka, Harper’s magazine, Harvard magazine, Illuminated Poetics, Lettre International, Literal Latté, Long Shot, Man Alive, The Nation, New York Newsday, New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, Off the Wall, Poetry Flash, Poetry Ireland Review, Shambhala Sun, Tribu, Tricycle, Viva Vine, Viva Ferlinghetti!, and Woodstock Journal.
Acknowledgments
The editors wish to acknowledge the following people for their help and support: Andrew Wylie, Sarah Chalfant, Jeff Posternak, Terry Karten, Megan Barrett, Jaqueline Gens, Eliot Katz, Steven Taylor, Ben Schafer, and Regina Pellicano.