Care for the Poor
Said the Son of God skeleton
AIDS needs cure
Said the Homophobe skeleton
Gay folk suck
Said the Heritage Policy skeleton
Blacks’re outa luck
Said the Macho skeleton
Women in their place
Said the Fundamentalist skeleton
Increase human race
Said the Right-to-Life skeleton
Foetus has a soul
Said Pro Choice skeleton
Shove it up your hole
Said the Downsized skeleton
Robots got my job
Said the Tough-on-Crime skeleton
Tear gas the mob
Said the Governor skeleton
Cut school lunch
Said the Mayor skeleton
Eat the budget crunch
Said the Neo Conservative skeleton
Homeless off the street!
Said the Free Market skeleton
Use ’em up for meat
Said the Think Tank skeleton
Free Market’s the way
Said the S&L skeleton
Make the State pay
Said the Chrysler skeleton
Pay for you & me
Said the Nuke Power skeleton
& me & me & me
Said the Ecologic skeleton
Keep Skies blue
Said the Multinational skeleton
What’s it worth to you?
Said the NAFTA skeleton
Get rich, Free Trade,
Said the Maquiladora skeleton
Sweat shops, low paid
Said the rich GATT skeleton
One world, high tech
Said the Underclass skeleton
Get it in the neck
Said the World Bank skeleton
Cut down your trees
Said the I.M.F skeleton
Buy American cheese
Said the Underdeveloped skeleton
Send me rice
Said Developed Nations’ skeleton
Sell your bones for dice
Said the Ayatollah skeleton
Die writer die
Said Joe Stalin’s skeleton
That’s no lie
Said the Middle Kingdom skeleton
We swallowed Tibet
Said the Dalai Lama skeleton
Indigestion’s whatcha get
Said the World Chorus skeleton
That’s their fate
Said the USA skeleton
Gotta save Kuwait
Said the Petrochemical skeleton
Roar Bombers roar!
Said the Psychedelic skeleton
Smoke a dinosaur
Said Nancy’s skeleton
Just say No
Said the Rasta skeleton
Blow Nancy Blow
Said Demagogue skeleton
Don’t smoke Pot
Said Alcoholic skeleton
Let your liver rot
Said the Junkie skeleton
Can’t we get a fix?
Said the Big Brother skeleton
Jail the dirty pricks
Said the Mirror skeleton
Hey good looking
Said the Electric Chair skeleton
Hey what’s cooking?
Said the Talkshow skeleton
Fuck you in the face
Said the Family Values skeleton
My family values mace
Said the N.Y. Times skeleton
That’s not fit to print
Said the C.I.A. skeleton
Cantcha take a hint?
Said the Network skeleton
Believe my lies
Said the Advertising skeleton
Don’t get wise!
Said the Media skeleton
Believe you Me
Said the Couch-potato skeleton
What me worry?
Said the TV skeleton
Eat sound bites
Said the Newscast skeleton
That’s all Goodnight
February 12–16, 1995
“You know what I’m saying?”
I was shy and tender as a 10 year old kid, you know what I’m saying?
Afraid people’d find me out in Eastside H.S. locker room you know what I’m saying?
Earl had beautiful hips & biceps when he took off his clothes to put on gym shorts you know what I’m saying?
His nose was too long, his face like a ferret but his white body
Proportioned thin, muscular definition thighs & breasts, with boy’s nipples you know what I’m saying? uncircumcised
& strange, goyishe beauty you know what I’m saying, I was dumbstruck—
at Golden 50th H.S. Reunion I recognized him, bowed, & exchanged pleasant words, you know what I’m saying?
He was retired, wife on his arm, you know what I’m saying?
& Millie Peller “The Class Whore” warmest woman at our last Silver 25th Reunion alas had passed away
She was nice to me a scared gay kid at Eastside High, you know what I’m saying?
December 23, 1995
Bowel Song
You’ve been coughing for weeks
still you don’t sit on your cushion & visualize Bam
You’ve been in the hospital just last week
still you read the newspapers
Recovered from congestive heart failure,
you took 7 hours last week to read the Sunday N.Y Times
Listen, your days are numbered, why waste the essence of your clock
How will you feel when you can’t breathe?
What’ll you do the last six minutes?
Where’ll you go for the next 6 hours?
What good, half dozen gay porno films then?
You can hardly catch your breath now, why jack off limp prick?
Your master gives good advice, you listen, follow it couple weeks
then lapse into old habits, waste time on the toilet reading books,
at the kitchen sink 3am washing dishes daydreaming.
If you don’t get ready now, what’ll you do at the Black Hole
You wanna get born a pretty little girl & go through agony?
Wanna get caught between snakes coupling?
In between death and life, still wanna get laid?
What makes you lazy? you’re not on your deathbed yet,
if you’ve an ounce of strength, use it to look inside.
Clear your mind, you won’t escape the Great Sickness
the Immortal Plague, Grand Disaster continuous to eternity—
Whatever it is, whyn’cha figure it out?
Wanna drift off & become a newspaper headline,
what good favorable publicity in the bardo?
Allen Ginsberg says, these words’ll get you nowhere
these jokes won’t be funny when everyone leaves the seven exits.
January 2, 1996
Popular Tunes
What do I hear in my ear
approaching my 70th year—
Echoes of popular tunes, old rhymes
familiar runes
Songs my mother taught me
“O tell me pretty maiden
are there any more at home
like you?”
Cousin Claire heard on the Newark radio
Aunt Elanor played on her Bronx phonograph
piercing Bell Song soprano notes,
sostenuto Amelita Galli-Curci & Rosa Ponselle
Wind up Victrola Yiddish Monologues
Cohen On The Telephone,
The Wind the Wind,
“Last night da vind, da vind blew down da shutters.”
“No I didn’t say shuddup!”
The fugitive words of a Scots contralto
woman’s chant “McCushla,
McCushla my dark eyed McCushla”
Ask Aunt Honey age 83, ask Stepmother Edith just 90,
they’ll know—
they’
ll remember
“The March of the Wooden Soldiers,” tin drums
& pipes of Babes in Toyland
“Comin’ thru the rye” new generations of
folksing kids never remember sung
when they play Guitar on Union Square’s
L train subway platform—
or “Auchichornya, auchimolinka, rasdrivyminya,
molijeninka,” with Mandolins or Balalaikas
and “Tis the last rose of Summer” by Thomas Moore—
echoing thru Time’s skull as my beard’s
turned white, sugar high in my blood
coughing weeks on end fall to winter,
Chronic bronchitis the rest of my days?
& “Down will come baby cradle and all”
as 1930’s all fell down with
mournful Peat Bog Soldiers’
“Lied des Concentrationslagers”
February 9, 1996
Five A.M.
Élan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmitted into words
Transmuted back to breath
in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho’s 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing—beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars,
chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind—but where’s it come from?
Inspiration? The muses drawing breath for you? God?
Nah, don’t believe it, you’ll get entangled in Heaven or Hell—
Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night
flooding mind with space, echoing thru future cities, Megalopolis or
Cretan village, Zeus’ birth cave Lassithi Plains—Otsego County
farmhouse, Kansas front porch?
Buddha’s a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana—
coffee, alcohol, cocaine, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas?
Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky
at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street—
Where does it come from, where does it go forever?
May 1996
Power
The N Power, the feminine power
the woman power the
flower power, the power of Marigolds
& roses, Sequoia power,
Nature’s power
wont blossom in this lifetime
or the next, this Yuga’s finished,
seeds shot, entered the earth
gestating with alligators & waterworms
in swamps where planes crash,
Next lifetimes after, watch roses turn
red, Marigolds yellow, little
sequoias begin to climb the sky
Millions of African kids’ll grow up
amid green bushes & radiant
camelopards again—
Down 12th Street corner Avenue A midnight police
lean against Bodega shutters looking for
last week’s swarthy crack pushers
May 15, 1996, 11 A.M.
Anger
How’d I get angry? Analytic approach:
M’I still angry with Carolyn? forty three years ago
kicked me out of bed with
naked Neal their house San Jose—
Disadvantaged hating Podhoretz
for put-down of Beat writers
queers nineteen fifty eight
later defense of death-squad drug-dealer
Generals in El Salvador
& op-ed B2 Bombers
Angrily sat an hour adamant
Thangka-thief meth-head Gaiton’s apt.
E. Houston Street nineteen sixty three
never got my Dancing Skeletons back—
Never forgave late Alan Marlowe nineteen seventy five
stole back my $100 loan gift
to Jyoti Datta Calcutta four years earlier
Lost my telephone temper with critic Walter
Goodman
insulting Gunther Grass’ visit to poor South Bronx
International PEN Congress nineteen eighty five
& my own handmade Nicaraguan
Contra-War peace petition mocked
as “all the news that’s fit to print.”
May 18, 1996
Multiple Identity Questionnaire
“Nature empty, everything’s pure; Naturally pure, that’s what I am.”
I’m a jew? a nice Jewish boy?
A flaky Buddhist, certainly
Gay in fact pederast? I’m exaggerating?
Not only queer an amateur S&M fan, someone should spank me for
saying that
Columbia Alumnus class of ’48, Beat icon, students say.
White, if jews are “white race”
American by birth, passport, and residence
Slavic heritage, mama from Vitebsk, father’s forebears Grading in
Kamenetz-Podolska near Lvov.
I’m an intellectual! Anti-intellectual, anti-academic
Distinguished Professor of English Brooklyn College,
Manhattanite, Another middle class liberal,
but lower class second generation immigrant,
Upperclass, I own a condo loft, go to art gallery Buddhist Vernissage
dinner parties with Niarchos, Rockefellers, and Luces
Oh what a sissy, Professor Four-eyes, can’t catch a baseball or drive a
car—courageous Shambhala Graduate Warrior
addressed as “Maestro” Milano, Venezia, Napoli
Still student, chela, disciple, my guru Gelek Rinpoche,
Senior Citizen, got Septuagenarian discount at Alfalfa’s Healthfoods
New York subway—
Mr. Sentient Being!—Absolutely empty neti neti identity, Maya Nobo-
daddy, relative phantom nonentity
July 5, 1996, Naropa Tent,
Boulder, CO
Don’t Get Angry with Me
for Chödok Tulku
Don’t get angry with me
You might die tomorrow
I’m an empty hungry ghost
Any spare change I can borrow?
Don’t get angry with me
Full of God tomorrow
Could get sorry you got mad,
wanna be the God of sorrow?
Don’t get angry with me
War starts tomorrow
I’ll get bombed You’ll get shot
in the eye with Interdependent Arrow
Don’t get angry with me
Hell’s hot tomorrow
If we’re burned up now inflamed
Could pass aeons in cold horror
Don’t get angry with me
We’ll be worms tomorrow
Both wriggling in the mud
cut in two by the ploughman’s harrow
Don’t get angry with me—
Who’ll we be tomorrow?
who knows who we are today?
Better meditate & pray,
Tila, Mila, Marpa, Naro.
August 27, 1996
Swan Songs in the Present
“Swan songs in the present
moon systems in gleeps
Don’t hang on to the essence
the refrigerator’s for keeps
the Hot house vernacular
Sets up on the moldy hill
you and I climb the ribcage
& look for a heart to kill
you can do whatcha want with Europe
Eat Bananas with your dung
Whistle while you wonk the Pope
Breathe out of a spastic lung
but you’ll live forever anyway
in birds’ beasts hungry ghosts
& various Boddhisattvas
Drinking morning coffee
eating loxes & toasts
Hypnogogi Twaddle
anytime I can
>
But 70 years I’ll sleep
like other old men
October 29, 1996, 3:50 A.M.
Gone Gone Gone
“The wan moon is sinking under the white wave
and time is sinking with me, O!”
—Robert Burns
yes it’s gone gone gone
gone gone away
yes it’s gone gone gone
gone gone away
yes it’s gone gone gone
gone gone away
yes it’s gone gone gone
it’s all gone away
gone gone gone
won’t be back today
gone gone gone
just like yesterday
gone gone gone
isn’t any more
gone to the other shore
gone gone gone
it wasn’t here to stay
yes it’s gone gone gone
all gone out to play
yes it’s gone gone gone
until another day
no one here to pray
gone gone gone
yak your life away
no promise to betray
gone gone gone
somebody else will pay
the national debt no way
gone gone gone
your furniture layaway
plan gone astray
gone gone gone
made hay
gone gone gone
Sunk in Baiae’s Bay
yes it’s gone gone gone
wallet and all you say
gone gone gone
so you can waive your pay
yes it’s gone gone gone
gone last Saturday
yes it’s gone gone gone
tomorrow’s another day
gone gone gone
bald & old & gay
gone gone gone
turned old and gray
yes it’s gone gone gone
whitebeard & cold
yes it’s gone gone gone
cashmere scarf & gold
yes it’s gone gone gone
warp & woof & wold
yes it’s gone gone gone
gone far far away
to the home of the brave
down into the grave
yes it’s gone gone gone
moon beneath the wave
yes it’s gone gone gone
so I end this song
yes this song is gone
gone to kick the gong
yes it’s gone gone gone
No more right & wrong
yes it’s gone gone gone