Book of Blues
Okay—dreaming fields—Blake
wants to hear the latest development
in the man the way the bleat
lambs bleakly blake it now
and that is soft,
Ah William,
I guess as soft as Spanish
dreams, what was it Trappist
said:— “Goats
as
soft
as
sleep”
Something like that
Farewell
13TH CHORUS
Jack Micheline
“Feet of children playing by
the mill”—he didnt say
hill—When tongue gets
caught inside the lapels
of the mouth, that’s what
I wanta hear—Like Fred
Katz the cellist—or is
it chellist?
“Tongue crucified, seven stitched”
is pretty weird
Make it down to New Orleans
one of these days
says Moonlight Martin
“Maniac massacred” on account
of “blinded on stone”
Wow, whatze mean?
Like Wolfe’s Underground, mad dog
choking in tunnels of hate
“Spring has come
yellow teeth & black hair”
14TH CHORUS
is exactly like the magnificent
haiku mailed to President
Eisenhower by Manosuke
Kambe
“They have succeeded
in shooting up a star
And Spring is near”
Yeah, where down yonder
in you now Where
Now I’m getting to sound
like a drearisome
tangerine
Folks, read Jack Micheline,
n doubt about it
He’s a great poeit
And see?—read Gregory Corso
too all about “bookies
& chickenpluckers”
& Read Competition Ginsberg
the maddest brain
in poetry
15TH CHORUS
Ginsberg has a poet who
has a “great precise
practical benevolence
& new understanding,”
and I have Jack
Micheline, Steve Tropp,
Steve White, and
many other naked heads
What I wrote first I kept,
because I figure
God moves
the body hand
because
the body of the truth
is a body
corruptible
in graves
though
nourishing,
O Schweitzer
Africa Trumpet!
16TH CHORUS
(And George Jones blows too!)
“Kneeling in the sun beside
the bright red mad beauties
of Street!” sings Corso
“I drag him into
myricolorous St Chapelle
Stained Glass marvel,”
sings Ginsberg
Dont discourage
the poets!
Sings Jack Micheline:
“And kiss the strangers
& plant the seeds of life among the dead”
Because it’s a distant
hightone rail
“Flower of cities”
17TH CHORUS
And these sweet lines revive
the open poetry of hope
in old America
long fish
And this sweet moth revised
the entelechy
in my endebechy
in old pardodechy
where Croo-Ba
made it working
boy girls in
He was hanged in the closet
The King ate sliced sage
John the Baptist had no head
Jesus had nails in his skin
The Neon’s nailed to me
I wish I were dead
Or King of Ronald Colman
country, or Kin to Sariputra
Shakespeare, one
18TH CHORUS
Well, s’long as barrel womps we’ll
womp em on in, Used to write
poems about Princeton boy rose
Also Baltimore bleedings
& think rabbit plate
shit
I wish I had
a way
to make
Tuesday Sarah
come by
any day
With China throwup
hadnt Puttered
men with me
but bile was free,
& girl long blonde
taffy pull
I guess best thing to do
is to write to
Blues Bessie
19TH CHORUS
I wonder what Emily’s thinkin
in that groomus earth of
coral snakes & alligators
on the sidewalk, is she got down
by Sunday in the Tomb, or
does time matter no blow out
bulbs of shame, Jesus, what
shame in eyelid war life
no shame at all in eyelid
ant eat
allied ant eat
What wars Bismarck plotted
on accounta ambitious
bishops, I dont know,
what Colbert built
for Mazarin slurp,
or why French Blond
Hero bombs black
Arab dream in sand
of Berber Ya ke
Silhouette Blue men
veil, kill me, I’se
free
20TH CHORUS
Jazz killed itself
But dont let poetry kill itself
Dont be afraid
of the cold night air
Dont listen to institutions
When you return manuscripts to
brownstone
dont bow & scuffle
for Edith Wharton pioneers
or ursula major nebraska prose
just hang in your own backyard
& laugh play pretty
cake trombone
& if somebody gives you beads
juju, jew, or otherwise,
sleep with em around your neck
Your dreams’ll maybe better
There’s no rain,
there’s no me,
I’m telling ya man
sure as shit
21ST CHORUS
That cat’s in paradise
The noise of automobile sigh
dont interfere with the knowing
of me or any paper party
but’s what smat smeldied
on hey-now, Zulch!
Truth is, cry
Because the radar never was invented
could find paradise sound
or cat lost in the night
radarless
radar-less
rad-arless
radarle-ss
rrrrt
branged suitcases as a kid
& sang to Glenn Miller’s
Moonlight Serenade
& Laid
But O, Lor
d above,
have pity on my
missin kitty
22ND CHORUS
Usta smear ma lips with whiskey
Fred and open up the doors
to make a joke—while
women waited
and Bert Lahr waited
playing what he waited
like Duke Ellington
used to sit staring at Seymour
who implied to me the swing
of the music by his
low crash
high abidin
shoulders,
Pap,
and what wow hoo?
Thotlatnape
Compose Vehicle
Special
Banana
Nine
23RD CHORUS
Bat bow
lack Jack
swing Bing
that’s right!
Yes
backwards—wail—
You’re gut okay man
swing on along
I don’t care
I can do it
too
Orlak + +
see
24TH CHORUS
If you once
for all good
times
Man’s fine,
know
YOU KNOW
25TH CHORUS
My mind! even harder than
my path, my freedom
is in piano
O, wow, wild wow
NBC OOO
piano
Like Lee Konitz
sky,
Yay, wow?
Sluke!
Slow! Swing? THEN
YOU GO—
That new tenor cat
made me drop my pencil,
Elvin Jones
26TH CHORUS
Zoot Sims
and his
Johnny Williams
“This Happy Leaping Thing”
Kitty Drum Barry
Gray, you like cemetary
swing?
“Big Xmas Seal”
Hockey teams—?
Al? —shape
lay, & the Elington
Good high school
sex orgy
girls
in the woods
of
rape,
nun dear
27TH CHORUS
The New Orleans New York
Club
wishes to announce
the opening
of
new sessions,
& new fields, Daddio,
Dave Brubeck’s
the swingingest
And I wish to say
Farewell
to
Al
Smith
Hello Dave
28TH CHORUS
For Minors Only
is the name of a new record
all about trumpet
& trimban
Zlap
Peter Orlovsky
is the cat to play to
You see dont you dig
on all sides
the wild sounds?
and o the conceptions
you made
on
Thursday
afternoon
trumpet man, dont blow
that thing at me,
blow it to
banana
29TH CHORUS
Timmy got back,
soft Blakey lamb
Timmy got back
& wrote rhymes
And we sat purring on the bed
with Tammy
And made it 5 percent
thousand
Times a day, swinging,
we had sand,
We had Gothic top
Cathedral girls
But O in Euniceburg
they footballed
Stupid me from Edgar
Lear’s interior
Majesty
30TH CHORUS
No, this lamby bit
Is what I mean
O Orlando, O sweet
No Orlander phonecalls
Georgia Flowerbranch
Lamby mean, William,
Lamb dust? Nnaaa!
Softy uglu flutey?
Almost—
Pan flute Erdic
Shook spear
that Venusian cunt
was neat when
I’se a Nigger
was
a
baby
31ST CHORUS
O Gary Snyder
we work in many ways
In Montreal I suffered tile
and rain
In Additional Christmas
waylayed babes
In old crow Hotels
full of blue babes
in pink dressinggowns
down
But O Gary Snyder,
where’d you go,
What I meant was
there you go
In Montreal I worked a manied-way
And, better than Old Post,
I learned t’appreciate
in many ways
Montreal, Soulsville,
and Drain
32ND CHORUS
Listening to a guy play
tenor saxophone &
keep the tune inside
chords & structures,
as sweetly as this,
you’ll experience
the same
fitly thrill
you got from Mozart
It is pure musical beauty,
like a musicale
among wigs
People who dont understand
jazz are tone-deaf
& dont understand
what tone-deaf &
simply deaf
meant to Ludwig
33RD CHORUS
van
Beethoven
*
Goats as soft as break
of day
In swamp
Mexico
*
Can diamond cut iron?
Diamond cuts glass
glass links
But can it cut
An iron link?
Nirvana means Cut-Link
If diamond dont cut glass
or iron dont count,
hey?
maybe the Wisdom Vow
o the Diamondcutter
may have made it
34TH CHORUS
The only responsibility to a child
is to feed, the rest is
interference
Can you just see
a man arrested
for letting his daughter
fuck
around the block
anyway
anywhere
just so long as she got
home to eat her
dinner, he’s telling
the cops
absolutely that
And the girl gets married?
I have a bunch of stray cats
in my yard
I wouldnt have a daughter
35TH CHORUS
Whattayouwanta have er for
You wanta sling sperm
over her?
A
vin her now, ey you
old reprobate
Lissen, just keep that daughter
away from my knees
after she’s thirteen
And between ten & that
tell her to lay off
the rough stuff
With boys you can play
as rough as you want,
but once ye spank em
they hate you forever
Oi Karamazov!
36TH CHORUS
O Apollo
Men
are the beautiful
The women miss cats
Cads & rogues
of Montreal all,
or blue diers in deep pars
asking for golfscore
But in any Case
tsa united press
37TH CHORUS
Old dotin old fuck
There’s this old man,
he come down this road
just a walking with some
a whatyamaycallit
in a big bottle
& I dont know what was in it
& it come night
& I was in my house
& here come this old man
down the road
drinking outa that bottle
And there was Allen Wayne
in his house
38TH CHORUS
& he had to hang this sheet
on the clothesline
& that old man dropped
that bottle in his
yard
& that shu old man
dropped that bottle
down that road
And that’s all,
Uncle Fred
39TH CHORUS
Maybe it’s resting in the arms
of Jesus,
or just a cloudy windy day
In the trees
*
But since there’s an infinite
amount of angels,
and Infinite ends in no ‘s,’
it must be
one angel
Infinites Angels?
Maybe that bird that floats
hill belly on the wind up there,
and that cat
that pats
in this grass,
is the same
Infinite
Worldwide
Angel
40TH CHORUS