EGAD me hearties has it all come down to this, sitting in some café (and cafés the habitation of all lonely people) while most of the country is imbeciles in neckties and I wuz one of them it’s obvious or else who would blather like this mindless as a mule with a sense of humor or a donkey that brays every time he opens his big mouth and out comes a bellow of a laugh very derisive of everything on earth Yahoo! like he finds existence a big hoot and a puzzlement to all especially himself but after all he’s somebody and was on the Ark and all that which was like the first Mayflower landing on our shores Well it all ain’t that funny this long mad history of man and mule on earth the flip-flops of minds and behinds intertwined and how long can this go on and is there a big ball of fire headed this way And so it’s Gertie on the grass alas and all of us sitting there with our bare faces hanging out revealing all of us as we truly are naked bodies and souls in the paved-over garden of the world So take a close look at us humans and humanoids chimps and chumps and champs in a Saint Vitus Dance oh it’s a samba a cucaracha a mad waltz a taxi dance in the Roseland Ballroom a madcap celebration of the coming end of industrial civilization which is bad for earth and man with the bad breath of machines inhaled by all and the halitosis of greed perfuming our breath and Homo Sap too stupid and too greedy to save himself from eco-oblivion oh man ain’t it Awesome! Oh so you think so, you creep you asshole-first-class another one of those crazies always against everything Well let me tell you we’ve got you on our special list of suspects don’t worry we’ll take care of you Better that you just stick to your knitting or whatever you do to diddle yourself if you know what I mean bye now and Have a Nice Day as the San Francisco figurative school of painters used to say blowing booze in jam sessions up around the Art Institute while down Columbus Avenue just a few blocks away a pickup band of grungy wild-ass poets was fomenting a new counterculture a true critique of Moloch American consumer capitalism while the figurative painters kept fiddling their bourgeois tunes oh boy have you heard this before It’s an old story Let’s move on Don’t we have better fish to frig Am I my brother’s keeper still or was I ever my brother’s subconscious which is a city built upon another city built upon another buried city back through unrecorded time city upon city buried layers of thinking and only the top level visible or audible so that so that history becomes a mirror with infinite depth layer upon layer of buried cities of consciousness and you and your consciousness just the surface image in front of a quicksilver mirror a Memory Chalet or is it just drifting water over the mirror of the past Cityful passing away Pyramids in sand Houses streets lampposts terminals tunnels blocks of apartments Landlord never dies sed Jimmy Joyce And our minds drifting away in dreams hallucinations visions of lovers on riverbanks man on woman man on man woman on woman on and on and all their voices commingling sounds of humanity echoing down through the centuries yes yes visions omens ecstasies and Allen Ginzy wailing “gone down the American river! Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit! Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!” Skin books Parchment bodies Palimpsests of consciousness Continuous epiphanies and moments of nudity when the red sun sets on us stripped naked on the beach waving genitals and manuscripts disappearing over the horizon Goodbye! Goodbye! our minds blink shut but consciousness continues echoing forever through time though all bodies be gone And every word my last word Nothing resolved Nothing brought to any conclusion the plot left hanging the hero left longing for some way up or out for some resolution revelation revolution So where away then out of the playpen to the final calamitous enunciation annunciation denunciation in the Womb of the Unknown Word the baby’s rattle in this mumble And this ain’t no novel but a kind of extended epiphany to pin down extempore thinking like a butterfly pinned on a board a hoard a treasure trove of words spread out like wings aflutter in the eternal breeze the sneeze of time the wind of consciousness filling the sail the spinnaker ballooning and there is no plot as there is none in life there is only the stutter of wording between waking and sleeping, the little cicada of consciousness singing with its legs in Provence summer heat the bleat of sheep under the hill the mistral wind in the lavender carrying the scent of the race oh what a spurious fabrication so let’s return to the real world down to earth in a tram in the South Bronx and somebody reading the daily blatt on the way to perform in the Yiddish theatre Lower East Side or are we riding the Staten Island Ferry during the Second World War or landing in San Francisco on a ferry from Oakland oh all the same tick of time in a clock tower and eternal spring coming ever returning but for how much longer Aye mates tell me that in the morning blatt will I find our fate written there or in any ledger or Bible tell me that Tell me tell me the moon in the Hebrides and the fog falling down like a scrim in London and sister in the street her brassiere backward ain’t that a pretty picture of this life on earth and all tears are the same and yet we go on living because we love it love it love it yes and some of this country founded by slave owners who wanted to be free oh yeah it’s the American dream but you have to be asleep to believe it and so what else is new and where do we go from here Are we back at Square One with the newborn babe carrying with him all the genes of the race and what a race it is A foot race a camel race a horse derby with all the bets on unknown ponies on an Ellis Island merry-go-round with all the riders reaching out for the brass ring and where do we get on or off Ah none of that I am merely speaking my mind such as it is and that’s all there is to it this long blab on Blabbermouth Night the endless night filled with the rabble babble of a billion tongues all wagging at once in falsetto, boisterous polyphoboisterous panhandlers all drunk on street corners Brother can you spare a dame or how about carrying me for a block and have you seen the Rose of Tralee who is pining away for me somewhere over the sea Blarney be Oh it’s just my seabag full of memories and I am a tear of the sun I am a hill where poets run I invented the alphabet after watching the flight of cranes who made letters with their legs I am a word in a tree I am a hall of poetry I am a raid on the inarticulate I have dreamt that all my teeth fell out but my tongue lived to tell the tale I am a hill of poetry I am a bank of song I am a player piano in an abandoned casino on a seaside esplanade in a dense fog still playing, I am an American I was an American boy I read the American Boy magazine and became a Boy Scout in the suburbs I thought I was Tom Sawyer catching crayfish in the Bronx River and imagining the Mississippi, I had a baseball mitt and an American Flyer bike, I delivered the Woman’s Home Companion at five in the afternoon and the Herald Trib at five in the morning, I still can hear the paper thump on lost porches, I saw Lindbergh land, I looked homeward and saw no angel, I got caught stealing pencils in the five-and-ten-cent store the same month I made Eagle Scout, I chopped trees for the CCC and sat on them, I landed in Normandy in a rowboat that turned over, I have seen the educated armies on the beach at Dover, I have seen the garbagemen parade in the Columbus Day Parade behind the fat farting trumpeters, I have eaten potato salad and dandelions at anarchist picnics, I have eaten hot dogs in ballparks, I have ridden boxcars boxcars boxcars, I have traveled among unknown men, I was with Noah in the Ark, I was in India when Rome was built, I was in the manger with an ass, I have seen the Laughing Woman in Luna Park outside the Fun House in a great rainstorm still laughing, I have heard the sound of revelry by night, I have wandered lonely as a crowd, I have engaged in silent exile and cunning, I flew too near the sun and my wax wings fell off, I am looking for my Old Man whom I never knew, I am looking for the Lost Leader with whom I flew. Young men should be explorers. Home is where one starts from. Womb-weary I rest I have traveled, I have seen goof city, I have heard Kid Ory cry, I have heard a trombone preach, I have heard Debussy strained thru a sheet, I have slept on a hundred islands where books were trees, I have heard the birds that sound like bells I have worn grey flannel trousers and s
old what sells I have dwelt in a hundred cities where trees were books. What subways What taxis What cafés! What women with blind breasts limbs lost among skyscrapers, I have seen the statues of heroes at carrefours, Danton weeping at a Metro entrance, Columbus in Barcelona pointing westward up the Ramblas toward the American Express, Lincoln in his stony chair and a great Stone Face in North Dakota. I read the want ads daily looking for a stone a leaf an unfound door. I hear America singing in the Yellow Pages. One could never tell the soul has its rages. It is long since I was a herdsman, oh I went to the city and I did weep, out of touch with nature in a megalopolis maybe with the human crowd about to wander off a cliff somewhere yes that same bunch that grew up from apes after dinosaurs became birds and elephants grew trunks by the banks of the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River long ago in a universe that is not conscious but is rather a blind creature a blind creation by a blind creator motivated by a blind life force unconscious of itself the goddess Ka in Egyptian mythology and all we can do is adopt a Stoic philosophy as Buddhists do to recognize our blind fate and yet to enjoy the journey and even laugh aloud as Zen fools do in their craaazy wisdom to think of the absolute absurdity of it all after all for are we not all clowns doing our cartwheels around the earth and the sun setting in all its burning glory And the life of the mind connecting to the struggle for justice is a way of life but what did I know about all that when I was growing up in that small suburb when all I knew to begin with was the barbaric heart in the geography of nowhere before I discovered the fruit on the tree of sex but what do you mean sex is ruining everything You must be a kook or something Well so let me tell you I mean that the single root problem in the whole world the problem of problems underlying all the ills of the world can be traced back to overpopulation like why is there so much pollution because there are too many cars and too many coal-burning plants because too many people want cars and heat etc etc and why are they cutting down the rain forests because they need the wood to build more houses for more and more people and so on and on all because people won’t stop making love or just fucking They just won’t stop it or even cut down on their amorous or orgiastic activity like Man you can’t tell me how many lovers I can have or how many babies I make you fascist you’re taking away my basic freedoms my basic human rights and ain’t this a free country so go fuck yerself komrad and on and on so that the earth is overflowing with two-legged creatures and nothing to do about it because to propagate is a basic undeniable instinct yes we have a blind instinctual primeval urge to propagate and reproduce ourselves and we’re going to do it no matter what and we’re never never going to stop fucking and so cover her head with an American flag and fuck for Old Glory oh it’s a long night that ends in day and it’s the short happy life of Francis Macomber and the long unhappy life of John Doe-re-me-me-me oh where to begin and where to end Mother mine what have we here a bit of protoplasm grown into a boy or man or woman and what is it this strange creation never before seen in eternity Love’s Labor’s Lost and all that Tell me tell me a tale of me-me-me or he-he-he the sound of laughter interspersed with tears and if I weren’t laughing I’d be crying or vice versa or twice worser So that so that life is a short day’s journey and Blimey if it ain’t dark in here I can’t see beyond my nose if that far if at all and that’s the long and the short of it after all as my monkey mind raves on But did I not lift my lamp or did she lift her lamp beside the golden door Ah yes but now who’s closing the door and scratching out the stone inscription so that it reads Don’t send me your poor your whatever yearning to be free Don’t give me that I’ve had enuf of all that and I have my own pursuit of happiness to pursue and don’t disturb me in that happy pursuit and there are other kinds of doors smaller and smaller doors or lead doors instead of gold doors and the hinges may get changed anyway to swing both ways or not at all and the whole idea of doors is hilarious as when I engaged in a long discussion on the phone with poet Philip Lamantia when he was expositing on L’ge d’Or and I was raving about starting a literary magazine called Large Door and the two of us went on and on enthusing about our two subjects and both thinking we were talking about the same thing on and on until we were disconnected and in fact he died Gone gone into the great dark brother Let there be light while the rest of us go on living on the spinning earth and the truth will out as long as there is light the light of night and the light of day so let’s just say that if we live forever in the light the truth will out and justice will reign or rain down on us like manna or bananas from heaven as if such a high place ever existed and L’ge d’Or will return again when we will all be beautiful creatures naked in sun and happy as the day is long loving each other without envy or hate all open-armed and openhearted to each other without fear and trembling or paranoia all the while striving to piece together the past and the future to make some sense of it and in the end to try to fathom man’s fate the aim of all art painted or written in hieroglyphs or computer code with ciphers for eternity and infinity the Pi of our lives on earth or elsewhere for what else have we to do on earth but figure out how and why we’re here and will we all ever meet again in darkness or in light the moon is rising and shadows bound about the landscape like svelte ghosts smoking hookahs in our dreams and all is mystery and we are all mysterious even to each other stick figures on the far horizon dancing on the edge of the world signaling to us Hello! Hello! are we not all brothers man and dame are we not all one and I am you passing thru the ultimate Golden Door to fall through space forever organic tossed upon the solar wind our winding sheet forever unwinding Let us pray or prey upon each other like wild beasts or wilderbeasts upon a plain where humanoids first emerged from apes in the heart of darkest Africa the nameless night shattered with light and my real brother heard my first cry in a small back bedroom in Yonkers New York and I sprang up and ran off into the jungles of the world through thickets of feeling dense woods of emotion forests of fast friends and enemies swamps of paranoia sloughs of despond high hills of happiness breakthroughs of mind and imaginary adventures of the imaginary soul
WITH the mind still raving away on its own and poetry not an expression of emotion but an escape from it said old Tea Ass Eliot he of Saint Louey posing as a perfect British gentleman with his tragic wife Vivienne with her menstrocity and poor Tom letting it all out finally in his Four Quartets with all his pain well hidden in its lovely prose poetry the year before she died in a private asylum but nevermind all that and let’s just dance instead and “Have a nice day” says the rear-guard painter while buttering his toast with dollars but you can’t have a nice day when it’s night and we spend half our lives in darkness and so bless Mr. Edison for bringing us out of the great dark yes the great dark comes upon us every twelve hours and we must all sleep through at least half of it every night or we’ll all croak yes we are required to sleep and to dream yes we absolutely must dream and we are such stuff as dreams are made into We are the great dreamers although maybe not so great as other animals like dogs and cats and other animals that hibernate whole winters Can you imagine what they could all be dreaming and dreaming all that time and isn’t it strange how every night when we lie down our brains are put into a coma and our muscles are incapacitated and we cannot move or run when a monster or phantom appears on our dream-screen and we cannot swim when in our dreams we are thrown from a sinking ship into the sea and all we can do is lie there with mouths agape awaiting the next apocalypse or revelation and it better be Sweet Dreams or else we end up moaning or weeping so where does it all leave us back here on earth on a pillow with weak echoes or flashbacks of scenes we have just dreamed yes flashbacks of some lost existence in some forgotten world or landscape over the horizon never seen when waking so here we are just you and just me sitting on our zafu cushions or at bars in happy hours or working or playing or fucking or laughing or crying and sighing or otherwise living it up in our casino Land of the Brave and Holy Smokes ain’t it cool to be alive ain’t it awesome yeah and I am American or a space traveler just touched d
own here for a few millennia before taking off for new virgin undespoiled planets or pieces of stardust for are we not all pure stardust adrift in endless space in a dream within a dream in which texts in our consciousness are jumbled together with the Bible and cut-ups from Naked Lunch or want ads mixed with highway signs in North Dakota advertising Unisex Hair Saloons etc etc And “It’s been a long day already, I’ve been up all night” said the Ohlone Indian occupying Alcatraz on Thanksgiving and the Feds moved in and you know the drill but the braves come back anyway every Thanksgiving beating their drums against the Pilgrims in riot gear who in New England in an incredible act of mercy had decided to eat turkey instead of Indians indeed indeed but wasn’t Mr. Edison’s little light really no more than an artificial spark whereas it was really Gautama Buddha who showed us the true way out of the great dark so that if we chant the Great Paramita Sutra or Mantra of Compassion we just might attain enlightenment yes if we chant the six syllables of Om Mani Padme Hum then our Pride Jealousy Desire Ignorance Greed and Anger might be transformed into pure light even in the midst of our avaricious industrial uncivilization with its brilliant selling of samsara and its barren distractions oh yes our great consumer society a fanatical religion with its omnivorous consumer machine devouring us and its vampire electronics sucking our lifeblood while I am just a Zen fop with the Humbug wandered abroad and all this my boozy wisdom but my idol all the time is Siddhartha under the Bodhi Tree seeking enlightenment but then again there are all sorts of other ways to try to seek enlightenment and peeling a potato to find the real potato could possibly be enlightening or you could just maybe pay some taxi driver to let you get in the trunk of his cab while he drives around for a certain amount of time all the while trusting he won’t forget about you and leave you in there until you get enlightened by dying when you will no doubt see some eternal light and hear the voice of the fourth person singular directing you which way to walk And it’s Om Om Om all the way into eternity Oh so I am just an onion peeling myself down to the core to find there is nothing there at all and thus attaining the same end as the most advanced guru and ain’t that funny but is it funny-ha-ha or funny-pathetic that’s what I want to know yes like they say life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel or is it the other way around take your choice and roll your dice oh it’s nice to think of yourself as having free will but all water is not tears and who knows if the cries of birds are cries of ecstasy or cries of despair and all is not lost when the sun goes down when red sky at night is the sailor’s delight and the dark side of the moon holds many mysteries which light will never reveal yes the moon after much reflection says “Sun is God” and standing still the river rushes forward (carrying a leaf upon which we are stranded passengers)
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