gliding down freeway ramp to City Lights, Peter’s face and television, money and new wanderings to come.
September 1965
Carmel Valley
Grass yellow hill,
small mountain range blue sky
bright reservoir below road tiny cars
The wing tree green wind sigh
rises, falls—
Buddha, Christ, fissiparous
Tendencies—
White sun rays pierce my eyeglasses—
gray bark animal arms,
skin peeling,
sprig fingers pointing, twigs trembling
green plate-thins bobbing,
knotted branch-sprouts—
No one will have to announce New Age
No special name, no Unique way,
no crier by Method or
Herald of Snaky Unknown,
No Messiah necessary but the Country ourselves
fifty years old—
Allah this tree, Eternity this Space Age!
Teenagers walking on Times Sq. look up
at blue planets thru neon metal
buildingtops,
Old men lie on grass afternoons
old Walnut stands on green mountain hide,
ants crawl the page, invisible
insects sing, birds
flap down,
Man will relax on a hill remembering tree friends.
Chez Baez, November 1965
First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels
Cool black night thru the redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.
December 1965
Continuation of a Long Poem of These States
S.F. Southward
Stage-lit streets
Downtown Frisco whizzing past, buildings
ranked by Freeway balconies
Bright Johnnie Walker neon
sign Christmastrees
And Christmas and its eves
in the midst of the same deep wood
as every sad Christmas before, surrounded
by forests of stars—
Metal columns, smoke pouring cloudward,
yellow-lamp horizon
warplants move, tiny
planes lie in Avionic fields—
Meanwhile Working Girls sort mail into the red slot
Rivers of newsprint to soldiers’ Vietnam
Infantry Journal, Kanackee
Social Register, Wichita Star
And Postoffice Christmas the same brown place
mailhandlers’ black fingers
dusty mailbags filled
1948 N.Y. Eighth Avenue was
when Peter drove the mailtruck 1955
from Rincon Annex—
Bright lights’ windshield flash,
adrenalin shiver in shoulders
Around the curve
crawling a long truck
3 bright green signals on forehead
Jeweled Bayshore passing the Coast Range
one architect’s house light on hill crest
……………… negro voices rejoice over radio
Moonlit sticks of tea
Moss Landing Power Plant
shooting its cannon smoke
across the highway, Red taillight
speeding the white line and a mile away
Orion’s muzzle
raised up
to the center of Heaven.
December 18, 1965
These States: into L.A.
Organs and War News
Radio static from Saigon
“And the Glory of the Lord”
Newscaster Voice thru Aether—
The Truce—
12 hours, 30 hours?
Thirty Days, said Mansfield.
Cars roll right lane,
bridge lights
rising & falling on night-slope—
headlights cross speeding reflectors
Handel rejoicing
chorus whine Requiem, roar in yr Auto
window shoulders
Memories of Christmas—
and the deep Christmas begins:
U.S. 101 South
The President at home
in his swinging chair on the porch
listening to Christmas Carols
Vice-President returning from Far East
“Check into yourself that you are wrong—
You may be the Wrong” says Pope His
Christmas Message—
Overpopulation, overpopulation
Give me 3 acres of land
Give my brother how much?
Each man have fine estate?
settle giant Communes?
LSD Shakti-snake settles like gas into Consciousness
—Brightest Venus I’ve ever seen
Canyon-floor road, near
bursting tides
& caves they’d slept in earlier years
covered with green water
height of a man.
A stranger walked that ground.
Five years ago we picnicked
in this place.
Auto track by a mud log, Bixby Creek
wove channels
thru the shifting sands.
I saw the ghost of Neal
pass by, Ferlinghetti’s ghost
The ghost of Homer roaring at the surf
barking & wagging his tail
My own footprint at the sea’s lips
white foam to the rock where I sang Harekrishna
sand garden drying, kelp
standing head upward in sunlight.
Dinosaur hard, scabrous
overgrown with seaweed tendrils,
Professors of rock …
Where’s Stravinsky? Theda Bara? Chaplin? Harpo Marx?
Where’s Laurel and his Hardy?
Laughing phantoms
going to the grave—
Last time this town I saw them in movies
Ending The Road to Utopia‘O Carib Isle!’
Laurel aged & white-haired Hardy
Hydrogen Comic smoke billowing
up from their Kingdom—
Grauman’s Chinese Theater’s drab sidewalk front’s
concrete footprints, stood there
stupid, anal, exciting
upside down, Crosseyed moviestar’d
I craned my neck at Myrna Loy & Shirley Temple shoe-marks—
Raccoon crouched at road-edge, praying—
Carlights pass—
Merry Christmas to Mr. & Mrs.
Chiang Kai Shek
Merry Christmas to President Johnson & pray for Health
Merry Christmas to MacNamara, State Secretary Rusk,
Khrushchev hid in his apartment house,
to Kosygin’s name, to Ho Chi Minh grown old,
Merry Christmas to rosycheeked Mao Tze Tung
Happy New Year Chou En Lai & Laurel and Hardy
Merry Christmas to the Pope
& to the Dalai Lama Rebbe Lubovitcher
to the highest Priests of Benin,
to the Chiefs of the Faery Ch
urches—
Merry Christmas to the Four Shankaracharyas,
to all Naga Sadhus, Bauls & Chanting Dervishes from Egypt to
Malaya—
Black Sign Los Angeles 140 Miles
stifling car-heat—
Music on the tacky radio,
senseless, senseless coughs of emotion—
The Ally Cease-Fire Will Not Be Extended
“……. on a densely populated area”
“… —Peking will never join the United Nations as long
as it remains under what it termed American Domination.”
MOBILIZE THE NATIONAL GUARD, sd Senator Anderson
IY Mental Rejectees will be reexamined
for service in Vietnam.
Bradley high on acid
drawing pictures on Army Forms?
Peter classified Psycho telling his Sergeant
“An Army is an Army against Love.”
Xmas day work stack of papers on the President’s desk
a foot high!
he has to finish them tonight!
this determined NBC News entering Lompoc, famed of
W. C. Fields
who proved that Everyman’s a
natural bullshit artist:
“spends about 75% of his time on Foreign Matters and is,
uh, very involved …”
“and all letters are answered.”
WHAT no Xmas message from the
Texas White House?
The President must be very down—
He’s maintaining his communications networks
circling the Planet.
Mambo canned music mush
Ventura radio Xmas sound
Commercial announcements,
Few minutes of live speech, little joy or thanksgiving,
no voice from Himalayas
Good Cheer Happy Kalpa
for Dominica Vietnam Congo China India America
Tho England rang with the Beatles!
“healing all that was oppressed with the Devil.”
& at Santa Barbara exit
the Preacher hollered in tongues
YOUR NAME IS WRITTEN IN HEAVEN
passing 38th Parallel
Lodge spoke from Saigon “We are morally right,
we are Morally Right,
serving the cause of freedom forever giving these people
an opportunity … almost like thinking”—
He’s broadcasting serious-voice on Xmas Eve to America
Entering Los Angeles space age
three stations simultaneous radio—
Cut-Up Sounds that fill Aether,
voices back of the brain—
The voice of Lodge, all well, Moral—
voice of a poor poverty worker,
“Well they dont know anybody dont
know anything about the poor all
the money’s going to the politicians
in Syracuse, none of it’s going to the poor.”
Evers’ voice the black Christmas March
“We want to be treated like Men, like human …”
Mass Arrest of Campers Outside LBJ Ranch
Aquamarine lights revolving along the highway,
night stars over L.A., exit trees,
turquoise brilliance shining on sidestreets—
Xmas Eve 1965
A Methedrine Vision in Hollywood
Here at the atomic Crack-end of Time XX Century
History swifting past horse chariot earth wheel
So I in mid-age, finished with half desire
Tranquil in my hairy body, familiar beard face,
Same fingers to pen
as twenty years ago began
scribbled Confession to fellow Beings
Americans—
Heavenly creatures,
This universe a thing of dream
substance naught & Keystone void
vibrations of symmetry Yes No
Foundation of Gold Element Atom
all the way down to the first Wave
making opposite Nothing a mirror
which begat a wave of Ladies marrying
waves of Gentlemen till I was born in 1926
in Newark, New Jersey under the sign of
sweet Gemini—
Whole universes hived upon the first
dumb Jerk
that wasn’t there—The
Only One escape from the black Not Ever
was Itself,
a extra click of Life woke
because Nothing had no hand to switch off
the Light.
The first dumb Jerk,
one wave, Forward! one way too many—
So forward got backward, & Sideways both
got there simultaneous with up
and down who got each other
Meanwhile the first Being got its non-Being
Opposite which never had to be there before
This calamity, this accident, this Goof,
this Imperceptible Sneak of Dimension,
Some Move-Push tickle, Aleph or Aum
swallowed before uttered,
one-eyed sparkle, giant glint, any tiny fart
or rose-whiff before roses were
Thought Impossible
filled every corner of Emptiness with Symmetries of
Impossible Universe with no Idea
How Come, & Opposite Possible Kosmoses assembled Doubtless—
One makes two, symmetry’s infinite touch
makes Sound bounce, light sees
waves reproduce oceans,
vibrations are red white & blue—
All like a 3 dimensional TV dream
like Science-fiction opera
sung by inexistent Gas-brains
in their N-dimensional bag,
Some what a bubble, some what dewdrop
Some what a blossom, some what lightning flash,
Some what the old Jew in the Hospital—
snap of dying fingers,
“Where did it all go?”
Made of Ideas, waves, dots, hot projectors
mirror movie screens,
Some what the Shadow cast at Radio City
Music Hall Xmas 1939
gone, gone, utterly completely gone
to a world of Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs—
Made up of cartoon picture clouds, papier-mâché
Japanese lantern stage sets strung
with moon lights, neon arc-flames,
electric switches, thunder
reverberating from phonograph record tape machine
Tin sheets of Zeus on
the Microphone jacked to gigantic Amplifiers, gauge
needle jumping, red lights warning Other
Dimensions off the overloaded public address Sound
Systems feedback thru blue void
echoing the Real of Endless Film.
Xmas 1965
Hiway Poesy: L.A.-Albuquerque-Texas-Wichita
up up and away!
we’re off, Thru America—
Heading East to San Berdoo
as West did, Nathanael,
California Radio Lady’s voice
Talking about Viet Cong—
Oh what a beautiful morning
Sung for us by Nelson Eddy
Two trailer trucks, Sunkist oranges / bright colored
piled over the sides
rolling on the road
Gray hulk of Mt. Baldy under
white misted skies
Red Square signs unfold, Texaco Shell
Harvey House tilted over the superhighway—
Afternoon Light
Children in back of a car
with Bubblegum
a flight of birds out of a dry field like mosquitoes
“… several battalions of U.S. troops in a search and destroy operation in the Coastal plain near Bong Son, 300 mi. Northeast of Saigon. Thus far the fighting has been a series of small cla
shes. In a related action 25 miles to the South, Korean troops killed 35 Viet Cong near Coastal highway Number One.”
“For he’s oh so Good
and he’s oh so fine
and he’s oh so healthy
in his body and his mind”
The Kinks on car radio
In Riverside,
a 1920s song—
“It’s the only words I know / that you’ll
understand”
For my uncle Max dead 5 years ago
it’s settled—buried
under the blue mountain wall,
Veined with snow at the top
clouds passing
icy remote heights
Palmtrees on valley floor
stick up toothpick hairheads—
Toy automobiles piled crushed and mangled
topped by a hanging crane,
The planet hanging,
the air hanging,
Trees hang their branches,
A dirt truck hanging on the highway—
Spectacle of Afternoon,
giant pipes glistening in the universe
Magic that weighs tons and tons,
Old bum with his rough
tattered pack hunched
walking up the hill hanging
to Ukipah
cloth cap pulled over his head
black fingernails.
A wall, a wall, a Mesa Wall, There’s desert
flat mountain shadows
miles along the pale pink floor
—Indio in space.
The breath of spring, the breath of fear
Mexican border …
The LSD cube—
silence.
There’s those Hellies again,
over hiway, as over Mekong
belly lights blinking red
prob’ly surveying the border—
shotguns stickin’ out all over
—Two birds swoop under car dashboard.
Purple Mist,
motor tire drone.
Sacrifice for Prosperity, says Johnson.
Joshua Tree Monument
Blue dusk.
Bomb China
says Southern Senator Stennis—
Mobil’s neon Pegasus flying overhill.
Colorado River border,
Two lemons an orange seized,
Scaly Mites
and the cube of acid smuggled into Arizona …
“It all comes from Crystal hill”—
The whole countryside’s Quartzite hereabouts—
Huntley’s Perspective on the News
Sukarno a Nut? A wildman?
or potential friend?
Brought to you by Mercury
boasting “sweet
success taste”—
They can go around saying things about people,
Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 30
