curtains hanging on New York, one window lit
in unfinished skyscraper.
Swami White Beard
Being-Consciousness-Delight’s photo’s tacked
to bookshelf filled with Cosmic Milarepa, Wm. Blake’s
Prophetic Writings, Buddhist Logic & Hymn to the Goddess,
and many another toy volume of orient lore, poetry crap;
Poe sober knew his white skull, tranquil Stein
repeated one simple idea Making Americans on Space Age’s
edge whiten thought to transparent Place. Peace!
Done, finished with body cock desire, anger
shouting at bus drivers, Presidents & Police.
Gone to other shore, empty house, no lovers
suffering under bedsheets, inconceived babies calm.
Surge, a little abdomen warmth, the bus grinds
cobbles past red light, garbage trucks uplift iron
buttocks, old meat gravy & tin cans sink to bottom
in the Airfield. City edge woods wave branches
in chill breeze darkness under Christmas moon.
December 14, 1966
Holy Ghost on the Nod over the Body of Bliss
Is this the God of Gods, the one I heard about
in memorized language Universities murmur?
Dollar bills can buy it! the great substance
exchanges itself freely through all the world’s
poetry money, past and future currencies
issued & redeemed by the identical bank,
electric monopoly after monopoly owl-eyed
on every one of 90 billion dollarbills vibrating
to the pyramid-top in the United States of Heaven—
Aye aye Sir Owl Oh say can you see in the dark you
observe Minerva nerveless in Nirvana because
Zeus rides reindeer thru Bethlehem’s blue sky.
It’s Buddha sits in Mary’s belly waving Kuan
Yin’s white hand at the Yang-tze that Mao sees,
tongue of Kali licking Krishna’s soft blue lips.
Chango holds Shiva’s prick, Ouroboros eats th’cobalt bomb,
Parvati on YOD’s perfumèd knee cries Aum
& Santa Barbara rejoices in the alleyways of Brindaban
La illaha el (lill) Allah hu—Allah Akbar!
Goliath struck down by kidneystone, Golgothas grow old,
All these wonders are crowded in the Mind’s Eye
Superman & Batman race forward, Zarathustra on Coyote’s ass,
Lao-tze disappearing at the gate, God mocks God,
Job sits bewildered that Ramakrishna is Satan
and Bodhidharma forgot to bring Nothing.
December 1966
Bayonne Turnpike to Tuscarora
Gray water tanks in gray mist,
gray robot
towers carrying wires thru Bayonne’s
smog, silver
domes, green chinaworks steaming,
Christmas’s leftover lights hanging
from a smokestack—
Monotone gray highway into the gray West—
Noon hour, the planet smoke-covered
Truck wheels roar forward
spinning past the garbagedump
Gas smell wafting thru Rahway overpass
oiltanks in frozen ponds, cranes’ feederladders &
Electric generator trestles, Batteries open under heaven
Anger in the heart—
hallucinations in the car cabin, rattling
bone ghosts left and right
by the car door—the broken camper icebox—
On to Pennsylvania turnpike
Evergreens in Snow
Laundry hanging from the blue bungalow
Mansfield and U Thant ask halt Bombing North Vietnam
State Department says “Tit For Tat.”
Frank Sinatra with negro voice
enters a new phase—
Flat on his face 50 years “I’ve been a beggar & a clown
a poet & a star, roll myself in July
up into a ball and die.”
Radio pumping
artificial rock & roll, Beach Boys
& Sinatra’s daughter overdubbed microphone
antennae’d car dashboard vibrating
False emotions broadcast thru the Land
Natural voices made synthetic,
phlegm obliterated
Smart ones work with electronics—
What are the popular songs on the Hiway?
“Home I’m Comin Home I am a Soldier—”
“The girl I left behind…
I did the best job I could
Helping to keep our land free
I am a soldier”
Lulled into War
thus commercial jabber Rock & Roll Announcers
False False False
“Enjoy this meat—”
Weak A&P SuperRight ground round
Factories building, airwaves pushing …
Trees stretch up parallel into gray sky
Yellow trucks roll down lane—
Hypnosis of airwaves
In the house you can’t break it
unless you turn off yr set
In the car it can drive yr eyes inward
from the snowy hill,
withdraw yr mind from the birch forest
make you forget the blue car in the ice,
Drive yr mind down Supermarket aisles
looking for cans of Save-Your-Money
Polishing-Glue
made of human bones manufactured in N. Vietnam
during a mustard gas hallucination:
The Super-Hit sound of All American Radio.
Turnpike to Tuscarora
Snowfields, red lights blinking in the broken car
Quiet hills’ genital hair black in Sunset
Beautiful dusk over human tininess
Pennsylvanian intimacy,
approaching Tuscarora Tunnel
Quiet moments off the road, Tussey Mountains’
snowfields untouched.
A missile lost Unprogrammed
Twisting in flight to crash 100 miles
south of Cuba into the
Blue Carib!
Diplomatic messages exchanged
“Don’t Worry it’s only the Setting Sun—”
(Western correspondents assembling in Hanoi)
“perfect ball of orange in its cup of clouds”
Dirty Snowbanks pushed aside from Asphalt thruway-edge—
Uphill’s the little forests where the boyhoods grow
their bare feet—
Night falling, “Jan 4 1967, The Vatican Announces Today
No Jazz at the Altar!”
Maybe in Africa
maybe in Asia they got funny music
& strange dancing before the Lord
But here in the West No More Jazz at the Altar,
“It’s an alien custom—”
Missa Luba crashing thru airwaves with Demonic Drums
behind Kyrie Eleison—
Millions of tiny silver Western crucifixes for sale
in the Realms of King Baudouin—
Color TV in this year—weekly
the Pope sits in repose & slumbers to classical music
in his purple hat—
Gyalwa Karmapa sits in Rumtek Monastery, Sikkim
& yearly shows his most remarkable woven Dakini-hair
black Magic Hat
Whose very sight is Total Salvation—
Ten miles from Gangtok—take a look!
* * * *
Mary Garden dead in Aberdeen,
Jack Ruby dead in Dallas—
Sweet green incense in car cabin.
(Dakini sleeping head bowed, hair braided
over her Rudraksha beads
driving through Pennsylvania.
Julius, bearded, hasn’t eaten all day
sitting forward, pursing his lips, calm.)
in Texas, sleep Jack from Chicago,
Friend of the Mafia, friend of the cops
friend of the dancing girls—
Under the viaduct near the book depot
Under the hospital Attacked by Motorcades,
Under Nightclubs under all the
groaning bodies of Dallas,
under their angry mouths
Sleep Jack Ruby, rest at last,
bouquet’d with cancer.
Ruby, Oswald, Kennedy gone
New Years’ 1967 come,
Reynolds Metals up a Half
Mary Garden, 92, sleeping tonite in Aberdeen.
Three trucks adorned with yellow lights crawl uproad
under winter network-shade, bare trees, night fallen.
Under Tuscarora Mountain, long tunnel,
WBZ Boston coming thru—
“Nobody needs icecream nobody needs pot nobody
needs movies.”
… “Public Discussion.”
Is sexual Intercourse any Good? Can the kids handle it?
out the Tunnel,
The Boston Voice returning: “controlled circumstances …”
Into tunnel, static silence,
Trucks roar by in carbon-mist,
Anger falling asleep at the heart.
White Rembrandt, the hills—
Silver domed silo standing above house
in the white reality place
farm up the road,
Mist Quiet on Woods,
Silent Reality everywhere.
Till the eye catches the billboards—
Howard Johnson’s Silent Diamond Reality
“makes the difference.”
Student cannon fodder prepared for next Congress session
Willow Hill, Willow hill, Cannon Fodder, Cannon fodder—
And the Children of the Warmakers’re exempt from fighting
their parents’ war—
Those with intellectual money capacities who go to college
till 1967—
Slowly the radio war news
steals o’er the senses—
Negro photographs in Rochester
ax murders in Cleveland,
Anger at heart base
all over the Nation—
Husbands ready to murder their wives
at the drop of a hat-statistic
I could take an ax and split Peter’s skull with pleasure—
Great trucks crawl up road
insect-lit with yellow bulbs outside Pittsburgh,
“The Devil with Blue Dress” exudes over radio,
car headlights gleam on motel signs in blackness,
Satanic Selfs covering nature
spiked with trees.
Crash of machineguns, ring of locusts, airplane roar,
calliope yell, bzzzs.
January 4, 1967
An Open Window on Chicago
Midwinter night,
Clark & Halstead brushed with this week’s snow
grill lights blinking at the corner
decades ago
Smokestack poked above roofs & watertower
standing still above the blue
lamped boulevards,
sky blacker than th’ east
for all the steel smoke
settled in heaven from South.
Downtown—like Batman’s Gotham City
battleshipped with Lights,
towers winking under clouds,
police cars blinking on Avenues,
space above city misted w/fine soot
cars crawling past redlites down Avenue,
exuding white wintersmoke—
Eat Eat said the sign, so I went in the Spanish Diner
The girl at the counter, whose yellow Bouffant roots
grew black over her pinch’d face,
spooned her coffee with knuckles
puncture-marked,
whose midnight wrists had needletracks,
scars inside her arms:
“Wanna go get a Hotel Room with me?”
The Heroin Whore
thirty years ago come haunting Chicago’s midnite streets,
me come here so late with my beard!
Corner Grill-lights blink, police car turned
& took away its load of bum to jail,
black uniforms patrolling streets
where suffering
lifts a hand palsied by Parkinson’s Disease
to beg a cigarette.
The psychiatrist came visiting this Hotel 12th floor—
Where does the Anger come from?
Outside! Radio messages, images on Television,
Electric Networks spread
fear of murder on the streets—
“Communications Media”
inflict the Vietnam War & its anxiety on every private skin
in hotel room or bus—
Sitting, meditating quietly on Great Space outside—
Bleep Bleep dit dat dit radio on, Television
murmuring,
bombshells crash on flesh
his flesh my flesh all the same.—
The Dakini in the hotel room turns in her sleep
while War news flashes thru Aether—
Shouts at streetcorners as bums
crawl in the metal policevan.
And there’s a tiny church in middle Chicago
with its black spike to the black air
And there’s the new Utensil Towers round on horizon.
And there’s red glow of Central Neon
on hushed building walls at 4 A.M.,
And there’s proud Lights & Towers of Man’s Central City
looking pathetic at 4 A.M., traveler passing through,
staring outa hotel window under Heaven—
Is this tiny city the best we can do?
These tiny reptilian towers
so proud of their Executives
they haveta build a big sign in middle downtown
to Advertise
old Connor’s Insurance sign fading on brick
building side—
Snow on deserted roofs & parkinglots—
Hog Butcher to the World!?
Taxi-Harmonious Modernity grown rusty-old—
The prettiness of Existence! To sit at the window
& moan over Chicago’s stone & brick
lifting itself vertical tenderly,
hanging from the sky.
Elbow on windowsill,
I lean and muse, taller than any building here
Steam from my head
wafting into the smog
Elevators running up & down my leg
Couples copulating in hotelroom beds in my belly
& bearing children in my heart,
Eyes shining like warning-tower Lights,
Hair hanging down like a black cloud—
Close your eyes on Chicago and be God,
all Chicago is, is what you see—
That row of lights Finance Building
sleeping on its bottom floors,
Watchman stirring
paper coffee cups by bronzed glass doors—
and under the bridge, brown water
floats great turds of ice beside buildings’ feet
in windy metropolis
waiting for a Bomb.
January 8, 1967
Returning North of Vortex
Red Guards battling country workers
in Nanking
Ho-Tei trembles,
Mao’s death near,
Snow over Iowa
cornstalks on icy hills,
bus wheels murmuring in afternoon brilliance toward Council Bluffs
hogs in sunlight, dead rabbits on asphalt
Booneville passed, Crane quiet,
highway empty—silence as
house doors open, food on table,
nobody home—
sign thru windshield
100 Miles More to the Missouri.
How toy-like Pall Mall’s red embossed pack
cellophane gleaming in sunshine,
Indian-head stamped crown crested,
shewing its dry leaf of history to my eye
now that I no longer reach my hand to the ashtray
nor since Xmas have lit a smoke.
One puff I remember the 18 year joy-musk of manhood
that curled thru my nostrils first time I kissed
another human body—
that time with Joe Army, he seduced me
into smoking—
I’ll give Swami a present like Santa Claus—
no attachment—
No meat nor tabaccy—even sex questionable
Now in America craving its billions
of needles of War.
Detach yrself from Matter, & look about
at the bright snowy show of Iowa,
Earth & heaven mirroring
eachother’s light,
tiny meat-trucks rolling downhill
toward deep Omaha.
This is History, to quit smoking Anger-leaf
into one man’s lungs,
glancing up at gravestone rows
in hill woods thru rear window.
This is History: Iowa’s Finest Comics:
Sunday, Rex Morgan M.D. in snowstorm,
Mustachio’d villain cruel eyed
with long European hair
doubletalking the Doc
“Meanwhile, under the influence of LSD
Veronica races through the fields
in an acute panic”—
Author Dal Curtis
In a violet box her big tits fall on snowy ground.
Gray ice floating down Missouri, sunset into Omaha
Bishop’s Buffets, German Chocolate, wall to wall carpet
Om A Hah, Om Ah Hu?
“The land summoned them and they loved it” cut in granite
Post Office lintel, Walt Disney
playing at State, week after his death.
Table service, fireplace, armchairs,
homeostasis in Omaha.
Steve Canyon Comics in Color:
U.S. Military Seabees chopper
operation dropping bridges
over the “Lake of the Black Wind”
Princess Snowflower will
“speak over the bullhorn to the
herdsmen—
So they won’t think it’s a Chincom trick.”
Ten-year-olds in Sunday
morning sunlight on the rug
dreaming of slack-cheekboned blond
big cocked Steve Canyon
fucking the yellow bellies
tied face down naked on the floor of the lone helicopter
And on Sunday Evening the Reverend Preacher
C. O. Staggerflup—
America’s Hope
POB 72 Hopkins Minnesota
Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 38
