Isaiah denouncing the root of Evil to the Nation
14 billion 200 million a year to the Debt Money System,
Rolling back darkness in Nebraska—
Shanghai water power cut off by Mao’s enemies
I am a Rock, I am an Island radio souls cry
passing north of Lincoln’s tiny bright downtown horizon;
Square banks huddled under Capitol turret blinking red,
electric tower steam-drifts
ribboned across building tops
under city’s ruby night-glow—
Let the Viet Cong win over the American Army!
Dice of Prophecy cast on the giant plains!
Drum march on airwaves, anger march in the mouth,
Xylophones & trumpets screaming thru American brain—
Our violence unabated after a year
in mid-America returned, I prophesy against
this my own Nation
enraptured in hypnotic war.
And if it were my wish, we’d lose & our will
be broken
& our armies scattered as we’ve scattered the airy guerrillas
of our own yellow imagination.
Mothers weep & Sons be dumb
your brothers & children murder
the beautiful yellow bodies of Indochina
in dreams invented for your eyes by TV
all yr talk gibberish mouthed by radio,
yr politics mapped by paper Star
Thought Consciousness
Form Feeling Sensation Imagination the
5 skandhas, realms of Buddha
Invaded by electronic media KLYL
News Bureau
& yr trapped in red winking Kansas
one giant delicate electrical antenna upraised
in midwinter Nebraska plains blackness
January 1967
I hope we lose this war.
Lincoln airforce Base, Ruby, Gochner
US 80 near Big Blue River,
The radio Bibl’d Hour, Dallas Texas
a great nose pushed out of the dashboard
demanding Your Faith Pledge!
Money your dollars support
The Radio Bible Hour.
You pledge to God to send
100 or 10 or 2 or $1 a month to the
Radio Bible Hour—
The electric network selling itself:
“The medium is the message”
Even so, Come, Lord Jesus!
Straight thru Nebraska at Midnight
toward North Platte & Ogallala
returning down black superhighways to Denver.
January 8, 1967
Wales Visitation
White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—
Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
the wisdom of earthly relations,
of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
orchards of mind language manifest human,
of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—
Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower
& network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness
clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—
Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!
All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
undulating on mossy hills
a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
on the mountainside
whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
in granitic undertow down—
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
and lifted the lambs to hold still
and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave
A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,
a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean
tonned with cloud-hang,
—Heaven balanced on a grassblade.
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—
No imperfection in the budded mountain,
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
horses dance in the warm rain,
tree-lined canals network live farmland,
blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,
pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—
Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
myriad-formed—
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells drooped
doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
& look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,
smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,
trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,
Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
Calling our Presence together
The great secret is no secret
Senses fit the winds,
Visible is visible,
rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,
gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
Heaven breath and my own symmetric
Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
Sounds of Aleph and Aum
through forests of gristle,
my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,
All Albion one.
What did I notice? Particulars! The
vision of the great One is myriad—
smoke curls upward from ashtray,
house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
starless
upward in motion with wet wind.
July 29, 1967 (LSD)—August 3, 1967 (London)
Pentagon Exorcism
“No taxation without representation”
Who represents my body in Pentagon? Who spends
my spirit’s billions for war manufacture? Who
levies the majority to exult unwilling in Bomb
Roar? “Brainwash!” Mind-fear! Governor’s language!
“Military-Industrial-Complex!” President’s language!
Corporate voices jabber on electric networks building
body-pain, chemical ataxia, physical slavery
to diaphanoid Chinese Cosmic-eye Military Tyranny
movie hysteria—Pay my taxes? No Westmoreland wants
to be Devil, others die for his General Power
sustaining hurt millions in house security
tuning to images on TV’s separate universe where
peasant manhoods burn in black & white forest
villages—represented less than myself by Magic
Intelligence influence matter-scientists’ Rockefeller
bank telephone war investment Usury Agency
executives jetting from McDonnell Douglas to General Dynamics
over smog-shrouded metal-noised treeless cities
patrolled by radio fear with tear gas, businessman!
Go spend your bright billions for this suffering!
Pentagon wake from planet-sleep! Apokatastasis!
Spirit Spirit Dance Dance Spirit Spirit Dance!
Transform Pentagon skeleton to maiden-temple O Phantom
Guevara! Om Raksa Raksa Hu? Hu? Hu? Phat Svaha!
Anger Control your Self feared Chaos, suffocation
body-death in Capitols caved with stone radar sentinels!
Back! Back! Back! Central Mind-machine Pentagon reverse
consciousness! Hallucination manifest! A million Americas
gaze out of man-spirit’s naked Pentacle! Magnanimous
reaction to signal Peking, isolate Space-beings!
Milan, September 29, 1967
Elegy Che Guevara
European Trib. boy’s face photo’d eyes opened,
young feminine beardless radiant kid
lain back smiling looking upward
Calm as if ladies’ lips were kissing invisible parts of the body
Aged reposeful angelic boy corpse,
perceptive Argentine Doctor, petulant Cuba Major
pipe mouth’d & faithfully keeping Diary
in mosquitos Amazonas
Sleep on a hill, dull Havana Throne renounced
More sexy your neck than sad aging necks of Johnson
De Gaulle, Kosygin,
or the bullet pierced neck of John Kennedy
Eyes more intelligent glanced up to death newspapers
than worried living Congress Cameras passing
dot screens into TV shade, glass-eyed
McNamara, Dulles in old life …
Women in bowler hats sitting in mud outskirts 11,000 feet up in Heaven
with a headache in La Paz
selling black potatoes brought down from earth roof’d huts
on mountain-lipped Puno
would’ve adored your desire and kissed your Visage new Christ
They’ll raise up a red-bulb-eyed war-mask’s
white tusks to scare soldier-ghosts
who shot thru your lungs
Incredible! one boy turned aside from operating room
or healing Pampas yellow eye
To face the stock rooms of Alcoa, Myriad Murderous
Board Directors of United Fruit
Smog-Manufacturing Trustees of Chicago U
Lawyer Phantoms ranged back to dead
John Foster Dulles’ Sullivan and Cromwell lawfirm
Acheson’s mustache, Truman’s bony hat
To go mad and hide in jungle on mule & point rifle at OAS
at Rusk’s egoic Courtesies, the metal deployments of Pentagon
derring-do Admen and dumbed intellectuals
from Time to the CIA
One boy against the Stock Market all Wall Street ascream
since Norris wrote The Pit
afraid of free dollars showering from the Observers’ Balcony
scattered by laughing younger brothers,
Against the Tin Company, against Wire Services,
against infrared sensor Telepath Capitalism’s
money-crazed scientists
against College boy millions watching Wichita Family Den TV
One radiant face driven mad with a rifle
Confronting the electric networks.
Venice, November 1967
War Profit Litany
To Ezra Pound
These are the names of the companies that have made money from this war
nineteenhundredsixtyeight Annodomini fourthousandeighty Hebraic
These Corporations have profited by merchandising skinburning phosphorus or shells fragmented to thousands of fleshpiercing needles
and here listed money millions gained by each combine for manufacture and here are gains numbered, index’d swelling a decade, set in order,
here named the Fathers in office in these industries, telephones directing finance,
names of directors, makers of fates, and the names of the stockholders of these destined Aggregates,
and here are the names of their ambassadors to the Capital, representatives to legislature, those who sit drinking in hotel lobbies to persuade,
and separate listed, those who drop Amphetamines with military, gossip, argue, and persuade
suggesting policy naming language proposing strategy, this done for fee as ambassadors to Pentagon, consultants to military, paid by their industry:
and these are the names of the generals & captains military, who now thus work for war goods manufacturers;
and above these, listed, the names of the banks, combines, investment trusts that control these industries:
and these are the names of the newspapers owned by these banks
and these are the names of the airstations owned by these combines;
and these are the numbers of thousands of citizens employed by these businesses named;
and the beginning of this accounting is 1958 and the end 1968, that statistic be contained in orderly mind, coherent & definite,
and the first form of this litany begun first day December 1967 furthers this poem of these States.
December 1, 1967
Elegies for Neal Cassady
(1968)
Elegy for Neal Cassady
OK Neal
aethereal Spirit
bright as moving air
blue as city dawn
happy as light released by the Day
over the city’s new buildings—
Maya’s Giant bricks rise rebuilt
in Lower East Side
windows shine in milky smog.
Appearance unnecessary now.
Peter sleeps alone next room, sad.
Are you reincarnate? Can ya hear me talkin?
If anyone had strength to hear the invisible,
And drive thru Maya Wall
you had it—
What’re you now, Spirit?
That were spirit in body—
The body’s cremate
by Railroad track
San Miguel Allende Desert,
outside town,
Spirit become spirit,
or robot reduced to Ashes.
Tender Spirit, thank you for touching me with tender hands
When you were young, in a beautiful body,
Such a pure touch it was Hope beyond Maya-meat,
What you are now,
Impersonal, tender—
you showed me your muscle/warmth/over twenty years ago
when I lay trembling at your breast
put your arm around my neck,
—we stood together in a bare room on 103d St.
Listening to a wooden Radio,
with our eyes closed
Eternal redness of Shabda
lamped in our brains
at Illinois Jacquet’s Saxophone Shuddering,
prophetic Honk of Louis Jordan,
Honeydrippers, Open The Door Richard
To Christ’s Apocalypse—
The buildings’re insubstantial—
That’s my New York Vision
outside eastern apartment offices
where telephone rang last night
and stranger’s friendly Denver Voice
asked me, had I heard the news from the West?
Some gathering Bust, Eugene Oregon or Hollywood Impends
I had premonition.
“No” I said—“been away all week,”
“you havent heard the News from the West,
Neal Cassady is dead—”
Peter’s dove-voic’d Oh! on the other line, listening.
Your picture stares cheerful, tearful, strain’d,
a candle burns,
green stick incense by household gods.
Military Tyranny overtakes Universities, your Prophecy
approaching its kindest sense brings us
Down
to the Great Year’s awakening.
Kesey’s in Oregon writing novel language
family farm alone.
Hadja no more to do? Was your work all done?
Had ya seen your first son?
Why’dja leave us all here?
Has the battle been won?
I’m a phantom skeleton with teeth, skull
resting on a pillow
calling your spirit
god echo consciousness, murmuring
sadly to myself.
Lament in dawnlight’s not needed,
the world is released,
desire fulfilled, your history over,
story told, Karma resolved,
prayers completed
vision manifest, new consciousness fulfilled,
spirit returned in a circle,
world left standing empty, buses roaring through streets—
garbage scattered on pavements galore—
Grandeur solidified, phantom-familiar fate
returned to Auto-dawn,
your destiny fallen on RR track
My body breathes easy,
I lie alone,
living
After friendship fades from flesh forms—
heavy happiness hangs in heart,
I could talk to you forever,
The pleasure inexhaustible,
discourse of spirit to spirit,
Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 39
