Collected Poems 1947-1997

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Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 49

by Allen Ginsberg


  Bless the dead last Philosophers, thought of the thought of Philosophers

  Perfected Wisdom’s teachers escaped from Blessing and the Bliss of grasping prayer

  ’scaped from the curse of meditation on a cushion on yr ass

  Dead that’ve left breath, renounced sex body, suffered stroke & begone

  alone, the drinker, thinker, divorcé, grandfather weary wise

  dying in bed night’s stillness silent and wake.

  November 17, 1973

  Teton Village

  Snow mountain fields

  seen thru transparent wings

  of a fly on the windowpane

  November 29, 1973

  Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass

  lemme kiss your face, lick your neck

  touch your lips, tongue tickle tongue end

  nose to nose, quiet questions

  ever slept with a man before?

  hand stroking your back slowly down to the cheeks’ moist hair soft asshole

  eyes to eyes blur, a tear strained from seeing—

  Come on boy, fingers thru my hair

  Pull my beard, kiss my eyelids, tongue my ear, lips light on my forehead

  —met you in the street you carried my package—

  Put your hand down to my legs,

  touch if it’s there, the prick shaft delicate

  hot in your rounded palm, soft thumb on cockhead—

  Come on come on kiss me full lipped, wet tongue, eyes open—

  animal in the zoo looking out of skull cage—you

  smile, I’m here so are you, hand tracing your abdomen

  from nipple down rib cage smooth skinn’d past belly veins, along muscle to your silk-shiny groin

  across the long prick down your right thigh

  up the smooth road muscle wall to titty again—

  Come on go down on me your throat

  swallowing my shaft to the base tongue

  cock solid suck—

  I’ll do the same your stiff prick’s soft skin, lick your ass—

  Come on Come on, open up, legs apart here this pillow

  under your buttock

  Come on take it here’s vaseline the hard on here’s

  your old ass lying easy up in the air—here’s

  a hot prick at yr soft mouthed asshole—just relax and let it in—

  Yeah just relax hey Carlos lemme in, I love you, yeah how come

  you came here anyway except this kiss arms round my neck mouth open your

  two eyes looking up, this hard slow thrust this

  softness this relaxed sweet sigh.

  New York, January 3, 1974

  Jaweh and Allah Battle

  Jaweh with Atom Bomb

  Allah cuts throat of Infidels

  Jaweh’s armies beat down neighboring tribes

  Will Red Sea waters close & drown th’armies of Allah?

  Israel’s tribes worshipping the Golden Calf

  Moses broke the Tablets of Law.

  Zalmon Schacter Lubovitcher Rebbe what you say

  Stone Commandments broken on the ground

  Sufi Sam whaddya say

  Shall Prophet’s companions dance circled

  round Synagogue while Jews doven bearded electric?

  Both Gods Terrible! Awful Jaweh Allah!

  Both hook-nosed gods, circumcised.

  Jaweh Allah which unreal?

  Which stronger Illusion?

  Which stronger Army?

  Which gives most frightening command?

  What God maintain egohood in Eden? Which be Nameless?

  Which enter Abyss of Light?

  Worlds of Gods, jealous Warriors, Humans, Animals & Flowers,

  Hungry Ghosts, even Hell Beings all die,

  Snake cock and pig eat each other’s tails & perish

  All Jews all Moslems’ll die All Israelis all Arabs

  Cairo’s angry millions Jerusalem’s multitudes

  suffer Death’s dream Armies in battle!

  Yea let Tribes wander to tin camps at cold Europe’s walls?

  Yea let the Million sit in desert shantytowns with tin cups?

  I’m a Jew cries Allah! Buddha circumcised!

  Snake sneaking an apple to Eden—

  Alien, Wanderer, Caller of the Great Call!

  What Prophet born on this ground

  bound me Eternal to Palestine

  circled by Armies tanks, droning bomber motors,

  radar electric computers?

  What Mind directed Stern Gang Irgun Al Fatah

  Black September?

  Meyer Lansky? Nixon Shah? Gangster? Premier? King?

  one-eyed General Dayan?

  Golda Meir & Kissinger bound me with Arms?

  HITLER AND STALIN SENT ME HERE!

  WEIZMANN & BEN-GURION SENT ME HERE!

  NASSER AND SADAT SENT ME HERE!

  ARAFAT SENT ME HERE! MESSIAH SENT ME HERE!

  GOD SENT ME HERE!

  Buchenwald sent me here! Vietnam sent me here!

  Mylai sent me here!

  Lidice sent me here!

  My mother sent me here!

  I WAS BORN HERE IN ISRAEL, Arab

  circumcised, my father had a coffee shop in Jerusalem

  One day the Soldiers came & told me to walk down road my hands up

  walk away leave my house business forever!

  The Israelis sent me here!

  Solomon’s Temple the Pyramids & Sphinx sent me here!

  JAWEH AND ALLAH SENT ME HERE!

  Abraham will take me to his bosom!

  Mohammed will guide me to Paradise!

  Christ sent me here to be crucified!

  Buddha will wipe us out and destroy the world.

  The New York Times and Cairo Editorialist Heykal sent me here!

  Commentary and Palestine Review sent me here!

  The International Zionist Conspiracy sent me here!

  Syrian Politicians sent me here! Heroic Pan-Arab

  Nationalists sent me here!

  They’re sending Armies to my side—

  The Americans & Russians are sending bombing planes tanks

  Chinese Egyptians Syrians help me battle for my righteous

  house my Soul’s dirt Spirit’s Nation body’s

  boundaries & Self’s territory my

  Zionist homeland my Palestine inheritance

  The Capitalist Communist & Third World Peoples’

  Republics Dictatorships Police States Socialisms & Democracies

  are all sending Deadly Weapons to our aid!

  We shall triumph over the Enemy!

  Maintain our Separate Identity! Proud

  History evermore!

  Defend our own bodies here this Holy Land! This hill

  Golgotha never forget, never relinquish

  inhabit thru Eternity

  under Allah Christ Yaweh forever one God

  Shema Yisroel Adonoi Eluhenu Adonoi Echad!

  La ilah illa’ Allah hu!

  OY! AH! HU! OY! AH! HU!

  SHALOM! SHANTIH! SALAAM!

  New York, January 13, 1974

  Manifesto

  Let me say beginning I don’t believe in Soul

  The heart, famous heart’s a bag of shit I wrote 25 years ago

  O my immortal soul! youthful poet Shelley cried

  O my immortal Ego—little knowing

  he didn’t believe in God. Neither do I.

  Nor all science reason reality and good moral Will—

  collections of empty atoms as Kerouac Buddha scribed.

  Neither does great love immortal defy pain nightmare Death Torture Saigon Police Underground Press Pravda Bill of Rights—

  And while we’re at it, let’s denounce Democracy, Fascism, Communism and heroes.

  Art’s not empty if it shows its own emptiness

  Poetry useful leaves its own skeleton hanging in air

  like Buddha, Shakespeare & Rimbaud.

  Serious, dispense with law except Cause & Eff
ect, even the latter has exceptions

  No cause & effect is not foolproof.

  There is Awareness—which confounds the Soul, Heart, God, Science Love Governments and Cause & Effects’ Nightmare.

  New York, January 28, 1974, 1 A.M.

  Sad Dust Glories

  To the Dead

  You were here on earth, in cities—

  where now?

  Bones in the ground,

  thoughts in my mind.

  *

  Teacher

  bring me to heaven

  or leave me alone.

  Why make me work so hard

  when everything’s spread around

  open, like forest’s poison oak turned red

  empty sleepingbags hanging from

  a dead branch.

  *

  When I sit

  I see dust motes in my eye

  Ponderosa needles trembling

  shine green

  in blue sky.

  Wind sound passes thru

  pine tops, distant

  windy waves flutter black

  oak leaves

  and leave them still

  like my mind

  which forgets

  why the bluejay across the woods’

  clearing

  squawks, mid afternoon.

  *

  The mood

  is sadness, dead friends,

  or the boy I slept with last night

  came twice silently

  and I still lie in the colored

  hammock, half naked

  reading poetry

  Sunday

  in bright sun pine shade.

  *

  KENJI MYAZAWA

  “All is Buddhahood

  to who has cried even once

  Glory be?”

  So I said glory be

  looking down at a pine

  feather

  risen beside a dead leaf

  on brown duff

  where a fly wavers an inch

  above ground

  midsummer.

  *

  Could you be here?

  Really be here

  and forget the void?

  I am, it’s peaceful, empty,

  filled with green Ponderosa

  swaying parallel crests

  fan-like needle circles

  glittering haloed

  in sun that moves slowly

  lights up my hammock

  heats my face skin

  and knees.

  *

  Wind makes sound

  in tree tops

  like express trains like city

  machinery

  Slow dances high up, huge

  branches wave back & forth sensitive

  needlehairs bob their heads

  —it’s too human, it’s not human

  It’s treetops, whatever they think,

  It’s me, whatever I think,

  It’s the wind talking.

  * *

  The moon followed by Jupiter thru pinetrees,

  A mosquito comes round your head buzzing

  you know he’s going to bite you if he can—

  First you look at your thoughts

  then you look at the moon

  then look at the reflection of the moon in your eyeball

  splatter of light on surface retina

  opening and closing the blotched circle

  and the mosquito buzzes, disturbing your senses

  and you remember your itching thumb as mind

  wanders again.

  *

  Shobo-an

  The Acorn people

  read newspapers

  by kerosene light.

  *

  By Kitkitdizze Pond in June with Gary Snyder

  Bookkeeping in the moonlight

  —“frogs count

  my checks.”

  *

  Driving Volkswagen

  with tired feet

  returned from camping

  in Black Buttes

  thru sad dust glories

  turning off Malakoff

  Diggings road

  Blinded by sunlight

  squirrel in

  windshield.

  September 1974

  Ego Confessions

  (1974–1977)

  Ego Confession

  I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America

  Introduced to Gyalwa Karmapa heir of the Whispered Transmission Crazy Wisdom Practice Lineage

  as the secret young wise man who visited him and winked anonymously decade ago in Gangtok

  Prepared the way for Dharma in America without mentioning Dharma—scribbled laughter

  Who saw Blake and abandoned God

  To whom the Messianic Fink sent messages darkest hour sleeping on steel sheets “somewhere in the Federal Prison system” Weathermen got no Moscow Gold

  who went backstage to Cecil Taylor serious chat chord structure & Time in a nightclub

  who fucked a rose-lipped rock star in a tiny bedroom slum watched by a statue of Vajrasattva—

  and overthrew the CIA with a silent thought—

  Old Bohemians many years hence in Viennese beergardens’ll recall

  his many young lovers with astonishing faces and iron breasts

  gnostic apparatus and magical observation of rainbow-lit spiderwebs

  extraordinary cooking, lung stew & Spaghetti a la Vongole and recipe for salad dressing 3 parts oil one part vinegar much garlic and honey a spoonful

  his extraordinary ego, at service of Dharma and completely empty

  unafraid of its own self’s spectre

  parroting gossip of gurus and geniuses famous for their reticence—

  Who sang a blues made rock stars weep and moved an old black guitarist to laughter in Memphis—

  I want to be the spectacle of Poesy triumphant over trickery of the world

  Omniscient breathing its own breath thru War tear gas spy hallucination

  whose common sense astonished gaga Gurus and rich Artistes—

  who called the Justice department & threaten’d to Blow the Whistle

  Stopt Wars, turned back petrochemical Industries’ Captains to grieve & groan in bed

  Chopped wood, built forest houses & established farms

  distributed monies to poor poets & nourished imaginative genius of the land

  Sat silent in jazz roar writing poetry with an ink pen—

  wasn’t afraid of God or Death after his 48th year—

  let his brains turn to water under Laughing Gas his gold molar pulled by futuristic dentists

  Seaman knew ocean’s surface a year

  carpenter late learned bevel and mattock

  son, conversed with elder Pound & treated his father gently

  —All empty all for show, all for the sake of Poesy

  to set surpassing example of sanity as measure for late generations

  Exemplify Muse Power to the young avert future suicide

  accepting his own lie & the gaps between lies with equal good humor

  Solitary in worlds full of insects & singing birds all solitary

  —who had no subject but himself in many disguises

  some outside his own body including empty air-filled space forests & cities—

  Even climbed mountains to create his mountain, with ice ax & crampons & ropes, over Glaciers—

  San Francisco, October 1974

  Mugging

  I

  Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street’s dusk—

  Walked out of my home ten years, walked out in my honking neighborhood

  Tonite at seven walked out past garbage cans chained to concrete anchors

  Walked under black painted fire escapes, giant castiron plate covering a hole in ground

  —Crossed the street, traffic lite red, thirteen bus roaring by liquor store,

  past corner pharmacy iron grated, past Coca Cola & Mylai post
ers fading scraped on brick

  Past Chinese Laundry wood door’d, & broken cement stoop steps For Rent hall painted green & purple Puerto Rican style

  Along E. 10th’s glass splattered pavement, kid blacks & Spanish oiled hair adolescents’ crowded house fronts—

  Ah, tonite I walked out on my block NY City under humid summer sky Halloween,

  thinking what happened Timothy Leary joining brain police for a season?

  thinking what’s all this Weathermen, secrecy & selfrighteousness beyond reason—F.B.I. plots?

  Walked past a taxicab controlling the bottle strewn curb—

  past young fellows with their umbrella handles & canes leaning against a ravaged Buick

  —and as I looked at the crowd of kids on the stoop—a boy stepped up, put his arm around my neck

  tenderly I thought for a moment, squeezed harder, his umbrella handle against my skull,

  and his friends took my arm, a young brown companion tripped his foot ’gainst my ankle—

  as I went down shouting Om Ah Hu? to gangs of lovers on the stoop watching

  slowly appreciating, why this is a raid, these strangers mean strange business

  with what—my pockets, bald head, broken-healed-bone leg, my softshoes, my heart—

  Have they knives? Om Ah Hu?—Have they sharp metal wood to shove in eye ear ass? Om Ah Hu?

  & slowly reclined on the pavement, struggling to keep my woolen bag of poetry address calendar & Leary-lawyer notes hung from my shoulder

  dragged in my neat orlon shirt over the crossbar of a broken metal door

  dragged slowly onto the fire-soiled floor an abandoned store, laundry candy counter 1929—

  now a mess of papers & pillows & plastic car seat covers cracked cockroachcorpsed ground—

  my wallet back pocket passed over the iron foot step guard

  and fell out, stole by God Muggers’ lost fingers, Strange—

  Couldn’t tell—snakeskin wallet actually plastic, 70 dollars my bank money for a week,

  old broken wallet—and dreary plastic contents—Amex card & Manf. Hanover Trust Credit too—business card from Mr. Spears British Home Minister Drug Squad—my draft card—membership ACLU & Naropa Institute Instructor’s identification

  Om Ah Hu? I continued chanting Om Ah Hu?

  Putting my palm on the neck of an 18 year old boy fingering my back pocket crying “Where’s the money”

  “Om Ah Hu? there isn’t any”

  My card Chief Boo-Hoo Neo American Chruch New Jersey & Lower East Side

  Om Ah Hu?—what not forgotten crowded wallet—Mobil Credit, Shell? old lovers addresses on cardboard pieces, booksellers calling cards—

 

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