Collected Poems 1947-1997

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Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 51

by Allen Ginsberg


  Come All Ye Brave Boys

  Come all you young men that proudly display

  Your torsos to the Sun on upper Broadway

  Come sweet hearties so mighty with girls

  So lithe and naked to kiss their gold curls

  Come beautiful boys with breasts bright gold

  Lie down in bed with me ere ye grow old,

  Take down your blue jeans, we’ll have some raw fun

  Lie down on your bellies I’ll fuck your soft bun.

  Come heroic half naked young studs

  That drive automobiles through vaginal blood

  Come thin breasted boys and fat muscled kids

  With sturdy cocks you deal out green lids

  Turn over spread your strong legs like a lass

  I’ll show you the thrill to be jived up the ass

  Come sweet delicate strong minded men

  I’ll take you thru graveyards & kiss you again

  You’ll die in your life, wake up in my arms

  Sobbing and hugging & showing your charms

  Come strong darlings tough children hard boys

  Transformed with new tenderness, taught new joys

  We’ll lie embrac’d in full moonlight till dawn

  Whiteness shows sky high over the wet lawn

  Lay yr head on my shoulder kiss my lined brow

  & belly to belly kiss my neck now

  Yeah come on tight assed & strong cocked young fools

  & shove up my belly your hard tender tools,

  Suck my dick, lick my arm pit and breast

  Lie back & sigh in the dawn for a rest,

  Come in my arms, groan your sweet will

  Come again in my mouth, lie silent & still,

  Let me come in your butt, hold my head on your leg,

  Let’s come together, & tremble & beg.

  Boulder, August 25, 1975, 4 A.M.

  Sickness Blues

  Sickness Blues

  Lord Lord I got the sickness blues, I must’ve done something wrong

  There ain’t no Lord to call on, now my youth is gone

  Sickness blues, don’t want to fuck no more

  Sickness blues, can’t get it up no more

  Tears come in my eyes, feel like an old tired whore

  I went to see the doctor, he shot me with poison germs

  I got out of the hospital, my head was full of worms

  All I can think is Death, father’s getting old

  He can’t walk half a block, his feet feel cold

  I went down to Santa Fe take vacation there

  Indians selling turquoise in dobe huts in Taos Pueblo Square

  Got headache in La Fonda, I could get sick anywhere

  Must be my bad karma, fuckin these pretty boys

  Hungry ghosts chasing me, because I been chasing joys

  Lying here in bed alone, playing with my toys

  I musta been doing something wrong meat & cigarettes

  Bow down before my lord, 100 thousand regrets

  All my poems down in hell, that’s what pride begets

  Sick and angry, lying in my hospital bed

  Doctor Doctor bring morphine before I’m totally dead

  Sick and angry at the national universe O my aching head

  Someday I’m gonna get out of here, go somewhere alone

  Yeah I’m going to leave this town with noise of rattling bone

  I got the sickness blues, you’ll miss me when I’m gone

  Boulder, July 19, 1975

  Gospel Noble Truths

  Gospel Noble Truths

  Born in this world

  You got to suffer

  Everything changes

  You got no soul

  Try to be gay

  Ignorant happy

  You get the blues

  You eat jellyroll

  There is one Way

  You take the high road

  In your big Wheel

  8 steps you fly

  Look at the View

  Right to horizon

  Talk to the sky

  Act like you talk

  Work like the sun

  Shine in your heaven

  See what you done

  Come down & walk

  Sit you sit down

  Breathe when you breathe

  Lie down you lie down

  Walk where you walk

  Talk when you talk

  Cry when you cry

  Lie down you lie down

  Die when you die

  Look when you look

  Hear what you hear

  Taste what you taste here

  Smell what you smell

  Touch what you touch

  Think what you think

  Let go Let it go Slow

  Earth Heaven & Hell

  Die when you die

  Die when you die

  Lie down you lie down

  Die when you die

  New York Subway, October 17, 1975

  Lay Down Yr Mountain

  Rolling Thunder Stones

  I

  LAY DOWN YR MOUNTAIN

  Lay down Lay down yr mountain Lay down God

  Lay down Lay down your music Love lay down

  Lay down Lay down yr hatred Lay yrself down

  Lay down Lay down your nation Lay your foot on the rock

  Lay down yr whole creation Lay yr mind down

  Lay down Lay down yr empire Lay your whole world down

  Lay down your soul forever Lay your vision down

  Lay down yr bright body Down your golden heavy crown

  Lay down Lay down yr magic hey! Alchemist lay it down clear

  Lay down your practice precisely Lay down yr wisdom dear

  Lay down yr skillful camera Lay down yr image right

  Lay down your brilliant image Lay down light

  Lay down your ignorance Roll yr wheel once more

  Lay down yr empty suffering Lay down yr Lion’s Roar

  October 31, 1975

  II

  Sunrise Ceremony Verse

  Improvised with Australian Aborigine Song-Sticks

  at Request of Medicine Man Rolling Thunder November 5, 1975

  When Music was needed Music sounded

  When a Ceremony was needed a Teacher appeared

  When Students were needed Telephones rang.

  When Cars were needed Wheels rolled in

  When a Place was needed a Mansion appeared

  When a Fire was needed Wood appeared

  When an Ocean was needed Waters rippled waves

  When Shore was needed Shore met Ocean

  When Sun was needed the Sun rose east

  When People were needed People arrived

  When a circle was needed a Circle formed.

  Plymouth

  III

  SNOW BLUES

  Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine

  Jiggling yr knees blankeyed in the rain

  When it snows in yr nose you catch cold in yr brain

  Danbury, November 10, 1975

  IV

  TO THE SIX NATI ONS AT TUSCARORA RE SERVATION

  We give thanks for this food, deer meat & indian-corn soup

  Which is a product of the labor of your people

  And the suffering of other forms of life

  And which we promise to transform into friendly song and dancing

  To all the ten directions of the Earth.

  November 18, 1975

  V

  Snow falls

  souls freeze

  Speed kills

  heart’s ease

  Alcohol

  fools wills

  O slaves

  Who craves

  junk raves

  Downer’s

  angers

  eyes blur—

  I sing

  Rolling

  Thunder

  Ho ho!

  Macho

  frenzy

  in thee

  ’s a drag

/>   dead bag.

  Smoke grass

  Yaas Yass

  Shake ass

  mind’s wealth

  joint’s health

  Ready?

  Meditations

  patience

  eyes keen

  serene

  as graves

  saves! saves

  nations.

  Montreal, December 4, 1975

  Cabin in the Rockies

  I

  Sitting on a tree stump with half cup of tea,

  sun down behind mountains—

  Nothing to do.

  Not a word! Not a Word!

  Flies do all my talking for me—

  and the wind says something else.

  Fly on my nose,

  I’m not the Buddha,

  There’s no enlightenment here!

  Against red bark trunk

  A fly’s shadow

  lights on the shadow of a pine bough.

  An hour after dawn

  I haven’t thought of Buddha once yet!

  —walking back into the retreat house.

  II

  Walking into King Sooper after Two-week Retreat

  A thin redfaced pimpled boy

  stands alone minutes

  looking down into the ice cream bin.

  Boulder, September 16, 1975

  Reading French Poetry

  Poems rise in my brain

  like Woolworth’s 5 & 10¢ Store perfume

  O my love with thin breasts

  17 year old boy with smooth ass

  O my father with white hands

  specks on your feet & foul breath bespeak tumor

  O myself with my romance

  fading but fat bodies remain

  in bed with me warm passionless

  unless I exercise myself like a dumbbell

  O my Fiftieth year approaching

  like Tennessee like Andy a failure, big nothing—

  very satisfactory subjects for Poetry.

  New York, January 12, 1976

  Two Dreams

  I

  As I passed thru Moscow’s grass lots I heard

  a voice, a small green dwarf, leaf-clothed &

  thin corn-stalk arms, head capped with green

  husk & tassel, walking toward me talking:

  “You see these other tassel heads stalking

  thru long green grass spears half buried

  in empty lots where building-ghosts stand

  razed by police state but bursting from ground

  Springtime as now seeds grown natural

  So I full grown sprite of Friendship salute

  you who seek love in Roman Moscow circuses—

  Be cheerful our enemy’s enemy is Death

  and since Death is We, since all die, all

  is not lost but to Death, & what lives eccentric

  as yourself & Me, ancient friends, lives

  humorous and democratic as your leaves of grass

  which die also prophesied but live as you and I.

  Bee cheerful, good Sir. Cockhead green am I

  an entertainer triumphant in the tiny cliffs

  between buildings, in old grasslots of Paterson

  where the wrecker’s ball creates a tiny farm

  for worms, and bottles glint in new turned earth—

  and weeds and we sprout renewing Nature’s

  humor where the architectural police are on the nod.

  The sun will rise and I’ll accompany your eye

  that walks thru Moscow looking for human love.”

  March 1, 1976

  II sludge

  Dantean, the cliffside whereon I walked

  With volumes of Milton & the Tuscan Bard enarmed:

  Highway prospecting th’ocean Sludged transparent

  lipped to asphalt built by Man under sky.

  Far down below the factory I espied, and plunged

  full clothed into the Acid Tide, heroic precipitous

  Stupidly swam the noxious surface to my goal—

  An Oil platform at land’s end, where Fellows watched

  my bold approach to the Satanic World Trade Center.

  Father dying tumored, Industry smog

  o’erspreads dawn sky, gold beams descend

  on Paterson thru subtle tar fumes, viewless

  to wakened eye, transfused into family meat.

  Capitalism’s reckless industry cancers New Jersey.

  New York, March 6, 1976

  C’mon Jack

  Turn me on your knees

  Spank me & Fuck me

  Hit my ass with your hand

  Spank me and Fuck me

  Hit my hole with your fingers

  Hit my ass with your hand

  Spank me and fuck me

  Turn me on your knees

  Ah Robertson it’s you

  Yes hit my ass with your hand

  real hard, ass on your knees

  sticking up hard harder slap

  Spank me and Fuck me

  Got a hard on Spank me

  When you get a hard on Fuck me.

  March 29, 1976

  Pussy Blues

  for Anne Waldman

  You said you got to go home & feed your pussycat

  When I ast you to stay here tonight Where’s your pussy at?

  Keep your pussy here Try our hot cat food

  Yeah lotsa cats around here & they’s all half nude

  Going home alone do your pussy no good

  Hey it’s 4th of July Say it’s your U.S. birthday

  Yeah stay out all night National Holiday

  Tiger on your fence Don’t let him get away

  Pussy pussy come home I’m gonna feed you fish

  Yeah pussy pussy here come your big red dish

  I’ll tickle your belly All the eats you wish

  Hey there pussy Cantcha catch my mouse

  Hey please pussy Play with my white mouse

  You can stay all night You can clean my house

  Boulder, Independence Day 1976, 1 A.M.

  Don’t Grow Old

  I

  Old Poet, Poetry’s final subject glimmers months ahead

  Tender mornings, Paterson roofs snowcovered

  Vast

  Sky over City Hall tower, Eastside Park’s grass terraces & tennis courts beside Passaic River

  Parts of ourselves gone, sister Rose’s apartments, brown corridor’d high schools—

  Too tired to go out for a walk, too tired to end the War

  Too tired to save body

  too tired to be heroic

  The real close at hand as the stomach

  liver pancreas rib

  Coughing up gastric saliva

  Marriages vanished in a cough

  Hard to get up from the easy chair

  Hands white feet speckled a blue toe stomach big breasts hanging thin

  hair white on the chest

  too tired to take off shoes and black sox

  Paterson, January 12, 1976

  II

  He’ll see no more Times Square

  honkytonk movie marquees, bus stations at midnight

  Nor the orange sun ball

  rising thru treetops east toward New York’s skyline

  His velvet armchair facing the window will be empty

  He won’t see the moon over house roofs

  or sky over Paterson’s streets.

  New York, February 26, 1976

  III

  Wasted arms, feeble knees

  80 years old, hair thin and white

  cheek bonier than I’d remembered—

  head bowed on his neck, eyes opened

  now and then, he listened—

  I read my father Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality

  “… trailing clouds of glory do we come

  from God, who is our home …”

  “That’s beautiful,” he said, “but it’s not true.”

  “When I was a boy, we had a h
ouse

  on Boyd Street, Newark—the backyard

  was a big empty lot full of bushes and tall grass,

  I always wondered what was behind those trees.

  When I grew older, I walked around the block,

  and found out what was back there—

  it was a glue factory.”

  May 18, 1976

  IV

  Will that happen to me?

  Of course, it’ll happen to thee.

  Will my arms wither away?

  Yes yr arm hair will turn gray.

  Will my knees grow weak & collapse?

  Your knees will need crutches perhaps.

  Will my chest get thin?

  Your breasts will be hanging skin.

  Where will go—my teeth?

  You’ll keep the ones beneath.

  What’ll happen to my bones?

  They’ll get mixed up with stones.

  June 1976

  Father Death Blues

  V

  FATHER DEATH BLUES

  Hey Father Death, I’m flying home

  Hey poor man, you’re all alone

  Hey old daddy, I know where I’m going

  Father Death, Don’t cry any more

  Mama’s there, underneath the floor

  Brother Death, please mind the store

  Old Aunty Death Don’t hide your bones

  Old Uncle Death I hear your groans

  O Sister Death how sweet your moans

  O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths

  Sobbing breasts’ll ease your Deaths

  Pain is gone, tears take the rest

  Genius Death your art is done

  Lover Death your body’s gone

  Father Death I’m coming home

  Guru Death your words are true

  Teacher Death I do thank you

  For inspiring me to sing this Blues

  Buddha Death, I wake with you

  Dharma Death, your mind is new

  Sangha Death, we’ll work it through

  Suffering is what was born

  Ignorance made me forlorn

  Tearful truths I cannot scorn

  Father Breath once more farewell

  Birth you gave was no thing ill

  My heart is still, as time will tell.

  July 8, 1976 (Over Lake Michigan)

  VI

  Near the Scrap Yard my Father’ll be Buried

 

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