Collected Poems 1947-1997

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Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 81

by Allen Ginsberg


  that the U.N. is Good ? Bad ? Indifferent ? for American interests Check One

  Research has shown that Christian Reconstructionist homosexuality is Sin, Lesbianism crime against nature, AIDS a plague sent to punish gay Angelmakers

  bisexuality disapproved by 51% Americans

  Research has shown that teen headshakers watching TV get more IQ tests than natives of Amazon & Ucayali rivers who have no antennae

  Research has shown whales & porpoises to subscribe to a Higher Intelligence

  Research has shown that Elitist Individualism Spiritual Corruption & Degenerate Art caused Dictatorships in Soviet Union China and Germany

  that possession of pornography by American Family Institute has resulted in 35% increase in sex crimes among institute librarians

  viewing murderous behavior on TV sitcoms resulted in 100% increased violent language behavior by intercontinental Heads of State

  To conclude research has shown that the material universe does not exist

  May 20, 1992

  PUT DOWN YOUR CIGARETTE RAG

  Put Down Your Cigarette Rag (Dont Smoke)

  Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke

  Dont smoke

  It’s a nine billion dollar

  Capitalist Communist joke

  Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke

  Dont smoke

  Smoking makes you cough,

  You cant sing straight

  You gargle on saliva

  & vomit on your plate

  Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke,

  Dont smoke smoke smoke smoke

  You smoke in bed

  You smoke on the hill

  Smoke till yr dead

  You smoke in Hell

  Dont smoke dont smoke in living Hell Dope Dope

  Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke

  You puff your fag

  You suck your butt

  You choke & gag

  Teeth full of crud

  Smoke smoke smoke smoke Dont dont dont

  Dont Dont Dope Dope Dope Dont Smoke Dont Dope

  Pay your two bucks

  for a deathly pack

  Trust your bad luck

  & smoke in the sack

  Dont Smoke Dont Smoke Nicotine Nicotine No

  No dont smoke the official Dope Smoke Dope Dope

  Four Billion dollars in Green

  ’swat Madison Avenue gets

  t’ advertise nicotine

  & hook you radical brats

  Dont Smoke Dont Smoke Dont Smoke

  Nope Nope Dope Dope Hoax Hoax Hoax Hoax

  Dopey Dope Dopey Dope Dope Dope dope dope

  Black magic pushes dope

  Sexy chicks in cars

  America loses hope

  & smokes and drinks in bars

  Dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke,

  dont smoke dont dont dont dont

  choke choke choke choke kaf kaf

  Kaf Kaf Choke Choke

  Choke Choke Dope Dope

  Communism’s flopped

  Let’s help the Soviet millions

  Sell ’em our Coffin-Nails

  & make a couple billions

  Big Bucks Big Bucks bucks bucks

  bucks bucks smoke smoke smoke smoke

  smoke bucks smoke bucks Dope bucks big

  Dope Bucks Dig Big Dope Bucks Big Dope

  Bucks dont smoke big dope bucks

  Dig big Pig dope bucks

  Nine billion bucks a year

  a Southern Industry

  Buys Senator Jesse Fear who pushes Tobacco subsidy

  In the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

  Dope smokes dope smokes dont smoke dont smoke

  Cloak cloak cloak room cloak & dagger

  smoke room cloak room dope cloak

  cloak room dope cloak room dope dont smoke

  Nine billion bucks for dope

  approved by Time & Life

  America loses hope

  The President smokes Tobacco votes

  Dont Smoke dont smoke dont smoke dont smoke

  Dont smoke nope nope nope nope

  20 thousand die of coke

  Illegal speed each year

  400 thousand cigarette deaths

  That’s the drug to fear

  Dont smoke Dont smoke Dont smoke

  Get Hooked on Cigarettes

  Go Fight the War on Drugs

  Smoke any other Weed

  Get bust by Government Thugs

  Dont smoke dont smoke the official dope

  If you will get in bed

  & give your girlfriend head

  then you wont want a fag

  Nor evermore a drag

  Dont Smoke dont smoke Hope Hope Hope Hope

  O Please Dont Smoke Dont Smoke

  O Please O Please O Please

  I’m calling on my knees

  Twenty-four hours in bed

  & give your boyfriend head

  Put something in your mouth

  Like skin not cigarette filth

  Suck tit suck tit suck cock suck cock

  suck clit suck prick suck it

  but dont smoke nicotine dont smoke

  dont smoke nicotine nicotine it’s

  too obscene dont smoke dont smoke

  nicotine suck cock suck prick suck tit

  suck clit suck it But don’t smoke shit nope

  nope nope nope Dope Dope Dope Dope

  the official dope Dont Smoke

  Make believe yer sick

  Stay in bed and lick

  yr cigarette habit greed

  One day’s all you need

  In deed in deed in deed in deed smoke weed

  smoke weed Put something green

  in between but don’t smoke smoke dont smoke

  hope hope hope hope Nicotine dont

  smoke the official dope

  Dope Dope Dope Dope Don’t Smoke

  1971; June 21, 1992

  VIOLENT COLLABORATIONS

  Violent Collaborations

  Violate me

  in violet times

  the vilest way that you know

  Ruin me

  Ravage me

  utterly savage me

  on me no mercy bestow

  —OLD SONG, 1944

  Trespass against me

  & penetrate deeply

  Spare me not even your rape

  Tie me up quickly

  make me smile sickly

  Seal up my mouth with scotch tape

  —AG

  Piss on me Crap on me

  Wipe your fat ass on me

  Make me a creature you loathe

  Sorely harass me

  Dont even ask me

  But deal me your ultimate blow

  —PH

  Ignore me & stomp on me

  Crack your big whip on me

  Make me get down on my knees

  Order me suck your dick

  spank me & do it quick

  Shove it in deep as you please

  —AG & PH

  Stun me & shun me

  slave me & shave me

  Give me your loathsome disease

  Fuck me & fist me

  in your army enlist me

  Poop on me when you’re at ease

  —AG & PH

  Degrade & debase me

  in public deface me

  come on my beard in the mud

  Double me over

  in summertime clover

  then hose me down w/your stud

  —AG & PH

  With Peter Hale

  June 1992

  Calm Panic Campaign Promise

  End of Millennium

  Earth’s decay—

  Fire Air Water tainted

  We’re the Great Beast—

  Dark bed thoughts

  Can’t do anything to stop it—

  Denial in Government, in Newspapers of Record—

  Like watching gum disease & not brushing teeth

  Gett
ing heart failure, no rest much stress

  Putting salt on your greasy pork

  Putting sugar in coffee you’re diabetic

  Dysesthesia on foot soles

  Poor circulation smoke more cigarettes

  Kick your son under the table have another beer

  Need President who’ll reverse the denial—

  The Calm Panic Party

  to restore nature’s balance.

  July 9, 1992, 12:55 A.M.

  Now and Forever

  I’ll settle for Immortality—

  Not thru the body

  Not thru the eyes

  Star-spangled high mountains

  waning moon over Aspen peaks

  But thru words, thru the breath

  of long sentences

  loves I have, heart beating

  still,

  inspiration continuous, exhalation of

  cadenced affection

  These immortal survive America,

  survive the fall of States

  Departure of my body,

  mouth dumb dust

  This verse broadcasts desire,

  accomplishment of Desire

  Now and forever boys can read

  girls dream, old men cry

  Old women sigh

  youth still come.

  July 19, 1992

  Aspen

  Who Eats Who?

  A crow sits on the prayerflagpole,

  her mate blackwinged walks the wet green grass, worms?

  Yesterday seagulls skimmed the choppy waves,

  feet touching foamed breakers

  looking for salmon? halibut? sole?

  Bacteria eat parameciums or vice versa,

  viruses enter cells, white cell count low—

  Tooth & claw on TV, lions strike down antelope—

  Whales sift transparent krill thru bearded teeth.

  Every cannibal niche fulfilled, Amazon

  headhunters eat testicles—

  Enemy’s powers & energy become mine!

  August 13, 1992

  Gampo Abbey, Nova Scotia

  The Charnel Ground

  … rugged and raw situations, and having accepted them as part of your home ground, then some spark of sympathy or compassion could take place. You are not in a hurry to leave such a place immediately. You would like to face the facts, realities of that particular world. …

  FROM A COMMENTARY ON THE SADHANA OF MAHAMUDRA, Chögyam TRUNGPA, RINPOCHE

  Upstairs Jenny crashed her car & became a living corpse, Jake sold grass, the white-bearded potbelly leprechaun silent climbed their staircase

  Ex-janitor John from Poland averted his eyes, cheeks flushed with vodka, wine who knew what

  as he left his groundfloor flat, refusing to speak to the inhabitant of Apt. 24

  who’d put his boyfriend in Bellevue, calling police, while the artistic Buddhist composer

  on sixth floor lay spaced out feet swollen with water, dying slowly of AIDS over a year—

  The Chinese teacher cleaned & cooked in Apt. 23 for the homosexual poet who pined for his gymnast

  thighs & buttocks— Downstairs th’ old hippie flower girl fell drunk over the banister, smashed her jaw—

  her son despite moderate fame cheated of rocknroll money, twenty thousand people in stadiums

  cheering his tattooed skinhead murderous Hare Krishna vegetarian drum lyrics—

  Mary born in the building rested on her cane, heavy-legged with heart failure on the second landing, no more able

  to vacation in Caracas & Dublin— The Russian landlady’s husband from concentration camp disappeared again—nobody mentioned he’d died—

  tenants took over her building for hot water, she couldn’t add rent & pay taxes, wore a long coat hot days

  alone & thin on the street carrying groceries to her crooked apartment silent—

  One poet highschool teacher fell dead mysterious heart dysrhythmia, konked over

  in his mother’s Brooklyn apartment, his first baby girl a year old, wife stoical a few days—

  their growling noisy little dog had to go, the baby cried—

  Meanwhile the upstairs apartment meth head shot cocaine & yowled up and down

  East 12th Street, kicked out of Christine’s Eatery till police cornered him, ’top a hot iron steamhole

  near Stuyvesant Town Avenue A telephone booth calling his deaf mother—sirens speed the way to Bellevue—

  past whispering grass crack salesman jittering in circles on East 10th Street’s

  southwest corner where art yuppies come out of the overpriced Japanese Sushi Bar—& they poured salt into potato soup heart failure vats at KK’s Polish restaurant

  —Garbage piled up, nonbiodegradable plastic bags emptied by diabetic sidewalk homeless

  looking for returnable bottles recycled dolls radios half-eaten hamburgers—thrown-away Danish—

  On 13th Street the notary public sat in his dingy storefront, driver’s lessons & tax returns prepared on old metal desks—

  Sunnysides crisped in butter, fries & sugary donuts passed over the luncheonette counter next door—

  The Hispanic lady yelled at the rude African-American behind the Post Office window

  “I waited all week my welfare check you sent me notice I was here yesterday

  I want to see the supervisor bitch dont insult me refusing to look in—”

  Closed eyes of Puerto Rican wino lips cracked skin red stretched out

  on the pavement, naphtha backdoor open for the Korean family dry cleaners at the 14th Street corner—

  Con Ed workmen drilled all year to bust electric pipes 6 feet deep in brown dirt

  so cars bottlenecked wait minutes to pass the M14 bus stopped mid-road, heavy dressed senior citizens step down in red rubble

  with Reduced Fare Program cards got from grey city Aging Department offices downtown up the second flight by elevators don’t work—

  News comes on the radio, they bomb Baghdad and the Garden of Eden again?

  A million starve in Sudan, mountains of eats stacked on docks, local gangs & U.N.’s trembling bureaucrat officers sweat near the equator arguing over

  wheat piles shoved by bulldozers—Swedish doctors ran out of medicine— The Pakistan taxi driver

  says Salman Rushdie must die, insulting the Prophet in fictions—

  “No that wasn’t my opinion, just a character talking like in a poem no judgment”—

  “Not till the sun rejects you do I,” so give you a quarter by the Catholic church 14th St. you stand half drunk

  waving a plastic glass, flush-faced, live with your mother a wounded look on your lips, eyes squinting,

  receding lower jaw sometimes you dry out in Bellevue, most days cadging dollars for sweet wine

  by the corner where Plump Blindman shifts from foot to foot showing his white cane, rattling coins in a white paper cup some weeks

  where girding the subway entrance construction sawhorses painted orange

  guard steps underground— And across the street the NYCE bank machine cubicle door sign reads

  Not in Operation as taxis bump on potholes asphalt mounded at the crossroad when red lights change green

  & I’m on my way uptown to get a CAT scan liver biopsy, visit the cardiologist,

  account for high blood pressure, kidneystones, diabetes, misty eyes & dysesthesia—

  feeling lack in feet soles, inside ankles, small of back, phallus head, anus—

  Old age sickness death again come round in the wink of an eye—

  High school youth the inside skin of my thighs was silken smooth tho

  nobody touched me there back then—

  Across town the velvet poet takes Darvon N, Valium nightly, sleeps all

  day kicking methadone

  between brick walls sixth floor in a room cluttered with collages & gold

  dot paper scraps covered

  with words: “The whole point seems to be the idea of giving away the
>
  giver.”

  August 19, 1992

  Everyday

  The Lama sat

  in bed

  with bamboo

  backscratcher

  his false teeth

  in a big

  glass of water

  on the sunny

  windowsill.

  August 1992

  Fun House Antique Store

  I’d been motoring through States &

  stopped at a country antique store, an

  old-fashioned house, in excellent condition—

  Flower’d wallpaper, polished banisters

  lampshades dusted, candelabra burnished

  flaming quiet by the cloak closet

  under the stairs, pitcher of water & white

  washbowls beside the french doors

  embroidered doilies & artificial flowers

  ivory & light brown on mahogany

  side tables, a brass bowl for cards,

  kitchen with polished stove cold ready

  at Summer’s end to light up with split

  wood & kindling in buckets beside

  the empty fireplace, tongs & screen

  in neat order. The second floor as

  perfectly appointed as the foyer

  (set with hat & cane rack & mirror)

  stairway rugs & oaken doors, down beds

  a glass-front bookcase, brown shiny bureaus,

  drawers crammed with old ties & bloomers,

  celluloid collars, some long-sleeved underwear, silk

  & paisley shirts & shawls—and the stairs

  to the third-floor attic rose five steep steps

  into a blank wall nicely wallpapered with roses.

  What a delicate touch, trompe l’oeil

  artistry, what charming care & magical consciousness

  arranged this antique shop, so practical

  for display as Bed-and-Breakfast wayfarer’s

  stop-over & lampshade collector’s twee daydream—

  Yet it was a modern commercial establishment

  we’d entered casually on our own road

  through Maryland to see our lawyer in D.C.—

  One attendant who observed us admiring his home

  appointments watched us turn to go—

  I wished to make a speech: “Congratulations

  on your work of Ahrt, your antique care

  & delicate intelligence, as if Messrs. McDermott

  & McGough photographed the 1880s entire

 

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