yes it’s gone gone gone
gone gone away
November 10, 1996
Reverse the rain of Terror …
Reverse the rain of Terror on street consciousness U.S.A.
Death Penalty! Electric Chair! A roomsful of poison gas! Lethal injections! Mortal Hanging! Beheading the Idiot killer!
Dogs slaver over airport luggage! Suitcase bottoms caked with hash! Strip search the sick opium addict, medicine’s up his anus in a finger stall
arriving from legal India, cozy England, lax Morocco, face 12 billion Dollars worth of cops
Sniffing bodies for illegal medicine! Vomiting in a stone cell, abdominal convulsions, muscle spasms thigh & foot, sleepless cold-turkey torture—
Puerto Rican kid needs a doctor, young black man needs his girlfriend’s fix, white boy didn’t know his habit was immortal!
The octogenarian schmecker’s liver & kidneys failed, wants a deathbed shot of M
Half mad lady on the street had a fight with her daughter the whore!
The old boy lies on the sidewalk hands dirty red faced in his own saliva.
The delicate youth’s in his halfway house a decade, thorazine eyes glazed over
His brother’s Christmas card arrives at Binghampton State Hospital!
The elder hides in a furnished room drinks wine delivers newspapers, didn’t wanna work on the neutron bomb!
The salesman’s product went off the market, recycling coke bottles he cries at kitchen tables blaming Jews
An auto worker shoveling snow curses six African-Americans mugged him twenty years ago—
A black man walked the street with his B.A. pager, clubbed down giving lip to a cop car
The young fruit dies body with sores he challenged the Senate on the plague.
The homeless jewish guitarist sings on the 14th Street’s L Train Subway platform, blows harmonica, taps tambourine with one foot, with another drums
then back to his graybeard cocksucker’s apartment fries eggs
Streetcorner boys and girlfriends hang round the butcher shop corner, “Smoke smoke?”
Rocky Flats engineers tear their hair, Plutonium waste’ll outlast an otherworldly God
December 1996
Sending Message
They are sending a message to the youth of America
Smoking medical marijuana’s all right
They’re sending a message in cartoon saloons hard-ass blokes look like camels smoke Camels at the bar, 5 year olds love it,
To the youth of America they’re sending a message
CIA no official connections to Contra coke dealers in New York Times Washington Post expert crackheads send same messages to adolescent Senior citizen crackhead readers
They’re sending a message to American youth, African youth can starve to death we can’t care
too much money, far over the Atlantic, our boys’ll never die, politically unpopular, they’ll become dependent, it won’t fly
They’re sending message by Bronco, Honda, 4 by 4, cinema MG, Land Rover & half million gas stations
youth of this nation fossil fuel’s neat, hella cool, admirable dope really rad, as if—what valley girls think when their fathers drive them to Highschool—
They’re sending the message to Saturn, American Democracy works over the globe, spin that round your rings
To Chinese youth, eat like us, we do flesh & fries,
Don’t sleep on streets, dangerous off-duty death-squad police send this message to Brazilian kiddies
Someone sent naked pretty boys on FCC Internet, Don’t!
No Forbidden Planet Swedish sex? Got the message pretty girls?
Got the message clean old men? Michelangelo got the message? Da Vinci got it? Phidias, Socrates, Shakespeare, J. Edgar Hoover at the Plaza, Cardinal Francis Spellman on Roy Cohn’s yacht, Senator Jesse Helms in your gut, duh
got the message teeny-weenies? They’re sending a message right below your belly button.
A message to the youth of America, “Diminished expectations,” they’s too many people,
native gooks work cheaper, rich get richer, North hemispheric whites live longer, Black high-blood pressure rules Kentucky Fried Chicken
Across the highway from Arbie’s Barbecue Palace, Roy Rogers’ Horsechops, or McDonalds Amazon Treeburgers
you heard about on Television serves the message Eat your meat
or beat your meat, safe sex with ketchup, Whatever
The message now’s pay 4 trillion dollars debt Reagan pissed away on Military,
promised before you born, sit in school waterclosets study yr Latin
They’re sending youth a message look at TV football baseball hypnotic soccer basketball sports, sport!
General Rios-Montt & Pat Robertson sent a message to Guatemalan Indians
so 200,000 dropped dead with delight at sight of Christ’s military
pistol machete machinegun baseball bat & Inerrant Bible
700 Club’s Antichrist sends U.S. youth this message Despise the poor & piss on liberal Jesus
The message is Compassion’ll cause a Wall Street crash
& Networks send me messages Shut the fuck up.
December 3, 1996, 4:30 A.M.
New York City
No! No! It’s Not the End
No! No!
Not the end of
Civilization
Not the end of
Civilization
Blast of industrial
Gas in Bhopal
No! No! Not the end of
Civilization
Dropt one bomb
killed one
hundred thousand
Hiroshima nineteen forty five
No no not the end of
Civilization
Not the end of Civilization
Guatemala murdered
two hundred thousand
Indians
No no not the end of
Civilization
Not the end of Civilization
200 thousand
slaughtered in Rwanda
Crazed events
on the TV screen
No no not the end of
Civilization
Not the end of Civilization
U.S. Blacks in jail
land of the free
mosta these citizens you & me
No no not the end of
Civilization
Not the end of Civilization
Fossil fuel dust filling heaven
ozone layer hole in the sky
No no not the end of
Civilization
Not the end of Civilization
Oldest trees in the world cut down
Weyerhaeuser Bush wears a cardboard Crown
No no not the end of
Civilization
Not the end of Civilization
Amazon forests cut to the ground
you can still breathe
to the chainsaw’s sound
No no not the end of
Civilization
Only a temporary aberration
No No it’s not the end of Civilization
It’s Nobadaddy’s
old temptation
No no it’s not the end of Civilization
Everybody’s waltzing
to “the Hesitation”
It’s the same damned
President’s Inauguration
No no it’s not the end of Civilization
We’re come to “the fabled
damned of Nations”
No no it’s not the end of Civilization
Slaves wore chains
at the States’ creation
No no it’s not the end of Civilization
sourpuss wantsa stop colored immigration
Nobody’s wearing
hooves & scales
all they wanna do is
kill more whales
No no it’s not the end of Civilization
No no it’s not the end of Civi
lization
Cayenne saved a little bit of sensation
No no it’s not the end of civilization
No final solution
just gas & cremation
December 18–20, 1996
Bad Poem
Being as Now has been re-invented
I have devised a new now
Entering the real Now
at last
which is now
December 24, 1996, 3 A.M.
Homeless Compleynt
Pardon me buddy, I didn’t mean to bug you
but I came from Vietnam
where I killed a lot of Vietnamese gentlemen
a few ladies too
and I couldn’t stand the pain
and got a habit out of fear
& I’ve gone through rehab and I’m clean
but I got no place to sleep
and I don’t know what to do
with myself right now
I’m sorry buddy, I didn’t mean to bug you
but it’s cold in the alley
& my heart’s sick alone
and I’m clean, but my life’s a mess
Third Avenue
and E. Houston Street
on the corner traffic island under a red light
wiping your windshield with a dirty rag
December 24, 1996
Happy New Year Robert & June
Happy New Year Robert & June
Tho I’d hoped to see you soon
I’d better say Happy Hanukkah too
Till I get your number that’s new—
I’ll be leaving for retreat,
Where they make me salt-free meat
along with Gelek Rinpoche
Who’s got ailments same as me,
in Michigan Camp Copneconic
Where I’ll room with Mr. Harmonic
Philip Glass in our Buddhist Class
Ten days later January 8
I’ll go to Boston, rest & wait
the weekend in anticipation
Maybe a hernia operation
supervised by Dr. Lown
(cardiologist of wide renown
—I’d recommended him to you
elderly trustworthy smart & true)
—Recuperate a week with Ellie
Dorfman, eat yellow fish-yuckh jelly
with Gefilte fish, then best
Mid January home NY to rest
Maybe we’ll see eachother then,
in any case let me know when.
Love, Allen
December 12, 1996
Diamond Bells
“Clear light & illusion body become one”
Hearing the all pervading scintillation of empty bells I realize
Napoleon had toes
Frankenstein’s big toe
Hayagriva cosmic horse one big cleft toe
Virgin Mary white-toed married Joseph brown-toed, impregnated by a white dove transparent triple-toed
How many toes has God? Yahweh nobody knows his toes
Allah’s toes? Mohammed, prophetic ten
Jesus Christ well-kissed human toes
Sealo the Seal Boy who two-fingered hand-flippers at shoulders could smoke & type with regular ten toes
sold tiny white toilets wrapped in toilet paper, souvenirs one dollar
Shelly ten pale pure toes
Michelangelo enjoyed five digits per foot, Da Vinci mapped ten on his two feet
Flies toes get stuck on spiderwebs
Spiders slide swift-toed on sticky nets
Scratch the sole, toes curl
Foetus is capable of toes
Stubbed my bare fourth toe on a step ladder one dark Friday night, though it still wiggles
walking on snowy mud’s painful, back aches
John Madison has chocolate toes
Hitler natural toes
Buddha ten bare toes enlightened
Lay my skull on night pillows, rest on Tara’s lap between gentle toes
Lama YabYum dreams with 20 toes
Emptiness innumerable trillion toes
Old men’s toenails thicken ivory aged
Dead toenails grow in cenotaphs
Napoleon wore toenails inside polished riding boots
Elephant toenail stubs nudge tussocks
Such is the all pervading scintillation of empty bells
December 30, 1996, 12:55 A.M.
Virtual Impunity Blues
With Virtual impunity Clinton got campaign funds from pink Chinese
With Virtual impunity CIA Contra stringers sold Cocaine disease L.A. & Minneapolis
With Virtual impunity FBI burned down apocalyptic Waco
With Virtual impunity gov’t began charging huge fees for public college studies
With Virtual impunity Congress FCC ok’d Fundamentalist Broadcast censorship
With Virtual impunity Family Values insulted ladies, gays, Afric Americans
With Virtual impunity the Pope banned planet birth control
With Virtual impunity N. Carolina banned sodomy in the wrong hole
With Virtual impunity the Chinese banned fresh speech electrics
With Virtual impunity Albanian Lottery bosses bought & sold elections
January 1997
Waribashi
Walk into your local Japanese restaurant Teriyaki Boy—
order sliced raw fish mackerel, smoked eel, roe on vinagered rice balls
slide thin wooden utensils out a white paper sleeve with blue Crane print
split the wood, rub ends together smooth down splinters, sit & wait & sigh—
200,000 cubic meters Southeast Asian timber exports
sawed & processed in Japan, resold, 20 billion waribashi
used once, thrown away—roots of rainforest destruction—help pay interest
Thailand’s & Malaysia’s yearly debt service to World Bank, IMF—
Your plate arrives with sharp green mustard & pink pickled ginger slices
new sprig of parsley, lift the chopsticks to your mouth enjoy sashimi
January 7, 1997, 6:30 A.M.
Good Luck
I’m lucky to have all five fingers on the right hand
Lucky peepee with little pain
Lucky bowels move
Lucky, sleep nights on a captain’s bed, nap mid-afternoons
Lucky to amble down First Avenue
Lucky make a couple hundred thousand a year
singing Eli Eli, writing passing mind, etching primordial doodles, teaching Buddhist college, snapping Leica bus-stop photos thru my window eyeballs
Hear ambulance sirens, smell garlic & rust, taste persimmons & flounder, walk the loft floor barefoot soles a little desensitized
Lucky I can think, and sky can snow
January 8, 1997
Some Little Boys Dont
Some little boys like it
Some little boys dont
Some little girls swipe it
Some little girls won’t
Some nephews suck it
Some lollypops grunt
Some nieces truck it
If grandpa’s a runt
Some puberties request it
Four times a month
Some girl teens breast it
Some eat it for brunch
Some little people gargle
Some adolescents warble
Some teenyboppers babble
Some kiddies play Scrabble
January 10, 1997, 4 A.M.
Jacking Off
Who showed up?
Joe S. pale bodied wiry leanness,
suck your cock—I kissed his belly,
thin muscular breast—
Suck my cock you bitch, little bitch
suck my cock,
Huck, I got him on his knees
licked his ass his hairy behind
doggie style, jacked him off he
grabbed his own dick finished—come.
Tom G. big cocked passed thru my
dream
bed, didn’t stay
Ah John got you, bought the
leather handcuffs & strap
binding hand & feet helpless,
Leather collar roped to the
bedstead’s head—buy it
once for all S&M shops
Christopher Street
Uptown leather
Spank good & hard, slap his ass
let him writhe, better
than cutting him up,
designs with razor—
So came on that unfamiliar fear
savage control over
Adonis body, willing
eager—bound to be true.
January 28, 1997
Think Tank Rhymes
think tank
pick thank
lamb shank
wet wank
drug dork
hankie pankey
kitchey camp
namby pamby
macho wimp
witchy granny
randy daddy
skimpy mammie
toilet Tilly
itchy nursie
Golden Grammie
dandy Sammy
Fried pork
mind wonk
brain konk
junk funk
coke dink
dead drunk
Big Pink
skunk stink
mom wink
nuke kink
big dick
instinct
gum crank
space pork
fried wok
Hershey drink
Einstein
January 30, 1997, 2:45 A.M.
Song of the Washing Machine
Burned out Burned out Burned out
We’re not burned out We’re not burned out
for a house for a house for a house for a house
Bathroom Bathroom Bathroom Bathroom
At home at home at home at home
We’re not burned out We’re not burned out
Fair enough fair enough fair enough
Can you account for yourself account for yourself
Better not better not better not better not
January 31, 1997
World Bank Blues
I work for the world bank yes I do
My salary was hundred thousand smackeroo
Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 86
