Detroit has built a million automobiles of rubber trees and phantoms
but I walk, I walk, and the Orient walks with me, and all Africa walks
and sooner or later North America will walk
for as we have driven the Chinese Angel from our door he will drive us from the Golden Door of the future
we have not cherished pity on Tanganyika
Einstein alive was mocked for his heavenly politics
Bertrand Russell driven from New York for getting laid
immortal Chaplin driven from our shores with the rose in his teeth
a secret conspiracy by Catholic Church in the lavatories of Congress has denied contraceptives to the unceasing masses of India.
Nobody publishes a word that is not the cowardly robot ravings of a depraved mentality
The day of the publication of the true literature of the American body will be day of Revolution
the revolution of the sexy lamb
the only bloodless revolution that gives away corn
poor Genet will illuminate the harvesters of Ohio
Marijuana is a benevolent narcotic but J. Edgar Hoover prefers his deathly scotch
And the heroin of Lao-Tze & the Sixth Patriarch is punished by the electric chair
but the poor sick junkies have nowhere to lay their heads
fiends in our government have invented a cold-turkey cure for addiction as obsolete as the Defense Early Warning Radar System.
I am the defense early warning radar system
I see nothing but bombs
I am not interested in preventing Asia from being Asia
and the governments of Russia and Asia will rise and fall but Asia and Russia will not fall
the government of America also will fall but how can America fall
I doubt if anyone will ever fall anymore except governments
fortunately all the governments will fall
the only ones which won’t fall are the good ones
and the good ones don’t yet exist
But they have to begin existing they exist in my poems
they exist in the death of the Russian and American governments
they exist in the death of Hart Crane & Mayakovsky
Now is the time for prophecy without death as a consequence
the universe will ultimately disappear
Hollywood will rot on the windmills of Eternity
Hollywood whose movies stick in the throat of God
Yes Hollywood will get what it deserves
Time
Seepage of nerve-gas over the radio
History will make this poem prophetic and its awful silliness a hideous spiritual music
I have the moan of doves and the feather of ecstasy
Man cannot long endure the hunger of the cannibal abstract
War is abstract
the world will be destroyed
but I will die only for poetry, that will save the world
Monument to Sacco & Vanzetti not yet financed to ennoble Boston
natives of Kenya tormented by idiot con-men from England
South Africa in the grip of the white fool
Vachel Lindsay Secretary of the Interior
Poe Secretary of Imagination
Pound Secty. Economics
and Kra belongs to Kra, and Pukti to Pukti
crossfertilization of Blok and Artaud
Van Gogh’s Ear on the currency
no more propaganda for monsters
and poets should stay out of politics or become monsters
I have become monsterous with politics
the Russian poet undoubtedly monsterous in his secret notebook
Tibet should be left alone
These are obvious prophecies
America will be destroyed
Russian poets will struggle with Russia
Whitman warned against this “fabled Damned of nations”
Where was Theodore Roosevelt when he sent out ultimatums from his castle in Camden
Where was the House of Representatives when Crane read aloud from his prophetic books
What was Wall Street scheming when Lindsay announced the doom of Money
Were they listening to my ravings in the locker rooms of Bickfords Employment Offices?
Did they bend their ears to the moans of my soul when I struggled with market research statistics in the Forum at Rome?
No they were fighting in fiery offices, on carpets of heartfailure, screaming and bargaining with Destiny
fighting the Skeleton with sabers, muskets, buck teeth, indigestion, bombs of larceny, whoredom, rockets, pederasty,
back to the wall to build up their wives and apartments, lawns, suburbs, fairydoms,
Puerto Ricans crowded for massacre on 114th St. for the sake of an imitation Chinese-Moderne refrigerator
Elephants of mercy murdered for the sake of an Elizabethan birdcage
millions of agitated fanatics in the bughouse for the sake of the screaming soprano of industry
Money-chant of soapers—toothpaste apes in television sets—deodorizers on hypnotic chairs—
petroleum mongers in Texas—jet plane streaks among the clouds—
sky writers liars in the face of Divinity—fanged butchers of hats and shoes, all Owners! Owners! Owners! with obsession on property and vanishing Selfhood!
and their long editorials on the fence of the screaming negro attacked by ants crawled out of the front page!
Machinery of a mass electrical dream! A war-creating Whore of Babylon bellowing over Capitols and Academies!
Money! Money! Money! shrieking mad celestial money of illusion! Money made of nothing, starvation, suicide! Money of failure! Money of death!
Money against Eternity! and eternity’s strong mills grind out vast paper of Illusion!
Paris, December 1957
Europe! Europe!
World world world
I sit in my room
imagine the future
sunlight falls on Paris
I am alone there is no
one whose love is perfect
man has been mad man’s
love is not perfect I
have not wept enough
my breast will be heavy
till death the cities
are specters of cranks
of war the cities are
work & brick & iron &
smoke of the furnace of
selfhood makes tearless
eyes red in London but
no eye meets the sun
Flashed out of sky it
hits Lord Beaverbrook’s
white modern solid
paper building leaned
in London’s street to
bear last yellow beams
old ladies absently gaze
thru fog toward heaven
poor pots on windowsills
snake flowers to street
Trafalgar’s fountains splash
on noon-warmed pigeons
Myself beaming in ecstatic
wilderness on St. Paul’s dome
seeing the light on London
or here on a bed in Paris
sunglow through the high
window on plaster walls
Meek crowd underground
saints perish creeps
streetwomen meet lacklove
under gaslamp and neon
no woman in house loves
husband in flower unity
nor boy loves boy soft
fire in breast politics
electricity scares downtown
radio screams for money
police light on TV screens
laughs at dim lamps in
empty rooms tanks crash
thru bombshell no dream
of man’s joy is made movie
think factory pushes junk
autos tin dreams of Eros
mind eats its flesh in
geekish starvation and no
man’s fuck is holy for
man’s work is most war
Bony China hungers brain
wash over power dam and
America hides mad meat
in refrigerator Britain
cooks Jerusalem too long
France eats oil and dead
salad arms & legs in Africa
loudmouth devours Arabia
negro and white warring
against the golden nuptial
Russia manufacture feeds
millions but no drunk can
dream Mayakovsky’s suicide
rainbow over machinery
and backtalk to the sun
I lie in bed in Europe
alone in old red under
wear symbolic of desire
for union with immortality
but man’s love’s not perfect
in February it rains
as once for Baudelaire
one hundred years ago
planes roar in the air
cars race thru streets
I know where they go
to death but that is OK
it is that death comes
before life that no man
has loved perfectly no one
gets bliss in time new
mankind is not born that
I weep for this antiquity
and herald the Millennium
for I saw the Atlantic sun
rayed down from a vast cloud
at Dover on the sea cliffs
tanker size of ant heaved
up on ocean under shining
cloud and seagull flying
thru sun light’s endless
ladders streaming in Eternity
to ants in the myriad fields
of England to sun flowers
bent up to eat infinity’s
minute gold dolphins leaping
thru Mediterranean rainbow
White smoke and steam in Andes
Asia’s rivers glittering
blind poets deep in lone
Apollonic radiance on hillsides
littered with empty tombs
Paris, February 29, 1958
The Lion for Real
“Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative …”
I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Paterson and stayed two days.
Called up my old Reichian analyst
who’d kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
‘It’s happened’ I panted ‘There’s a Lion in my room’
‘I’m afraid any discussion would have no value’ he hung up.
I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend
I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye
We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow & he kicked me out
I ended masturbating in his jeep parked in the street moaning ‘Lion.’
Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him ‘Lion!’
He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries
I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn Ants
But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom’s bathroom.
But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat
‘I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions
But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father hath no Lion
You said your mother was mad don’t expect me to produce the Monster for your Bridegroom.’
Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink in Harlem
He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear him outside thru the window
My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in deafening stillness
We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur
Waxed rheumy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang greeting.
I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove
boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tub under the sink board.
He didn’t eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.
Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out
enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws
by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.
Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten face stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had nightmares
Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion’s flophouse circus,
I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor—‘Terrible Presence!’ I cried ‘Eat me or die!’
It got up that afternoon—walked to the door with its paw on the wall to steady its trembling body
Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth
thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in Mexico
Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice “Not this time Baby—but I will be back again.”
Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the Universe how am I chosen
In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served
Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your Mercy.
Paris, March 1958
The Names
Time comes spirit weakens and goes blank apartments shuffled through and forgotten
The dead in their cenotaphs locomotive high schools & African cities small town motorcycle graves
O America what saints given vision are shrouded in junk their elegy a nameless hoodlum elegance leaning against death’s military garage
Huncke who first saw the sun revolve in Chicago survived into middle-age Times Square
Thief stole hearts of wildcat tractor boys arrived to morphine brilliance Bickford table midnight neon to take a fall
arrested 41 times late 40s his acned skin & black Spanish hair grown coy and old and lip bitten in Rikers Island Jail
as bestial newsprint photograph we shared once busted, me scared of black eye cops Manhattan
you blissful nothing to lose digging the live detectives perhaps even offering God a cigarette
I’ll answer for you Huncke I never could before—admiring your natural tact and charm and irony—now sad Sing Sing
whatever inept Queens burglary you goofed again let God judge his sacred case
rather than mustached Time Judge steal a dirty photograph of your soul—I knew you when—
& you loved me better than my lawyer who wanted a frightened rat for official thousand buck mousetrap, no doubt, no doubt—
Shine in Cell free behind bars Immortal soul why not
Hell the machine can’t sentence anyone except itself, have I to do that?
It gives jail I give you poem, bars last twenty years rust in a hundred
my handwork remains when prisons fall because the hand is compassion
Brilliant bitter Morphy stalking Los Angeles after his ghost boy
haunting basements in Denver with his Montmartre black beard
Charming ladies’ man for gigolo purpose I heard, great cat for Shakespearean sex
first poet suicide I knew we sat on park benches I watched him despair his forehead star
my elder asked serious advice, gentle man! international queer pride humbled to pre-death cigarette gun fright
His love a young blond demon of broken army, his nemesis his own mad cock for the kids sardonic ass
his dream mouthful of white prick trembling in his head—woke a bullet in his side days later in Passaic
last moments gasping stricken blood under stars coughing intestines & lighted highway cars flowing past his eyes into the dark.
Joe Army’s beauty forgotten that night, pain cops nightmare, drunken AWOL through Detroit
phonecalls angels backrooms & courtsmartial lawyers trains a kaleidoscope of instant change,
shrinkage of soul, bearded dead dreams, all Balzac read in jail,
late disappearance from the city hides metamorphosis to humancy loathing that deathscene.
Phil Black hung in Tombs, horsefaced junky, dreamy strange murderer, forgotten pistol three buck holdup, stoolpigeon suicide I save him from the grave
Iroquois his indian head red cock intelligence buried in miserous solitaire politics
his narcissistic blond haired hooknosed pride, I made him once he groaned and came
Later stranger chill made me tremble, I loved him hopeless years,
he’s hid in Seattle consumed by lesbian hypochondrias’ stealthy communion, green bullfighters envy age,
unless I save him from the grave, but he won’t talk no more
much less fall in my arms or any mental bed forgiveness before we climb Olympics death
Leroi returning to bughouse monkishness & drear stinky soupdish his fatness fright & suffering mind insult a repetitious void
“I have done my best to make saintliness as uninteresting as possible”
and has succeeded, when did I last write or receive ambiguous message joky hangdog prophetic spade
Joan in dreams bent forward smiling asks news of the living
as in life the same sad tolerance, no skullbone judge of drunks
asking whereabouts sending regards from Mexican paradise garden where life & death are one
as if a postcard from eternity sent with human hand, wish I could see you now, it’s happening as should
whatever we really need, we ought get, don’t blame yourself—a photograph on reverse the rare tomb smile where trees grow crooked energy above grass—
yet died early-old teeth gone, tequila bottle in hand, an infantile paralysis limp, lacklove, the worst—
I dreamed such vision of her secret in my frisco bed, heart can live the rest by my, or her, best desire—love
Bill King black haired sorry drunken wop lawyer, woke up trembling in Connecticut DT’s among cows