Him there to recover I guess, but made his way back to New York shuddering to fuck stiff Time girls,
Death charm in person, sexual childlike radiant pain
See his face in old photographs & bandaged naked wrist leaning melancholy contemplating the camera
awkward face now calm, kind to me in cafeteria one sober morn looking for jobs at breakfast,
but mostly smiled at roof edge midnight, all 1920s elegance reincarnate in black vomit bestriven suit
& screechy records Mahagonny airplane crash, lushed young man of 1940s hated his fairy woe, came on Lizzie’s belly or Ansen’s sock in desperate orgies of music canopener
God but I loved his murdered face when he talked with a mouthful of rain in 14th St subway—
where he fell skull broken underground last, head crushed by the radiant wheel on iron track at Astor Place
Farewell dear Bill that’s done, you’re gone, we all go into the ancient void drunkard mouth
you made it too soon, here was more to say, & more to drink, but now too late to sit and talk
all night toward the eternity you sought so well so fearlessly in so much alcoholic pain with so much fire behind eyes with such
sweet manner in your heart that never won a happy fate thru what bleak years you saw your red skull burning deathshead in the U.S. sun
Mix living dead, Neal Cassady, old hero of travel love alyosha idiot seek-train poems, what crown you wear at last
what fameless reward for patience & pain, what golden whore come secret from the clouds, what has god bidden for your coffin and heart someday,
what will give back your famous arm, your happy catholic boy eye, orphan torso shining in poolhall & library, intimate spermworks with old girls downtown rockabelly energy,
what Paradise built high enough to hold your desire, deep enough to encompass your cock kindnesses, soft for your children to pray, 10 foot iron wheels you fell under?
what American heaven receive you? Christ allow sufferings then will he allow you His opening tinbarrel Iowa light as Jerusalem?
O Neal that life end we together on knees know harvest of prayers together,
Paradise autos ascend to the moon no illusion, short time earth life Bibles bear our eyes, make it dear baby
Stay with me Angel now in Shroud of railroad lost bet racetrack broke leg
oblivion
till I get the shining Word or you the cockless cock to lay in my ass hope mental radiance—
It’s all lost we fall without glory to empty tomb comedown to nothing but evil thinkless worm, but we know better
merely by old heart hope, or merely Desire, or merely the love whisper breathed in your ear on lawns of long gone by Denver,
merely by the night you leaned on my body & held me for All & called me to Adore what I wondered at as child age ten I
wandered by hopeless green hedges, when you sat under alley balcony garbagestair, ache in our breasts Futurity
meeting Love for Love, so wept as child now man I weep for true end,
Save from the grave! O Neal I love you I bring this Lamb into the middle of the world happily—O tenderness—to see you again—O tenderness—to recognize you in the middle of Time.
Paris, Spring 1958
At Apollinaire’s Grave
“… voici le temps
Où l’on connaîtra l’avenir
Sans mourir de connaissance”
I
I visited Père Lachaise to look for the remains of Apollinaire
the day the U.S. President appeared in France for the grand conference of heads of state
so let it be the airport at blue Orly a springtime clarity in the air over Paris
Eisenhower winging in from his American graveyard
and over the froggy graves at Père Lachaise an illusory mist as thick as marijuana smoke
Peter Orlovsky and I walked softly thru Père Lachaise we both knew we would die
and so held temporary hands tenderly in a citylike miniature eternity
roads and streetsigns rocks and hills and names on everybody’s house
looking for the lost address of a notable Frenchman of the Void
to pay our tender crime of homage to his helpless menhir
and lay my temporary American Howl on top of his silent Calligramme
for him to read between the lines with Xray eyes of Poet
as he by miracle had read his own death lyric in the Seine
I hope some wild kidmonk lays his pamphlet on my grave for God to read me on cold winter nights in heaven
already our hands have vanished from that place my hand writes now in a room in Paris Git-le-Coeur
Ah William what grit in the brain you had what’s death
I walked all over the cemetery and still couldn’t find your grave
what did you mean by that fantastic cranial bandage in your poems
O solemn stinking deathshead what’ve you got to say nothing and that’s barely an answer
You can’t drive autos into a sixfoot grave tho the universe is mausoleum big enough for anything
the universe is a graveyard and I walk around alone in here
knowing that Apollinaire was on the same street 50 years ago
his madness is only around the corner and Genet is with us stealing books
the West is at war again and whose lucid suicide will set it all right
Guillaume Guillaume how I envy your fame your accomplishment for American letters
your Zone with its long crazy line of bullshit about death
come out of the grave and talk thru the door of my mind
issue new series of images oceanic haikus blue taxicabs in Moscow negro statues of Buddha
pray for me on the phonograph record of your former existence
I’ve eaten the blue carrots you sent out of the grave and Van Gogh’s ear and maniac peyote of Artaud
and will walk down the streets of New York in the black cloak of French poetry
improvising our conversation in Paris at Père Lachaise
and the future poem that takes its inspiration from the light bleeding into your grave
II
Here in Paris I am your guest O friendly shade
the absent hand of Max Jacob
Picasso in youth bearing me a tube of Mediterranean
myself attending Rousseau’s old red banquet I ate his violin
great party at the Bateau Lavoir not mentioned in the textbooks of Algeria
Tzara in the Bois de Boulogne explaining the alchemy of the machineguns of the cuckoos
he weeps translating me into Swedish
well dressed in a violet tie and black pants
a sweet purple beard which emerged from his face like the moss hanging from the walls of Anarchism
he spoke endlessly of his quarrels with André Breton
whom he had helped one day trim his golden mustache
old Blaise Cendrars received me into his study and spoke wearily of the enormous length of Siberia
Jacques Vaché invited me to inspect his terrible collection of pistols
poor Cocteau saddened by the once marvelous Radiguet at his last thought I fainted
Rigaut with a letter of introduction to Death
and Gide praised the telephone and other remarkable inventions
we agreed in principle though he gossiped of lavender underwear
but for all that he drank deeply of the grass of Whitman and was intrigued by all lovers named Colorado
princes of America arriving with their armfuls of shrapnel and baseball
Oh Guillaume the world so easy to fight seemed so easy
did you know the great political classicists would invade Montparnasse
with not one sprig of prophetic laurel to green their foreheads
not one pulse of green in their pillows no leaf left from their wars—Ma
ya-kovsky arrived and revolted
III
Came back sat on a tomb and stared at your rough menhir
a piece of thin granite like an unfinished phallus
a cross fading into the rock 2 poems on the stone one Coeur Renversée
other Habituez-vous comme moi A ces prodiges que j’annonce Guillaume Apollinaire de Kostrowitsky
someone placed a jam bottle filled with daisies and a 5&10¢ surrealist typist ceramic rose
happy little tomb with flowers and overturned heart
under a fine mossy tree beneath which I sat snaky trunk
summer boughs and leaves umbrella over the menhir and nobody there
Et quelle voix sinistre ulule Guillaume qu’es-tu devenu
his nextdoor neighbor is a tree
there underneath the crossed bones heaped and yellow cranium perhaps
and the printed poems Alcools in my pocket his voice in the museum
Now middleage footsteps walk the gravel
a man stares at the name and moves toward the crematory building
same sky rolls over thru clouds as Mediterranean days on the Riviera during war
drinking Apollo in love eating occasional opium he’d taken the light
One must have felt the shock in St. Germain when he went out Jacob & Picasso coughing in the dark
a bandage unrolled and the skull left still on a bed outstretched pudgy fingers the mystery and ego gone
a bell tolls in the steeple down the street birds warble in the chestnut trees
Famille Bremont sleeps nearby Christ hangs big chested and sexy in their tomb
my cigarette smokes in my lap and fills the page with smoke and flames
an ant runs over my corduroy sleeve the tree I lean on grows slowly
bushes and branches upstarting through the tombs one silky spiderweb gleaming on granite
I am buried here and sit by my grave beneath a tree
Paris, Winter-Spring 1958
Message
Since we had changed
rogered spun worked
wept and pissed together
I wake up in the morning
with a dream in my eyes
but you are gone in NY
remembering me Good
I love you I love you
& your brothers are crazy
I accept their drunk cases
It’s too long that I have been alone
it’s too long that I’ve sat up in bed
without anyone to touch on the knee, man
or woman I don’t care what anymore, I
want love I was born for I want you with me now
Ocean liners boiling over the Atlantic
Delicate steelwork of unfinished skyscrapers
Back end of the dirigible roaring over Lakehurst
Six women dancing together on a red stage naked
The leaves are green on all the trees in Paris now
I will be home in two months and look you in the eyes
Paris, May 1958
To Lindsay
Vachel, the stars are out
dusk has fallen on the Colorado road
a car crawls slowly across the plain
in the dim light the radio blares its jazz
the heartbroken salesman lights another cigarette
In another city 27 years ago
I see your shadow on the wall
you’re sitting in your suspenders on the bed
the shadow hand lifts up a Lysol bottle to your head
your shade falls over on the floor
Paris, May 1958
To Aunt Rose
Aunt Rose—now—might I see you
with your thin face and buck tooth smile and pain
of rheumatism—and a long black heavy shoe
for your bony left leg
limping down the long hall in Newark on the running carpet
past the black grand piano
in the day room
where the parties were
and I sang Spanish loyalist songs
in a high squeaky voice
(hysterical) the committee listening
while you limped around the room
collected the money—
Aunt Honey, Uncle Sam, a stranger with a cloth arm
in his pocket
and huge young bald head
of Abraham Lincoln Brigade
—your long sad face
your tears of sexual frustration
(what smothered sobs and bony hips
under the pillows of Osborne Terrace)
—the time I stood on the toilet seat naked
and you powdered my thighs with calamine
against the poison ivy—my tender
and shamed first black curled hairs
what were you thinking in secret heart then
knowing me a man already—
and I an ignorant girl of family silence on the thin pedestal
of my legs in the bathroom—Museum of Newark.
Aunt Rose
Hitler is dead, Hitler is in Eternity; Hitler is with
Tamburlane and Emily Brontë
Though I see you walking still, a ghost on Osborne Terrace
down the long dark hall to the front door
limping a little with a pinched smile
in what must have been a silken
flower dress
welcoming my father, the Poet, on his visit to Newark
—see you arriving in the living room
dancing on your crippled leg
and clapping hands his book
had been accepted by Liveright
Hitler is dead and Liveright’s gone out of business
The Attic of the Past and Everlasting Minute are out of print
Uncle Harry sold his last silk stocking
Claire quit interpretive dancing school
Buba sits a wrinkled monument in Old
Ladies Home blinking at new babies
last time I saw you was the hospital
pale skull protruding under ashen skin
blue veined unconscious girl
in an oxygen tent
the war in Spain has ended long ago
Aunt Rose
Paris, June 1958
American Change
The first I looked on, after a long time far from home in mid Atlantic on a summer day
Dolphins breaking the glassy water under the blue sky,
a gleam of silver in my cabin, fished up out of my jangling new pocket of coins and green dollars
—held in my palm, the head of the feathered indian, old Buck-Rogers eagle eyed face, a gash of hunger in the cheek
gritted jaw of the vanished man begone like a Hebrew with hairlock combed down the side—O Rabbi Indian
what visionary gleam 100 years ago on Buffalo prairie under the molten cloud-shot sky, ’the same clear light 10000 miles in all directions
but now with all the violin music of Vienna, gone into the great slot machine of Kansas City, Reno—
The coin seemed so small after vast European coppers thick francs leaden pesetas, lire endless and heavy,
a miniature primeval memorialized in 5¢ nickel candy-store nostalgia of the redskin, dead on silver coin,
with shaggy buffalo on reverse, hump-backed little tail incurved, head butting against the rondure of Eternity,
cock forelock below, bearded shoulder muscle folded below muscle, head of prophet, bowed,
vanishing beast of Time, hoar body rubbed clean of wrinkles and shining like polished stone, bright metal in my forefinger, ridiculous buffalo —Go to New York.
Dime next I found, Minerva, sexless cold & chill, ascending goddess of money—and was it the wife of Wallace Stevens, truly?
and now from the locks flowing the miniature wings of speedy thought,
executive dyke, Minerva, goddess of Madison Avenue, forgotten useless dime that can’t buy hot dog, dead dime—
Then we’ve Geor
ge Washington, less primitive, the snub-nosed quarter, smug eyes and mouth, some idiot’s design of the sexless Father,
naked down to his neck, a ribbon in his wig, high forehead, Roman line down the nose, fat cheeked, still showing his falsetooth ideas—O Eisenhower & Washington—O Fathers—No movie star dark beauty—O thou Bignoses—
Quarter, remembered quarter, 40¢ in all—What’ll you buy me when I land—one icecream soda?—
poor pile of coins, original reminders of the sadness, forgotten money of America—
nostalgia of the first touch of those coins, American change,
the memory in my aging hand, the same old silver reflective there,
the thin dime hidden between my thumb and forefinger
All the struggles for those coins, the sadness of their reappearance
my reappearance on those fabled shores
and the failure of that Dream, that Vision of Money reduced to this haunting recollection
of the gas lot in Paterson where I found half a dollar gleaming in the grass—
I have a $5 bill in my pocket—it’s Lincoln’s sour black head moled wrinkled, forelocked too, big eared, flags of announcement flying over the bill, stamps in green and spiderweb black,
long numbers in racetrack green, immense promise, a girl, a hotel, a busride to Albany, a night of brilliant drunk in some faraway corner of Manhattan
a stick of several teas, or paper or cap of Heroin, or a $5 strange present to the blind.
Money money, reminder, I might as well write poems to you—dear American money—O statue of Liberty I ride enfolded in money in my mind to you—and last
Ahhh! Washington again, on the Dollar, same poetic black print, dark words, The United States of America, innumerable numbers
R956422481 One Dollar This Certificate is Legal Tender (tender!) for all debts public and private
My God My God why have you forsaken me
Ivy Baker Priest Series 1953 F
and over, the Eagle, wild wings outspread, halo of the Stars encircled by puffs of smoke & flame—
a circle the Masonic Pyramid, the sacred Swedenborgian Dollar
America, bricked up to the top, & floating surreal above
the triangle of holy outstaring Eye sectioned out of the aire, shining
light emitted from the eyebrowless triangle—and a desert of cactus, scattered all around, clouds afar,