Lord Lord Lord caw caw caw Lord Lord Lord caw caw caw Lord
Paris, December 1957-New York, 1959
Mescaline
Rotting Ginsberg, I stared in the mirror naked today
I noticed the old skull, I’m getting balder
my pate gleams in the kitchen light under thin hair
like the skull of some monk in old catacombs lighted by
a guard with flashlight
followed by a mob of tourists
so there is death
my kitten mews, and looks into the closet
Boito sings on the phonograph tonight his ancient song of angels
Antinoüs bust in brown photograph still gazing down from my wall
a light burst from God’s delicate hand sends down a wooden dove to the calm virgin
Beato Angelico’s universe
the cat’s gone mad and scraowls around the floor
What happens when the death gong hits rotting ginsberg on the head
what universe do I enter
death death death death death the cat’s at rest
are we ever free of—rotting ginsberg
Then let it decay, thank God I know
thank who
thank who
Thank you, O lord, beyond my eye
the path must lead somewhere
the path
the path
thru the rotting shit dump, thru the Angelico orgies
Beep, emit a burst of babe and begone
perhaps that’s the answer, wouldn’t know till you had a kid
I dunno, never had a kid never will at the rate I’m going
Yes, I should be good, I should get married
find out what it’s all about
but I can’t stand these women all over me
smell of Naomi
erk, I’m stuck with this familiar rotting ginsberg
can’t stand boys even anymore
can’t stand
can’t stand
and who wants to get fucked up the ass, really?
Immense seas passing over
the flow of time
and who wants to be famous and sign autographs like a movie star
I want to know
I want I want ridiculous to know to know WHAT rotting ginsberg
I want to know what happens after I rot
because I’m already rotting
my hair’s falling out I’ve got a belly I’m sick of sex
my ass drags in the universe I know too much
and not enough
I want to know what happens after I die
well I’ll find out soon enough
do I really need to know now?
is that any use at all use use use
death death death death death
god god god god god god god the Lone Ranger
the rhythm of the typewriter
What can I do to Heaven by pounding on Typewriter
I’m stuck change the record Gregory ah excellent he’s doing just that
and I am too conscious of a million ears
at present creepy ears, making commerce
too many pictures in the newspapers
faded yellowed press clippings
I’m going away from the poem to be a drak contemplative
trash of the mind
trash of the world
man is half trash
all trash in the grave
What can Williams be thinking in Paterson, death so much on him
so soon so soon
Williams, what is death?
Do you face the great question now each moment
or do you forget at breakfast looking at your old ugly love in the face
are you prepared to be reborn
to give release to this world to enter a heaven
or give release, give release
and all be done—and see a lifetime—all eternity—gone over
into naught, a trick question proposed by the moon to the answerless earth
No Glory for man! No Glory for man! No glory for me! No me!
No point writing when the spirit doth not lead
New York, 1959
Lysergic Acid
It is a multiple million eyed monster
it is hidden in all its elephants and selves
it hummeth in the electric typewriter
it is electricity connected to itself, if it hath wires
it is a vast Spiderweb
and I am on the last millionth infinite tentacle of the spiderweb, a worrier
lost, separated, a worm, a thought, a self
one of the millions of skeletons of China
one of the particular mistakes
I allen Ginsberg a separate consciousness
I who want to hear the infinite minutest vibration of eternal harmony
I who wait trembling my destruction by that aethereal music in the fire
I who hate God and give him a name
I who make mistakes on the eternal typewriter
I who am Doomed
But at the far end of the universe the million eyed Spyder that hath no name
spinneth of itself endlessly
the monster that is no monster approaches with apples, perfume, railroads, television, skulls
a universe that eats and drinks itself
blood from my skull
Tibetan creature with hairy breast and Zodiac on my stomach
this sacrificial victim unable to have a good time
My face in the mirror, thin hair, blood congested in streaks down beneath my eyes, cocksucker, a decay, a talking lust
a snaeap, a snarl, a tic of consciousness in infinity
a creep in the eyes of all Universes
trying to escape my Being, unable to pass on to the Eye
I vomit, I am in a trance, my body is seized in convulsion, my stomach crawls, water from my mouth, I am here in Inferno
dry bones of myriad lifeless mummies naked on the web, the Ghosts, I am a Ghost
I cry out where I am in the music, to the room, to whomever near, you, Are you God?
No, do you want me to be God?
Is there no Answer?
Must there always be an Answer? you reply,
and were it up to me to say Yes or No—
Thank God I am not God! Thank God I am not God!
But that I long for a Yes of Harmony to penetrate
to every corner of the universe, under every condition whatsoever
a Yes there Is … a Yes I Am … a Yes You Are … a We
A We
and that must be an It, and a They, and a Thing with No Answer
It creepeth, it waiteth, it is still, it is begun, it is the Horns of Battle it is Multiple Sclerosis
it is not my hope
it is not my death at Eternity
it is not my word, not poetry
beware my Word
It is a Ghost Trap, woven by priest in Sikkim or Tibet
a crossframe on which a thousand threads of differing color
are strung, a spiritual tennis racket
in which when I look I see aethereal lightwaves radiate
bright energy passing round on the threads as for billions of years
the thread-bands magically changing hues one transformed to another as if the
Ghost Trap
were an image of the Universe in miniature
conscious sentient part of the interrelated machine
making waves outward in Time to the Beholder
displaying its own image in miniature once for all
repeated minutely downward with endless variations throughout all of itself
it being all the same in every part
This image or energy which reproduces itself at the depths of space from the very Beginning
in what might be an O or an Aum
and trailing variations made of the same Word circles round itself in the
same pattern as its original Appearance
creating a larger Image of itself throughout depths of Time
outward circling thru bands of faroff Nebulae & vast Astrologies
contained, to be true to itself, in a Mandala painted on an Elephant’s hide,
or in a photograph of a painting on the side of an imaginary Elephant which smiles, tho how the Elephant looks is an irrelevant joke—
it might be a Sign held by a Flaming Demon, or Ogre of Transience,
or in a photograph of my own belly in the void
or in my eye
or in the eye of the monk who made the Sign
or in its own Eye that stares on Itself at last and dies
and tho an eye can die
and tho my eye can die
the billion-eyed monster, the Nameless, the Answerless, the Hidden-from-me, the endless Being
one creature that gives birth to itself
thrills in its minutest particular, sees out of all eyes differently at once
One and not One moves on its own ways
I cannot follow
And I have made an image of the monster here
and I will make another
it feels like Cryptozoids
it creeps and undulates beneath the sea
it is coming to take over the city
it invades beneath every Consciousness
it is delicate as the Universe
it makes me vomit
because I am afraid I will miss its appearance
it appears anyway
it appears anyway in the mirror
it washes out of the mirror like the sea
it is myriad undulations
it washes out of the mirror and drowns the beholder
it drowns the world when it drowns the world
it drowns in itself
it floats outward like a corpse filled with music
the noise of war in its head
a babe laugh in its belly
a scream of agony in the dark sea
a smile on the lips of a blind statue
it was there
it was not mine
I wanted to use it for myself
to be heroic
but it is not for sale to this consciousness
it goes its own way forever
it will complete all creatures
it will be the radio of the future
it will hear itself in time
it wants a rest
it is tired of hearing and seeing itself
it wants another form another victim
it wants me
it gives me good reason
it gives me reason to exist
it gives me endless answers
a consciousness to be separate and a consciousness to see
I am beckoned to be One or the other, to say I am both and be neither
it can take care of itself without me
it is Both Answerless (it answers not to that name)
it hummeth on the electric typewriter
it types a fragmentary word which is
a fragmentary word,
MANDALA
Gods dance on their own bodies
New flowers open forgetting Death
Celestial eyes beyond the heartbreak of illusion
I see the gay Creator
Bands rise up in anthem to the worlds
Flags and banners waving in transcendence
One image in the end remains myriad-eyed in Eternity
This is the Work! This is the Knowledge! This is the End of man!
Palo Alto, June 2, 1959
I Beg You Come Back & Be Cheerful
Tonite I got hi in the window of my apartment
chair at 3 A.M.
gazing at Blue incandescent torches
bright-lit street below
clotted shadows looming on a new laid pave
—as last week Medieval rabbiz
plodded thru the brown raw
dirt turned over—sticks
& cans
and tired ladies sitting on spanish
garbage pails—in the deadly heat
—one month ago
the fire hydrants were awash—
the sun at 3 P.M. today in a haze—
now all dark outside, a cat crosses
the street silently—I meow
and she looks up, and passes a
pile of rubble on the way
to a golden shining garbage pail
(phosphor in the night
& alley stink)
(or door-can mash)
—Thinking America is a chaos
Police clog the streets with their anxiety,
Prowl cars creak & halt:
Today a woman, 20, slapped her brother
playing with his infant bricks—
toying with a huge rock—
‘Don’t do that now! the cops! the cops!’
And there was no cop there—
I looked around shoulder—
a pile of crap in the opposite direction.
Tear gas! Dynamite! Mustaches!
I’ll grow a beard and carry lovely
bombs,
I will destroy the world, slip in between
the cracks of death
And change the Universe—Ha!
I have the secret, I carry
Subversive salami in
my ragged briefcase
“Garlic, Poverty, a will to Heaven,”
a strange dream in my meat:
Radiant clouds, I have heard God’s voice in
my sleep, or Blake’s awake, or my own or
the dream of a delicatessen of snorting cows
and bellowing pigs—
The chop of a knife
a finger severed in my brain—
a few deaths I know—
O brothers of the Laurel
Is the world real?
Is the Laurel
a joke or a crown of thorns?—
Fast, pass
up the ass
Down I go
Cometh Woe
—the street outside,
me spying on New York.
The dark truck passes snarling &
vibrating deep—
Leaving us flying like birds into Time
—eyes and car headlights—
The shrinkage of emptiness
in the Nebulae
These Galaxies cross like pinwheels & they pass
like gas—
What forests are born.
September 15, 1959
Psalm IV
Now I’ll record my secret vision, impossible sight of the face of God:
It was no dream, I lay broad waking on a fabulous couch in Harlem
having masturbated for no love, and read half naked an open book of Blake on my lap
Lo & behold! I was thoughtless and turned a page and gazed on the living Sun-flower
and heard a voice, it was Blake’s, reciting in earthen measure:
the voice rose out of the page to my secret ear never heard before—
I lifted my eyes to the window, red walls of buildings flashed outside, endless sky sad in Eternity
sunlight gazing on the world, apartments of Harlem standing in the universe—
each brick and cornice stained with intelligence like a vast living face—
the great brain unfolding and brooding in wilderness!—Now speaking aloud with Blake’s voice—
Love! thou patient presence & bone of the body! Father! thy careful watching and waiting over my soul!
My son! My son! the endless ages have remembered me! My son! My son! Time howled in anguish in my ear!
My son! My son! my father wept and held me in his dead arms.
1960
To an Old Poet in Peru
Because we met at dusk
Under the shadow of the railroad station
clock
While my shade was visiting Lima
&
nbsp; And your ghost was dying in Lima
old face needing a shave
And my young beard sprouted
magnificent as the dead hair
in the sands of Chancay
Because I mistakenly thought you were
melancholy
Saluting your 60 year old feet
which smell of the death
of spiders on the pavement
And you saluted my eyes
with your anisetto voice
Mistakenly thinking I was genial
for a youth
(my rock and roll is the motion of an
angel flying in a modern city)
(your obscure shuffle is the motion
of a seraphim that has lost
its wings)
I kiss you on your fat cheek (once more tomorrow
Under the stupendous Desamparados clock)
Before I go to my death in an airplane crash
in North America (long ago)
And you go to your heart-attack on an indifferent
street in South America
(Both surrounded by screaming
communists with flowers
in their ass)
—you much sooner than I—
or a long night alone in a room
in the old hotel of the world
watching a black door
… surrounded by scraps of paper
DIE GREATLY IN THY SOLITUDE
Old Man,
I prophesy Reward
Vaster than the sands of Pachacamac
Brighter than a mask of hammered gold
Sweeter than the joy of armies naked
fucking on the battlefield
Swifter than a time passed between
old Nasca night and new Lima
in the dusk
Stranger than our meeting by the Presidential
Palace in an old café
ghosts of an old illusion, ghosts
of indifferent love—
THE DAZZLING INTELLIGENCE
Migrates from Death
To make a sign of Life again to you
Fierce and beautiful as a car crash
in the Plaza de Armas
I swear that I have seen that Light
I will not fail to kiss your hideous cheek
when your coffin’s closed
And the human mourners go back
to their old tired
Dream.
And you wake in the Eye of the
Dictator of the Universe.
Another stupid miracle! I’m