the porches and woods changed when I go back / to see Earl again
He’ll be a bald / fleshy father / I could pursue him further in the garage
If there’s still a garage on the hill / on the planet / when I get back. From Asia.
If I could even remember his name or his face / or find him /
When I was ten / perhaps he exists in some form.
With a belly and a belt and an auto
Whatever his last name / I never knew / in the phonebook / the Akashic records.
I’ll write my Inspiration for all Mankind to remember,
My Idea, the secret cave / in the clothes closet / that house probably down /
Nothing to go back to / everything’s gone / only my idea
that’s disappearing / even in dreams / gray dust piles / instant annihilation
of World War II and all its stainless steel shining-mouthed cannons
much less me and my grammar school kisses / I never kissed in time /
and go on kissing in dream and out on the street / as if it were for ever.
No forever left! Even my oldest forever gone, in Bangkok, in Benares,
swept up with words and bodies / all into the brown Ganges /
passing the burning grounds and / into the police state.
My mind, my mind / you had six feet of Earth to hoe /
Why didn’t you remember and plant the seed of Law and gather the sprouts of What?
the golden blossoms of what idea? If I dream that I dream /what dream
should I dream next? Motorcycle rickshaws / parting lamp shine / little taxis / horses’ hoofs
on this Saigon midnight street. Angkor Wat ahead and the ruined city’s old Hindu faces
and there was a dream about Eternity. What should I dream when I wake?
What’s left to dream, more Chinese meat? More magic Spells? More youths to love before I change & disappear?
More dream words? This can’t go on forever. Now that I know it all /
goes whither? For now that I know I am dreaming /
What next for you Allen? Run down to the Presidents Palace full of Morphine /
the cocks crowing / in the street. / Dawn trucks / What is the question?
Do I need sleep, now that there’s light in the window?
I’ll go to sleep. Signing off until / the next idea / the moving van arrives empty
at the Doctor’s house full of Chinese furniture.
Saigon, May 31-June 1, 1963
Angkor Wat
Angkor—on top of the terrace
in a stone nook in the rain
Avalokitesvara faces everywhere
high in their stoniness
in white rainmist
Slithering hitherward paranoia
Banyans trailing
high muscled tree crawled
over the roof its big
long snaky toes spread
down the lintel’s red
cradle-root
elephantine bigness
Buddha I take my refuge
bowing in the black bower
before the openhanded lotus-man
sat crosslegged
and riding in the rain in the
anxious motorcycle putting
in the wetness my shirt
covered with green plastic
apron shivering
and throat choking
with upsurge
of stroke fear
cancer Bubonic
heart failure
bitter stomach juices
a wart growing on my rib
Objection! This can’t be
Me!
What happens to me when I get high
The echo of Sitaram, Sitaram Hindu
fears—eat no meat or vomit
the body—warnings in dream bearded
Das Thakur—obsessed
with meat, smoking, ganja
sex, cannibal spies, Propagation
of this Skin, thin
vegetable soups, they was
all Chinese eating pigs, was seven
slanteyes watching me drink tea
till I saluted the Buddha-baby in
the cloth flowered pram
sucking its chubby plum
Music from Walt Disney hearts and roses
sweet violins—
yellow skins landing on the green
vegetable planet—
seven children with identical haircuts
very polite, saluting
clasped hand bow—
the Fear ordering peas in the French
restaurant, with whole garlic
bread cheese and coffee hot
and
a
b
a
n
a
n
a to finish the bill on the table
pink
p
o
n
k of the rain on the roof tin
in the neon light a Hotel
clean tiled room
U
n
d
e
r a fan and canopied mosquito net
All well in this solitude, plenty money
for a long ride thru the forest in a
rainy afternoon with
long hair wet beard
glasses clouding—and that
nausea—passing out
of the Churning of the Ocean
asuras with teeth fangs
and fat eared Devas
with military mustaches
hanging on to the great Chain Snake
muscle sandstone railing
length of the moat-bridge to
the South Gate, Avalokitesvara’s huge
many faces in opposite directions
in high space
thru which ran new black road
at the knees of greater trees, one
needed a haircut, root-hair sprouting
on branches—thru the forested
Castle grounds to pathways fallen
sandstone headless statues
Damp black bas-relief Dancing Shiva
or angel lady
The huge snake roots, the vaster
serpent arms fallen
octopus over the roof
in a square courtyard—curved
roofcombs looked Dragon-back-stone-scaled
As frail as stone is, this harder wooden
life crushing them
with the cricket-glare and parrot
squads walking across the roof
—last nite full moon in misted heaven
and slow girl dance bent elbow and inspring
fingers snaking it thru the middle—
I am afraid where I am
“I am inert” … “I’m just doing my
Professional duty” … “I’m scheming
murders” … “I’m chasing a story”
I’m not going to eat meat anymore
I’m taking refuge in the Buddha Dharma Sangha
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare
who how satisfying in the ocean night
as the exit of laughing gas,
or the thrice-real moment of hashish
or the “ordering men about, playing god,
without drugs”
american husbands in sportshirts with clear,
bright eyes and legs spread in
the velocipedomotor bripping
on holiday from US Army Saigon
streets hotels I hitched
get polite when you’se a hiker
“I going to take both sides”
You have no right being a Hitler repeating that
Abhaya mudra reassurance
Palm out flat, patting the airhide
of earth—
Nothing but a fa
lse Buddha afraid of
my own annihilation, Leroi Moi—
afraid to fail you yet terror those Men
their tiger pictures and uniforms
dream to see that Kerouac tiger too—
Helikopter to— Sh, spies with telescopes
for seeing the bullets that shoot—
Leroi I been done you wrong
I’m just an old Uncle Tom in disguise all along
afraid of physical tanks.
and those buzzing headphones in my skull.
and many a butterfly committed suicide
its wings to the motheaten flame—
Agh! I vomited in fear of the forest of ganja meats—
Eternal Death silliness—Cowards die many times
Not even afraid to be a Coward—Ashamed only by
metal voices declaring war on Darkness
I seen plenty corpses but not them living wound-flowers
healing split open “mouths” as you see the
War Correspondent who wanted to Bash China
Even I wound up with his Titoist anxieties
Whatever happened to Jeannie Frigididia
Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy
radio 20 years behind Cambodia
Sounds like love is so sweet springtime
all in my head going down worried
about changing 100 Reales of meat
Whatever you think happened to
Jeannie Frigididia?
Whatyathink happen to the Frigididy girl?
You think she’ll be in the Ille Frigididy news?
Is the Frigididy Universe gonna be awakened?
Is Leary my laughter?
Plus ça change tonight from 6 P.M.
wet handed by meat sex
drank tea, drank carrot-potato thin soup
bread cheese coffee peas pies coffee
pineapple soda
walked on the rainy. run out of ink
market
To write a letter to President Norodom Sihanouk
to live in the flower-jazz palace at Phnom Penh
Kingly neutrality enter China for U.P
from Hong Kong
write to Eisenhower, politely inquiring
get China off the hook
war of races not Marxism in
Viet Nam Pres. Diem’s Queer picture
—a spy in the chinese soup
on the restaurant bench—I being also a
spy for the Left Consuling
“Geez that’s a great job yr doing fellers
keep it up”
I wish I could fly o’er the leaves of the jungle and not
get killed see the bamboo stakes
piercing the foot of the beefy Marine?
or the bodies Viet Cong piled on the tank
Vietnamese bosses at Ap Bac battle lost whodunit?
President’s messages back and forth in French and Charming
Ike give OK retreat from pregnant belly
of S.E. Asia,
Antichinese riots Indonesia—out of the papers—
not seen Newsweek a week or the Times
Monsoon riding thru the forest gate faces
Creepers silence on Ta-Phrom temple halls
narrow stone walk under sleeping trees—
rain on Ta-Keo pyramid—perfect faces
smiling ladies’ fiery headdresses in Thommanom
till passing the soda stand in forest arbor
ganja cigarette rolled in Terrasse Supérieur
rooftower by Ikon
of Buddha touching Earth
the burnt out incense sticks in the tipped can
I straightened and shoes off bowed
As I rode thru the forest Hari Hindoo and Lord of Mercy
struggled like Asur-Devas
with my mind-snake drifting
motorized under the trees—that
long road with a dip and slow strange
rise into the arch of the four-headed
Smile—gate to the old park
of Khmer palaces—ancient morphine
in a room—Garuda bebeaked and wing-sphinxed—
The many Sphinx-heads with ears on the towers
Looking around the country seventeen, cheek on eye,
Bewildered in a hurry in the rain to make
this City conquered by Chams (upriver
burning the wooden city) of
Stone to last in forest
Even that permanence warped cleaned
in the Alice in Wonderland giant garden
of Ta-Phrom—followed
by the young guardian with a caterpillar
like green frond in his hair
—he shrank back a second when I went to
touch his crown
And I’m following them naked to the waist
chinese smooth limbed workmen or darker
Cambodian cyclist Prisoners cutting the grass
by the Grand Hotel’s
cool waiting room with bar and USIS handout
news-casts only Journals except
for the State Paper reprinting the Prince
King’s questionless speech to
Journalists itching with neon—
So many grounds to cover the terrors of the day
All got to do with snakes and only one shy
tail, I saw disappearing behind a
rock, slow banded worm—the smiles
of Avalokitesvara with his big mouth like
Cambodian Pork Chops—the boys
and why do I not even faintly desire those
black silk girls in the alley of this
clean new tourist city?—
Ah those Deva faces on the walls of Thommanom!
Clean eyebrows and smiles of Lady Yore
Ever Naomi in my ear—a sad case of refusing to
grow up give birth to die—
I am Coward in every direction—Coughing
in the motorcycle trailer seat but
the beautiful forest hath its rain to
drown my noises—
Home to the Needle, further violation
or is this vegetable smoke and vein warmth
futile in the light of my friends Pronouncements
Maybe Gary’ll have the answer! Maybe Jack have
the Answer? Will the Army answer me,
or will a clang of bells herald the God Creeley
To whom I sent postcards of the cold stonebrows—
in the green—on the spot
“Blind white mossed gray carved
blocks of stone noses smiling
thin lips
green mossy fronds of giant
trees, the white drift smoke
sky
The millions of familiar
raindrops dripping in
floor rock crevasses
on the broken crown of the
gray lotus
The stone benches on the roof
Snake balustrades
Buddha’s faces on the
many towers, the forest snakes
waiting in the tall trunks of
wooden trees
Oh the beautiful pour of the rain noises
waiting below the money cyclopede
Motor driver covered with blue plastic
Angkor
where I dreamed of trembling to
write—here again after the
hot sun, sleeping and dreaming
2 days ago—back in the wished
for rain past
rain on my elbows
Buddha save me, what am
I doing here
again dreamed of this
This awful stone monument
being in the streams
of change or the Clouds
in the sky—
Kneeled to the statue on
Porch
Saranam Gochamee Catchme quick
forced with incense—have to
go down to the
veloc
ycle
thru the bat-tower
again, or out
in the rain!”
As might be read for poesy by Olson
At least moves from perception to obsession
according to waves of Me-ness
Still clinging to the Earthen straw
My eye
Confused with this blue sky cloud drift
“illusion” over the treetops
dwelling in my mind “frightened aging nagging flesh”
To step out of—? Who, Me?
Just a lot of words and propaganda
I been spreading getting scared
of my own bullshit
Except when faced with my confusion
words meat / death
mind-soup
eaten last night, greedily fried macaroni
with rare beef—all the children
scream at my long awkward hair,
On the bed as I ached and strained my
sphincter opened hoped
to get next time befucked by
a Cambodian sweet policeman
from the bicycle first day
who had Lord Buddha’s lips as on
the towers—all alike many boys—the Monks
of Lolei, smoking and eating beef,
touched my toes and my beard pulled
by the shaven kid in yellow
Nandi the bull waiting her owner in the Sun
The house crumbling and Vishnu’s arms
broken, heads off the seated
statues
bat families hanging upside down in the
door beams’ cracks—Chinese families
overrunning the earth like greeneyed children of
Science-fiction—Shall I blow
them up, Professor?—and
O Leaf of Buddha! when we get to
the green planets will we fight
the strange snaky races of—
Cancer Overpopulation
It’s a pyramid of faces—Sphinx-Avalokitesvara
all mixed up, I hope Buddha’s been there,
Then we’ll know if his mind appeared
in all the directions of Space—
The Pope died a saint to be dissolved in
his Christ
Philip Lamantia prophesied truly, all but
Mao Tze Tung loved Pope John
Except those newspaper Catholics in Saigon
He didn’t change their plans yet—
A walk, past the Saigon Market, where
There’s a few brass Buddhas for
shop sale in the North Wing
Crost the big traffic circle between the Shell
gas signs, where at nite the troop
Cops got in buses to go to Hué
Where telephones spoke blisters