to the gas students—
gathered in front of City Hall to redress
their grievances—
Surabaya Johnnie not seen Bodrabadur Temple
in Java next time round this part
of the world
All the wire services eating sweet and
sour pork and fresh cold lichee white-meat
in sugarwater—
Discussing the manly truth Gee Fellers—
Even the fat whitehaired belly boy from
Time and his Kewpiedoll wife
Could’ve been seen in the movies dancing
the rainy night at the border
Chinese cha-cha, Hysteria
That UP kid flown down from Vientiane
Laos fugitive Hepatitis
Scared of the Yellow Men, or the slow
Alcohol red face of the Logistics
Analyst—“I got the Eichmann syndrome”
said he newsweekly—reporters who
never committed suicide like
Hemingway had to, faced
with the fat newsman with
Seven children from
Buddenbrooks
They were living in Greece while Pound
was taking a vow of silence
“I knew too much”
but it was all a mistake,
I fled the Mekong delta, fled the 12,000
Military speaking hot dog guts on the
downtown aircooled streets,
fled the Catinat Hotel, flushed my shit
down the bathroom—
jumped in the cab suddenly, afraid
after left Xaloi temple like a
Negro disintegrated in New Orleans,
afraid to publish that or they bomb
my typesetter’s woodsy Balcony
in Louisiana—
Everywhere it’s the fear I got in my own
intestines—Kenyatta Prime Minister
peacefully with his fly-whisk
and maybe the Mo Mo’s underground
Mao-Mao—everywhere is my own Rhodesia
for Mysterious Choose Up Sides and Die
like a “Man”
I never wanted to be a “human” being and
this is what I got—a himalayan
striped umbrella I don’t use
in the jungle rain—my eyes
Lid-heavy—my mind skips
back to the overweight knapsack I carry
all these years’ scribbles bound in
Ganges towels—
Down, to drink
Iced coffee with sweet evaporated milk
Chinese coffee in small glasses, but
Manger les Tripes No No—not eat
that mouthful of snake-apple
“give up desire for children”
give up—this Prophecy—
Everything drifted away in the dream
even the stone buildings of Low Library,
even the great dome of Columbia,
even the great cities of Khmer—weak
dancers at the portals of Angkor—
where I saw the praying young
head shaved peasant kneel at
the foot of the stairs on a purple
straw mat,
The cries of the boy dancers to the
deliberate slow walking drum’s
triple beat—Faunlike
conscious asian steps on the
stonewalk—My cries of Sex
in bed echoed in their
lap-head grass eyes—
Motorcyclists crying together
entering the inner gates to
the huge temple left behind by other
Hindu dreamers—Kingdom
Come or Kingdom Yore—
reassurance from Buddha’s
two arms, palms out
stept up to 13th Century
Sukothai feminacy
step forward—
I’ve read the 1910 Guidebook about them
giant trees strangling the heavy palace
one altar full of little black bugs I never saw
before,
Broken or stray Lingams left over from another
Imperial History, Goon squads with Moats,
Kingly reservoirs dried up, must’ve
been a big city full of wooden poles right
near here, bamboo thatchments
Chinese babies screaming at the bearded
Han traveler—Palms together
Salute I don’t care I don’t know
Buddha footprint repetition
Make that a dozen eggs—split em easy.
Make that pig—tied up on the running board
between iron spokes, with a sharp
wood stick set between his legs to
carry him squeaking hoarsely protesting
being man-handled to
get his throat cut for chinese
hordes—yes they eat
So much pork they’ll make a butcher shop
restaurant of the whole white folks universe
which should be owned by Negroes but is
really haircut like Jews or
Indian Mounties in
Northern Canada
They been “throwing up radioactive dolphins
in their icy bays—”?
There was a great ice-floe up north I
saw holes in the sea crust, weir
cold green brine slurping up, or mist
on my fingernail—
I sat in a hammock and waited—a
big hole appeared in the English
Channel
To let the human beings thru, hordes
from Italy into White Anglia
England achange—Stonehenge who
went back that far to worship the
Sun?
Lady Mort’s wormy intestines,
always passed the basement in the Louvre
with that Knight-at-Arms on a stone
black table carried by hooded monks
big as huge children getting
stoned, tired—
It can can’t go on forever. I’m in the
Jet Set, according to my memory,
dissociated in Space from
Bangkok to Calcutta 2 hours
from Bangkok to Saigon the
old elegance of the hitch thumb
in Texas past the valley
town and the green river—
Coughing in the airplane and my ears hurt
a headache on the local slow
airboat—over the great
water, carrying the 10 tiny
Buddhas of the negligent
Mahant of Bodh Gaya—
Jumping in and out of space—soon
faster than light I’ll go back to the
Graham Avenue past, and stare out the
window happily at Paul R——
passing down the 1942 Broadway—
the gothic church, the alleys and
Synagogues of Mea Shearim,
Jerusalem’s hated Walls—
I couldn’t get over to the Holy Side and weep
where I was supposed to by History
Laws got confused stamped
in my passport, lost in the refugee
Station at Calcutta. It
winds in and out of space and time the
physical traveler—
Returning home at last, years later as
prophesied, “Is this the way that
I’m supposed to feel?”
with my nightmare underwear downtown
in the gray haunted midnight street
foggy Vancouver was winter
then now Summer I’ll see
Thru the clear air the great Northern Mountains
and aspire that lonely visible
Space-peak before entering the
Moils of New Frisco San York Orleans
Castro Bomb Shade Protest Shelter
Better write a letter warnin
g against
the
Aswan Nile not seen
Peking’s Jewelry feet not Come true
Surely I’ll live to take tea in a back yard
in Kyoto and be calm!
“Make me ready—but not yet”
No I am not “ready” to die when that Choke
comes I’m afraid I’ll scream and
embarrass everybody—go out
like a coward yellow fear I done left no
Louis babies behind me Rebuke in
Those 70 year eyes and I speak of Murder
blessing him?—Alas
to be kinder except I was kind to the
Man on park bench after the Nite Club
who “schemed murders” as an
analyst for air forces.
They need conscience-stricken analysts, I’m
a conscious-stricken panelist on this
university show.
Forward March, guessing
which bullet which airplane which nausea
be the dreadful doomy last
begun while I’m still
conscious—I’ll go down and get a cold coffee at
Midnight
Siemréap, Cambodia, June 10, 1963
The Change: Kyoto–Tokyo Express
I
Black Magicians
Come home: the pink meat image
black yellow image with
ten fingers and two eyes
is gigantic already: the black
curly pubic hair, the
blind hollow stomach,
the silent soft open vagina
rare womb of new birth
cock lone and happy to be home
again
touched by hands by mouths,
by hairy lips—
Close the portals of the festival?
Open the portals to what Is,
The mattress covered with sheets,
soft pillows of skin,
long soft hair and delicate
palms along the buttocks
timidly touching,
waiting for a sign, a throb
softness of balls, rough
nipples alone in the dark
met by a weird finger;
Tears allright, and laughter
allright
I am that I am—
Closed off from this
The schemes begin, roulette,
brainwaves, bony dice,
Stroboscope motorcycles
Stereoscopic Scaly
Serpents winding thru
cloud spaces of
what is not—
“… convoluted, lunging upon
a pismire, a conflagration, a—”
II
Shit! Intestines boiling in sand fire
creep yellow brain cold sweat
earth unbalanced vomit thru
tears, snot ganglia buzzing
the Electric Snake rising hypnotic
shuffling metal-eyed coils
whirling rings within wheels
from asshole up the spine
Acid in the throat the chest
a knot trembling Swallow back
the black furry ball of the great
Fear
Oh!
The serpent in my bed pitiful
crawling unwanted babes of
snake covered with veins and pores
breathing heavy frightened love
metallic Bethlehem out the window
the lost, the lost hungry
ghosts here alive trapped
in carpet rooms How can I
be sent to Hell
with my skin and blood
Oh I remember myself so
Gasping, staring at dawn over
lower Manhattan the bridges
covered with rust, the slime
in my mouth & ass, sucking
his cock like a baby crying Fuck
me in my asshole Make love
to this rotten slave Give me the
power to whip & eat your heart
I own your belly & your eyes
I speak thru your screaming
mouth Black Mantra Fuck you
Fuck me Mother Brother Friend
old white haired creep shuddering in
the toilet slum bath floorboards—
Oh how wounded, how wounded, I
murder the beautiful chinese women
It will come on the railroad, beneath
the wheels, in drunken hate screaming
thru the skinny machine gun, it will
come out of the mouth of the pilot
the dry lipped diplomat, the hairy
teacher will come out of me
again shitting the meat out of
my ears on my cancer deathbed
Oh crying man crying woman
crying guerrilla shopkeeper
crying dysentery boneface on
the urinal street of the Self
Oh Negro beaten in the eye in my
home, oh black magicians
in white skin robes boiling the
stomachs of your children that
you do not die but shudder in
Serpent & worm shape forever
Powerful minds & superhuman
Roar of volcano & rocket in
Your bowels—
Hail to your fierce desire, your
Godly pride, my Heaven’s gate
will not be closed until
we enter all—
All human shapes, all
trembling donkeys & apes, all
lovers turned to ghost
all achers on trains &
taxicab bodies sped away
from date with desire, old movies,
all who were refused—
All which was rejected, the
leper-sexed hungry of
nazi conventions, hollow
cheeked arab marxists of Acco
Crusaders dying of starvation
in the Holy Land—
Seeking the Great Spirit of the
Universe in Terrible Godly
form, O suffering Jews
burned in the hopeless fire
O thin Bengali sadhus adoring
Kali mother hung with
nightmare skulls O Myself
under her pounding
feet!
Yes I am that worm soul under
the heel of the daemon horses
I am that man trembling to die
in vomit & trance in bamboo
eternities belly ripped by
chinamen kids—Come sweetly
now back to my Self as I was—
Allen Ginsberg says this: I am
a mass of sores and worms
& baldness & belly & smell
I am false Name the prey
of Yamantaka Devourer of
Strange dreams, the prey of
radiation & Police Hells of Law
I am that I am I am the
man & the Adam of hair in
my loins This is my spirit and
physical shape I inhabit
this Universe Oh weeping
against what is my
own nature for now
Who would deny his own shape’s
loveliness in his
dream moment of bed
Who sees his desire to be
horrible instead of Him
Who is, who cringes, perishes,
is reborn a red Screaming
baby? Who cringes before
that meaty shape in
Fear?
In this dream I am the Dreamer
and the Dreamed I am
that I am Ah but I have
always known
oooh for the hate I have spent
in denying my image & cursing
the breasts of illusion—
Screaming at murderers, trembling
between their legs in fear of the
steel pistols of my mortality—
Come, sweet lonely Spirit, back
to your bodies, come great God
back to your only image, come
to your many eyes & breasts,
come thru thought and
motion up all your
arms the great gesture of
Peace & acceptance Abhaya
Mudra Mudra of fearlessness
Mudra of Elephant Calmed &
war-fear ended forever!
The war, the war on Man, the
war on woman, the ghost
assembled armies vanish in
their realms
Chinese American Bardo Thodols
all the seventy hundred hells from
Orleans to Algeria tremble
with tender soldiers weeping
In Russia the young poets rise
to kiss the soul of the revolution
in Vietnam the body is burned
to show the truth of only the
body in Kremlin & White House
the schemers draw back
weeping from their schemes—
In my train seat I renounce
my power, so that I do
live I will die
Over for now the Vomit, cut
up & pincers in the skull,
fear of bones, grasp
against man woman & babe.
Let the dragon of Death
come forth from his
picture in the whirling
white clouds’ darkness
And suck dream brains &
claim these lambs for his
meat, and let him feed
and be other than I
Till my turn comes and I
enter that maw and change
to a blind rock covered
with misty ferns that
I am not all now
but a universe of skin and breath
& changing thought and
burning hand & softened
heart in the old bed of
my skin From this single
birth reborn that I am
to be so—
My own Identity now nameless
neither man nor dragon or
God
but the dreaming Me full
of physical rays’ tender
red moons in my belly &
Stars in my eyes circling
And the Sun the Sun the
Sun my visible father
making my body visible
thru my eyes!
Tokyo, July 18, 1963
VII
KING OF MAY: AMERICA TO EUROPE
(1963–1965)
Nov. 23, 1963: Alone
Alone
in that same self where I always was
with Kennedy throat brain bloodied in Texas
the television continuous blinking two radar days