with Charlie muttering in his underwear strewn bedroom
with Neal running down the hall shouting about the racetrack
with Ann with her white boy’s ass silent under the Cupid thigh
with Lucille talking to herself, feeding the pregnant cat Alice
with Anne mourning her pockmarked womb & the hard muscled chest of her Lover
with David’s red wine fireplace casting shadows back to the Duchess farm-boy faggot of Wichita, on fire in mainstreet
with Lance with his crummy painting & leopard blue breast seeking to buy a motorcycle to crosscountry smiling & wan
with the manuscripts of nutritious Roselle the New York suicide on the round mahogany table near the kitchen
with Leroi Jones’ white-eyeballed war-cry unread, babbling in postmortem blue-sneer
with myself confused shock-fingertipt on the rented typewriter
with Alan with horses’ teeth metafysiks demurely insisting he was intensely so over coffee
with Glen o’ the lisp & Justin the olding bluejacketed man-love off in autos to Mexico cactus hope
with the fat lady with babe in the auto, feeding & grieving her adolescence’s backseat
with “Go to Hell” spoke on the streetcorner down hill in dark November night
with Judy’s blood in the furnace building up weeks before in campus-forest headlines, white-haired parents on Television
with Christopher running around in raincoats talking fast about his eyesockets seeing true streets of ’60s
with Jaime phoning collect from New York insulting his lonesome Cunt
with Nemmie insisting she was drunk & insulting on the couch & Marko with a bandaged tendon hanging in front of his gaptooth
with Hubert in beret & tweed beard absolutely sober on meth-freak newspaper splatter rorschach universe, drinking milk
with Jordan on the phone suave & retired jobbing invisible mandalas upstairs from the technicolor gutter
with Larry whitehaired chewing his teeth nodding in chairs weak & amiable lost the pointlessness
with the cat curled in white fur in the kitchen chair
with the transistor radio silent weeks on the typewriter desk
with the novels Happiness Bastard Sheeper from Tangier Wichita Mad Cub Yesterday Today & Tomorrow
with Now, with Fuck You, with Wild Dog Burning Bush Poetry Evergreen C Thieves Journal Soft Machine Genesis Renaissance Contact Kill Roy Etc.
with spaniards appearing at the doors to know what’s happening you wanna score or am I the sacred fear the meth-head fuzz the insect trust or delicious José
with Robert in his black jacket & tie deciding to make a point of his courtesy over the kitchen linoleum
with the Ghosts of Natalie & Peter & Krishna & Ram intoned on the shag rugs in the darkness of abandoned rooms
with Blue Grace in typescript stepping out of the taxi on the wall, and letters arriving from Málaga & Chicago
with me breaking off to rush in to the other room where Adam & Eve lie to get my hair spermy
Why Is God Love, Jack?
Because I lay my
head on pillows,
Because I weep in the
tombed studio
Because my heart
sinks below my navel
because I have an
old airy belly
filled with soft
sighing, and
remembered breast
sobs—or
a hand’s touch makes
tender—
Because I get scared—
Because I raise my
voice singing to
my beloved self—
Because I do love thee
my darling, my
other, my living
bride
my friend, my old lord
of soft tender eyes—
Because I am in the
Power of life & can
do no more than
submit to the feeling
that I am the One
Lost
Seeking still seeking the
thrill—delicious
bliss in the
heart abdomen loins
& thighs
Not refusing this
38 yr. 145 lb. head
arms & feet of meat
Nor one single Whitmanic
toenail contemn
nor hair prophetic banish
to remorseless Hell,
Because wrapped with machinery
I confess my ashamed desire.
New York, 1963
Morning
Ugh! the planet screams
Doves in rusty cornice-castles peer
down on auto crossroads,
a junkey in white jacket
wavers in yellow light on
way to a negro in bed
Black smoke flowing on roofs, terrific
city coughing—
garbage can lids music over
Ugh! I’m awake again—
dreary day ahead
what to do?—Dull letters
to be answered
an epistle to M. Duchamp
more me all day the same
clearly
Q. “Do you want to live or die?”
A. “I don’t know”
said Julius after 12 years
State Hospital
Ugh! cry negroes in Harlem
Ugh! cry License Inspectors, Building
Inspectors, Police Congressmen
Undersecretaries of Defense.
Ugh! Cries Texas Mississippi!
Ugh! Cries India
Ugh! Cries US
Well, who knows?
O flowing copious!
total Freedom! To
Do what? to blap! to
embarrass! to conjoin
Locomotive blossoms to Leafy
purple vaginas.
To be dull! ashamed! shot!
Finished! Flopped!
To say Ugh absolutely meaningless here
To be a big bore! even to
myself! Fulla shit!
Paper words! Fblup! Fizzle! Droop!
Shut your big fat mouth!
Go take a flying crap in the
rain!
Wipe your own ass! Bullshit!
You big creep! Fairy! Dopy
Daffodil! Stinky Jew!
Mr. Professor! Dirty Rat! Fart!
Honey! Darling! Sweetie pie!
Baby! Lovey! Dovey! Dearest!
My own! Buttercup! O Beautiful!
Doll! Snookums! Go fuck
yourself,
everybody Ginsberg!
And when you’ve exhausted
that, go forward?
Where? kiss my ass!
O Love, my mouth against
a black policeman’s breast.
New York, 1963
Waking in New York
I
I place my hand before my beard with awe
and stare thru open-uncurtain window
rooftop rose-blue sky thru
which small dawn clouds ride
rattle against the pane,
lying on a thick carpet matted floor
at last in repose on pillows my knees
bent beneath brown himalayan blanket, soft—
fingers atremble to pen, cramp
pressure diddling the page white
San Francisco notebook—
And here am on the sixth floor cold
March 5th Street old building plaster
apartments in ruin, super he drunk
with baritone radio AM nose-sex
Oh New York, oh Now our bird
flying past glass window Chirp
—our life together here
smoke of tenement chimney pots dawn haze
passing thru wind soar Sirs—
How shall we greet Thee this Springtime oh Lords—?
What gifts give o
urselves, what police fear
stop searched in late streets
Rockefeller Frisk No-Knock break down
my iron white-painted door?
Where shall I seek Law? in the State
in offices of telepath bureaucracy—?
in my dis-ease, my trembling, my cry
—ecstatic song to myself
to my police my law my state my
many selfs—
Aye, Self is Law and State Police
Kennedy struck down knew him Self
Oswald, Ruby ourselves
Till we know our desires Blest
with babe issue,
Resolve, accept
this self flesh we bear
in underwear, Bathrobe, smoking cigarette
up all night—brooding, solitary, set
alone, tremorous leg & arm—
approaching the joy of Alones
Racked by that, arm laid to rest,
head back wide-eyed
Morning, my song to Who listens, to
myself as I am
To my fellows in this shape that building
Brooklyn Bridge or Albany name—
Salute to the self-gods on
Pennsylvania Avenue!
May they have mercy on us all,
May be just men not murderers
Nor the State murder more,
That all beggars be fed, all
dying medicined, all loveless
Tomorrow be loved
well come & be balm.
March 16, 1964
II
On the roof cloudy sky fading sun rays
electric torches atop—
auto horns—The towers
with time-hands giant pointing
late Dusk hour over
clanky roofs
Tenement streets’ brick sagging cornices
baby white kite fluttering against giant
insect face-gill Electric Mill
smokestacked blue & fumes drift up
Red messages, shining high floors,
Empire State dotted with tiny windows
lit, across the blocks
of spire, steeple, golden topped utility
building roofs—far like
pyramids lit in jagged
desert rocks—
The giant the giant city awake
in the first warm breath of springtime
Waking voices, babble of Spanish
street families, radio music
floating under roofs, longhaired
announcer sincerity squawking
cigar voice
Light zips up phallos stories
beneath red antennae needling
thru rooftop chimneys’ smog
black drift thru the blue air—
Bridges curtained by uplit apartment walls,
one small tower with a light
on its shoulder below the “moody, water-loving giants”
The giant stacks burn thick gray
smoke, Chrysler is lit with green,
down Wall street islands of skyscraper
black jagged in Sabbath quietness—
Oh fathers, how I am alone in this
vast human wilderness
Houses uplifted like hives off
the stone floor of the world—
the city too vast to know, too
myriad windowed to govern
from ancient halls—
“O edifice of gas!”—Sun shafts
descend on the highest building’s
striped blocktop a red light
winks buses hiss & rush
grinding, green lights
of north bridges,
hum roar & Tarzan
squeal, whistle
swoops, hurrahs!
Is someone dying in all this stone building?
Child poking its black head out of the womb
like the pupil of an eye?
Am I not breathing here frightened
and amazed—?
Where is my comfort, where’s heart-ease,
Where are tears of joy?
Where are the companions? in
deep homes in Stuyvesant Town
behind the yellow-window wall?
I fail, book fails—a lassitude,
a fear—tho I’m alive
and gaze over the descending—No!
peer in the inky beauty of the roofs.
April 18, 1964
After Yeats
Now incense fills the air
and delight follows delight,
quiet supper in the carpet room,
music twangling from the Orient to my ear,
old friends at rest on bright mattresses,
old paintings on the walls, old poetry
thought anew, laughing at a mystic toy
statue painted gold, tea on the white table.
New York, April 26, 1964
I Am a Victim of Telephone
When I lie down to sleep dream the Wishing Well it rings
“Have you a new play for the brokendown theater?”
When I write in my notebook poem it rings
“Buster Keaton is under the brooklyn bridge on Frankfurt and Pearl…”
When I unsheath my skin extend my cock toward someone’s thighs fat or thin, boy or girl
Tingaling—“Please get him out of jail… the police are crashing down”
When I lift the soupspoon to my lips, the phone on the floor begins purring
“Hello it’s me—I’m in the park two broads from Iowa … nowhere to sleep last night… hit ’em in the mouth”
When I muse at smoke crawling over the roof outside my street window
purifying Eternity with my eye observation of gray vaporous columns in the sky
ring ring “Hello this is Esquire be a dear and finish your political commitment manifesto”
When I listen to radio presidents roaring on the convention floor
the phone also chimes in “Rush up to Harlem with us and see the riots”
Always the telephone linked to all the hearts of the world beating at once
crying my husband’s gone my boyfriend’s busted forever my poetry was rejected
won’t you come over for money and please won’t you write me a piece of bullshit
How are you dear can you come to Easthampton we’re all here bathing in the ocean we’re all so lonely
and I lie back on my pallet contemplating $50 phone bill, broke, drowsy, anxious, my heart fearful of the fingers dialing, the deaths, the singing of telephone bells
ringing at dawn ringing all afternoon ringing up midnight ringing now forever.
New York, June 20, 1964
Today
O I am happy! O Swami Shivananda—a smile!
O telephone sweet little black being, what many voices and tongues!
Tonight I’ll call up Jack tell him Buster Keaton is under the Brooklyn Bridge
by a vast red-brick wall still dead pan alive in red suspenders, portly abdomen.
Today I saw movies, publishers, bookstores, checks—wait, I’m still poor
Poor but happy! I saw politicians we wrote a Noise Law!
A Law to free poetry—Poor Plato! Whoops here comes Fascism! I rode in a taxi!
I rode a bus, ate hot Italian Sausages, Coca-Cola, a chili-burger, Kool-Aid I drank—
All day I did things! I took a nap—didn’t I dream about lampshade academies and ouch! I am dying?
I stuck a needle in my arm and flooded my head with drowsy bliss …
And a hairy bum asked Mr. Keaton for money drink! Oh Buster! No answer!
Today I was really amazed! Samuel Beckett had rats eyes and gold round glasses—
I didn’t say a word—I had my picture taken and read all thru the NY Times
and Daily News, I read everybody’s editorials, I protested in my mind I have the privilege of being
Mad. Today I did everything, I wore a pink shirt in the st
reet, at home in underwear
I marveled Henry Miller’s iron sink, how could he remember so clearly?
Hypnagogic vision in Brooklyn 50 years ago—just now my eyeball
troops marched in square mufti battalion dragging prisoners to—
eyelids lifted I saw a blue devil with fifteen eyes on the wall—everything’s mine, antique Tibetan Tankas, a siamese cat asleep on its side relaxed—
I looked out of the window and saw Tonight, it was dark—someone said ooo! in Puerto Rican.
But it was light all day, sweating hot—iron eyes blinking at the human element—
Irreducible Me today, I bought cigarettes at a machine, I was really worried
about my gross belly independent of philosophy, drama, idealism imagery—
My fate and I became one today and today became today—just like a mystic prophecy—I’ll conquer my belly tomorrow
or not, I’ll toy with Mr. Choice also for real—today I said “Forever”
thrice—
and walked under the vast Ladder of Doom, insouciant, not merely innocent
but completely hopeless! In Despair when I woke this morning,
my mouth furry smoked a Lucky Strike first thing when I dialed telephone to check on the Building Department—
I considered the License Department as I brushed my teeth with an odd toothbrush
some visitor left I lost mine—where? rack my brains it’s there
somewhere in the past—with the snubnosed uncle cock from the freakshow
The old man familiar today, first time I thought of him in years, in the rain
in Massachusetts but I was a child that summer The pink thing bulged at his open thigh fly
he fingered it out to show me—I tarried till startled when the whiskied barker
questioned mine I ran out on the boardwalk drizzle confronting the Atlantic Ocean
—so trotted around the silent moody blocks home speechless
to mother father vaginal jelly rubber instruments discovered in the closet—
a stealthy memory makes hackles rise—“He inserts his penis into her vagina”—
What a weird explanation! I who collected matchbook covers like J. P. Morgan
gloating over sodden discoveries in the wet gutter—O happy grubby sewers of Revere—distasteful riches—
hopeless treasure I threw away in a week when I realized it was endless to complete—
next year gathered all the heat in my loins to spurt my white surprise drops into the wet brown wood under a
steamy shower, I used the toilet paper cardboard skeleton tube
to rub and thrill around my unconscious own shaft—playing with myself unbeknownst to the entire population of Far Rockaway—