remembered it all today—many years thinking of Kali-Ma and other matters—
a big surprise it was Me—Dear Reader, I seem strange to myself—
You recognize everything all over again where you are, it’s wonderful
to be introduced to strangers who know you already—
like being Famous—a reverberation of Eternal Consciousness—
Today heraldic of Today, archetypal mimeograph machines reprinting everybody’s poetry,
like finishing a book of surrealism which I haven’t read for years—
Benjamin Péret & René Crevel heroic for real—the old New Consciousness reminded
me today—how busy I was, how fatal like a man in the madhouse, distracted with presence of dishes of food to eat—Today’s “ stringbeans in the moonlight”
Like today I brought home blueberry pie for the first time in years—
Also today bit by a mosquito (to be precise, toward dawn)
(toward dusk ate marshmallows at the News Stand and drank huge cold grape soda eyeing:
this afternoon’s Journal headline FBI IN HARLEM, what kind of Nasty old Epic
Afternoons I imagine!) Another event, a $10 bill in my hands, debt repaid,
a café espresso smaller event—Feeling rich I bought a secondhand record of Gertrude Stein’s actual Voice—
My day was Harmonious—Though I heard no mechanic music—
I noticed some Nazi propaganda—I wrote down my dream about Earth dying—I wanted to telephone Long Island—I stood on a street corner and didn’t know where to go—
I telephoned the Civil Liberties Union—discussed the Junk Problem & Supreme Court—
I thought I was planting suggestions in everybody’s Me-ity—
thought a few minutes of Blake—his quatrains—I climbed four flights &
stood at Fainlight’s Chinatown door locked up—I’m being mysterious—
What does this mean? Don’t ask me today, I’m still thinking,
Trying to remember what happened while it’s still happening—
I wrote a “poem,” I scribbled quotation marks everywhere over Fate passing by
Sometimes I felt noble, sometimes I felt ugly, I spoke to man and woman
from Times & Time, summarized hugely—plots, cinematic glories, I boasted a little, subtly—
Was I seen thru? Too much happened to see thru All—
I was never alone except for two blocks by the park, nor was I unhappy—
I blessed my Guru, I felt like a shyster—told Ed how much I liked being made love to by delicate girl hands—
It’s true, more girls should do that to us, we chalked up another mark what’s wrong
and told everybody to register to vote this November—I stopped on the street and shook hands—
I took a crap once this day—How extraordinary it all goes! recollected, a lifetime!
Imagine writing autobiography what a wealth of Detail to enlist!
I see the contents of future magazines—just a peek Today being hurried—
Today is slowly ending—I will step back into it and disappear.
New York, July 21, 1964
Message II
Long since the years
letters songs Mantras
eyes apartments bellies
kissed and gray bridges
walked across in mist
Now your brother’s Welfare’s
paid by State now Lafcadio’s
home with Mama, now you’re
in NY beds with big poetic
girls & go picket on the street
I clang my finger-cymbals in Havana, I lie
with teenage boys afraid of the red police,
I jack off in Cuban modern bathrooms, I ascend
over blue oceans in a jet plane, the mist hides
the black synagogue, I will look for the Golem,
I hide under the clock near my hotel, it’s intermission
for Tales of Hoffmann, nostalgia for the 19th century
rides through my heart like the music of The Moldau,
I’m still alone with long black beard and shining eyes
walking down black smoky tramcar streets at night
past royal muscular statues on an old stone bridge,
Over the river again today in Breughel’s wintry city,
the snow is white on all the rooftops of Prague,
Salute beloved comrade I’ll send you my tears from Moscow.
March 1965
Big Beat
The Olympics have descended into
red velvet basement
theaters of Centrum
long long hair over skeleton boys
thin black ties, pale handsome
cheeks—and screams and screams,
Orchestra mob ecstasy rising from
this new generation of buttocks and eyes
and tender nipples
Because the body moves again, the
body dances again, the body
sings again
the body screams new-born after
War, infants cursed with secret cold
jail deaths of the Fifties—Now
girls with new breasts and striplings
wearing soft golden puberty hair—
1000 voices scream five minutes long
clapping thousand handed in great ancient measure
saluting the Meat God of XX Century
that moves thru the theater like the
secret rhythm of the belly in
Orgasm
Kalki! Apocalypse Christ! Maitreya! grim
Chronos weeps
tired into the saxophone,
The Earth is Saved! Next number!
SHE’S A WOMAN
Electric guitar red bells!
and Ganymede emerges stomping
his feet for Joy on the stage
and bows to the ground, and weeping, GIVES.
Oh the power of the God on his throne
constantly surrounded by white drums
right hand Sceptered beating brass cymbals!
Prague, March 11, 1965
Café in Warsaw
These spectres resting on plastic stools
leather-gloved spectres flitting thru the coffeehouse one hour
spectre girls with scarred faces, black stockings thin eyebrows
spectre boys blond hair combed neat over the skull little chin beards
new spectres talking intensely crowded together over black shiny tables late afternoon
the sad soprano of history chanting thru a hi-fidelity loudspeaker
—perspective walls & windows 18th century down New World Avenue to Sigmund III column’d
sword upraised watching over Polish youth 3 centuries—
O Polish spectres what’ve you suffered since Chopin wept into his romantic piano
old buildings rubbled down, gaiety of all night parties under the air bombs,
first screams of the vanishing ghetto—Workmen step thru prewar pink-blue bedroom walls demolishing sunny ruins—
Now spectres gather to kiss hands, girls kiss lip to lip, red witch-hair from Paris
& fine gold watches—to sit by the yellow wall with a large brown briefcase—
to smoke three cigarettes with thin black ties and nod heads over a new movie—
Spectres Christ and your bodies be with you for this hour while you’re young
in postwar heaven stained with the sweat of Communism, your loves and your white smooth cheekskin soft in the glance of each other’s eye.
O spectres how beautiful your calm shaven faces, your pale lipstick scarves, your delicate heels,
how beautiful your absent gaze, legs crossed alone at table with long eyelashes,
how beautiful your patient love together sitting reading the art journals—
how beautiful your entrance thru the velvet-curtained door, laughing into the overcrowded room,
how you wait in your hats, measure the
faces, and turn and depart for an hour,
or meditate at the bar, waiting for the slow waitress to prepare red hot tea, minute by minute
standing still as hours ring in churchbells, as years pass and you will remain in Novy Swiat,
how beautiful you press your lips together, sigh forth smoke from your mouth, rub your hands
or lean together laughing to notice this wild haired madman who sits weeping among you a stranger.
April 10, 1965
The Moments Return
a thousand sunsets behind tramcar wires in open skies of Warsaw Palace of Culture chinese peaks blacken against the orange-clouded horizon—
an iron trolley rolling insect antennae sparks blue overhead, hat man limping past rusty apartment walls—
Christ under white satin gleam in chapels—trembling fingers on the long rosary—awaiting resurrection
Old red fat Jack mortal in Florida—tears in black eyelash, Bach’s farewell to the Cross—
That was 24 years ago on a scratchy phonograph Sebastian Sampas bid adieu to earth—
I stopped on the pavement to remember the Warsaw Concerto, hollow sad pianos crashing like bombs, celestial tune
in a kitchen in Ozone Park—It all came true in the sunset on a deserted street—
And I have nothing to do this evening but walk in a fur coat on the cool gray avenue years later, a melancholy man alone—
the music fading to another universe—the moments return—reverberations of taxicabs arriving at a park bench—
My beard is misery, no language to these young eyes—that I remember myself naked in my earliest dream—
now sat by the car-crossing rueful of the bald front of my skull and the gray sign of time in my beard—
headache or dancing exhaustion or dysentery in Moscow or vomit in New York—
Oh—the Metropol Hotel is built—crowds waiting on traffic islands under streetlamp—the cry of tramcars on Jerusalemski—
Roof towers flash Red State—the vast stone avenue hung with yellow bulbs —stop lights blink, long trolleys grind to rest, motorcycles pass exploding—
The poem returns to the moment, my vow to record—my cold fingers—& must sit and wait for my own lone Presence—the first psalm—
I also return to myself, the moment and I are one man on a park bench on a crowded streetcorner in Warsaw—
I breathe and sigh—Give up desire for children the bony-faced white bearded Guru said in Benares—am I ready to die?
or a voice at my side on the bench, a gentle question—worn young man’s face under pearl gray hat—
Alas, all I can say is “No Panamay”—I can’t speak.
Easter Sunday, April 18, 1965
Kral Majales
And the Communists have nothing to offer but fat cheeks and eyeglasses and lying policemen
and the Capitalists proffer Napalm and money in green suitcases to the Naked,
and the Communists create heavy industry but the heart is also heavy
and the beautiful engineers are all dead, the secret technicians conspire for their own glamour
in the Future, in the Future, but now drink vodka and lament the Security Forces,
and the Capitalists drink gin and whiskey on airplanes but let Indian brown millions starve
and when Communist and Capitalist assholes tangle the Just man is arrested or robbed or had his head cut off,
but not like Kabir, and the cigarette cough of the Just man above the clouds
in the bright sunshine is a salute to the health of the blue sky.
For I was arrested thrice in Prague, once for singing drunk on Narodni street,
once knocked down on the midnight pavement by a mustached agent who screamed out BOUZERANT,
once for losing my notebooks of unusual sex politics dream opinions,
and I was sent from Havana by plane by detectives in green uniform,
and I was sent from Prague by plane by detectives in Czechoslovakian business suits,
Cardplayers out of Cézanne, the two strange dolls that entered Joseph K’s room at morn
also entered mine, and ate at my table, and examined my scribbles,
and followed me night and morn from the houses of lovers to the cafés of Centrum—
And I am the King of May, which is the power of sexual youth,
and I am the King of May, which is industry in eloquence and action in amour,
and I am the King of May, which is long hair of Adam and the Beard of my own body
and I am the King of May, which is Kral Majales in the Czechoslovakian tongue,
and I am the King of May, which is old Human poesy, and 100,000 people chose my name,
and I am the King of May, and in a few minutes I will land at London Airport,
and I am the King of May, naturally, for I am of Slavic parentage and a Buddhist Jew
who worships the Sacred Heart of Christ the blue body of Krishna the straight back of Ram
the beads of Chango the Nigerian singing Shiva Shiva in a manner which I have invented,
and the King of May is a middleeuropean honor, mine in the XX century
despite space ships and the Time Machine, because I heard the voice of Blake in a vision,
and repeat that voice. And I am King of May that sleeps with teenagers laughing.
And I am the King of May, that I may be expelled from my Kingdom with Honor, as of old,
To show the difference between Caesar’s Kingdom and the Kingdom of the May of Man—
and I am the King of May, tho’ paranoid, for the Kingdom of May is too beautiful to last for more than a month—
and I am the King of May because I touched my finger to my forehead saluting
a luminous heavy girl trembling hands who said “one moment Mr. Ginsberg”
before a fat young Plainclothesman stepped between our bodies—I was going to England—
and I am the King of May, returning to see Bunhill Fields and walk on Hampstead Heath,
and I am the King of May, in a giant jetplane touching Albion’s airfield trembling in fear
as the plane roars to a landing on the gray concrete, shakes & expels air,
and rolls slowly to a stop under the clouds with part of blue heaven still visible.
And tho I am the King of May, the Marxists have beat me upon the street, kept me up all night in Police Station, followed me thru Springtime Prague, detained me in secret and deported me from our kingdom by airplane.
Thus I have written this poem on a jet seat in mid Heaven.
May 7, 1965
Guru
It is the moon that disappears
It is the stars that hide not I
It’s the City that vanishes, I stay
with my forgotten shoes,
my invisible stocking
It is the call of a bell
Primrose Hill, May 1965
Drowse Murmurs
… touch of vocal flattery
exists where you wake us
at dawn with happy sphinx
together in mysterious Signature,
this is the end of the world
whether Atom bomb hits
it or I fall down death
alone no body help help
It’s me myself caught in throes
of Ugh! They got me whom you lately loved
of soft cloth beds to stick his cock
in the wrong way lost animal, what wd Zoology
say on Park Bench watching the Spectacle
of this time Me it’s my body going to die,
it’s My ship sinking forever, O Captain
the fearful trip is done! I’m all alone,
This is human, and the cat that licks its ass
also hath short term to be furry specter
as I do woken by last thought leap
up from my pillow as the cat leaps up
on the desk chair to resolve its foot lick,
I lick my own mind observe the pipe
crawling up the brick wall, see picture
room-sides hung with nails emblem
abstract oil funny glyphs, girls
naked, letters & newspapers the World
Map colored over for emphasis somebody born—
my thoughts almost lost, I absorb the big
earth lamps hung from the ceiling for ready light,
hear the chirp of birds younger than I
and faster doomed, that jet plane whistle
hiss roar above roofs stronger winged
than any thin-jawed bird—the precise robot
for air flying’s stronger than me even,
tho’ metal fatigue may come before I’m 90—
I scratch my hairy skull and lean on elbow bone
as alarm clock Sat Morn rings next door
and wakes a sleeper body to face his day.
How amazing here, now this time newspaper
history, when earth planet they say revolves
around one sun that on outer Galaxy arm
revolves center so vast slow pinwheel
big this speckless invisible molecule I am
sits up solid motionless early dawn thinking
high in every direction photograph spiral nebula
photograph death BLANK photograph this wakened
brick minute bird-song pipe-flush elbow lean
in soft pillow to scribe the green sign Paradis.
June 1965
Who Be Kind To
Be kind to your self, it is only one
and perishable
of many on the planet, thou art that
one that wishes a soft finger tracing the
line of feeling from nipple to pubes—
one that wishes a tongue to kiss your armpit,
a lip to kiss your cheek inside your
whiteness thigh—
Be kind to yourself Harry, because unkindness
comes when the body explodes
napalm cancer and the deathbed in Vietnam
is a strange place to dream of trees
leaning over and angry American faces
grinning with sleepwalk terror over your
last eye—
Be kind to yourself, because the bliss of your own
kindness will flood the police tomorrow,