and once their policy’s adopted it’ll rule a decade—
Somebody decided “he’s a nut!”
official policy, re-echoed to 14 Million Readers of Time
as we drive along in the Bat-mobile thru Arizona—
Approaching Hope, dream maps unfolded
Waves with larger & larger loops,
Tree-posts flashing auto headlights
hit my retina
I saw what it was
light saw light,
a flash in the pan.
Eyes register, nerves send waves along to the brain
Finger touch is electric waves
carlights glare thru eyes—
Voice repeating itself,
wavering over the microphones—
Meditation passing Hope …
Horrific outskirts’ Eastern Traffic Sign,
Turn backward…
Dull sleep on my eyes
* * * *
Morning Phoenix Gazette, editorial January 27, ’66
“No time for probe of CIA
No Good Purpose would be served—
Why poke on the Nose?
… Virtual epidemic of attacks,
Pacifists let Reds take over the world, rather than
Fighting Against Them—
well meaning people … distasteful intelligence
Sacrosanct… scuttle … demand an investigation …
Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
Righto! The Navaho trail—
Crescent moon setting on low hills West—
Military forces over radio
push bombing N. Vietnam.
Lifelines, sponsored by Henry L. Hunt, Beans.
Dead voiced announcer, denouncing
“a communist conspiracy among the youth …
speakers on campuses / trained to condition
idealistic brains …”
It’s Chase Manhattan Bank lends money to South African
White government—Rockfeller boy!
Unless Chase Bank quits I prophesy blood violence.
Ford has a factory,
Ford has a factory there—
“they’re aw-fly proud
of being South African.”
“… A hotbed of anti Semitism too?”
PAINTED DESERT,
petrified forest
Leslie Howard’s scratchy ’30s image
… eating jurassic steak
Petroglyphs over there the Man in the Moon,
the guy with four fingers …
over there, this is the sun, with two spikes out the North,
two spikes South, two spikes ray East & West
Milky way over here, the Moon,
… and all the animal tentacles
Nebula spiraled “… Roger 1943”
And I hit Julius for eating his avocado cheese sandwich too fast.
Gas flares, oil refinery night smoke,
high aluminum tubes winking red lights
over space ship runways
petrochemical witches’ blood boiling underground—
“Looks like they’re gettin ready to go to Mars.”
Approaching Thoreau—
Fort Wingate Army Depot entrance—
and there’s the Continental Divide.
Anti Vietnam War Demonstrator soldiers sentenced
For Contempt of President:
Hard Labor—
Learn thyself in Shell Refinery’s Oil Storage Seaboard Rackets,
Lying back on the car seat,
eyelids heavy,
legs spread leaned against the table,
Oh that I were young again and the skin in my anus folds rose,
“La illaba el (lill) Allah bu”
Finally bored,
Over a hill, singing Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram
Albuquerque Sparkling blue brilliant
more diamonds & pearls of electricity
running out of power-plants than ever heard of
Turkey or Israel—
intense endless iridescence on black
velvet desert—
Ah what a marvel
orange blue Neon Circling itself Solar System’d
Speed Wash Texaco 19¢ Famous Hamburgers
Lion House Italian Village Pizza ah!
radio warbles Electronic noise
echo chamber vibrations—
Albuquerque streets’ fantastic Neon Stars
collapsing to bright red blinks
Satellite Globes plunging their
tiny lamps in and out—
the eyeball.
* * * *
Space stretching North dotted with silver gastanks
to Sandia Range
Hitchhiking student
supported by National Defense Fund
with his black horn rimmed glasses,
thin blond hair,
“If your country calls you, would you go?”
“If my country drafted me …
then I would go.”
Selfish young american always interested in his own skin
—and blue car speeding along the highway
sticker on back
“I’m proud I’m an American”
right front seat, a 10 gallon hat
driver a fat car salesman—
Sitting icy tipped
distant earth peaks over Hilltops
& here’s an ugly little oasis, used car tractors
fenced off by barbed wire
below roadside—
Evenings cool clear, sharp
brilliant blue stars—
Just what we needed, State Penitentiary!
Two miles off into the brown furze rolling
East of the highway
“This is Ford Country what are you driving?” Be a Ford dealer?
Great snow meadows roof Sangre De Cristo
clouds, North, dipping misty rivulet tails of pointy fog.
………………………………………………………
It’s a hard question …
which would you rescue, your mother-in-law
or the last text of Shakespeare?
* * * *
Two hitchhikers, one Cajun dumb mouth
who sang brown voiced
blues his travelin’ baby.
T’other highschool smart
wavy hair, unbeautiful, unbeautiful and gentle
pinched pachuco face
had ideas of his own philosophy—
thumbing out of Albuquerque
To New Orleans Mardigras
$900 a week, working rolling drunks, or
fixin signs with ladders and hammers
had spent 3 youth years in Siam,
Champagne & Pussy 50¢
kindly eyes
“I love to eat, and I love girls.”
Sang them Prajnaparamita Sutra
entering Panhandle,
left them back at Tukumkarie—
talking in the truckstop booth,
fat truck drivers
headed south.
On Radio entering Texas
Please For Jesus!
Grunts & Screams & Shouts,
Shouts for the Poison Redeemer,
Shouts for the Venomous Jesus of Kansas.
Onward to Wichita!
Onward to the Vortex!
To the Birchite Hate Riddles,
cock-detesting, pussy-smearing
dry ladies and evil Police
of Central Plains State
Where boredom & fury
magick bars and sirens around
the innocent citykid eye
& Vampire stake of politics Patriotism’s driven
into the white breast of Teenage
joyful murmurers
in carpet livingrooms
on sidestreets—
Beautiful children’ve been driven from Wichita
McClure & Branaman gone
J. Alan Whit
e departed left no address
Charlie Plymell come Now to San Francisco
Ann Buchanan passing thru,
Bruce Conners took his joke to another coast—
in time the White Dove Review
fluttered up from Tulsa
Flatland entering Great Plains
Evil gathers in Cities,
Eye mouth newspapers
Television concentrates its blue
flicker of death in the frontal lobe—
Police department sirens wail,
The Building Department inspector Negates
What the Fire Department has failed to burn down—
Students departing for Iowa & Chicago,
New York beckoning at the end of the stage—
While Soviets have made soft landing on the moon
Today, be it rock or dust?
Now’s Solar System born anew?
Red lights, red lights at highway end,
glass reflectors,
there’s no one On the Road.
“… Don’t know what will happen to the proud
American soldiers in Vietnam”
said Ex Ambassador Ex General Taylor—
In this great space, Murchison & Hunt,
Texas millionaires
sit in Isolate skyscrapers
on flatland dotted with lights
or, from cities, isolate from fairies
and screaming european dowagers & sopranos,
plot conspiracies against Communists,
send messages to New York, Austin, Wichita
Vancouver, Seattle, to Los Angeles—
Radio programs about the Federal Octopus—
Seraphs of Money Power on Texas plains
huge fat-bellied power-men
shoving piles of Capital
by train
across grasslands—
Shoving messages into myriad innocent-cleaned ears
Spiritual messages about spiritual war—
Come to Jesus
where the money is!
Texas voice
singing Vietnam Blues
Twanging
“I don’t like to die / a man I ain’t about t’ crawl”
In Vital-heart,
Big truck slowly lumbers through town—
Hotels raise signs, neon winks.
Liberal’s the beginning of Kansas
Martial music filling airwaves—
only the last few weeks
waves of military music
drum taps drum beats trumpets
pulsing thru radiostations
not even sad,
bald Sopranos
Sacred Tenors from 1920s
Singing antique music style
What Patriot wrote that shit?
Something to drive out the Indian
Vibrato of Buffy Sainte-Marie?
Doom call of McGuire?
The heavenly echo of Dylan’s despair
before the silver microphone
in his snake suit,
a reptile boy
disappearing in Time—
soft shoe dancing on the Moon?
It’ll be a relief when the Chinese take over Texas!
Lifeline pumping its venom “Communist Conspiracy”
Secret documents Infiltrate & smash Vatican—
broadcast to these empty plains,
Isolate farmhouses with radios
hearing the Horror Syndicate
take over the Universe!
Radiostations whistling & crashing against each other on autoradio—
Full moonlight on blue snow
Loudspeaker blasting midnite static
thru some European Swansong,
Dit dat dits of outerspace communication
blanking out Ear’s substance
Vatican whistles undertone
bloops and eeeeeps, trillion-antennae’d
grid of the Shabda
If it’s silent it isn’t there—
* * * *
Entering Kansas
little red towers blink distance,
Lifeline, continued over 7 stations—
H. L. Hunt his books read,
Cold reasoning voice over Kansas plains—
O that’s Liberal Spread before us!
Truck stopped by roadside Weighing Station
*
Heavy Jewish voice heard over Kansas Radio
Varning the Jews, Take safety in Christ
—Dr. Michaelson
and the Hebrew-Christian Hour
—P.O.B. 707 Los Angeles 53—
In 1866 & 1881 the Carbon Companies paid
$2,500,000 for the bones of Buffalos
Representing 31,000,000 Buffalos.
Handful of Buffalo, lightbrown back shining in the sun
Grazing at the edge of River Ginnesca—
Peter says Oooo! What
visions they must have of human beings—
silent tolerant, head bent,
cropping grass—
‘Right now they’re trying to take the Indian territories
away, near Hopiland.’
Wanna build subdivisions,
Mineral rights—
The last lands of the redskins—
Saw it in the paper t’other day
on the Highway near Tucson—
Blue morning in Kansas,
black lambs dotted in snow
Ice gleaming in brown grass at roadside
Corn stacks, small
lined up around tree groves—
Kingman Salvage, rusty autos under rusty hill,
Jodrell Bank reporting Sensational pictures Rocks on the Moon,
“it’s a hard surface—”
information about Hog Scallops at Birth,
Meat prices, Grain prices
Steer Meat Dollar values,
Appeal to end Property Tax
Green signs,
Welcome to Wichita
Population 280,000
January 28–29, 1966
Chances “R”
Nymph and shepherd raise electric tridents
glowing red against the plaster wall,
The jukebox beating out magic syllables,
& shaking thin Italian trouserlegs
or rough dungarees on big asses
bumping and dipping
ritually, with no religion but the
old one of cocksuckers
naturally, in Kansas center of America
the farmboys in Diabolic bar light
alone stiff necked or lined up
dancing row on row like Afric husbands
& the music’s sad here, whereas Sunset Trip or
Jukebox Corner it’s ecstatic pinball machines—
Religiously, with concentration and free
prayer; fairy boys of the plains
and their gay sisters of the city
step together to the center of the floor
illumined by machine eyes, screaming drumbeats,
passionate voices of Oklahoma City
chanting No Satisfaction
Suspended from Heaven the Chances R
Club floats rayed by stars
along a Wichita tree avenue
traversed with streetlights on the plain.
Wichita, February 1966
Wichita Vortex Sutra
I
Turn Right Next Corner
The Biggest Little Town in Kansas
Macpherson
Red sun setting flat plains west streaked
with gauzy veils, chimney mist spread
around christmas-tree-bulbed refineries—aluminum
white tanks squat beneath
winking signal towers’ bright plane-lights,
orange gas flares
beneath pillows of smoke, flames in machinery—
transparent towers at dusk
In advance of the Cold Wave
Snow is spreading eastward to
the Great Lakes
News Broadcast & old clarinets
Watertower dome Lighted on the flat plain
car radio speeding acrost railroad tracks—
Kansas! Kansas! Shuddering at last!
PERSON appearing in Kansas!
angry telephone calls to the University
Police dumbfounded leaning on
their radiocar hoods
While Poets chant to Allah in the roadhouse Showboat!
Blue eyed children dance and hold thy Hand O aged Walt
who came from Lawrence to Topeka to envision
Iron interlaced upon the city plain—
Telegraph wires strung from city to city O Melville!
Television brightening thy rills of Kansas lone
I come,
lone man from the void, riding a bus
hypnotized by red tail lights on the straight
space road ahead—
& the Methodist minister with cracked eyes
leaning over the table
quoting Kierkegaard “death of God”
a million dollars
in the bank owns all West Wichita
come to Nothing!
Prajnaparamita Sutra over coffee—Vortex
of telephone radio aircraft assembly frame ammunition
petroleum nightclub Newspaper streets illuminated by Bright
EMPTINESS—
Thy sins are forgiven, Wichita!
Thy lonesomeness annulled, O Kansas dear!
as the western Twang prophesied
thru banjo, when lone cowboy walked the railroad track
past an empty station toward the sun
sinking giant-bulbed orange down the box canyon—
Music strung over his back
and empty handed singing on this planet earth
I’m a lonely Dog, O Mother!
Come, Nebraska, sing & dance with me—
Come lovers of Lincoln and Omaha,
hear my soft voice at last
As Babes need the chemical touch of flesh in pink infancy
lest they die Idiot returning to Inhuman—
Nothing—
So, tender lipt adolescent girl, pale youth,
give me back my soft kiss
Hold me in your innocent arms,
accept my tears as yours to harvest
equal in nature to the Wheat
that made your bodies’ muscular bones
broad shouldered, boy bicept—
from leaning on cows & drinking Milk
in Midwest Solitude—
No more fear of tenderness, much delight in weeping, ecstasy
in singing, laughter rises that confounds
staring Idiot mayors
and stony politicians eyeing
Thy breast,
O Man of America, be born!
Truth breaks through!
How big is the prick of the President?
How big is Cardinal Vietnam?
How little the prince of the FBI, unmarried all these years!