on the frosty broad road
uphill between highway embankments
I search for the language
that is also yours—
almost all our language has been taxed by war.
Radio antennae high tension
wires ranging from Junction City across the plains—
highway cloverleaf sunk in a vast meadow
lanes curving past Abilene
to Denver filled with old
heroes of love—
to Wichita where McClure’s mind
burst into animal beauty
drunk, getting laid in a car
in a neon misted street
15 years ago—
to Independence where the old man’s still alive
who loosed the bomb that’s slaved all human consciousness
and made the body universe a place of fear—
Now, speeding along the empty plain,
no giant demon machine
visible on the horizon
but tiny human trees and wooden houses at the sky’s edge
I claim my birthright!
reborn forever as long as Man
in Kansas or other universe—Joy
reborn after the vast sadness of War Gods!
A lone man talking to myself, no house in the brown vastness to hear,
imaging the throng of Selves
that make this nation one body of Prophecy
languaged by Declaration as Pursuit of
Happiness!
I call all Powers of imagination
to my side in this auto to make Prophecy,
all Lords
of human kingdoms to come
Shambu Bharti Baba naked covered with ash
Khaki Baba fat-bellied mad with the dogs
Dehorahava Baba who moans Oh how wounded, How wounded
Sitaram Onkar Das Thakur who commands
give up your desire
Satyananda who raises two thumbs in tranquillity
Kali Pada Guha Roy whose yoga drops before the void
Shivananda who touches the breast and says OM
Srimata Krishnaji of Brindaban who says take for your guru
William Blake the invisible father of English visions
Sri Ramakrishna master of ecstasy eyes
half closed who only cries for his mother
Chaitanya arms upraised singing & dancing his own praise
merciful Chango judging our bodies
Durga-Ma covered with blood
destroyer of battlefield illusions
million-faced Tathagata gone past suffering
Preserver Harekrishna returning in the age of pain
Sacred Heart my Christ acceptable
Allah the Compassionate One
Jaweh Righteous One
all Knowledge-Princes of Earth-man, all
ancient Seraphim of heavenly Desire, Devas, yogis
& holymen I chant to—
Come to my lone presence
into this Vortex named Kansas,
I lift my voice aloud,
make Mantra of American language now,
I here declare the end of the War!
Ancient days’ Illusion!—
and pronounce words beginning my own millennium.
Let the States tremble,
let the Nation weep,
let Congress legislate its own delight
let the President execute his own desire—
this Act done by my own voice,
nameless Mystery—
published to my own senses,
blissfully received by my own form
approved with pleasure by my sensations
manifestation of my very thought
accomplished in my own imagination
all realms within my consciousness fulfilled
60 miles from Wichita
near El Dorado,
The Golden One,
in chill earthly mist
houseless brown farmland plains rolling heavenward
in every direction
one midwinter afternoon Sunday called the day of the Lord—
Pure Spring Water gathered in one tower
where Florence is
set on a hill,
stop for tea & gas
Cars passing their messages along country crossroads
to populaces cement-networked on flatness,
giant white mist on earth
and a Wichita Eagle-Beacon headlines
“Kennedy Urges Cong Get Chair in Negotiations”
The War is gone,
Language emerging on the motel news stand,
the right magic
Formula, the language known
in the back of the mind before, now in black print
daily consciousness
Eagle News Services Saigon—
Headline Surrounded Vietcong Charge Into Fire Fight
the suffering not yet ended
for others
The last spasms of the dragon of pain
shoot thru the muscles
a crackling around the eyeballs
of a sensitive yellow boy by a muddy wall
Continued from page one area
after the Marines killed 256 Vietcong captured 31
ten day operation Harvest Moon last December
Language language
U.S. Military Spokesmen
Language language
Cong death toll
has soared to 100 in First Air Cavalry
Division’s Sector of
Language language
Operation White Wing near Bong Son
Some of the
Language language
Communist
Language language soldiers
charged so desperately
they were struck with six or seven bullets before they fell
Language Language M 60 Machine Guns
Language language in La Drang Valley
the terrain is rougher infested with leeches and scorpions
The war was over several hours ago!
Oh at last again the radio opens
blue Invitations!
Angelic Dylan singing across the nation
“When all your children start to resent you
Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?”
His youthful voice making glad
the brown endless meadows
His tenderness penetrating aether,
soft prayer on the airwaves,
Language language, and sweet music too
even unto thee,
hairy flatness!
even unto thee
despairing Burns!
Future speeding on swift wheels
straight to the heart of Wichita!
Now radio voices cry population hunger world
of unhappy people
waiting for Man to be born
O man in America!
you certainly smell good
the radio says
passing mysterious families of winking towers
grouped round a quonset-hut on a hillock—
feed storage or military fear factory here?
Sensitive City, Ooh! Hamburger & Skelley’s Gas
lights feed man and machine,
Kansas Electric Substation aluminum robot
signals thru thin antennae towers
above the empty football field
at Sunday dusk
to a solitary derrick that pumps oil from the unconscious
working night & day
& factory gas-flares edge a huge golf course
where tired businessmen can come and play—
Cloverleaf, Merging Traffic East Wichita turnoff
McConnell Airforce Base
nourishing the city—
Lights rising in the suburbs
Supermarket Texaco brilliance starred
over streetlamp vertebrae on Kellogg,
green jeweled traffic li
ghts
confronting the windshield,
Centertown ganglion entered!
Crowds of autos moving with their lightshine,
signbulbs winking in the driver’s eyeball—
The human nest collected, neon lit,
and sunburst signed
for business as usual, except on the Lord’s Day—
Redeemer Lutheran’s three crosses lit on the lawn
reminder of our sins
and Titsworth offers insurance on Hydraulic
by De Voors Guard’s Mortuary for outmoded bodies
of the human vehicle
which no Titsworth of insurance will customize for resale—
So home, traveler, past the newspaper language factory
under Union Station railroad bridge on Douglas
to the center of the Vortex, calmly returned
to Hotel Eaton—
Carry Nation began the war on Vietnam here
with an angry smashing ax
attacking Wine—
Here fifty years ago, by her violence
began a vortex of hatred that defoliated the Mekong Delta—
Proud Wichita! vain Wichita
cast the first stone!—
That murdered my mother
who died of the communist anticommunist psychosis
in the madhouse one decade long ago
complaining about wires of masscommunication in her head
and phantom political voices in the air
besmirching her girlish character.
Many another has suffered death and madness
in the Vortex from Hydraulic
to the end of 17th—enough!
The war is over now—
Except for the souls
held prisoner in Niggertown
still pining for love of your tender white bodies O children of Wichita!
February 14, 1966
Auto Poesy: On the Lam from Bloomington
Setting out East on rain bright highways
Indianapolis, police cars speeding past
gas station—Stopped for matches
PLOWL of Silence,
Street bulbs flash cosmic blue—darkness!
POW, lights flash on again!
pavement-gleam
Mobil station pumps lit in rain
ZAP, darkness, highway power failure
rain hiss
traffic lights dead black—
Ho! Dimethyl Triptamine flashing circle vibrations
center Spiked—
Einsteinian Mandala,
Spectrum translucent,
… Television eyeball dots in treehouse Ken Kesey’s
Power failure inside the head,
neural apparatus crackling—
So drift months later past
Eli Lilly pharmaceuticals’ tower walls
asleep in early morning dark outside Indianapolis
Street lamps lit humped along downtown Greenfield
News from Dallas, Dirksen declareth
“Vietnam Protesters have forgotten the lessons of History”
Across Ohio River, noon
old wire bridge, auto graveyards,
Washington town covered with rust—hm—
February 1966
Kansas City to Saint Louis
Leaving K.C. Mo. past Independence past Liberty
Charlie Plymell’s memories of K.C. renewed
The Jewel-box Review,
white-wigged fat camps yakking abt
Georgie Washington and Harry T.
filthier than any poetry reading I ever gave
applauded
by the police negro wives Mafia subsidized
To East St. Louis on the broad road
Highway 70 crammed with trucks
Last night almost broke my heart dancing to
Cant Get No Satisfaction
lotsa beer & slept naked in the guest room—
Now
Sunlit wooded hills overhang the highway
rolling toward the Sex Factories of Indiana—
Automobile graveyard, red cars dumped
bleeding under empty skies—
Burchfield’s paintings, Walker Evans’ photos,
a white Victorian house on a hill—
Trumble & Bung of chamber music
pianoesque on radio—midwest culture
before rock and roll
If I knew twenty years ago what I know now
I coulda led a symphony orchestra in Minneapolis
& worn a tuxedo
Heart to heart, the Kansas voice of Ella Mae
“are you afraid of growing old,
afraid you’ll no longer be attractive to your husband?”
“… I dont see any reason” says the radio
“for those agitators— Why dont they move in with the negroes? We’ve been separated all along, why change things now? But I’ll hang up, some other Martian might want to call in, who has another thought.”
The Voice of Leavenworth
echoing thru space to the car dashboard
“… causes and agitations, then, then they’re doing the work of the communists as J. Edgar Hoover says, and many of these people are people with uh respectable, bility, of a cloak of respectability that shows uh uh teachers professors and students …”
hollow voice, a minister
breathing thru the telephone
“God created all the races … and it is only men who tried to mix em up, and when they mix em up that’s when the trouble starts.”
No place like Booneville though, buddy—
End of the Great Plains,
late afternoon sun, rusty leaves on trees
One of these days those boots will walk all over you
We the People—shelling the Viet Cong
“Inflation has swept in upon us … Johnson administration rather than a prudent Budget… discipline the American people rather than discipline itself…”
I lay in bed naked in the guest room,
my mouth found his cock,
my hand under his behind
Till the whole body stiffened
and sperm choked my throat.
Michele, John Lennon & Paul McCartney
wooing the decade
gaps from the 30s returned
It’s the only words I know that
You ll understand…
Old earth rolling mile after mile patient
The ground
I roll on
the ground
the music soars above
ray over
The ground dotted with signs for Dave’s Eat Eat
scarred by highways, eaten by voices
Pete’s Café—
Golden land in setting sun
Missouri River icy brown, black cows,
grass tufts standing up hairy on hills
mirrored to heaven—
Spring one month to come.
Sea shells on the ground strata’d by the turnpike—
Old ocean evaporated away,
Mastodons stomped, dinosaurs groaned
when these brown hillocks were
leafy steam-green-swamp-think Marsh nations
before the Birch Society was a gleam in the
Pterodactyl’s eye
—Aeroplane sinking groundward
toward my white Volkswagen prehistoric
white cockroach under high tension wires—
my face, Rasputin in car mirror.
Funky barn, black hills approaching Fulton
where Churchill rang down the Curtain
on Consciousness
and set a chill which overspread the world
one icy day in Missouri
not far from the Ozarks—
Provincial ears heard the Spenglerian Iron
Terror Pronouncement
Magnificent Language, they said,
for country ears—
&nb
sp; St Louis calling St Louis calling
Twenty years ago,
Thirty years ago
the Burroughs School
Pink cheeked Kenney with fine blond hair,
his almond eyes aristocrat
gazed,
Morphy teaching English & Rimbaud
at midnight to the fauns
W.S.B. leather cheeked, sardonic
waiting for change of consciousness,
unnamed in those days—
coffee, vodka, night for needles,
young bodies
beautiful unknown to themselves
running around St Louis
on a Friday evening
getting drunk in awe & honor of the
terrific future these
red dry trees at sunset go thru two decades later
They could’ve seen
the animal branches, wrinkled to the sky
& known the gnarled prophecy to come,
if they’d opened their eyes outa the whiskey-haze
in Mississippi riverfront bars
and gone into the country with a knapsack to
smell the ground.
Oh grandfather maple and elm!
Antique leafy old oak of Kingdom City in the purple light
come down, year after year,
to the tune
of mellow pianos.
Salute, silent wise ones,
Cranking powers of the ground,
awkward arms of knowledge
reaching blind above the gas station
by the high TV antennae
Stay silent, ugly Teachers,
let me & the Radio yell about Vietnam and mustard gas.
“Torture … tear gas legitimate weapons …
Worries language beyond my comprehension” the radio
commentator says himself.
Use the language today
“… a great blunder”
in Vietnam, heavy voices,
“A great blunder … once you’re in, uh,
one of these things, uh …”
“Stay in.” Withdraw,
Language, language, uh, uh
from the mouths of Senators, uh
trying to think of Senators, uh
trying to think on their feet
Saying uhh, politely
Shift linguals, said Burroughs, Cut the Word Lines!
He was right all along.
“… a procurer of these dogs
… take them from the United States … Major Caty … as long as it’s not a white dog … Sentry Dog Procurement Center, Texas … No dogs, once trained, are ever returned to the owner …”
French Truth,
Dutch Civility
Black asphalt, blue stars,
tail light procession speeding East,
The hero surviving his own murder,
his own suicide, his own
addiction, surviving his own
poetry, surviving his own
disappearance from the scene—