getting bigger
thumb and index finger slowly stroking
along cock sides, askew
cupp’d in hand
Serpent-reptile prick head
moving in and out its meat-nest—
Turn and watch the landscape,
wave my baton
at the passing truckdriver?
Lie back on bunk and lift the shade a bit
enjoy sun on my flagpole?
Ah, rest, relax, no fear
look at the sphincter-spasm itself
in a mirror
of sound—
Awk—if you jerk—oh it feels so good
Oh if only somebody’d come in &
shove som’in up that ass a mine—
Oh those two soldiers talking about Cambodia!
I wantem to come in and lay my head down
and shove it in and make me
Come like I’m coming now,
Come like I’m coming now,
Come like I’m coming now—
Ahh—white drops fall,
millions of children—
Santa Fe what can they do to prevent
passengers from
soiling their
small blankets with love?
Wipe up cream—what if
The Conductor knocked?
Go way, I’m—
I have to compose a poem
I have to write a financial report
I have to meditate myself
I have to
put on my pants—
just lie back look at the landscape
see a tree
& cross Ameriky—
Compromised!
among green Spinach fields!
Felt good for a minute, flash came thru body
And the Sphincter-spasm spoke
backward to the soldiers in the observation car
I’d hated their Cambodia gossip!
but longed for in moment truth
to punish my 40 years’ lies—
Oh what a wretch I am! What
monster naked in this metal box—
Hart Crane, under
Laughing Gas in the Dentist’s Chair 1922 saw
Seventh Heaven
said Nebraska scholar.
On thy train O Crane I had small death too.
Green valley-fields of California telephone-wired—
Lovers’ Desire’s State!
Hollywood starry State!
Rock poesy State!
end of the land!
where I lay me naked in a pullman coach—
D——
Thy secrecy arrogance befits thee not
Sweet Prince—
open yr ass to my mouth—
a poem to thee!
—my voice an overdramatic madman’s
murmuring to myself late afternoon drowze—
going home,
past cement robots,
gazing out on palmtrees with reptilian gaze,
All’s negative O Edward Carpenter!
As ’twere thy dainty Chinaman near Paris
making crude remarks—
I’ll jus liah hear like a nigger & moan my soul!
Sixty telephone wires strung across poles,
Hedges of spinach,
hair combed,
quite a bit of excitement coursing along city-edge
plugged in to human ears
Operators screaming at soldiers
returned from Vietnam,
murder marriage or orgasmic babe born
bawling Daddy Come Home!
Train stop, yellow capp’d workmen
roar at the engine with waterhoses,
I’ll take a nap dream, last night
Homer dog swallowed a furry mollusk—
barking and gulping—the black sucker parasite
ate belly & crawled up throat,
pink mucous flesh bubble
half-retched from dog chest
I smoke too much I’ll die lung cancer
eyes closed sensory illusion dotted
no-think moviescreens,
worms’ll grow eyeballs silently,
mosquitoes will row in valley bay night—
Sausalito, certainly had your big prick there—
Yellow light laid over planet
telegraph wires over consciousness
every direction Knowing I am here,
engine slowly throbbing uphill—
Night darkling over Mojave desert,
Yellow planet-light disappearing, mounds westward,
Soldiers asleep, rocking away from the War.
Autolite headed toward disappearing sun.
Pew! Pew! Pew! cry the children
pulling each other’s arms,
What an earth to live on!
Lights of the City, south,
brightening a piece of the night—
and the diamond-green gleam an airfield light—
Hey! ya bit me, ya bit me,
hello Missus Fight!
Green Green Green blinks the Diner sign
where truckmen roam
in darkness toward Barstow.
Stars as when I was a child.
Mojave’s firmament same Passaic’s—
This space capsule softer than trees
in chemical landscape
with electronic clicks.
And is Heaven any different from where we are?
How could it be better or worse?
Tho delicate chemical brain changes
Aethereal sensations
Muladhara sphincter up thru mind aura
Sahasrarapadma promise
another Universe—
Whitman, Carpenter, Gavin Arthur, saying
We are leaves of the Tree,
saying
We are drops of water running to the ocean
thru the fish’s mouth—
And we shall stand in Flesh in Paradise
with the Virgin of the 19th Century—?
Borax, Borax, Borax,
Crystal lights upon a hill, faery castles
Might be in heaven, only Mojave—
Borax, Borax, Borax
Borax the Dinosaur slounges thru
fronds under Pleiades—
Delicate filament of highway lights
the nerves between cities—
Borax, Borax Borax Borax
near Bel Mar desert Motel—
AUM
—my enemy machine chatterjabber mind
making Borax Borax Borax Borax
spinal column thought
o’er turkeys, oil, wind, headlights—
A child peeps thru glass moving night
where red tail lights keep time
to the Santa Fe train
rolling over Crane’s gloom.
Ho! a Crescent moon
Mr. Cummings & Mr. Vinal both dead—
“Why you like beer as much as I do,”
sd the old gal
to a tableful of cans—
“Lady, it’s my life.”—
Where the soldiers sat talkabout gotten their head busted off
and there’s a cherry in the gin & tonic
an angel upside down playing with himself
kneeling abed looks
between legs into mirror
to see the two spots where he sat so long studied Bible
reddened each buttock—
Cigarettes and alcohol,
the Hundred&81st Airborne
Hmm—They’d be better off puffin’
a peaceful O pipe
or sipping kif Sebsi in a café
green fig trees
blue Gibraltar Strait…
“The tricks are what makes business!
you got a college education, it ain’t what you got
it’s what you do with yr. college education Son.”
And they’re all actors.
Waiting at Barstow the engine humming
—“I wanna be an entertainer,
I wanna be a comedy writer,” he said—
his hands once colored with Vietnamese blood.
The engine humming—
All others silent, lost in thought.
And the soldier talked all about his troubles with his red hair.
And how he took his girl home after 3 drinks
when she squinted her eyes at him and said
“I wanna go with yew,”
and how he drove her to her house
and said “I’m giving you a last chance”
and how she leaned her head on his
shoulder and said
“Anywhere you’re goin take me”
and how he
took off her pants
and she said that he shd take off his pants
and he wouldn’t take off his pants
and how they’d have some
love play like everybody
and then, he’d drive her home,
but when he’s out at a bar
if anybody looks at his girl
he looks ’em in the eye and snaps his finger & says
whatter ya lookin like that fur—
and out in a bar alone,
anybody’s fair game for his love.
So I sat an I listened,
and I brooded in my beard
and saw he was ugly eyed
though his voice beautiful Edward Carpenter.
Now I’m lying here
Cabinette in complete darkness
Airfields passing by,
Stars, a few dim white fixed friendly
in blackness outside
the modern railroad window
doubled to reflect
passing gas—
“Matter-babble behind the ear” six years ago—
Old poetry grows stale,
forlorn, as always forlorn
“Ah love is so sweet in the Springtime,”
Jeanette MacDonald sang
three decades ago—
on marble balustrade in giant darkness
downtown Paterson Fabian Theater balcony
I wept, How soft flesh is—
Watching boyish Ronald Reagan
emote
his shadow
across the Thirties—
Same black vastness
pierced
by emotion,
melancholy toward the stars—
Political planets whirling round the Sun,
consciousness expansion,
earth girdled by telegraph wires, Edward,
they never dreamed of television then.
Railroad chugging thru yr thighs,
clear your throat,
lie there in the dark,
cough with cancer
close your eyes …
I didn’t even dream, passing Tehachapi
and woke, sleepy numb, reluctant
to face my own language.
But came back to it,
tape machine
passing Mojave,
evening ease,
Na-mu sa-man-da mo-to-nan o-ha-ra-chi ko-to-sha so-no-nan to-ji-to en gya-gya gya-ki gya-ki un-nun shi-fu-ra shi-fu-ra ha-ra-shi-fu-ra ha-ra-chi-fu-ra chi-shu-sa chi-chu-sa shu-shi-ri shu-shi-ri so-ha-ja so-ba-ja se-chi-gya shi-ri-ei so-mo-ko
The universe is empty.
Click of train
eyes closed … the long green courthouse building
“Like a monster with many eyes.”
On valley balcony overlooking Bay Bridge,
a horse in leafy corral…
600 Cong Death Toll this week
language language
escalating
“and the honor & the glory will go to him who speaks
with the voice of a man of feeling,” said Walter Lippmann
face creased w/ wrinkles,
Bakersfield Gazette.
Wear beads, live
in small polkadot tent, tasseled rooftop
in Bixby’s Canyon middle
peaceful Ashram
“It’s mine, it’s mine, I don’t want anybody else own
my piece of land private special from Police”
… I must be criminal, mind
wanders
nailing down roof boards—
tell him I stopped at the bar.
No time No time Sam Lewis—
Oh—No time Carolyn,
No time now, Neal.
Do you love me?
No, I’m an awkward jerk that’s been around yr neck for
so long you got used to it & kinda fond.
The salesman’s eyes close,
he stands his jacket off
tie hanging down white shirt
You run ’em a merry chase, Son?
Open your eyes and stars
are back where they were.
And Dr. Louria committed suicide,
accused of abortion,
that sensitive man.
Well gimme yr piece of perspective
for use in the slotmachine marketplace future—
You hafta get permission down in
Freehold New Jersey to see Tibetan Monks.
You hafta get permission.
The magic formula’s printed on the back of yr chair Lady,
yr going to be the most important illuminator
since Dr. Johnson?
And Huncke suffers rejection,
contrariety of others.
“Reform U.S. Government stinks detail,”
like, congratulations Whitey, you’ll go far
in yr black Maria, right?
A public meeting in my head,
way back on River Street.
Morning, crossing New Mexico border
massive cliff waves
in mid-earth America—A blessing
these sandstone organpipes under the shimmering consciousness of LSD.
Defiance, Wingate, Red Cliffs, Thoreau,
Indian Gallup ahead,
ran by here with Peter in the white bus once
level everywhere, fenced, flat
to Texas horizon gray-fleeced with cloud haze,
where Gemini men walked space that day—
And ninety-nine soldiers piled on the train at Amarillo—
Hadn’t read the paper four weeks
training Air Force
Pneumohydraulics—
Ninety-nine soldiers entering the train
Only a month
hair clipped & insulted
They weren’t too sad,
glad going to some electronics field near Chicago
—Been taking courses in Propaganda,
How not to believe what they were told
by the enemy,
Young fellas that some of them had long hair
before they came to the heated camp
friendly, over hamburgers
Volunteered
assignments behind the line of Great Machines
that drop Napalm,
milking
the Calf of Gold.
Three months from now
Vietnam, they said.
Walking the length of the train,
Lounge Car with Time Magazine
Amarillo Globe, US News & World Report
Reader’s Digest Coronet Universal Railroad Schedule,
everyone on the same track,
bound leatherette read on sofas,
America heartland passing flat
trees rising in night—
Dining Car
negro waiters negro porters
negro sandwichmen negro bartenders white jacketed
kindly old big-assed Gents half bald,
Going, sir, California to Chicago
feeding the Soldiers.
Blue eyed children climbing chair backs
staring at my beard, gay.
A consensus around card table beer—
“It’s m
y country,
better fight ’em over there than here,”
afraid to say “No it’s crazy
everybody’s insane—
This country’s Wrong,
the Universe, Illusion.”
Soldiers gathered round
saying—“my country
and they say I gotta fight,
I have no choice,
we’re in it too deep to pull out,
if we lose,
there’s no stopping the Chinese communists,
We’re fightin the communists, aren’t we?
Isn’t that what it’s about?”
Flatland,
emptiness,
ninety nine soldiers graduated Basic Training
eating hamburgers—
“you learn to eat fast
you learn to be insulted without caring
you gotta do what your country expects—”
even the bright talkative orphan farm boy
whose auto parts father wanted ’im to grow up military
“almost et by a male hog up to his shoulders”
4 hours punching at power steering tractor
brakes front & hind foot
giant insect specialized—
The whole populace fed by News
few dissenting on this train, I the lone beard who don’t like
Vietnam War—
Ninety nine airforce boys
lined up with their pants down forever.
Five Persons Wounded Cleveland Riots
Atlantic Next Stop for Jolly Space-men
Bubonic Plague Suspected in Prairie Dogs
U.S. Marine Offensive Operation Hastings
Communist Dead Toll Rose Almost 1000
Stratofortresses struck language language
Communist language language infiltration
South of 17th Parallel
“Psychedelic drugs no substitute for plain study
… Technicolored Delusion,
Many report visits to Heaven
… jumping the gun a bit”
George E. Turner said
“Eat well, Animal” with a package of dog food
and as for Negroes
“Work not rioting is Magic Formula”
And Johnson reiterated too, “our desire to engage in
unconditional discussions”
to end the war
“other side … concession
… not the slightest
indication”
More manpower would be required he said
flatly.
John Steinbeck,
flaxenhaired Yevtushenko wrote yr phantom
End the War
“Unconditional negotiations” sd Johnson
“Anywhere anytime” sd Johnson in the last poem
Yesterday Ky So. Vietnam sd
“Dissolve Vietcong
National Liberation Front—
and Peace”
Kennedy sd
“Give V.C. Negotiation Chair”
—irreconcilable positions, every year
United States proposes contradictions