Times Square & Mexico—
In my twenties I would’ve enjoyed running around these
green woods naked.
In my twenties I would’ve enjoyed making love naked
by these brooks.
Who’s the enemy, year after year?
War after war, who’s the enemy?
What’s the weapon, battle after battle?
What’s the news, defeat after defeat?
What’s the picture, decade after decade?
Television shows blood,
print broken arms burning skin photographs,
wounded bodies revealed on the screen
Cut Sound out of television you won’t tell who’s Victim
Cut Language off the Visual you’ll never know
Who’s Aggressor—
cut commentary from Newscast
you’ll see a mass of madmen at murder.
Chicago train soldiers chatted over beer
They, too, vowed to fight the Cottenpickin Communists
and give their own bodies to the fray.
Where’ve they learnt the lesson? Grammarschool
taught ’em Newspaper Language?
D’they buy it at Safeway with Reader’s Digest?
“Reducing the Unreal to Unreality, and causing the one
real Self to shine, the Guru …”
1966 trains were crowded with soldiers.
“… the Divine Eye, the eye that is pure Consciousness
which has no visions. Nothing that is seen is real.”
Passing tollgate,
regatta of yachts on river hazed
bend at Reading, giant smokestacks, watertowers
feed elevators—
“Seeing objects and conceiving God in them are mental processes, but that is not seeing God, because He is within.
“Who am I? … You’re in truth a pure spirit but you identify it with a body …”
The war is Appearances, this poetry Appearances
… measured thru Newspapers
All Phantoms of Sound
All landscapes have become Phantom—
giant New York ahead’ll perish with my mind.
“understand that the Self is not a Void”
not this, not that,
Not my anger, not War Vietnam
Maha Yoga a phantom
Blue car swerves close to the bus
—not the Self.
Ramana Maharshi, whittle myself a walkingstick,
waterspray irrigating the fields
That’s not the Self—
hard-on spring in loins
rocking in highway chair,
poignant flesh spasm not it Self,
body’s speaking there,
& feeling, that’s not Self
Who says No, says Yes—not Self.
Phelps Dodge’s giant white building
highway side, not Self.
Who? Who? both asleep & awake
closes his eyes?
Who opens his eyes to Sweden?
You happy, Lady, writing yr
checks on Howard Johnson’s counter?
Mind wanders. Sleep, cough & sweat…
Mannahatta’s
tunnel-door cobbled for traffic,
trucks into that mouth
MAKE NO IMAGE
Mohammedans say
Jews have no painting
Buddha’s Nameless
Alone is Alone,
all screaming of soldiers
crying on wars
speech politics massing armies
is false-feigning show—
Calm senses, seek self, forget
thine own adjurations
Who are you?
to mass world armies in planet war?
McGraw-Hill building green grown old, car fumes &
Manhattan tattered, summer heat,
sweltering noon’s odd patina
on city walls,
Greyhound exhaust terminal,
trip begun,
taxi-honk toward East River where
Peter waits working
July 22–23, 1966
City Midnight Junk Strains
for Frank O’Hara
Switch on lights yellow as the sun
in the bedroom …
The gaudy poet dead Frank O’Hara’s bones
under cemetery grass
An emptiness at 8 P.M. in the Cedar Bar
Throngs of drunken
guys talking about paint
& lofts, and Pennsylvania youth.
Kline attacked by his heart
& chattering Frank
stopped forever—
Faithful drunken adorers, mourn.
The busfare’s a nickel more
past his old apartment 9th Street by the park.
Delicate Peter loved his praise,
I wait for the things he says
about me—
Did he think me an Angel
as angel I am still talking into earth’s microphone willy nilly
—to come back as words ghostly hued
by early death
but written so bodied
mature in another decade.
Chatty prophet
of yr own loves, personal
memory feeling fellow
Poet of building-glass
I see you walking you said with your tie
flopped over your shoulder in the wind down 5th Ave
under the handsome breasted workmen
on their scaffolds ascending Time
& washing the windows of Life
—off to a date with martinis & a blond
beloved poet far from home
—with thee and Thy sacred Metropolis
in the enormous bliss of a long afternoon
where death is the shadow
cast by Rockefeller Center
over your intimate street.
Who were you, black suited, hurrying to meet,
Unsatisfied one?
Unmistakable,
Darling date
for the charming solitary young poet with a big cock
who could fuck you all night long
till you never came,
trying your torture on his obliging fond body
eager to satisfy god’s whim that made you
Innocent, as you are.
I tried your boys and found them ready
sweet and amiable
collected gentlemen
with large sofa apartments
lonesome to please for pure language;
and you mixed with money
because you knew enough language to be rich
if you wanted your walls to be empty—
Deep philosophical terms dear Edwin Denby serious as Herbert Read
with silvery hair announcing your dead gift
to the grave crowd whose historic op art frisson was
the new sculpture your big blue wounded body made in the Universe
when you went away to Fire Island for the weekend
tipsy with a family of decade-olden friends
Peter stares out the window at robbers
the Lower East Side distracted in Amphetamine
I stare into my head & look for your / broken roman nose
your wet mouth-smell of martinis
& a big artistic tipsy kiss.
40’s only half a life to have filled
with so many fine parties and evenings’
interesting drinks together with one
faded friend or new
understanding social cat…
I want to be there in your garden party in the clouds
all of us naked
strumming our harps and reading each other new poetry
in the boring celestial
Friendship Committee Museum.
You’re in a bad mood?
Take an Aspirin.
In the Dumps?
I’m falling asleep
safe in your thoughtful arms.
Someone uncontrolled by History would have to own Heaven,
on earth as it is.
I hope you satisfied your childhood love
Your puberty fantasy your sailor punishment on your knees
your mouth-suck
Elegant insistency
on the honking self-prophetic Personal
as Curator of funny emotions to the mob,
Trembling One, whenever possible. I see New York thru your eyes
and hear of one funeral a year nowadays—
from Billie Holiday’s time
appreciated more and more
a common ear
for our deep gossip.
July 29, 1966
A Vow
I will haunt these States
with beard bald head
eyes staring out plane window,
hair hanging in Greyhound bus midnight
leaning over taxicab seat to admonish
an angry cursing driver
hand lifted to calm
his outraged vehicle
that I pass with the Green Light of common law.
Common Sense, Common law, common tenderness
& common tranquillity
our means in America to control the money munching
war machine, bright lit industry
everywhere digesting forests & excreting soft pyramids
of newsprint, Redwood and Ponderosa patriarchs
silent in Meditation murdered & regurgitated as smoke,
sawdust, screaming ceilings of Soap Opera,
thick dead Lifes, slick Advertisements
for Gubernatorial big guns
burping Napalm on palm rice tropic greenery.
Dynamite in forests,
boughs fly slow motion
thunder down ravine,
Helicopters roar over National Park, Mekong Swamp,
Dynamite fire blasts thru Model Villages,
Violence screams at Police, Mayors get mad over radio,
Drop the Bomb on Niggers!
drop Fire on the gook China
Frankenstein Dragon
waving its tail over Bayonne’s domed Aluminum oil reservoir!
I’ll haunt these States all year
gazing bleakly out train windows, blue airfield
red TV network on evening plains,
decoding radar Provincial editorial paper message,
deciphering Iron Pipe laborers’ curses as
clanging hammers they raise steamshovel claws
over Puerto Rican agony lawyers’ screams in slums.
October 11, 1966
Autumn Gold: New England Fall
Auto Poetry to Hanover, New Hampshire
Coughing in the Morning
Waking with a steam beast, city destroyed
Pile drivers pounding down in rubble,
Red smokestacks pouring chemical
into Manhattan’s Nostrils …
“All Aboard”
Rust colored cliffs bulking over superhighway
to New Haven,
Rouged with Autumny leaves, october smoke,
country liquor bells on the Radio—
Eat Meat and your a beast
Smoke Nicotine & your meat’ll multiply
with tiny monsters of cancer,
Make Money & yr mind be lost in a million green papers,
—Smell burning rubber by the steamshovel—
Mammals with planetary vision & long noses,
riding a green small Volkswagen up three lane
concrete road
past the graveyard
dotted w/tiny american flags waved in breeze,
Washington Avenue:
Sampans battling in waters off Mekong Delta
Cuban politicians in Moscow, analyzing China—
Yellow leaves in the wood,
Millions of redness,
gray skies over sandstone
outcroppings along the road—
cows by yellow corn,
wheel-whine on granite,
white houseroofs, Connecticut woods
hanging under clouds—
Autumn again, you wouldn’t know in the city
Gotta come out in a car see the birds
flock by the yellow bush—
In Autumn, in autumn, this part of the planet’s
famous for red leaves—
Difficult for Man on earth to ’scape the snares of delusion—
All wrong, the thought process screamed at
from Infancy,
The Self built with myriad thoughts
from football to I Am That I Am,
Difficult to stop breathing factory smoke,
Difficult to step out of clothes,
hard to forget the green parka—
Trees scream & drop
bright Leaves,
Yea Trees scream & drop bright leaves,
Difficult to get out of bed in the morning
in the slums—
Even sex happiness a long drawn-out scheme
To keep the mind moving—
Big gray truck rolling down highway
to unload wares—
Bony white branches of birch relieved of their burden
—overpass, overpass, overpass
crossing the road, more traffic
between the cities,
More sex carried near and far—
Blinking tail lights
To the Veterans hospital where we can all collapse,
Forget Pleasure and Ambition,
be tranquil and let leaves
blush, turned on
by the lightningbolt doctrine that rings
telephones
interrupting my pleasurable humiliating dream
in the locker room
last nite?—
Weeping Willow, what’s your catastrophe?
Red Red oak, oh, what’s your worry?
Hairy Mammal whaddya want,
What more than a little graveyard
near the lake by airport road,
Electric towers marching to Hartford,
Buildingtops spiked in sky,
asphalt factory cloverleafs spread over meadows
Smoke thru wires, Connecticut River concrete wall’d
past city central gastanks, glass boat bldgs,
North, North on the highway, soon outa town,
green fields.
The body’s a big beast,
The mind gets confused:
I thought I was my body the last 4 years,
and everytime I had a headache, God dealt me
Ace of Spades—
I thought I was mind-consciousness 10 yrs before that,
and everytime I went to the Dentist the Kosmos disappeared,
Now I don’t know who I am—
I wake up in the morning surrounded
by meat and wires,
pile drivers crashing thru the bedroom floor,
War images rayed thru Television apartments,
Machine chaos on Earth,
Too many bodies, mouths bleeding on every Continent,
my own wall plaster cracked,
What kind of prophecy
for this Nation
Of Autumn leaves,
for those children in High School, green
woolen jackets
chasing football up & down field—
North of Long Meadow, Massachusetts
Shafts of Sunlight
Thru yellow millions,
blue light thru clouds,
President Johnson in a plane toward Hawaii,
Fighter Escort above & below
air roaring—
Radiostatic electric crackle from the
center of communications:
I broadcast thru Time,
He, with all his wires & wireless,
only an Instant—
Up Main Street
Northampton,
houses gabled sunny afternoon,
Ivy library porch—
Big fat pants, workshirt filled w/leaves,
painted pumpkinshead sitting Roof Corner,
—or hanging from frontyard tree country road—
Tape Machines, cigarettes, cinema, images,
Two Billion Hamburgers, Cognitive Thought,
Radiomusic, car itself,
this thoughtful Poet—
Interruption of brightly colored Autumn Afternoon,
clouds passed away—
Sky blue as a roadsign,
but language intervenes.
on route 9 going North—
“Then Die, my verse” Mayakovsky yelled
Die like the rusty cars
piled up in the meadow—
Entering Whately,
Senses amazed on the hills,
bright vegetable populations
hueing rocks nameless yellow,
veils of bright Maya over New England,
Veil of Autumn leaves laid over the Land,
Transparent blue veil over senses,
Language in the sky—
And in the city, brick veils,
curtains of windows,
Wall Street’s stage drops,
Honkytonk scenery—
or slum-building wall scrawled
“Bourgeois Elements must go”—
All the cows gathered to the feed truck in the middle of the pasture,
shaking their tails, hungry for the yellow Fitten Ration
that fills the belly
and makes the eyes shine
& mouth go Mooooo.
Then they lie down in the hollow green meadow to die—
In old Deerfield, Indian Tribes & Quakers
have come & tried
To conquer Maya-Time—
Thanksgiving pumpkins
remain by the highway,
signaling yearly Magic
plump from the ground.
Big leaves hang and hide the porch,
& babies scatter by the red lights
of the bridge at Greenfield.
The green Eagle on a granite pillar—
sign pointing route 2A The Mohawk Trail,
Federal Street apothecary shop & graveyard thru which
highschool athletes
tramp this afternoon—
Gold gold red gold yellow gold older than painted cities,
Gold over Connecticut River cliffs
Gold by Iron railroad,
gold running down riverbank,
Gold in eye, gold on hills,
golden trees surrounding the barn—
Silent tiny golden hills, Maya-Joy in Autumn
Speeding 70 MPH.
October 17, 1966
Done, Finished with the Biggest Cock
Done, finished, with the biggest cock you ever saw.
3 A.M., living room filled with quiet yellow electric,