Cranes lift over broken earth
Brain Clouds boil out tin-cone scrap burners
Newark sits in gray gas
July heat gleams on airplanes
Trailer tyres sing toward forests of oiltowers,
Power grids dance in th’Iron Triangle,
Tanks roast in Flatness—
Old Soybean-oil-storage Scandals
echo thru airwaves,
the family car bumps over asphalt toward Bright Mexico.
July 10, 1968
Violence
Mexcity drugstore table, giant
sexfiend in black spats
Sticks knife in a plump faggot’s
sportscoat seam;
at Teotihuacán in blue sunlight, I slap
my mocking blond nephew
for getting lost on the Moon
Pyramid.
In Oakland, legendary police shoot a
naked black boy running out
of his political basement
In Pentagon giant machines humm and
bleep in neon arcades,
Buttons click in sockets & robots
pencil prescriptions for acid gas
sunsets—
New York on the stairway, the dumbed
whitefaced Junkie pulls a knife
and stares immobile—the victim
gasps, “oh come off it” & a sixpack
of cokebottles
bounces down worn black steps, in
Vietnam plastic fire
Streams down myriad phantom cheeks
rayed over planet television—
Adrenalin runs in armpits from Los Angeles
to Paris, Harlem & Cannes
explode thru plateglass, Sunset Strip & Sorbonne
are crowded with Longhaired angels
armed with gasmasks & Acid,
& Angry Democrats gather in Chicago
fantasizing armies running
thru Sewers sprayed with Mace.
I walk up Avenida Juárez, over
cobbled shadows, blue-tiled streetlamps
lighting Sanborns’ arcades, behind me violent
chic fairy gangsters with bloody hands
hustle after midnight to cut my throat from
its beard.
July 22, 1968, 4:30 A.M.
Past Silver Durango Over Mexic Sierra-Wrinkles
Westward Mother-mountains drift Pacific, green-sloped canyons vaster than Mexico City
without roads under cloud-flowers bearing tiny shadow-blossoms on vegetable peaks—
red riverbeds snake thru paradises without electricity
—Huichol or Tarahumara solitudes hectare’d irregular, antpaths to rocky plateaux,
hollows for lone indian humility, hand-ploughed mountainside patches—
naked white cloud-fronds floating silent over silent green earth-crags.
O vast meccas of manlessness, Bright cloud-brains tower’d in blue space up to the Sun
with rainbow garlands over white water-gas, O tree-furred body defenseless thru clear air, visible green breast of America!
vaster than man the Mother Mountains manifest nakedness greater than all the bombs Bacteria ever invented
Impregnable cloud-cities adrift & dissolving no History,
white rain-ships alighted in Zenith Blue Ocean—
No ports or capitals to the horizon, emerald mesas ridged infinite-budded where rivers and ants gather garbage man left behind in the Valley of Mexico—
Iron’ll rust under living tree roots & soak back underground
to feed the sensitive tendrils of Ego covering mountains of granite green mossed unconscious.
Heaven & ocean mirror their azure, horizon lost in yellowed spectrum-mist—
Baja California Blue water lies flat to the brown armpit of United States,
River’s course muddies the delta with teardrops washed dusty from Utah— Green irrigated farm squares in desert—
& the dung colored gas, brown haze of labor near Los Angeles risen the height of Sierras—
gray smog drifts thru low mountain passes, city invisible.
Floating armchairs descend
from sky in sunlight, rocking back & forth in polluted fields of air.
July 22, 1968, 11 A.M.
On Neal’s Ashes
Delicate eyes that blinked blue Rockies all ash
nipples, Ribs I touched w/ my thumb are ash
mouth my tongue touched once or twice all ash
bony cheeks soft on my belly are cinder, ash
earlobes & eyelids, youthful cock tip, curly pubis
breast warmth, man palm, high school thigh,
baseball bicept arm, asshole anneal’d to silken skin
all ashes, all ashes again.
August 1968
Going to Chicago
22,000 feet over Hazed square Vegetable planet Floor
Approaching Chicago to Die or flying over Earth another 40 years
to die—Indifferent, and Afraid, that the bone-shattering bullet
be the same as the vast evaporation-of-phenomena Cancer
Come true in an old man’s bed. Or Historic
Fire-Heaven Descending 22,000 years End th’ Atomic Aeon
The Lake’s blue again, Sky’s the same baby, tho papers & Noses
rumor tar spread through the Natural Universe’ll make Angel’s feet sticky.
I heard the Angel King’s voice, a bodiless tuneful teenager
Eternal in my own heart saying “Trust the Purest Joy—
Democratic Anger is an Illusion, Democratic Joy is God
Our Father is baby blue, the original face you see Sees You—”
How, thru Conventional Police & Revolutionary Fury
Remember the Helpless order the Police Armed to protect,
The Helpless Freedom the Revolutionary Conspired to honor—?
I am the Angel King sang the Angel King
as mobs in Amphitheaters, Streets, Colosseums Parks and offices
Scream in despair over Meat and Metal Microphone
August 24, 1968
Grant Park: August 28, 1968
Green air, children sat under trees with the old,
bodies bare, eyes open to eyes under the hotel wall,
the ring of Brown-clothed bodies armed
but silent at ease leaned on their rifles—
Harsh sound of mikrophones, helicopter roar—
A current in the belly, future marches
and detectives naked in bed—
where? on the planet, not Chicago,
in late sunlight—
Miserable picnic, Police State or Garden of Eden?
in the building walled against the sky
magicians exchange images, Money vote
and handshakes—
The teargas drifted up to the Vice
President naked in the bathroom
—naked on the toilet taking a shit weeping?
Who wants to be President of the
Garden of Eden?
Car Crash
I
Snow-blizzard sowing
ice-powder drifts on stone fenced
gardens near gray woods.
Yellow hump-backed snow plow
rocking giant tires round
the road, red light flashing
iron insect brain.
Mrow, the cat with diarrhea.
Sunlight settled into human form,
tree rings settled age after age
stone forests accumulating atoms
traveled 93,000,000 miles,
carbon deposits settled into beds,
the mountain’s head breathes light,
Earth-hairs gather gold beams
thru chlorophyll, poets walk
between the green bushes
sprouting solar language.
Broken bones in bed,
hips and ribs cracked by autos,
snowdrifts over rubber tires,
tree stump
s freeze, the body stump
heals temporarily in wintertime.
II
So that’s it the body, ah!
Beat yr meat in a dark bed.
Boy friends wrinkle & shit in snow.
Girls go fat-eyed to their mother’s coffin.
Cigarettes burned my tastebuds’ youth,
I smelled my lover’s behind,
This autocrash broke my hip and ribs,
Ugh, Thud, nausea-breath at solar plexus paralyzed my bowels four days—
Eyeglasses broke, eyeballs still intact—
Thank God! alas, still alive but talk words
died in my body, thoughts died in pain.
A healthy day in the snow, white breath
and warm wool sox, hat over ears, hot broth,
nakedness in warm boudoirs, stiff prick come,
fame, physic, learning, scepter, dusk
and Aurora Borealis, hot pig flesh, turkey
stuffing—all disappear in a broken skull.
Unstable element, Sight Sound flesh Touch
& Taste, all Odour, one more consciousness
backseat of a steaming auto with broken nose—
Unstable place to be, an easy way out
by metal crash instead of mind cancer.
Unreliable meat, waving a chicken bone
in a hospital bed—get what’s coming to you
like the chicken steak you ate last year.
Impossible Dr. Feelgood Forever, gotta die
made of worm-stuff And worm thoughts?
And who’s left watching, or even
remembers the car crash that severed
the skull from the spinal column?
Who gets out of body, or who’s shut in
a box of soft pain when Napalm drops
from Heaven all over the abdomen,
breasts and cheek-skin? & tongue cut out
by inhuman knives? Cow tongue? Man tongue?
What does it feel like not to talk?
To die in the back seat, Ow!
December 21, 1968
III
Raw pine walls, ice-white windows
three weeks now, snowy flatness
foot-thick down valley meadows,
wind roar in bare ash arms, oak branch
tendrils icy gleaming, yellow stain of morning water in front
door’s snow—I walk out on crutches
to see white moonglow make snow blue
—three men just rode a space ship
round the moon last week—gnashing
their teeth in Biafra & Palestine,
Assassins & Astronauts traveling from
Athens to the sea of Venus Creatrix—
Lovers’ quarrels magnified decades to mad
violence, half naked farm boys stand
with axes at the kitchen table,
trembling guilty, slicing egg
grapefruit breasts on breakfast oilcloth.
Growing old, growing old, forget the words,
mind jumps to the grave, forget words,
Love’s an old word, forget words,
Peter with shave-head beardface
mutters & screams to himself at midnight.
A new year, no party tonite, forget
old loves, old words, old feelings.
Snow everywhere around the house,
I turned off the gas-light & came upstairs
alone to read, remembering pictures of dead
moon-side, my hip broken, the cat sick,
earhead filled with my own strong music,
in a houseful of men, sleep in underwear.
Neal almost a year turned to ash, angel
in his own midnight without a phonecall,
Jack drunk in my mind or his Florida.
Forget old friends, old words, old loves,
old bodies. Bhaktivedanta advises Christ.
The body lies in bed in ’69 alone,
a gnostic book fills the lap, Aeons
revolve ’round the household, Rimbaud
age 16 adolescent sneers tight lipt
green-eyed oval in old time gravure
—1869 his velvet tie askew, hair
mussed & ruffled by policeman’s rape.
January 1, 1969, 1:30 A.M.
Ecologues of These States
(1969–1971)
Over Denver Again
Gray clouds blot sunglare, mountains float west, plane
softly roaring over Denver—Neal dead a year—clean suburb yards,
fit boardinghouse for the homosexual messenger’s
alleyway Lila a decade back before the Atombomb.
Denver without Neal, eh? Denver with orange sunsets
& giant airplanes winging silvery to San Francisco—
watchtowers thru red cold planet light, when the Earth Angel’s dead
the dead material planet’ll revolve robotlike
& insects hop back and forth between metallic cities.
February 13, 1969
Imaginary Universes
Under orders to shoot the spy, I discharged my pistol into his mouth.
He fell face down from the position life left his body kneeling blindfold.
No, I never did that. Imagined in airport snow, Albany plane discharging passengers.
Yes, the Mexican-faced boy, 19 in Marine cloth, seat next me
Descending Salt Lake, accompanied his brother’s body from Vietnam.
“The Gook was kneeling in front of me, crying & pleading. There were two; he had a card we dropped on them.”
The card granted immunity to those V.C. surrendering.
“On account of my best friend & my brother I killed both Gooks.”
That was true, yes.
February 1969
Rising over night-blackened Detroit Streets
brilliant network-lights tentacle dim suburbs
Michigan waters canalled glitter thru city building blocks’
concentrate brightness blinking metal prayers & bright Hare Krishnas
telepathic to Heavenly darkness whence I stare down and adore O beautiful!
Mankind maker of such contemplate machine! Come gentle brainwaves
delicate-soft heart-throbs tender as belly butterflies,
light as Sexual charm-penumbras be, of radiant-eyed
boys & girls black-faced & blond that Born believe
Earth-death at hand, or Eden regenerate millennial Green
their destiny under your Human Police Will, O
Masters, fathers, mayors, Senators, Presidents, Bankers & workers
sweating & weeping ignorant on your own plastic-pain Maya planet…
February 15, 1969
To Poe: Over the Planet, Air Albany-Baltimore
Albany throned in snow! It’s winter, Poe,
upstate New York scythed
into mental fields, flat arbors & hairy woods
scattered in Pubic mounds twittering w/ birds—
Nobody foresaw these wormpaths asphalted
uphill crost bridges to small church towns, chill
hoarfields streaked with metal feces-dust.
Maelstrom roar of air-boats to Baltimore!
Farmland whirlpooled into mechanic apocalypse
on Iron Tides!
… Wheels drop in Sunlight, over
Vast building-hive roofs glittering,
New York’s ice agleam
in a dying world.
Bump down to ground
Hare Krishna Preserver!
Philadelphia smoking in Gold Sunlight, pink blue
green Cyanide tanks sitting on hell’s floor,
Many chimneys smoldering, city flats virus-linked
along Delaware bays under horizon-smog—
airplane drifting black vapor-filaments
above Wilmington—The iron habitations
endless from Manhattan to the Capital.
Poe
! D’jya prophesy this Smogland, this Inferno,
Didja Dream Baltimore’d Be Seen From Heaven
by Man Poet’s eyes Astounded in the Fire Haze,
carbon Gas aghast!
Poe! D’jya know yr prophecies’ red death
would pour thru Philly’s sky like Sulphurous Dreams?
Walled into Amontillado’s Basement! Man
kind led weeping drunk into the Bomb
Shelter by Mad Secretaries of Defense!
South! from the Bearded Sleeper’s Wink
at History, Hudson polluted & Susquehanna
Brown under bridges laced with factory smoke—
Proving grounds by Chesapeake,
Ammunition & Artillery
Edgewood & Aberdeen
Chemical munitions factories
hid isolate in wooded gardens—
Poe! Frankenstein! Shelley thy Prophecy,
What Demiurge assembles Matter-Factories
to blast the Cacodemonic Planet-Mirror apart
Split atoms & Polarize Consciousness &
let the eternal Void leak thru Pentagon
& cover White House with Eternal Vacuum-Dust!
Bethlehem’s miles of Christ-birth Man-apocalypse
Mechano-movie Refinery along Atlantic,
Shit-brown haze worse & worse over Baltimore
where Poe’s world came to end—Red smoke,
Black water, gray sulphur clouds over Sparrows Point
Oceanside flowing with rust, scum tide
boiling shoreward—
Red white blue yachts on Baltimore harbor,
the plane bounds down above gas tanks,
gas stations, smokestacks flaring poison mist,
Superhighways razored thru hairy woods,
Down to Earth Man City where Poe
Died kidnapped by phantoms
conspiring to win elections
in the Deathly Gutter of 19th Century.
March 1969
Easter Sunday
Slope woods’ snows melt
Streams gush, ducks stand one foot
beak eye buried in backfeathers,
Jerusalem pillars’ gold sunlight
yellow in window-shine, bright
rays spikey-white flashed in mud,
coo coo ripples thru maple branch,
horse limps head down, pale grass shoots