Democrat—Identity we Citizens
share this late century
Conscious after matter madness
Drunkenness-drug’d manufacture
Business Consumption
Transitory petrochemical toy
plastic aluminum
airconditioned hotel & old folks
home atrembling in our mortal bed
for the Big Nigger, the FBI the CIA the
NLF the ITT USSR the U.S.A.
Great Government Robot State
above us dominates our news,
takes up our telephone time labor paper work
in Magic War,
Ah! that we return to our Bodies alert
electric limb’d, lungs & heart
empty tingling, lightness
we all know Heaven on Earth
Our Will Be Thine as we Say
Our Ah—of Suffering Understood,
our life itself in pain
Ah! our ignorance! our desire!
Ah to know that suffering ends,
surrendered self’s sweet death—
our Ah to search the way together thru
some Eightfold Endless Path!
Ah! for the Hell we have made in America,
Ah for the Heaven we see among Us
Ah! for the Earth we are here!
Ah Miami streets, hotels lobbies crowded
auditorium! Ah for the fat sad police—
Ah for sad soldiers forlorn all over the world
Ah for the Madman in White House asylum
who dreams Planet Fate—
Depression armaments? Conspicuous
Consumption Cars! Great Ah
Protect us! Ah! for the Petrochemical Wonderland,
Conscious vast glittery buildings
fog dream neon’d
for Magical Emphasis
Hypnosis Money
A billfold full of Ah!
Ah! credit card plastic
broke in wastebasket
Ah for Cosa Nostra, Imagined or Real
Ah! Ah! Ah!
Ah Mayor Daley, Senator Humphrey voluble
Redeemed in Paradise, ah Laborer
Meany hatted with Milkweed
& Day Lilies,
Chiefs Nixon Agnew crowned with
Pigweed & snowballs’ tender blue blossoms
sent with Jersey Greeting,
Governor Wallace flowered with Mushrooms, magic
amanita & psilocybin, & Morning Glory halo’d
McGovern McCarthy ringed with Roses & Laurels,
ourselves all decked with Common Grass,
plebeian pleasures, ah
Ah! Normal voiced & Future President
Whoever Ye Are True Ah to Thee
Ah! to the Republic how it fare, Ah
sad flag, color transmuted
into all Three Worlds
This prayer to All Souls in America
Citizens of Body Mind & Speech
Ah! Ah! Ah!
July 9, 1972, 10:15 P.M.
Xmas Gift
I met Einstein in a dream
Springtime on Princeton lawn grass
I kneeled down & kissed his young thumb
like a ruddy pope
his face fresh broad cheeked rosy
“I invented a universe separate,
something like a Virgin”—
“Yes, the creature gives birth to itself,”
I quoted from Mescaline
We sat down open air universal summer
to eat lunch, professors’ wives
at the Tennis Court Club,
our meeting eternal, as expected,
my gesture to kiss his fist
unexpectedly saintly
considering the Atom Bomb I didn’t mention.
New York, December 24, 1972
Time Wheel Mandala (Tibetan Buddhist XX Century Woodblock). Six worlds, with Heaven and Angry Warrior Realms consolidated upper left section. At center, Cock Pig Snake eating each other’s tails. Twelve-fold chain of interdependent co-origination represented on wheel rim, held in hands of Time.
Thoughts Sitting Breathing
OM—the pride of perfumed money, music food from China, a place to sit quiet
MA—How jealous! the million Pentagon myrmidons with dollar billions to spend on Rock & Roll, restaurant high thrones in sky filled with Electric Bombers—Ah! how jealous they are of the thin stomached Vietnamese boy.
NI—Lust in heart for the pink tender prick’d school-boy upstairs bedroom naked with his books, high school locker shower, stretching on the bed, the young guitar player’s ass
PA—Impercipience, cat meows natural words at the window, dog barks cheerful morn, cockroach feelers touch the wall, the fly buzzes long long on the sunny windowsill lying upside-down in deathly prayer exhausted, man bends over oblivious books, buds stick forth their heart-tips when ice melts New Year’s eve, green grass shoots show ’neath melted snow, screams rise out of thousands of mouths in Hanoi—
DMI—alone the misery, the broken legs of carcrash alcohol, gimme another cigarette, I ain’t got a dime for coffee, got no rupee for rice ain’t got no land I got hunger in my gland my belly’s swollen potatoes my knees got cut on the Tanks—
HUM—the pigs got rocks in their head, C.I.A. got one eye bloody mind tongue, fiends sold my phonograph TV set to the junkman, Hate that dog shat my rug, hate Gook Heaven, hate them hippies in Hell stinking Marijuana smog city.
OM—Give it all away, poetry bliss & ready cash for taxicabs, walk Central Park alone & cook your beans in empty silence watching the Worm crawl thru meat walls—
MA—sit down crosslegged and relax, storm Heaven with your mental guns? Give up let Angels alone to play their guitars in Hollywood and drink their Coke-snuff in mountainside bathroom peace—
NI—Light as ashes, love for Neal sublimed into Poesy, love for Peter gone into the Vegetable garden to grow corn & tomatoes—
PA—Dog bark! call the mind gods! scream happiness in Saigon behind the bar my mother in throes of Police vomit rape! that garbage can I threw in Atlantic Ocean floats over Father Fisheye’s sacred grave—
DMI—I forgive thee Cord Meyer secret mind police suborned the Student Congress Cultural Freedom & destroyed Intellect in Academe Columbia Harvard made great murder Indochina War our fantasy-bomb gutted New York’s soul— HUM—Miserable victims flashing knives, Hell’s Angels Manson Nixon Calley-Ma, all the cops in the world and their gangster lovers, car salesmen Wall Street brokers smoking in rage over dwindling oil supplies, O poor sick junkies all here’s bliss of Buddha-opium, Sacred Emptiness to fix your angry brains—
March: Thoughts Sitting Breathing
Copyright © 1978 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg
OM—the Crown of Emptiness, relax the skullcap wove of formal thought, let light escape to Heaven, floating up from heart thru cranium, free space for Causeless Bliss—
MA—Speech purified, worlds calmed of alcoholic luxury & irritable smoking, jealous fucking rush thru taxicab cities, mental cancer pig war fever machines—Heart through throat, free space for Causeless Bliss!
NI—How vast, how brightly empty and how old, the breath within the breast expands threefold, the sigh of no restraint, sigh love’s release, the rest and peacefulness of sweethearts’ ease, from Heart to Heart —free space for Causeless Bliss!
PA—Dog bellies crying happy in the snow, worms share mind’s heaviest part, elephants carry Angels whose animal trumpets blow from abdomen deep navel up into the heart—free space for Causeless Bliss
DMI—Down in the pecker, the empty piece of wood—Everyone I fucked is dead and gone—everyone I’m gonna fuck is turning to a ghost— All my penis blessedness never’ll get lost, but rise from loins & come in my heart—free space for Causeless Bliss
HUM—I shit out my hate thru my asshole, My sphincter loosens the void, all hell’s legions fall thru space, the Pentagon is destroyed
United States armies
march thru the past
The Chinese legions rage
Past the Great Wall of Maya
And scream on the central stage
I loose my bowels of Asia
I move the U.S.A.
I crap on Dharmakaya
And wipe the worlds away
White House filled with fuel gas bombs
Slums with rats’ faeces & teeth
All Space is fore-given to Emptiness—
From earth to heart, free space
for Causeless Bliss
January 1, 1973
“What would you do if you lost it?”
said Rinpoche Chögyam Trungpa Tulku in the marble glittering apartment lobby
looking at my black hand-box full of Art, “Better prepare for Death” …
The harmonium that’s Peter’s
the scarf that’s Krishna’s the bell and brass lightningbolt Phil Whalen selected in Japan
a tattered copy of Blake, with chord notations, black books from City Lights,
Australian Aborigine song sticks, green temple incense, Tibetan preciousmetal finger cymbals—
A broken leg a week later enough reminder, lay in bed and after few days’ pain began to weep
no reason, thinking a little of Rabbi Schacter, a little of father Louis, a little
of everything that must be abandoned,
snow abandoned,
empty dog barks after the dogs have disappeared
meals eaten passed thru the body to nourish tomatoes and corn,
The wooden bowl from Haiti too huge for my salad,
Teachings, Tantras, Haggadahs, Zohar, Revelations, poetries, Koans
forgotten with the snowy world, forgotten
with generations of icicles crashing to white gullies by roadside,
Dharmakaya forgot, Nirmanakaya shoved in coffin, Sambhogakaya eclipsed in candle-light snuffed by the playful cat—
Goodbye my own treasures, bodies adored to the nipple,
old souls worshipped flower-eye or imaginary auditory panoramic skull—
goodbye old socks washed over & over, blue boxer shorts, subzero longies,
new Ball Boots black hiplength for snowdrifts near the farm mailbox,
goodbye to my room full of books, all wisdoms I never studied, all the Campion, Creeley, Anacreon Blake I never read through,
blankets farewell, orange diamonded trunked from Mexico Himalayan sheepwool lugged down from Almora days with Lama Govinda and Peter trying to eat tough stubborn halfcooked chicken.
Paintings on wall, Maitreya, Sakyamuni & Padmasambhava, Dr. Samedi with Haitian spats & cane whiskey,
Bhaktivedanta Swami at desk staring sad eye Krishna at my hopeless selfconsciousness,
Attic full of toys, desk full of old checks, files on NY police & C.I.A. peddling Heroin,
Files on laughing Leary, files on Police State, files on ecosystems all faded & brown, notebooks untranscribed, hundreds of little poems & prose my own hand,
newspaper interviews, assemblaged archives, useless paperworks surrounding me imperfectly chronologic, humorous later in eternity, reflective of Cities’ particular streets studios and boudoirs—
goodbye poetry books, I don’t have to take you along anymore on a chain to Deux Magots like a red lobster
thru Paris, Moscow, Prague, Milan, New York, Calcutta, Bangkok, holy Benares, yea Rishikesh & Brindaban may yr prana lift ye over the roof
of the world—
my own breath slower now, silent waiting & watching—
Downstairs pump-organs, musics, rags and blues, home made Blake hymns, mantras to raise the skull of America,
goodbye C chord, F chord, G chord, goodbye all the chords of The House of the Rising Sun
Goodbye farmhouse, city apartment, garbage subways Empire State, Museum of Modern Art where I wandered thru puberty dazzled by Van Gogh’s raw-brained star-systems pasted on blue thick skyey Suchness—
Goodbye again Naomi, goodbye old painful legged poet Louis, goodbye Paterson the 69 between Joe Bozzo & Harry Haines that out-lasted childhood & poisoned the air o’er Passaic Valley,
goodbye Broadway, give my regards to the great falls & boys staring marijuana’d in wonder hearing the quiet roar of Godfather Williams’ speech
Goodbye old poets of Century that taught fixed eye & sharp tongue from Pound with silent Mouni heart to Tom Veitch weeping in Stinson Beach,
goodbye to my brothers who write poetry & play fiddle, my nephews who blow tuba & stroke bass viol, whistle flute or smile & sing in blue rhythm,
goodbye shades of dead living loves, bodies weeping bodies broken bodies aging, bodies turned to wax doll or cinder
Goodbye America you hope you prayer you tenderness, you IBM 135–35 Electronic Automated Battlefield Igloo White Dragon-tooth Fuel-Air Bomb over Indochina
Om Ah Hu? A La La Ho Sophia, Soham Tara Ma, Om Phat Svaha Padmasambhava Marpa Mila sGam.po.pa Karmapa Trungpaye!
Namastaji Brahma, Ave atque vale Eros, Jupiter, Zeus, Apollo, Surya, Indra
Bom Bom! Shivaye! Ram Nam Satyahey! Om Ganipatti, Om Saraswati Hrih Sowha! Ardinarishvara Radha Harekrishna faretheewell forevermore!
None left standing! No tears left for eyes, no eyes for weeping, no mouth for singing, no song for the hearer, no more words for any mind.
Cherry Valley, February 1, 1973
Who
From Great Consciousness vision Harlem 1948 buildings standing in Eternity
I realized entire Universe was manifestation of One Mind—
My teacher was William Blake—my life work Poesy,
transmitting that spontaneous awareness to Mankind.
February 3, 1973
Yes and It’s Hopeless
hundred million cars running out of gasoline
million coalstoves burning shale carbonmist over cities
Hopeless I’ll never get laid again, O what a beautiful body that boy from Jersey City last night
Hopeless, locked in plaster-of-Paris leg cast, bones, skull heart, intestines, liver, eyes and tongue
All hopeless, the entire solar system running Thermodynamics’ Second Law
down the whole galaxy, all universes brain illusion or solid electric hopeless emptiness
evacuating itself through quasar pressure Furnaces,
hopeless the 300,000 junkies in N.Y.
hopeless President waging war, “fighting for peace” sending State Secretary to Israel, the moon, China, Acapulco,
hopeless the Dutch boy standing with his finger in the dike,
the energy crisis, the protein crisis 1990, the Folklore Crisis, the Aboriginal Crisis, the Honkie Crisis, the old Nazi Crisis, the Arab Crisis, the Chrysophrase Crisis, Tungsten, the crisis in Panama, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Santa Domingo, Haiti, Cuba, Florida, Alabama, Texas, New Jersey, New York, East 10th Street, the Crisis in San Juan Capistrano, the Oil-spill in Bolinas Bay, Santa Barbara’s tar tide, the crisis of the Loch Ness Monster & the Dublin Bomb Crisis,
all hopeless, the overpopulation of dogs, humans, cockroaches, rats, Crown of Thorn Starfish, green algae in Lake Erie—
Hopeless, hopeless, Jesus on the Cross or Buddha voided passing through
Hopeless, the First Zen Institute, the Second Church of the Resurrection, the Third Eye System Inc., the 4th Estate, the 5th Column in the Kundalini, the 6th sense, the Seventh Seal Chowder & Marching Society the 8th Nerve in the Vagus Nebula System the 9th Degree Samadhi Monopoly the 10th sorry passenger on the bus crashed over Freeway’s iron ropes down into the Swamp Abyss outsida Roanoke—
OK hopeless, Rolling Stone Consciousness, Mammoth Sunday NY Times
Ho
peless all silence, all Yoga, all quiet Ecstasies of Saints and Starvation Monks Ceylon to Bhutan—
Hopeless two million deaths in Indochina, the half million Communists assassinated in Indonesia? Slaughter of Innocents in Mexico City, Massacres of Wounded Knee Mylai Lidice Attica, 15 million never came back from Siberia
the jail murder of George Jackson, Sacco & Vanzetti electrocuted Rosenbergs, bullet assassination of Kennedy, Luther King, Malcolm X, the burning of Zwingli, hemlock death of Socrates the headless catastrophe Jayne Mansfield’s autocrash & Jimmy Dean’s highway wreck-aged body—
Hopeless, the poems of Dante & Shakespeare, such stuff as dreams are made of, Burroughs’ Orwell systems, Spengler & Vico’s cycles, Padmasambhava Krishnamurti—empty, hopeless
as the great oilfields of Persia
reservoirs of petrochemicals under Alaskan permafrost & Indochinese ocean wave
petroleum cracker tanks in Venezuela & robot pumps of Los Angeles,
brokendown cars on the farm, the tire-less Ford,
Oldsmobile sans batteries, dead corpse of Myron the neighbor Farmer the live corpse of Ginsberg the prophet
Hopeless.
New York, March 10, 1973
Under the world there’s a lot of ass, a lot of cunt
a lot of mouths and cocks,
under the world there’s a lot of come, and a lot of saliva dripping into brooks,
There’s a lot of Shit under the world, flowing beneath cities into rivers,
a lot of urine floating under the world,
a lot of snot in the world’s industrial nostrils, sweat under the world’s iron arm, blood
gushing out of the world’s breast,
endless lakes of tears, seas of sick vomit rushing between hemispheres
floating toward Sargasso, old oily rags and brake fluids, human gasoline—
Under the world there’s pain, fractured thighs, napalm burning in black hair, phosphorus eating elbows to bone
insecticides contaminating oceantide, plastic dolls floating across Atlantic,
Toy soldiers crowding the Pacific, B-52 bombers choking jungle air with vaportrails and brilliant flares
Robot drones careening over rice terraces dropping cluster grenades, plastic pellets spray into flesh, dragontooth mines & jellied fires fall on straw roofs and water buffalos,