Come All Ye Brave Boys
Come all you young men that proudly display
Your torsos to the Sun on upper Broadway
Come sweet hearties so mighty with girls
So lithe and naked to kiss their gold curls
Come beautiful boys with breasts bright gold
Lie down in bed with me ere ye grow old,
Take down your blue jeans, we’ll have some raw fun
Lie down on your bellies I’ll fuck your soft bun.
Come heroic half naked young studs
That drive automobiles through vaginal blood
Come thin breasted boys and fat muscled kids
With sturdy cocks you deal out green lids
Turn over spread your strong legs like a lass
I’ll show you the thrill to be jived up the ass
Come sweet delicate strong minded men
I’ll take you thru graveyards & kiss you again
You’ll die in your life, wake up in my arms
Sobbing and hugging & showing your charms
Come strong darlings tough children hard boys
Transformed with new tenderness, taught new joys
We’ll lie embrac’d in full moonlight till dawn
Whiteness shows sky high over the wet lawn
Lay yr head on my shoulder kiss my lined brow
& belly to belly kiss my neck now
Yeah come on tight assed & strong cocked young fools
& shove up my belly your hard tender tools,
Suck my dick, lick my arm pit and breast
Lie back & sigh in the dawn for a rest,
Come in my arms, groan your sweet will
Come again in my mouth, lie silent & still,
Let me come in your butt, hold my head on your leg,
Let’s come together, & tremble & beg.
Boulder, August 25, 1975, 4 A.M.
Sickness Blues
Sickness Blues
Lord Lord I got the sickness blues, I must’ve done something wrong
There ain’t no Lord to call on, now my youth is gone
Sickness blues, don’t want to fuck no more
Sickness blues, can’t get it up no more
Tears come in my eyes, feel like an old tired whore
I went to see the doctor, he shot me with poison germs
I got out of the hospital, my head was full of worms
All I can think is Death, father’s getting old
He can’t walk half a block, his feet feel cold
I went down to Santa Fe take vacation there
Indians selling turquoise in dobe huts in Taos Pueblo Square
Got headache in La Fonda, I could get sick anywhere
Must be my bad karma, fuckin these pretty boys
Hungry ghosts chasing me, because I been chasing joys
Lying here in bed alone, playing with my toys
I musta been doing something wrong meat & cigarettes
Bow down before my lord, 100 thousand regrets
All my poems down in hell, that’s what pride begets
Sick and angry, lying in my hospital bed
Doctor Doctor bring morphine before I’m totally dead
Sick and angry at the national universe O my aching head
Someday I’m gonna get out of here, go somewhere alone
Yeah I’m going to leave this town with noise of rattling bone
I got the sickness blues, you’ll miss me when I’m gone
Boulder, July 19, 1975
Gospel Noble Truths
Gospel Noble Truths
Born in this world
You got to suffer
Everything changes
You got no soul
Try to be gay
Ignorant happy
You get the blues
You eat jellyroll
There is one Way
You take the high road
In your big Wheel
8 steps you fly
Look at the View
Right to horizon
Talk to the sky
Act like you talk
Work like the sun
Shine in your heaven
See what you done
Come down & walk
Sit you sit down
Breathe when you breathe
Lie down you lie down
Walk where you walk
Talk when you talk
Cry when you cry
Lie down you lie down
Die when you die
Look when you look
Hear what you hear
Taste what you taste here
Smell what you smell
Touch what you touch
Think what you think
Let go Let it go Slow
Earth Heaven & Hell
Die when you die
Die when you die
Lie down you lie down
Die when you die
New York Subway, October 17, 1975
Lay Down Yr Mountain
Rolling Thunder Stones
I
LAY DOWN YR MOUNTAIN
Lay down Lay down yr mountain Lay down God
Lay down Lay down your music Love lay down
Lay down Lay down yr hatred Lay yrself down
Lay down Lay down your nation Lay your foot on the rock
Lay down yr whole creation Lay yr mind down
Lay down Lay down yr empire Lay your whole world down
Lay down your soul forever Lay your vision down
Lay down yr bright body Down your golden heavy crown
Lay down Lay down yr magic hey! Alchemist lay it down clear
Lay down your practice precisely Lay down yr wisdom dear
Lay down yr skillful camera Lay down yr image right
Lay down your brilliant image Lay down light
Lay down your ignorance Roll yr wheel once more
Lay down yr empty suffering Lay down yr Lion’s Roar
October 31, 1975
II
Sunrise Ceremony Verse
Improvised with Australian Aborigine Song-Sticks
at Request of Medicine Man Rolling Thunder November 5, 1975
When Music was needed Music sounded
When a Ceremony was needed a Teacher appeared
When Students were needed Telephones rang.
When Cars were needed Wheels rolled in
When a Place was needed a Mansion appeared
When a Fire was needed Wood appeared
When an Ocean was needed Waters rippled waves
When Shore was needed Shore met Ocean
When Sun was needed the Sun rose east
When People were needed People arrived
When a circle was needed a Circle formed.
Plymouth
III
SNOW BLUES
Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine
Jiggling yr knees blankeyed in the rain
When it snows in yr nose you catch cold in yr brain
Danbury, November 10, 1975
IV
TO THE SIX NATI ONS AT TUSCARORA RE SERVATION
We give thanks for this food, deer meat & indian-corn soup
Which is a product of the labor of your people
And the suffering of other forms of life
And which we promise to transform into friendly song and dancing
To all the ten directions of the Earth.
November 18, 1975
V
Snow falls
souls freeze
Speed kills
heart’s ease
Alcohol
fools wills
O slaves
Who craves
junk raves
Downer’s
angers
eyes blur—
I sing
Rolling
Thunder
Ho ho!
Macho
frenzy
in thee
’s a drag
dead bag.
Smoke grass
Yaas Yass
Shake ass
mind’s wealth
joint’s health
Ready?
Meditations
patience
eyes keen
serene
as graves
saves! saves
nations.
Montreal, December 4, 1975
Cabin in the Rockies
I
Sitting on a tree stump with half cup of tea,
sun down behind mountains—
Nothing to do.
Not a word! Not a Word!
Flies do all my talking for me—
and the wind says something else.
Fly on my nose,
I’m not the Buddha,
There’s no enlightenment here!
Against red bark trunk
A fly’s shadow
lights on the shadow of a pine bough.
An hour after dawn
I haven’t thought of Buddha once yet!
—walking back into the retreat house.
II
Walking into King Sooper after Two-week Retreat
A thin redfaced pimpled boy
stands alone minutes
looking down into the ice cream bin.
Boulder, September 16, 1975
Reading French Poetry
Poems rise in my brain
like Woolworth’s 5 & 10¢ Store perfume
O my love with thin breasts
17 year old boy with smooth ass
O my father with white hands
specks on your feet & foul breath bespeak tumor
O myself with my romance
fading but fat bodies remain
in bed with me warm passionless
unless I exercise myself like a dumbbell
O my Fiftieth year approaching
like Tennessee like Andy a failure, big nothing—
very satisfactory subjects for Poetry.
New York, January 12, 1976
Two Dreams
I
As I passed thru Moscow’s grass lots I heard
a voice, a small green dwarf, leaf-clothed &
thin corn-stalk arms, head capped with green
husk & tassel, walking toward me talking:
“You see these other tassel heads stalking
thru long green grass spears half buried
in empty lots where building-ghosts stand
razed by police state but bursting from ground
Springtime as now seeds grown natural
So I full grown sprite of Friendship salute
you who seek love in Roman Moscow circuses—
Be cheerful our enemy’s enemy is Death
and since Death is We, since all die, all
is not lost but to Death, & what lives eccentric
as yourself & Me, ancient friends, lives
humorous and democratic as your leaves of grass
which die also prophesied but live as you and I.
Bee cheerful, good Sir. Cockhead green am I
an entertainer triumphant in the tiny cliffs
between buildings, in old grasslots of Paterson
where the wrecker’s ball creates a tiny farm
for worms, and bottles glint in new turned earth—
and weeds and we sprout renewing Nature’s
humor where the architectural police are on the nod.
The sun will rise and I’ll accompany your eye
that walks thru Moscow looking for human love.”
March 1, 1976
II sludge
Dantean, the cliffside whereon I walked
With volumes of Milton & the Tuscan Bard enarmed:
Highway prospecting th’ocean Sludged transparent
lipped to asphalt built by Man under sky.
Far down below the factory I espied, and plunged
full clothed into the Acid Tide, heroic precipitous
Stupidly swam the noxious surface to my goal—
An Oil platform at land’s end, where Fellows watched
my bold approach to the Satanic World Trade Center.
Father dying tumored, Industry smog
o’erspreads dawn sky, gold beams descend
on Paterson thru subtle tar fumes, viewless
to wakened eye, transfused into family meat.
Capitalism’s reckless industry cancers New Jersey.
New York, March 6, 1976
C’mon Jack
Turn me on your knees
Spank me & Fuck me
Hit my ass with your hand
Spank me and Fuck me
Hit my hole with your fingers
Hit my ass with your hand
Spank me and fuck me
Turn me on your knees
Ah Robertson it’s you
Yes hit my ass with your hand
real hard, ass on your knees
sticking up hard harder slap
Spank me and Fuck me
Got a hard on Spank me
When you get a hard on Fuck me.
March 29, 1976
Pussy Blues
for Anne Waldman
You said you got to go home & feed your pussycat
When I ast you to stay here tonight Where’s your pussy at?
Keep your pussy here Try our hot cat food
Yeah lotsa cats around here & they’s all half nude
Going home alone do your pussy no good
Hey it’s 4th of July Say it’s your U.S. birthday
Yeah stay out all night National Holiday
Tiger on your fence Don’t let him get away
Pussy pussy come home I’m gonna feed you fish
Yeah pussy pussy here come your big red dish
Hey there pussy Cantcha catch my mouse
Hey please pussy Play with my white mouse
You can stay all night You can clean my house
Boulder, Independence Day 1976, 1 A.M.
Don’t Grow Old
I
Old Poet, Poetry’s final subject glimmers months ahead
Tender mornings, Paterson roofs snowcovered
Vast
Sky over City Hall tower, Eastside Park’s grass terraces & tennis courts beside Passaic River
Parts of ourselves gone, sister Rose’s apartments, brown corridor’d high schools—
Too tired to go out for a walk, too tired to end the War
Too tired to save body
too tired to be heroic
The real close at hand as the stomach
liver pancreas rib
Coughing up gastric saliva
Marriages vanished in a cough
Hard to get up from the easy chair
Hands white feet speckled a blue toe stomach big breasts hanging thin
hair white on the chest
too tired to take off shoes and black sox
Paterson, January 12, 1976
II
He’ll see no more Times Square
honkytonk movie marquees, bus stations at midnight
Nor the orange sun ball
rising thru treetops east toward New York’s skyline
His velvet armchair facing the window will be empty
He won’t see the moon over house roofs
or sky over Paterson’s streets.
New York, February 26, 1976
III
Wasted arms, feeble knees
80 years old, hair thin and white
cheek bonier than I’d remembered—
head bowed on his neck, eyes opened
now and then, he listened—
I read my father Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality
“… trailing clouds of glory do we come
from God, who is our home …”
“That’s beautiful,” he said, “but it’s not true.”
“When I was a boy, we had a h
ouse
on Boyd Street, Newark—the backyard
was a big empty lot full of bushes and tall grass,
I always wondered what was behind those trees.
When I grew older, I walked around the block,
and found out what was back there—
it was a glue factory.”
May 18, 1976
IV
Will that happen to me?
Of course, it’ll happen to thee.
Will my arms wither away?
Yes yr arm hair will turn gray.
Will my knees grow weak & collapse?
Your knees will need crutches perhaps.
Will my chest get thin?
Your breasts will be hanging skin.
Where will go—my teeth?
You’ll keep the ones beneath.
What’ll happen to my bones?
They’ll get mixed up with stones.
June 1976
Father Death Blues
V
FATHER DEATH BLUES
Hey Father Death, I’m flying home
Hey poor man, you’re all alone
Hey old daddy, I know where I’m going
Father Death, Don’t cry any more
Mama’s there, underneath the floor
Brother Death, please mind the store
Old Aunty Death Don’t hide your bones
Old Uncle Death I hear your groans
O Sister Death how sweet your moans
O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths
Sobbing breasts’ll ease your Deaths
Pain is gone, tears take the rest
Genius Death your art is done
Lover Death your body’s gone
Father Death I’m coming home
Guru Death your words are true
Teacher Death I do thank you
For inspiring me to sing this Blues
Buddha Death, I wake with you
Dharma Death, your mind is new
Sangha Death, we’ll work it through
Suffering is what was born
Ignorance made me forlorn
Tearful truths I cannot scorn
Father Breath once more farewell
Birth you gave was no thing ill
My heart is still, as time will tell.
July 8, 1976 (Over Lake Michigan)
VI
Near the Scrap Yard my Father’ll be Buried