I yell thru Washington, South Carolina, Colorado, Texas, Iowa, New Mexico,
where nuclear reactors create a new Thing under the Sun, where Rockwell war-plants fabricate this death stuff trigger in nitrogen baths,
Hanger-Silas Mason assembles the terrified weapon secret by ten thousands, & where Manzano Mountain boasts to store
its dreadful decay through two hundred forty millennia while our Galaxy spirals around its nebulous core.
25 I enter your secret places with my mind, I speak with your presence, I roar your Lion Roar with mortal mouth.
One microgram inspired to one lung, ten pounds of heavy metal dust adrift slow motion over gray Alps
the breadth of the planet, how long before your radiance speeds blight and death to sentient beings?
Enter my body or not I carol my spirit inside you, Unapproachable Weight,
O heavy heavy Element awakened I vocalize your consciousness to six worlds
30 I chant your absolute Vanity. Yeah monster of Anger birthed in fear O most
Ignorant matter ever created unnatural to Earth! Delusion of metal empires!
Destroyer of lying Scientists! Devourer of covetous Generals, Incinerator of Armies & Melter of Wars!
Judgment of judgments, Divine Wind over vengeful nations, Molester of Presidents, Death-Scandal of Capital politics! Ah civilizations stupidly industrious!
Canker-Hex on multitudes learned or illiterate! Manufactured Spectre of human reason! O solidified imago of practitioners in Black Arts
35 I dare your Reality, I challenge your very being! I publish your cause and effect!
I turn the Wheel of Mind on your three hundred tons! Your name enters mankind’s ear! I embody your ultimate powers!
My oratory advances on your vaunted Mystery! This breath dispels your braggart fears! I sing your form at last
behind your concrete & iron walls inside your fortress of rubber & translucent silicon shields in filtered cabinets and baths of lathe oil,
My voice resounds through robot glove boxes & ingot cans and echoes in electric vaults inert of atmosphere,
40 I enter with spirit out loud into your fuel rod drums underground on soundless thrones and beds of lead
O density! This weightless anthem trumpets transcendent through hidden chambers and breaks through iron doors into the Infernal Room!
Over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony floats audible, these jubilant tones are honey and milk and wine-sweet water
Poured on the stone block floor, these syllables are barely groats I scatter on the Reactor’s core,
I call your name with hollow vowels, I psalm your Fate close by, my breath near deathless ever at your side
45 to Spell your destiny, I set this verse prophetic on your mausoleum walls to seal you up Eternally with Diamond Truth! O doomed Plutonium.
II
The Bard surveys Plutonian history from midnight lit with Mercury Vapor streetlamps till in dawn’s early light
he contemplates a tranquil politic spaced out between Nations’ thought-forms proliferating bureaucratic
& horrific arm’d, Satanic industries projected sudden with Five Hundred Billion Dollar Strength
around the world same time this text is set in Boulder, Colorado before front range of Rocky Mountains
50 twelve miles north of Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility in United States on North America, Western Hemisphere
of planet Earth six months and fourteen days around our Solar System in a Spiral Galaxy
the local year after Dominion of the last God nineteen hundred seventy eight
Completed as yellow hazed dawn clouds brighten East, Denver city white below
Blue sky transparent rising empty deep & spacious to a morning star high over the balcony
55 above some autos sat with wheels to curb downhill from Flatiron’s jagged pine ridge,
sunlit mountain meadows sloped to rust-red sandstone cliffs above brick townhouse roofs
as sparrows waked whistling through Marine Street’s summer green leafed trees.
III
This ode to you O Poets and Orators to come, you father Whitman as I join your side, you Congress and American people,
you present meditators, spiritual friends & teachers, you O Master of the Diamond Arts,
60 Take this wheel of syllables in hand, these vowels and consonants to breath’s end
take this inhalation of black poison to your heart, breathe out this blessing from your breast on our creation
forests cities oceans deserts rocky flats and mountains in the Ten Directions pacify with this exhalation,
enrich this Plutonian Ode to explode its empty thunder through earthen thought-worlds
Magnetize this howl with heartless compassion, destroy this mountain of Plutonium with ordinary mind and body speech,
65 thus empower this Mind-guard spirit gone out, gone out, gone beyond, gone beyond me, Wake space, so Ah!
July 14, 1978
Old Pond
Old Pond
The old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Hard road! I walked till both feet stunk—
Ma!Ma! Whatcha doing down on that bed?
Pa!Pa! what hole you hide your head?
Left home got work down town today
Sold coke, got busted looking gay
Day dream, I acted like a clunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Got hitched, I bought a frying pan
Fried eggs, my wife eats like a man
Won’t cook, her oatmeal tastes like funk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Eat shit exactly what she said
Drink wine, it goes right down my head
Fucked up, they all yelled I was drunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Saw God at six o’clock tonight
Flop house, I think I’ll start a fight
Head ache like both my eyeballs shrunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Hot dog! I love my mustard hot
Hey Rube! I think I just got shot
Drop dead She said you want some junk?
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Oh ho your dirty needle stinks
No no I don’t shoot up with finks
Speed greed I stood there with the punk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Yeh yeh gimme a breath of fresh air
Guess who I am well you don’t care
No name call up the mocking Monk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Come home you owe it to the boys
Can’t hear you scream your fish’s sunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Just folks, we bought a motor car
No gas I guess we crossed the bar
I swear we started for Podunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
I got his banjo on my knee
I played it like an old Sweetie
I sang plunk-a-plunk-a-plunk plunk plunk plunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
One hand I gave myself the clap
Unborn, but still I took the rap
Big deal, I fell out of my bunk
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Hey hey! I ride down the blue sky
Sit down with worms until I die
Fare well! Hum Hum Hum Hum Hum Hum!
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Red barn rise wet in morning dew
Cockadoo dle do oink oink moo moo
Buzz buzz—flyswatter in the kitchen, thwunk!
Th’old pond—a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
August 22, 1978
Blame the Thought, Cling to the Bummer
I am Fake Saint
magazine Saint Ram Das
Who’s not a Fake Saint consciousness, Nobody!
The 12th Trungpa, Karmapa 16, Dudjom lineage of Padmasambhava, Pope Jean-Paul, Queen of England crowned with dignity’s brilliant empty Diamonds Sapphires Emeralds, Amber, Rubies—
The sky is Fake Saint, emptyhearted blue
The Sacramento Valley floor fields no saints either, tractors in green corn higher than the T-shirted jogger.
This Volkswagen Fake Saint, license-plate-light wires smoking shorted in the rear-engine door.
Filter cigarette butt still smoking in the ashtray
No saints longhaired boys at the busdriver’s wheel
Hard workers no Fake Saints laborers everywhere behind desks in Plutonium offices
swatting flies under plastic flower-power signs
Driving Ponderosa & Spruce roads to the poet’s shrine at Kitkitdizze
Bedrock Mortar hermitage—Shobo-An temple’s copper roof on a black-oak groved hillside—
Discontinuous, the thought—empty—no harm—
To blame the thought would cling to the Bummer—
Unborn Evil, the Self & its systems
Transitory intermittent gapped in Grass Valley stopping for gas
Plutonium blameless, apocalyptic gift of Furies
Insentient space filled with green bushes—clouds over Ranger Station signs
Uncertain as incense.
Nevada City, September 7, 1978
“Don’t Grow Old”
I
Twenty-eight years before on the living room couch he’d stared at me, I said
“I want to see a psychiatrist—I have sexual difficulties—homosexuality”
I’d come home from troubled years as a student. This was the weekend I would talk with him.
A look startled his face, “You mean you like to take men’s penises in your mouth?”
Equally startled, “No, no,” I lied, “that isn’t what it means.”
Now he lay naked in the bath, hot water draining beneath his shanks.
Strong shouldered Peter, once ambulance attendant, raised him up
in the tiled room. We toweled him dry, arms under his, bathrobe over his shoulder—
he tottered thru the door to his carpeted bedroom
sat on the soft mattress edge, exhausted, and coughed up watery phlegm.
We lifted his swollen feet talcum’d white, put them thru pajama legs,
tied the cord round his waist, and held the nightshirt sleeve open for his hand, slow.
Mouth drawn in, his false teeth in a dish, he turned his head round
looking up at Peter to smile ruefully, “Don’t ever grow old.”
II
At my urging, my eldest nephew came
to keep his grandfather company, maybe sleep overnight in the apartment.
He had no job, and was homeless anyway.
All afternoon he read the papers and looked at old movies.
Later dusk, television silent, we sat on a soft-pillowed couch,
Louis sat in his easy-chair that swiveled and could lean back—
“So what kind of job are you looking for?”
“Dishwashing, but someone told me it makes your hands’ skin scaly red.”
“And what about officeboy?” His grandson finished highschool with marks too poor for college.
“It’s unhealthy inside airconditioned buildings under fluorescent light.”
The dying man looked at him, nodding at the specimen.
He began his advice. “You might be a taxidriver, but what if a car crashed into you? They say you can get mugged too.
Or you could get a job as a sailor, but the ship could sink, you could get drowned.
Maybe you should try a career in the grocery business, but a box of bananas could slip from the shelf,
you could hurt your head. Or if you were a waiter, you could slip and fall down with a loaded tray, & have to pay for the broken glasses.
Maybe you should be a carpenter, but your thumb might get hit by a hammer.
Or a lifeguard—but the undertow at Belmar beach is dangerous, and you could catch a cold.
Or a doctor, but sometimes you could cut your hand with a scalpel that had germs, you could get sick & die.”
Later, in bed after twilight, glasses off, he said to his wife
“Why doesn’t he comb his hair? It falls all over his eyes, how can he see?
Tell him to go home soon, I’m too tired.”
Amherst, October 5, 1978
III
Resigned
A year before visiting a handsome poet and my Tibetan guru, Guests after supper on the mountainside
we admired the lights of Boulder spread glittering below through a giant glass window—
After coffee, my father bantered wearily
“Is life worth living? Depends on the liver—”
The Lama smiled to his secretary—
It was an old pun I’d heard in childhood.
Then he fell silent, looking at the floor
and sighed, head bent heavy
talking to no one—
“What can you do …?”
Buffalo, October 6, 1978
Love Returned
Love returned with smiles
three thousand miles
to keep a year’s promise
Anonymous, honest
studious, beauteous
learned and childlike
earnest and mild like
a student of truth,
a serious youth.
Whatever our ends
young and old we were friends
on the coast a few weeks
In New York now he seeks
scholarly manuscripts
old writs, haunted notes
Antique anecdotes,
rare libraries lain
back of the brain.
Now we are in bed
he kisses my head
his hand on my arm
holds my side warm
He presses my leg
I don’t have to beg
his sweet penis heat
enlarged at my hip,
kiss his neck with my lip.
Small as a kid
his ass is not hid
I can touch, I can play
with his thighs any way
My cheek to his chest
my body’s his guest
he offers his breast
his belly, the rest
hug and kiss to my bliss
Come twice at last
he offers his ass
first time for him
to be entered at whim
of my bare used cock—
his cheeks do unlock
tongue & hand at soft gland
Alas for my dreams
my part’s feeble it seems
Familiar with lust
heartening the dust
of 50 years’ boys’
abandoned love joys
Not to queer my idea
he’s willing & trembles
& his body’s nimble
where I want my hard skin
I can’t get it on in.
Well another day comes
Church bells have rung
dawn blue in New York
I eat vegetables raw
Sun flowers, cole slaw
Age shortens my years
yet brings these good cheers
Some nights’re left free
& Love’s patient with me
December 16, 1978, 6 A.M.
December 31, 1978
Shining Diamonds & Sequins glitter
Grand Ballroom Waldorf
Astoria on the TV Screen
radiant shifting goodbye to
Times Square Phantoms
waving
massed eyeglasses & umbrellas’
rainy hands over
heads
Celebrating China
diplomatic relations
Disco in Peking
Congressional black & tan faces
on the news-dots sober Committee Report
Concludes Conspiracy Killing
Kennedy & Martin Luther King
President & Peacemaker last
Decade departed
mysteriously gloomy miasma
mind of NY Times Vietnam
nuclear Warren Commission
exploded, lies & confusion
popping firecrackers Razz-ma-Tazz
in mylar hats under klieg lights
dancing to Guy Lombardo
Hitchy Kitchy Koo in eyeglasses
& bowties
with tinkling Pianos, Trombones
& tubas above the round white
champagne tables
Old Folks smiling into camera one
last time
appreciating the Royal Canadian
Nostalgia
among sweepstake kitchen
sinks & refrigerators
advertised before the deodorized
stickup by Count Dracula
with popping eyeballs.
How enthusiastic the soap ads
while masses honk paper
horns
between December’s canyon’d building
walls straight-sided up
thru red misted sky
above Gotham
Broadway Oomp-pa-pa-ing its
regards to Heaven the
umpteenth time,
tin Trumpets waiting to
announce the year’s
midnight,
Big teeth having a good time,
Puerto Ricans smiling
under 44th Street marquees
greeting the camera’s
million-eyed blank
Hope the itching’s gone—
Live from New York! thousands
scream delight
roaring the clock along simultaneous
congratulations Network Chairman
Wm. S. Paley—
Forgiveness! Time! the ball’s
falling down, drums
roll loud
across America’s speaker
systems to
Balloons! Happy New Year!
Trumpets & Bubbles wave
thru the brain!
Raise yr hat & shake yr bracelet
Telephone Edie! Blow yr Trumpet
Ganymede with a mustache
Ring yr brazen horns ye
Fire engines of Soho!
Bark ye dogges in lofts, explode
yr honking halos ye