—What relief from writing letters to the Nation
disputing tyrants, war gossip, FBI—
My poems’ll gather dust in Kansas libraries,
adolescent farmboys opening book covers with ruddy hands.
2
Lower East Side
That round faced woman, she owns the street with her three big dogs,
screeches at me, waddling with her shopping bag across Avenue B
Grabbing my crotch, “Why don’t you talk to me?”
baring her teeth in a smile, voice loud like a taxi horn,
“Big Jerk … you think you’re famous?”—reminds me of my mother.
April 29, 1980
Reflections at Lake Louise
I
At midnight the teacher lectures on his throne
Gongs, bells, wooden fish, tingling brass
Transcendent Doctrines, non-meditation, old dog barks
Past present future burn in Candleflame
incense fills intellects—
Mornings I wake, forgetting my dreams,
dreary hearted, lift my body out of bed
shave, wash, sit, bow down to the ground for hours.
II
Which country is real, mine or the teacher’s?
Going back & forth I cross the Canada border, unguarded,
guilty, smuggling 10,000 thoughts.
III
Sometimes my guru seems a Hell King, sometimes a King in Eternity,
sometimes a newspaper story, sometimes familiar eyed
father, lonely mother, hard working—
Poor man! to give me birth who may never grow up
and earn my own living.
May 7, 1980
IV
Now the sky’s clearer, clouds lifted, a patch of blue
shows above Mt. Victoria. I should go walking to the Plain of the Six Glaciers
but I have to eat Oryoki style, prostrate hours in the basement, study for Vajrayana Exams—
If I had a heart attack on the path around the lake would I be ready to face my mother?
Noon
V
Scandal in the Buddhafields
The lake’s covered with soft ice inches thick.
Naked, he insulted me under the glacier!
He raped my mind on the wet granite cliffs!
He misquoted me in the white mists all over the Nation.
Hurrah! the Clouds drift apart!
Big chunks of blue sky fall down!
Mount Victoria stands with a mouth full of snow.
VI
I wander this path along little Lake Louise, the teacher’s too busy to see me,
my dharma friends think I’m crazy, or worse, a lonely neurotic, maybe I am—
Alone in the mountains, same as in snowy streets of New York.
VII
Trapped in the Guru’s Chateau surrounded by 300 disciples
I could go home to Cherry Valley, Manhattan, Nevada City
to be a farmer forever, die in Lower East Side slums, sit with no lightbulbs in the forest,
Return to my daily mail Secretary, Hard Times, Junk mail and love letters, get wrinkled old in Manhattan
Fly out and sing poetry, bring home windmills, grow tomatoes and Marijuana
chop wood, do Zazen, obey my friends, muse in Gary’s Maidu Territory, study acorn mush,
Here I’m destined to study the Higher Tantras and be a slave of Enlightenment.
Where can I go, how choose? Either way my life stands before me,
mountains rising over the white lake 6 A.M., mist drifting between water and sky.
May 7–9, 1980
τεθνάκην δ’ όλίγω ’πιδενης ϕαίόμ’ άλαία
Red cheeked boyfriends tenderly kiss me sweet mouthed
under Boulder coverlets winter springtime
hug me naked laughing & telling girl friends
gossip till autumn
Aging love escapes with his Childish body
Monday one man visited sleeping big cocked
older mustached crooked-mouthed not the same teenager
I sucked off
This kid comes on Thursdays with happy hard ons
long nights talking heart to heart reading verses
fucking hours he comes in me happy but I
can’t get it in him
Cherub, thin-legged Southern boy once slept over
singing blues and drinking till he got horny
Wednesday night he gave me his ass I screwed him
good luck he was drunk
Blond curl’d clear eyed gardener passing thru town
teaching digging earth in the ancient One Straw
method lay back stomach bare that night blew me
I blew him and came
Winter dance Naropa a barefoot wild kid
jumped up grabbed me laughed at me took my hand and
ran out saying Meet you at midnight your house
Woke me up naked
Midnight crawled in bed with me breathed in my ear
kissed my eyelids mouth on his cock it was soft
“Doesn’t do nothing for me,” turned on belly
Came in behind him
Future youth I never may touch any more
Hark these Sapphics lipped by my hollow spirit
everlasting tenderness breathed in these vowels
sighing for love still
Song your cadence formed while on May night’s full moon
yellow onions tulips in fresh rain pale grass
iris pea pods radishes grew as this verse
blossomed in dawn light
Measure forever his face eighteen years old
green eyes blond hair muscular gold soft skin whose
god like boy’s voice mocked me once three decades past
Come here and screw me
Breast struck scared to look in his eyes blood pulsing
my ears mouth dry tongue never moved ribs shook a
trembling fire ran down from my heart to my thighs
Love-sick to this day
Heavy limbed I sat in a chair and watched him
sleep naked all night afraid to kiss his mouth
tender dying waited for sun rise years ago
in Manhattan
Boulder, May 17-June 1, 1980
Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters
Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof
out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross
surveys the city’s blue-gray clouds. Larry Rivers
’ll come at 10 A.M. and take my picture. I’m taking
your picture, pigeons. I’m writing you down, Dawn.
I’m immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus.
O Thought, now you’ll have to think the same thing forever!
New York, June 7, 1980, 6:48 A.M.
Ode to Failure
Many prophets have failed, their voices silent
ghost-shouts in basements nobody heard dusty laughter in family attics
nor glanced them on park benches weeping with relief under empty sky
Walt Whitman viva’d local losers—courage to Fat Ladies in the Freak Show! nervous prisoners whose mustached lips dripped sweat on chow lines—
Mayakovsky cried, Then die! my verse, die like the workers’ rank & file fusilladed in Petersburg!
Prospero burned his Power books & plummeted his magic wand to the bottom of dragon seas
Alexander the Great failed to find more worlds to conquer!
O Failure I chant your terrifying name, accept me your 54 year old Prophet
epicking Eternal Flop! I join your Pantheon of mortal bards, & hasten this ode with high blood pressure
rushing to the top of my skull as if I wouldn’t last another minute, like the Dying Gaul! to
You, Lord of blind Monet, deaf Beethoven, armless Venus de Milo, headless Winged Victory!
I failed to sleep with every bearded
rosy-cheeked boy I jacked off over
My tirades destroyed no Intellectual Unions of KGB & CIA in turtlenecks & underpants, their woolen suits & tweeds
I never dissolved Plutonium or dismantled the nuclear Bomb before my skull lost hair
I have not yet stopped the Armies of entire Mankind in their march toward World War III
I never got to Heaven, Nirvana, X, Whatchamacallit, I never left Earth,
I never learned to die.
Boulder, March 7 / October 10, 1980
Birdbrain!
Birdbrain runs the World!
Birdbrain is the ultimate product of Capitalism
Birdbrain chief bureaucrat of Russia, yawning
Birdbrain ran FBI 30 years appointed by F. D. Roosevelt and never chased Cosa Nostra!
Birdbrain apportions wheat to be burned, keep prices up on the world market!
Birdbrain lends money to Developing Nation police-states thru the International Monetary Fund!
Birdbrain never gets laid on his own he depends on his office to pimp for him
Birdbrain offers brain transplants in Switzerland
Birdbrain wakes up in middle of night and arranges his sheets
I am Birdbrain!
I rule Russia Yugoslavia England Poland Argentina United States El Salvador
Birdbrain multiplies in China!
Birdbrain inhabits Stalin’s corpse inside the Kremlin wall
Birdbrain dictates petrochemical agriculture in Afric desert regions!
Birdbrain lowers North California’s water table sucking it up for Orange County Agribusiness Banks
Birdbrain harpoons whales and chews blubber in the tropics
Birdbrain clubs baby harp seals and wears their coats to Paris
Birdbrain runs the Pentagon his brother runs the CIA, Fatass Bucks!
Birdbrain writes and edits Time Newsweek Wall Street Journal Pravda Izvestia
Birdbrain is Pope, Premier, President, Commissar, Chairman, Senator!
Birdbrain voted Reagan President of the United States!
Birdbrain prepares Wonder Bread with refined white flour!
Birdbrain sold slaves, sugar, tobacco, alcohol
Birdbrain conquered the New World and murdered mushroom god Xochopili on Popocatepetl!
Birdbrain was President when a thousand mysterious students were machinegunned at Tlatelulco
Birdbrain sent 20,000,000 intellectuals and Jews to Siberia, 15,000,000 never got back to the Stray Dog Café
Birdbrain wore a mustache & ran Germany on Amphetamines the last year of World War II
Birdbrain conceived the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem in Europe
Birdbrain carried it out in Gas Chambers
Birdbrain borrowed Lucky Luciano the Mafia from jail to secure Sicily for U.S. Birdbrain against the Reds
Birdbrain manufactured guns in the Holy Land and sold them to white goyim in South Africa
Birdbrain supplied helicopters to Central America generals, kill a lot of restless Indians, encourage a favorable business climate
Birdbrain began a war of terror against Israeli Jews
Birdbrain sent out Zionist planes to shoot Palestinian huts outside Beirut
Birdbrain outlawed Opiates on the world market
Birdbrain formed the Black Market in Opium
Birdbrain’s father shot skag in hallways of the lower East Side
Birdbrain organized Operation Condor to spray poison fumes on the marijuana fields of Sonora
Birdbrain got sick in Harvard Square from smoking Mexican grass
Birdbrain arrived in Europe to Conquer cockroaches with Propaganda
Birdbrain became a great International Poet and went around the world praising the Glories of Birdbrain
I declare Birdbrain to be victor in the Poetry Contest
He built the World Trade Center on New York Harbor waters without regard where the toilets emptied—
Birdbrain began chopping down the Amazon Rainforest to build a wood-pulp factory on the river bank
Birdbrain in Iraq attacked Birdbrain in Iran
Birdbrain in Belfast throws bombs at his mother’s ass
Birdbrain wrote Das Kapital! authored the Bible! penned The Wealth of Nations!
Birdbrain’s humanity, he built the Rainbow Room on top of Rockefeller Center so we could dance
He invented the Theory of Relativity so Rockwell Corporation could make Neutron Bombs at Rocky Flats in Colorado
Birdbrain’s going to see how long he can go without coming
Birdbrain thinks his dong will grow big that way
Birdbrain sees a new Spy in the Market Platz in Dubrovnik outside the Eyeglass Hotel—
Birdbrain wants to suck your cock in Europe, he takes life very seriously, brokenhearted you won’t cooperate—
Birdbrain goes to heavy duty Communist Countries so he can get KGB girlfriends while the sky thunders—
Birdbrain realized he was Buddha by meditating
Birdbrain’s afraid he’s going to blow up the planet so he wrote this poem to be immortal—
Eroica
White marble pillars in the Rector’s courtyard
at the end of a marble-white street in the walled city of Dubrovnik—
All the fleet sunk, Empire foundered, Doges all skeletons & Turks vanished to dust
World Wars passed by with cannonfire mustard gas & amphetamine-wired Führers—
Beethoven’s drum roll beats again in the stone household
White jackets and Black ties the makers of Dissonant thunderbolts concentrate on music sheets
Bowing low, the Timpanist bends ear to his Copper Kettledrums’ heroic vibration—
Bassists with hornrim glasses and beards, young and old pluck ensemble with middle fingers at thin animal strings—
Bassoonists press lips to wooden hollow wands,
The Violinists fiddle up and down excitedly—First Violin
with a stubborn beard (at his music stand with a young girl in black evening dress) waits patiently the orchestra tuning and tweedling to a C—
The Conductor moves his baton & elbows to get the Beethoven bounce jumping
Sweating in the cool Adriatic air at 10:15 white collar round his neck, black longtailed jacket & celluloid cuffs, high heeled black shoes—he turns the glossy page of the First Movement—
The brasses ring out, trumpets puffing, French horns blaring for Napoleon!
Conductor whips it to a Bam Bam Bamb.
But Beethoven got disgusted with Napoleon & scratched his hero name off the Dedication page—
Now the Funeral March! I used to listen to this over the radio in Paterson during the Spanish Civil War—
At last I know it’s the bassoons Carry the wails of high elegy
at last I see the cellos in their chairs, violinists swaying forward, bassmen standing looking sad
as all bow together the mournful lament & dead march for Europe,
The end of the liberty of Dubrovnik, the idiot cry March on Moscow!
Dubrovnik’s musicians take revenge on Napoleon,
by playing Beethoven’s heroic chords in a Castle by the sea at Night—
Electric Globes on wrought iron stands light the year 1980 (Emperor Napoleon & Emperor Beethoven alike snoring skulls)
in the Rector’s house reconstructed a Concert Hall for Tourists
Beethoven’s heart pulses in the drums, his breath huffs and puffs, the black robed violin lady & the bearded Concert-master swing their arms.
The Funeral Fugue Begins! The Death of Kings, the screaming of Revolutionary multitudes
as the Middle Ages tumble before Industrial Revolution
a Mysterious Clarion! an extended brassy breath!
serene rows of island cities in violin language,
working back and forth from violins to bassoons—
The drum beats the footfalls of Coffin Carriers—
&n
bsp; over the roofs the lilt of a sad melody emerges,
like silent cats on red tile, the strings Climb up sadder—
a broken-muzzled lion’s head sticks out of a white plaster Fountain wall in the courtyard
Now rats and lions chase each other round the orchestra from fiddle string to bass gut staccato—
Hunting horns echo mellow against marble staircase blocks—
Napoleon has himself crowned Emperor by the Pope!
Unbelievable! Atom Bombs drop on Japan! Hitler attacks Poland! The Allies fire-bomb Dresden alive! America goes to war—
Now Violins and Horns rise Counterpoint to a thunderous bombing! Kettledrums war up! Bam Bamb! End of Scherzo!
Finale—Tiptoeing thru history, Pizzicato on the Bass Cello & Violins as Time marches on.
Running thru the veins, the lilt of victory, the Liberation of man from the State!
It’s a big dance, a festival, every instrument joined in the Yea Saying!
Who wouldn’t be happy meeting Beethoven at Jena in 1812 or 1980! It’s a small world, standing up to sing like a big beating heart!
Getting ready for the Ecstatic European Dance! Off we go on one ear, then another, Titanic Footsteps over Middle Europe—
And a waltz to quiet down the joy, But the big dance will come back like Eternity like God like
a hurricane an Earthquake a Beethoven Creation
a new Europe! A new world of Liberty almost 200 years ago
Prophesied thru brass and catgut, wood bow & breath
Gigantic Heartbeat of Beethoven’s Deaf Longing—
The Prophecy of a Solid happy peaceful Just Europe—
Big as the Trumpets of the Third Symphony.
The Unification of the World! The triumph of the Moon! Mankind liberated to Music!
Enough to make you cry in the middle of the Rector’s Palace, thinking of Einstein’s
Atom Bomb exploded out of his head—
In the middle of a note, an interruption! Cloudburst!
The Conductor wipes his head & runs away,
basses and cellos lift up their woods and vanish into Cloakrooms,
French Horns Violins and Bassoons lift eyes to the shower & scatter under balconies
in the middle of a note, in the middle of a big Satyric Footstep,
Pouf! Rain pours thru the sky!