is always love
and all it’s needs to be
where it needs to be
are you
I thought forgive me
it was something you do
now everywhere I turn
and everytime there is
that full thing with us
I am cottered
high inside you
lutus
11
You are not easy to enter
Omega
you are a double letter
and I am equal only
to my own singularity
the mixed strings of aries begins
you are sometimes in the trance of what
is beyond you,
sometimes close
and then you turn into it
so fast we turn
into another room we hear inside
and all the people looking
over the wall
are frozen
12
Not this
not that
and not this nor
not this or that
nor caught
on poles at
all I have
no place
outside might welcome
might warm me
I am nothing
anymore at all
than in myself, you be
a still center
which has about it pivoting
ramifications of my strain
a marvellously pure chrystal
the center still and in me
located
and in the ten thousand
years or more
will change
and be
the shift, location
and polaris
a new name
13
I feel that fear
my own
that fear a face presents
and looks
and says words and the words
mean something
else
and the fear
is inside the other meaning
meaning which
would have no meaning then
of the thing that’s not itself
would fear not itself
fear not,
could have no meaning
Don’t kill me
with that other meaning
14
The largest center we know
makes his move
sundown in the window
and in space, double space
each one a concentration of
the other a difficult fact to absorb
it is a double labor to love
one twin
and Nájera crosses my table
praising the audacity of an early death
Do you know where we are now
we have come here the day after
the announcement
and we look at our lives
in a camera
We made the journey by train
it was cold now and then
a day scored by a cloud
the heat we had we had in our pockets
and occasionally we took some
what more can be said
more than the existence we have
15
The question is not to you, you know
the indisputability of the soul
do you know where we are now
do you know the platform any more than
I arrived at the same time one september
what was crossed
is still crossed
and the agent’s dark eyes
represent, handles the claims
of those we over ran
and they scream with their
fixed smiles
for satisfaction
do you know where we are now
from my soul I want to know
from my beginning in and out
within me
and now returned home
from somewhere abroad
on the second day of april
with the snow
16
When the duel
the split
the collateral
of the mirror
the sisters
in the scrolls of foam
the trans parency
of the mirror
in that lure
you say goodbye
you say hello
reflected, and dig this—
your personality, as such
would be complicated
even if you had been
born all by yourself
17
The imagined
is the quality of life Paris
not the bones in the fish
in the oppression
of La Cupole, the drama of
our time, masks, a dramatic
event dinner, turns, grin
frown, tables
a view of that world
open and filled
with the prospect, the long
perspective of the pain
of my life
in that text
18
The Steppes
on the Plains
were the two maps
we joined, our lives
as two complex areas
a marriage
we’ll never have to prove
19
My solid energy state breeds
extreme movement in juxt
aposed blocks of space
Hermes standing
anyone from the beginning of time
will know the initiation of time
covered with sperm
20
When I heard the public story
of how they’d thrown away
their wedding rings, and how
the rings had been picked up
by the garbage men and taken
to the dump, and how laughing
finally they went out with flashlights
and found them that night I wondered
did they put them back on?
21
She will permit
any property of herself
any slanted permission
but make you know
any property is a careful
waste of time, and is
merly time
Thus it was revealed
the bed was covered by a skin
brought away from Delphi
22
The agony is beauty
that you can’t have that
and sense too. There is
no sense to beauty. It offends
everyone, the more so
in ratio to the praise of it.
And I’ve known this for a long
time, there has been no
great necessity to say it. How
really, the world is shit
and I mean all of it
23
And then, if you come
to the mountains, what
is there more, ore in mines
ore in veins, or more fully than
you might have had it elsewhere.
Call them the Rockie mountains.
They aren’t yours and
you never thought they were because
you lived in them too sometime,
There is a vast smell of marriage
not lightly said, some place
some time ago I was there too.
I’ve been everywhere.
This afternoon I thought why not,
why not get Jenny into something
and we both fly off to meet,
well, almost anyone. Away
from the flat rancorous smell
of their insinuation, which is
just this: you’ve done the thing—
you’ve
presumed your body
as well as your mind, your mind
we like to watch go through its sideshow
lifted up in the bright creative air
but when you made other arrangements
for your body, baby go away, that’s it
24
There is no final word
for how you are.
An emotional response
can be the reputation to
which all inquiry is referred
and let go at that.
Back Home, Back Home
the day wakes up and once
out the door into what’s
left of the fresh air it still
comes clear
how lovely
love is there
The Kulchural Exchange
“Nobody loves me but my mother And she could be jivin too”
—b.b. king
Slinger, an idle question the poet asked
Are you considered a learned man?
Perhaps
What haps?
You meant whose
I can’t choose
I can follow that lapse
so I shall reveal to you
what I know via Information
I c’gnitioned long ago
that whatever is put in
is triggered with impurity
and however entertaining that might be
it is killing you
with the clicking routine of a rosary
therefore if there is anything to know
I shut mine eyes
on a count of three seconds
and if I get the bit thats it
and if not I have another go
What information do you have
from this process?
Practically none
just one in fact
There is a saying
they have on Mars
“Sonne in the blue sky zero degrees
like the first polkadot”
“Far Out,”
so you know
practically nothing
Thats correct, nothin
I’m almost
pure Exformation
Anyway, the poet urged
try a 3 second bit
and see what you get
OK the Slinger breathed
He shut his lids
and 3 seconds passed
Behind Them
What! the poet whispered
A fat man with white hair
under a blue baseball cap
and a green shirt
under babyblue bib overalls
What are his feet in?
Didn’t get his feet.
You mean you didn’t get the whole bit?
We rarely do, You
tell me what he had his feet in
It wasnt my bit
But Exformation is common
youve seen this outcrop
a dozen times
one place or another, dont be confused
because it comes from My head
Now, without trying
tell me what the bits feet were in
Uh, Shoes, the poet hesitated
The Slinger crossed his lids
to rerun the three second bit
A-minus, he whispered
Whats that for the poet enquired
A-minus is your grade
it indicates youre slightly tired
it’s like a desperately correct answer
yor imagination was fard
with a Tom Sawyer Programme
a soft con to paint the fence
Id suggest you learn to think
with a touch of sense
then you can use yor head
as an Intake for solid liquid & gas
which Must be Why
He ran a line clear down to your ass
Gee, that blows me out,
I hadnt felt it like that Master
but now I can see your process is faster
and it’s quite suddenly discrete
that his feet were in his feet
Im proud of you,
the Slinger beamed . . .
[Chicago Day 113]
The Cosmology of Finding Your Place
The Resistantism of all other places
On the floor among filters and the Spillings
The cosmology of the floor of the Nation
The cosmology of finding your place
The cosmology of smelling and feeling your Natural place
inside the place, feeling the filters
feeling the rock, feeling the roll
feeling the social spray at that level
low down, with the filters and the feet
feeling the place you can fold all four legs
and be man’s best friend to the End, among the filters
and the feet, in the rock, and in the roll
in the clock and in the roll, in the hole
of the social bilge The Great White Dog
of the Rockchalk, seeks his place Seeks
The place for Him there, tries every scrap of Space
The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk Cafe
moves under the Social seeking his own Place
in the constant present snap of eternity
listening with the german dislocated castenet
His Nose Is under the great pin ball rolling in heaven above
thru the barren terrain of feet He moves
from place to place seeking his place
The resisters the dogs seek their place
WAYNE KIMBALL told me all this
WAYNE KIMBALL sits in the booths, WAYNE KIMBALL
knows about the Great White Dog of the Rockchalk
The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk doesn’t
The Great White Dog has been there
Western Civilization is Beer
The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk
went thru the door of Western Civilization
Which is north of the Barbershop
and north of the sailor pants incense shop
The Great White Dog went between all that
and the Gaslight, The Great White Rockchalk dog
shakes hands with both paws indiscriminately
For he Seeks his own true place on the floor
He disregards the social He seeks the Place
he seeks The Space his soul can occupy
In His restless search he looks only for the Place
Where he can come to rest in his own true Place
and that might be on the floor of the rockchalk
The great White Dog is not Interdicted by opinion
He accepts the floor of the Rock Chalk as an Area,
like any other, he will test that space
He is preoccupied only with the Search
The Great White dog of the Rockchalk is not social
WAYNE KIMBALL told me all this, WAYNE KIMBALL
is social, he knows only persons, he doesn’t
give a shit for the floor of the Rockchalk
WAYNE KIMBALL is neurotic like us, he wants
to smoke Grass, WAYNE KIMBALL sits in the booths
WAYNE KIMBALL drinks beer, has a part time job
pretending to be literate, WAYNE KIMBALL uses
the telephone and all other public Utilities
including Cocaine, The Great White Dog
of the Rock Chalk is full of shit and can’t shit
until he finds his place, WAYNE KIMBALL has diarrhea
WAYNE KIMBALL hasn’t got a driver’s license
WAYNE KIMBALL is thin and knows everything that happens
He has ears, He is a corrupt little mongrel like us
turned on to everything hopeless and bullshit
The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk is dumb
and doesn’t know anything but his instinct for the search
for his place somewhere in the litter
of the filters and t
he literally dropped dreams
of the Great Rock Chalk, he smells the dreams
on the floor dropped from between the legs
of young English majors, ejected from between the
Dual Spraycans of the fraternizers
He seeks his place on top of this matter
among the feet of the privileged nation on the floor
of the Great shit, Rock Chalk Rock Chalk White Rock
Chalk Dog, And WAYNE KIMBALL Smokes cigarettes
and Thoreaus them ontoOntoOntoOnto the floor
already predicated by cancer, the slow movement of Cancer
and I love these dogs because they are us and more us
than we are and they seek their places as do the true
whether they are Resisters or just scared or both
They are the twin dogs of creation in our image
and I give them both the floor as I give the Resisters
This Poem from the throne of Belief as the Egyptians
Gave and took from the Dogs Their access to Heaven
That we may all be Gods and seek our Place.
[presented april 10, 1969, at the united campus
christian fellowship benefit reading for the
draft resisters league, Lawrence]