Collected Poems 1947-1997 Read online

  Detroit has built a million automobiles of rubber trees and phantoms

  but I walk, I walk, and the Orient walks with me, and all Africa walks

  and sooner or later North America will walk

  for as we have driven the Chinese Angel from our door he will drive us from the Golden Door of the future

  we have not cherished pity on Tanganyika

  Einstein alive was mocked for his heavenly politics

  Bertrand Russell driven from New York for getting laid

  immortal Chaplin driven from our shores with the rose in his teeth

  a secret conspiracy by Catholic Church in the lavatories of Congress has denied contraceptives to the unceasing masses of India.

  Nobody publishes a word that is not the cowardly robot ravings of a depraved mentality

  The day of the publication of the true literature of the American body will be day of Revolution

  the revolution of the sexy lamb

  the only bloodless revolution that gives away corn

  poor Genet will illuminate the harvesters of Ohio

  Marijuana is a benevolent narcotic but J. Edgar Hoover prefers his deathly scotch

  And the heroin of Lao-Tze & the Sixth Patriarch is punished by the electric chair

  but the poor sick junkies have nowhere to lay their heads

  fiends in our government have invented a cold-turkey cure for addiction as obsolete as the Defense Early Warning Radar System.

  I am the defense early warning radar system

  I see nothing but bombs

  I am not interested in preventing Asia from being Asia

  and the governments of Russia and Asia will rise and fall but Asia and Russia will not fall

  the government of America also will fall but how can America fall

  I doubt if anyone will ever fall anymore except governments

  fortunately all the governments will fall

  the only ones which won’t fall are the good ones

  and the good ones don’t yet exist

  But they have to begin existing they exist in my poems

  they exist in the death of the Russian and American governments

  they exist in the death of Hart Crane & Mayakovsky

  Now is the time for prophecy without death as a consequence

  the universe will ultimately disappear

  Hollywood will rot on the windmills of Eternity

  Hollywood whose movies stick in the throat of God

  Yes Hollywood will get what it deserves

  Time

  Seepage of nerve-gas over the radio

  History will make this poem prophetic and its awful silliness a hideous spiritual music

  I have the moan of doves and the feather of ecstasy

  Man cannot long endure the hunger of the cannibal abstract

  War is abstract

  the world will be destroyed

  but I will die only for poetry, that will save the world

  Monument to Sacco & Vanzetti not yet financed to ennoble Boston

  natives of Kenya tormented by idiot con-men from England

  South Africa in the grip of the white fool

  Vachel Lindsay Secretary of the Interior

  Poe Secretary of Imagination

  Pound Secty. Economics

  and Kra belongs to Kra, and Pukti to Pukti

  crossfertilization of Blok and Artaud

  Van Gogh’s Ear on the currency

  no more propaganda for monsters

  and poets should stay out of politics or become monsters

  I have become monsterous with politics

  the Russian poet undoubtedly monsterous in his secret notebook

  Tibet should be left alone

  These are obvious prophecies

  America will be destroyed

  Russian poets will struggle with Russia

  Whitman warned against this “fabled Damned of nations”

  Where was Theodore Roosevelt when he sent out ultimatums from his castle in Camden

  Where was the House of Representatives when Crane read aloud from his prophetic books

  What was Wall Street scheming when Lindsay announced the doom of Money

  Were they listening to my ravings in the locker rooms of Bickfords Employment Offices?

  Did they bend their ears to the moans of my soul when I struggled with market research statistics in the Forum at Rome?

  No they were fighting in fiery offices, on carpets of heartfailure, screaming and bargaining with Destiny

  fighting the Skeleton with sabers, muskets, buck teeth, indigestion, bombs of larceny, whoredom, rockets, pederasty,

  back to the wall to build up their wives and apartments, lawns, suburbs, fairydoms,

  Puerto Ricans crowded for massacre on 114th St. for the sake of an imitation Chinese-Moderne refrigerator

  Elephants of mercy murdered for the sake of an Elizabethan birdcage

  millions of agitated fanatics in the bughouse for the sake of the screaming soprano of industry

  Money-chant of soapers—toothpaste apes in television sets—deodorizers on hypnotic chairs—

  petroleum mongers in Texas—jet plane streaks among the clouds—

  sky writers liars in the face of Divinity—fanged butchers of hats and shoes, all Owners! Owners! Owners! with obsession on property and vanishing Selfhood!

  and their long editorials on the fence of the screaming negro attacked by ants crawled out of the front page!

  Machinery of a mass electrical dream! A war-creating Whore of Babylon bellowing over Capitols and Academies!

  Money! Money! Money! shrieking mad celestial money of illusion! Money made of nothing, starvation, suicide! Money of failure! Money of death!

  Money against Eternity! and eternity’s strong mills grind out vast paper of Illusion!

  Paris, December 1957

  Europe! Europe!

  World world world

  I sit in my room

  imagine the future

  sunlight falls on Paris

  I am alone there is no

  one whose love is perfect

  man has been mad man’s

  love is not perfect I

  have not wept enough

  my breast will be heavy

  till death the cities

  are specters of cranks

  of war the cities are

  work & brick & iron &

  smoke of the furnace of

  selfhood makes tearless

  eyes red in London but

  no eye meets the sun

  Flashed out of sky it

  hits Lord Beaverbrook’s

  white modern solid

  paper building leaned

  in London’s street to

  bear last yellow beams

  old ladies absently gaze

  thru fog toward heaven

  poor pots on windowsills

  snake flowers to street

  Trafalgar’s fountains splash

  on noon-warmed pigeons

  Myself beaming in ecstatic

  wilderness on St. Paul’s dome

  seeing the light on London

  or here on a bed in Paris

  sunglow through the high

  window on plaster walls

  Meek crowd underground

  saints perish creeps

  streetwomen meet lacklove

  under gaslamp and neon

  no woman in house loves

  husband in flower unity

  nor boy loves boy soft

  fire in breast politics

  electricity scares downtown

  radio screams for money

  police light on TV screens

  laughs at dim lamps in

  empty rooms tanks crash

  thru bombshell no dream

  of man’s joy is made movie

  think factory pushes junk

  autos tin dreams of Eros

  mind eats its flesh in

  geekish starvation and no
/>   man’s fuck is holy for

  man’s work is most war

  Bony China hungers brain

  wash over power dam and

  America hides mad meat

  in refrigerator Britain

  cooks Jerusalem too long

  France eats oil and dead

  salad arms & legs in Africa

  loudmouth devours Arabia

  negro and white warring

  against the golden nuptial

  Russia manufacture feeds

  millions but no drunk can

  dream Mayakovsky’s suicide

  rainbow over machinery

  and backtalk to the sun

  I lie in bed in Europe

  alone in old red under

  wear symbolic of desire

  for union with immortality

  but man’s love’s not perfect

  in February it rains

  as once for Baudelaire

  one hundred years ago

  planes roar in the air

  cars race thru streets

  I know where they go

  to death but that is OK

  it is that death comes

  before life that no man

  has loved perfectly no one

  gets bliss in time new

  mankind is not born that

  I weep for this antiquity

  and herald the Millennium

  for I saw the Atlantic sun

  rayed down from a vast cloud

  at Dover on the sea cliffs

  tanker size of ant heaved

  up on ocean under shining

  cloud and seagull flying

  thru sun light’s endless

  ladders streaming in Eternity

  to ants in the myriad fields

  of England to sun flowers

  bent up to eat infinity’s

  minute gold dolphins leaping

  thru Mediterranean rainbow

  White smoke and steam in Andes

  Asia’s rivers glittering

  blind poets deep in lone

  Apollonic radiance on hillsides

  littered with empty tombs

  Paris, February 29, 1958

  The Lion for Real

  “Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative …”

  I came home and found a lion in my living room

  Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!

  Two stenographers pulled their brunette hair and banged the window shut

  I hurried home to Paterson and stayed two days.

  Called up my old Reichian analyst

  who’d kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana

  ‘It’s happened’ I panted ‘There’s a Lion in my room’

  ‘I’m afraid any discussion would have no value’ he hung up.

  I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend

  I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye

  We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow & he kicked me out

  I ended masturbating in his jeep parked in the street moaning ‘Lion.’

  Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him ‘Lion!’

  He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries

  I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn Ants

  But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom’s bathroom.

  But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat

  ‘I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions

  But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father hath no Lion

  You said your mother was mad don’t expect me to produce the Monster for your Bridegroom.’

  Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink in Harlem

  Opened the door the room was filled with the bomb blast of his anger

  He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear him outside thru the window

  My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in deafening stillness

  We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur

  Waxed rheumy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang greeting.

  I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove

  boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tub under the sink board.

  He didn’t eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.

  Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out

  enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws

  by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.

  Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten face stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had nightmares

  Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion’s flophouse circus,

  I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor—‘Terrible Presence!’ I cried ‘Eat me or die!’

  It got up that afternoon—walked to the door with its paw on the wall to steady its trembling body

  Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth

  thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in Mexico

  Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice “Not this time Baby—but I will be back again.”

  Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger

  Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the Universe how am I chosen

  In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served

  Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your Mercy.

  Paris, March 1958

  The Names

  Time comes spirit weakens and goes blank apartments shuffled through and forgotten

  The dead in their cenotaphs locomotive high schools & African cities small town motorcycle graves

  O America what saints given vision are shrouded in junk their elegy a nameless hoodlum elegance leaning against death’s military garage

  Huncke who first saw the sun revolve in Chicago survived into middle-age Times Square

  Thief stole hearts of wildcat tractor boys arrived to morphine brilliance Bickford table midnight neon to take a fall

  arrested 41 times late 40s his acned skin & black Spanish hair grown coy and old and lip bitten in Rikers Island Jail

  as bestial newsprint photograph we shared once busted, me scared of black eye cops Manhattan

  you blissful nothing to lose digging the live detectives perhaps even offering God a cigarette

  I’ll answer for you Huncke I never could before—admiring your natural tact and charm and irony—now sad Sing Sing

  whatever inept Queens burglary you goofed again let God judge his sacred case

  rather than mustached Time Judge steal a dirty photograph of your soul—I knew you when—

  & you loved me better than my lawyer who wanted a frightened rat for official thousand buck mousetrap, no doubt, no doubt—

  Shine in Cell free behind bars Immortal soul why not

  Hell the machine can’t sentence anyone except itself, have I to do that?

  It gives jail I give you poem, bars last twenty years rust in a hundred

  my handwork remains when prisons fall because the hand is compassion

  Brilliant bitter Morphy stalking Los Angeles after his ghost boy

  haunting basements in Denver with his Montmartre black beard

  Charming ladies’ man for gigolo purpose I heard, great cat for Shakespearean sex

  first poet suicide I knew we sat on park benches I watched him despair his forehead star

  my elder asked serious advice, gentle man! international queer pride humbled to pre-death cigarette gun fright


  His love a young blond demon of broken army, his nemesis his own mad cock for the kids sardonic ass

  his dream mouthful of white prick trembling in his head—woke a bullet in his side days later in Passaic

  last moments gasping stricken blood under stars coughing intestines & lighted highway cars flowing past his eyes into the dark.

  Joe Army’s beauty forgotten that night, pain cops nightmare, drunken AWOL through Detroit

  phonecalls angels backrooms & courtsmartial lawyers trains a kaleidoscope of instant change,

  shrinkage of soul, bearded dead dreams, all Balzac read in jail,

  late disappearance from the city hides metamorphosis to humancy loathing that deathscene.

  Phil Black hung in Tombs, horsefaced junky, dreamy strange murderer, forgotten pistol three buck holdup, stoolpigeon suicide I save him from the grave

  Iroquois his indian head red cock intelligence buried in miserous solitaire politics

  his narcissistic blond haired hooknosed pride, I made him once he groaned and came

  Later stranger chill made me tremble, I loved him hopeless years,

  he’s hid in Seattle consumed by lesbian hypochondrias’ stealthy communion, green bullfighters envy age,

  unless I save him from the grave, but he won’t talk no more

  much less fall in my arms or any mental bed forgiveness before we climb Olympics death

  Leroi returning to bughouse monkishness & drear stinky soupdish his fatness fright & suffering mind insult a repetitious void

  “I have done my best to make saintliness as uninteresting as possible”

  and has succeeded, when did I last write or receive ambiguous message joky hangdog prophetic spade

  Joan in dreams bent forward smiling asks news of the living

  as in life the same sad tolerance, no skullbone judge of drunks

  asking whereabouts sending regards from Mexican paradise garden where life & death are one

  as if a postcard from eternity sent with human hand, wish I could see you now, it’s happening as should

  whatever we really need, we ought get, don’t blame yourself—a photograph on reverse the rare tomb smile where trees grow crooked energy above grass—

  yet died early-old teeth gone, tequila bottle in hand, an infantile paralysis limp, lacklove, the worst—

  I dreamed such vision of her secret in my frisco bed, heart can live the rest by my, or her, best desire—love

  Bill King black haired sorry drunken wop lawyer, woke up trembling in Connecticut DT’s among cows