Collected Poems 1947-1997 Read online

  blind alley Kosmos.

  Back in Room (Cont.)

  How strange to remember anything, even a button

  much less a universe.

  ‘What creature gives birth to itself?’

  The universe is mad, slightly mad.

  —and the two sides wriggle away

  in opposite directions to die

  lopped off

  the blind metallic length curled up

  feebly & wiggling its feet

  in the grass

  the millipede’s black head moving inches away

  on the staircase at Macchu Picchu

  the Creature feels itself

  destroyed,

  head & tail of the universe

  cut in two.

  Men with slick mustaches of mystery have

  pimp horrible climaxes & Karmas—

  —the mad magician that created Chaos

  in the peaceful void & suave.

  with my fucking suave manners & knowitall

  eyes, and mind full of fantasy—

  the Me! that horror that keeps me conscious

  in this Hell of Birth & Death.

  34 coming up—I suddenly felt old—sitting with Walter & Raquel in Chinese Restaurant—they kissed—I alone—age of Burroughs when we first met.

  Hotel Comercio, Lima, Peru, May 28, 1960

  Magic Psalm

  Because this world is on the wing and what cometh no man can know

  O Phantom that my mind pursues from year to year descend from heaven to this shaking flesh

  catch up my fleeting eye in the vast Ray that knows no bounds—Inseparable —Master—

  Giant outside Time with all its falling leaves—Genius of the Universe—Magician in Nothingness where appear red clouds—

  Unspeakable King of the roads that are gone—Unintelligible Horse riding out of the graveyard—Sunset spread over Cordillera and insect—

  Gnarl Moth—

  Griever—Laugh with no mouth, Heart that never had flesh to die—Promise that was not made—Reliever, whose blood burns in a million animals wounded—

  O Mercy, Destroyer of the World, O Mercy, Creator of Breasted Illusions, O Mercy, cacophonous warmouthed doveling, Come,

  invade my body with the sex of God, choke up my nostrils with corruption’s infinite caress,

  transfigure me to slimy worms of pure sensate transcendency I’m still alive,

  croak my voice with uglier than reality, a psychic tomato speaking Thy million mouths,

  Myriad-tongued my Soul, Monster or Angel, Lover that comes to fuck me forever—white gown on the Eyeless Squid—

  Asshole of the Universe into which I disappear—Elastic Hand that spoke to Crane—Music that passes into the phonograph of years from another Millennium—Ear of the buildings of NY—

  That which I believe—have seen—seek endlessly in leaf dog eye—fault always, lack—which makes me think—

  Desire that created me, Desire I hide in my body, Desire all Man know Death, Desire surpassing the Babylonian possible world

  that makes my flesh shake orgasm of Thy Name which I don’t know never will never speak—

  Speak to Mankind to say the great bell tolls a golden tone on iron balconies in every million universe,

  I am Thy prophet come home this world to scream an unbearable Name thru my 5 senses hideous sixth

  that knows Thy Hand on its invisible phallus, covered with electric bulbs of death—

  Peace, Resolver where I mess up illusion, Softmouth Vagina that enters my brain from above, Ark-Dove with a bough of Death.

  Drive me crazy, God I’m ready for disintegration of my mind, disgrace me in the eye of the earth,

  attack my hairy heart with terror eat my cock Invisible croak of deathfrog leap on me pack of heavy dogs salivating light,

  devour my brain One flow of endless consciousness, I’m scared of your promise must make scream my prayer in fear—

  Descend O Light Creator & Eater of Mankind, disrupt the world in its madness of bombs and murder,

  Volcanos of flesh over London, on Paris a rain of eyes—truckloads of angel-hearts besmearing Kremlin walls—the skullcup of light to New York—

  myriad jeweled feet on the terraces of Pekin—veils of electrical gas descending over India—cities of Bacteria invading the brain—the Soul escaping into the rubber waving mouths of Paradise—

  This is the Great Call, this is the Tocsin of the Eternal War, this is the cry of Mind slain in Nebulae,

  this is the Golden Bell of the Church that has never existed, this is the Boom in the heart of the sunbeam, this is the trumpet of the Worm at Death,

  Appeal of the handless castrate grab Alm golden seed of Futurity thru the quake & volcan of the world—

  Shovel my feet under the Andes, splatter my brains on the Sphinx, drape my beard and hair over Empire State Building,

  cover my belly with hands of moss, fill up my ears with your lightning, blind me with prophetic rainbows

  That I taste the shit of Being at last, that I touch Thy genitals in the palmtree,

  that the vast Ray of Futurity enter my mouth to sound Thy Creation Forever Unborn, O Beauty invisible to my Century!

  that my prayer surpass my understanding, that I lay my vanity at Thy foot, that I no longer fear Judgment over Allen of this world

  born in Newark come into Eternity in New York crying again in Peru for human Tongue to psalm the Unspeakable,

  that I surpass desire for transcendency and enter the calm water of the universe

  that I ride out this wave, not drown forever in the flood of my imagination

  that I not be slain thru my own insane magic, this crime be punished in merciful jails of Death,

  men understand my speech out of their own Turkish heart, the prophets aid me with Proclamation,

  the Seraphim acclaim Thy Name, Thyself at once in one huge Mouth of Universe make meat reply.

  June 1960

  The Reply

  God answers with my doom! I am annulled

  this poetry blanked from the fiery ledger

  my lies be answered by the worm at my ear

  my visions by the hand falling over my eyes to cover them

  from sight of my skeleton

  my longing to be God by the trembling bearded jaw flesh

  that covers my skull like monster-skin

  Stomach vomiting out the soul-vine, cadaver on

  the floor of a bamboo hut, body-meat crawling toward

  its fate nightmare rising in my brain

  The noise of the drone of creation adoring its Slayer, the yowp

  of birds to the Infinite, dogbarks like the sound

  of vomit in the air, frogs croaking Death at trees

  I am a Seraph and I know not whither I go into the Void

  I am a man and I know not whither I go into Death—

  Christ Christ poor hopeless

  lifted on the Cross between Dimension—

  to see the Ever-Unknowable!

  a dead gong shivers thru all flesh and a vast Being enters my

  brain from afar that lives forever

  None but the Presence too mighty to record! the Presence

  in Death, before whom I am helpless

  makes me change from Allen to a skull

  Old One-Eye of dreams in which I do not wake but die—

  hands pulled into the darkness by a frightful Hand

  —the worm’s blind wriggle, cut—the plough

  is God himself

  What ball of monster darkness from before the universe come

  back to visit me with blind command!

  and I can blank out this consciousness, escape back

  to New York love, and will

  Poor pitiable Christ afraid of the foretold Cross,

  Never to die—

  Escape, but not forever—the Presence will come, the hour

  will come, a strange truth enter the universe, death

  show its Being as before


  and I’ll despair that I forgot! forgot! my fate return,

  tho die of it—

  What’s sacred when the Thing is all the universe?

  creeps to every soul like a vampire-organ singing behind

  moonlit clouds—poor being come squat

  under bearded stars in a dark field in Peru

  to drop my load—I’ll die in horror that I die!

  Not dams or pyramids but death, and we to prepare for that

  nakedness, poor bones sucked dry by His long mouth

  of ants and wind, & our souls murdered to prepare His Perfection!

  The moment’s come, He’s made His will revealed forever

  and no flight into old Being further than the stars will not

  find terminal in the same dark swaying port of unbearable music

  No refuge in Myself, which is on fire

  or in the World which is His also to bomb & Devour!

  Recognize His might! Loose hold

  of my hands—my frightened skull

  —for I had chose self-love—

  my eyes, my nose, my face, my cock, my soul—and now

  the faceless Destroyer!

  A billion doors to the same new Being!

  The universe turns inside out to devour me!

  and the mighty burst of music comes from out the inhuman door—

  June 1960

  The End

  I am I, old Father Fisheye that begat the ocean, the worm at my own ear, the serpent turning around a tree,

  I sit in the mind of the oak and hide in the rose, I know if any wake up, none but my death,

  come to me bodies, come to me prophecies, come all foreboding, come spirits and visions,

  I receive all, I’ll die of cancer, I enter the coffin forever, I close my eye, I disappear,

  I fall on myself in winter snow, I roll in a great wheel through rain, I watch fuckers in convulsion,

  car screech, furies groaning their basso music, memory fading in the brain, men imitating dogs,

  I delight in a woman’s belly, youth stretching his breasts and thighs to sex, the cock sprung inward

  gassing its seed on the lips of Yin, the beasts dance in Siam, they sing opera in Moscow,

  my boys yearn at dusk on stoops, I enter New York, I play my jazz on a Chicago Harpsichord,

  Love that bore me I bear back to my Origin with no loss, I float over the vomiter

  thrilled with my deathlessness, thrilled with this endlessness I dice and bury,

  come Poet shut up eat my word, and taste my mouth in your ear.

  New York, 1960

  Man’s glory

  Shines on top of Mountains where Grey Stone monastery sits & blinks at the sky

  There in Tangier in Soco Chico there God’s Grammar Arabic jabbers shoe-shine Poverty beneath the ultra silent mosque

  There in Venice glittering in Canal Grande in Front of San Giorgio Maggiore Gondola’d to cream the fabulous tourist—

  There in Mexico in th’ Archaeologic Museum where Coatlique Aztec Golgotha-head Goddess clasps her snakes & skulls & grins—

  There over Asia where the desolate white Stupas blast into the Buddhic Dome and the Mandala of the stars shines down—

  All over Europe where the masses weep & faint in Wooden Trains—

  By Florence, by the Windmills, all the churches singing together

  “We in the mountains and downtown Pray that America return to the

  Lamb”—

  And the Great Boom of the Cathedral at Seville, Granada groaning,

  Barcelona chanting out the Crannies of Sagrada Familia

  Long horns of Montpellier, Milan screaming and San Marco rocking in Venice like a great golden calliope

  “America, America, under the elms in parks of Illinois, the Anger, the

  Anger, Beware!”

  August 1960

  Fragment: The Names II

  Bill Burroughs in Tangiers slowly transfiguring into Sanctity season after season no God save impersonal solitude

  Mad Sheila shaking her head on a couch in Frisco, soft tear face half a year, 60 sleeping pills & blue asphyxiation—

  Connie much too drunk, slapped in my apartment by plainclothesmen & strangled in an alley by a lonesome hood

  Natalie redhaired in bathrobe on the roof listing sinners’ names for Government, police scared her to fire escape, her body on the pavement in the newspapers—

  Elise trembling by the phonograph with Bible in her hand, The Book of the Dead in her family wall reading her thoughts aloud, and her poor unmarried body broken on that ground Manhattan Heights

  Bremser running state to state, trapped Hoboken, Vera Cruz rat tat tat Poetry defense, frameup reformatory he thinks the cops are real

  One Harry Honig carried a laughing gas mask & bomb ten years back in NY the Kosmos exploded for

  John Hoffman too ecstasy of the black sun, Mexican peyote or infantile paralysis

  Iris suicide, delicate ships of paint fading into brown ocean universe—her longheaded junk-delicate girl’s penmanship of Orient small cats on folded knees

  New York & West coast grim as the A bomb deathwatch is set

  Nobody knows the way out of Time trap maybe Burroughs maybe Jack in

  Florida drinking with Joe McCarthy’s ghost, grieving death of mother who isn’t dead, scribing notebooks won’t be read till cold war’s lost by all

  1960/1961?

  VI

  PLANET NEWS: TO EUROPE AND ASIA

  (1961–1963)

  Who Will Take Over the Universe?

  A bitter cold winter night

  conspirators at café tables

  discussing mystic jails

  The Revolution in America

  already begun not bombs but sit

  down strikes on top submarines

  on sidewalks nearby City Hall—

  How many families control the States?

  Ignore the Government,

  send your protest to Clint Murchison.

  The Indians won their case with Judge McFate

  Peyote safe in Arizona—

  In my room the sick junky

  shivers on the 7th day

  Tearful, reborn to the Winter.

  Che Guevara has a big cock

  Castro’s balls are pink—

  The Ghost of John F. Dulles hangs

  over America like dirty linen

  draped over the wintry red sunset,

  Fumes of Unconscious Gas

  emanate from his corpse

  & hypnotize the Egyptian intellectuals—

  He grinds his teeth in horror & crosses his

  thigh bones over his skull

  Dust flows out of his asshole

  his hands are full of bacteria

  The worm is at his eye—

  He’s declaring counterrevolutions in the Worm-world,

  my cat threw him up last

  Thursday.

  & Forrestal flew out his window like an Eagle—

  America’s spending money to overthrow the Man.

  Who are the rulers of the earth?

  New York, January 6, 1961

  “Southern Cult Composite: The Staten Island Massacre” by Harry Smith, 1984.

  Journal Night Thoughts

  Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber

  It is here, the long Awaited bleap-blast light that Speaks one red tongue like Politician, but happy its own govt.,

  either we blow ourselves up now and die, like the old tribe of man, arguing among neutrons, spit on India, fuck Tibet, stick up America, clobber Moscow, die Baltic, have your tuberculosis in Arabia, wink not in Enkidu’s reverie—

  it’s a long Train of Associations stopped for gas in the desert & looking for drink of old-time H2O—

  made up of molecules, it ends being innocent as Lafcadio afraid to get up & cook his bacon—

  I prophesy: the Pigs won’t mind! I prophesy: Death will be old folks home!

  I prop
hesy: Chango will prophesy on national Broadcasting System,

  I prophesy, we will all prophesy to each other & I give thee happy tidings Robert Lowell and Jeanette MacDonald—

  Dusty moonlight, Starbeam riding its own flute, soul revealed in the scribble, an ounce of looks, an Invisible Seeing, Hope, The Vanisher betokening Eternity

  one finger raised warning above his gold eyeglasses—and Mozart playing giddy-note an hour on the Marxist gramophone—

  All Be—let the Kabbalah star be formed of perfect circles in a room of 1950 unhappiness where Myrna Loy gets lost—

  The Bardo Thodol extends in the millions of black jello for every dying Mechanic—We will make Colossal movies—

  We will be a great Tantric Mogul & starify a new Hollywood with our unimaginable Flop—Great Paranoia!

  The Family presents, your Corpse Hour—attended by myriad flies—hyperactive Commentators freed at their most bestial—sneering literary— perhaps a captive & loan Square

  caught hiding behind a dummy-univac in the obscurest Morgues of Hearst —wherever—no more possible—

  Only remains, a photo of a riverswollen hand in black and white, arm covered by aged burlap to the wrist—

  skin peeling from the empty fingers—; yet discovered by a mad Negro high on tea & solitary enough himself to notice a Fate—

  therefore, with camera remembered and passed along by hand mail roaring Jet toward Chicago, Big Table empty this morning,

  nothing but an old frog-looking editor worried about his Aesthetics,

  That’s life Kulchur ’61—retired to New York to invent Morse Code & found a great yellow Telegraph—

  Merry Xmas Paul carroll and irving Rose in Thrall—give up thy song & flower to any passing Millennium!

  I am the One, you are the One, we are the One, A. Hitler’s One as well as fast as his Many heavenly Jews are reborn,

  many a being with a nose—and many with none but an ear somewhere next to a Yelling Star—

  I myself saw the sunflower-monkeys of the Moon—spending their dear play-money electricity in a homemade tape-record minute of cartoony high Sound—

  goodbye Farewell repeated by Wagner Immortal in many a gladdened expanding mid-europe Hour

  that I’ll be hearing forever if the world I go to’s Music, Yes good to be stuck thru Eternity on that aching Liebestod Note