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Autobiography Read Poem

I am leading a quiet life
in Mike’s Place every day
watching the champs
of the Dante Billiard Parlor
and the French pinball addicts.

I am leading a quiet life
on lower East Broadway.

I am an American.

I was an American boy.

I read the American Boy Magazine
and became a boy scout
in the suburbs.

I thought I was Tom Sawyer
catching crayfish in the Bronx River
and imagining the Mississippi.

I had a baseball mit
and an American Flyer bike.

I delivered the Woman’s Home Companion
at five in the afternoon
or the Herald Trib
at five in the morning.

I still can hear the paper thump
on lost porches.

I had an unhappy childhood.

I saw Lindbergh land.

I looked homeward
and saw no angel.

I got caught stealing pencils
from the Five and Ten Cent Store
the same month I made Eagle Scout.

I chopped trees for the CCC
and sat on them.

I landed in Normandy
in a rowboat that turned over.

I have seen the educated armies
on the beach at Dover.

I have seen Egyptian pilots in purple clouds
shopkeepers rolling up their blinds
at midday
potato salad and dandelions
at anarchist picnics.

I am reading ‘Lorna Doone’
and a life of John Most
terror of the industrialist
a bomb on his desk at all times.

I have seen the garbagemen parade
in the Columbus Day Parade
behind the glib
farting trumpeters.

I have not been out to the Cloisters
in a long time
nor to the Tuileries
but I still keep thinking
of going.

I have seen the garbagemen parade
when it was snowing.

I have eaten hotdogs in ballparks.

I have heard the Gettysburg Address
and the Ginsberg Address.

I like it here
and I won’t go back
where I came from.

I too have ridden boxcars boxcars boxcars.

I have travelled among unknown men.

I have been in Asia
with Noah in the Ark.

I was in India
when Rome was built.

I have been in the Manger
with an Ass.

I have seen the Eternal Distributor
from a White Hill
in South San Francisco
and the Laughing Woman at Loona Park
outside the Fun House
in a great rainstorm
still laughing.

I have heard the sound of revelry
by night.

I have wandered lonely
as a crowd.

I am leading a quiet life
outside of Mike’s Place every day
watching the world walk by
in its curious shoes.

I once started out
to walk around the world
but ended up in Brooklyn.

That Bridge was too much for me.

I have engaged in silence
exile and cunning.

I flew too near the sun
and my wax wings fell off.

I am looking for my Old Man
whom I never knew.

I am looking for the Lost Leader
with whom I flew.

Young men should be explorers.

Home is where one starts from.

But Mother never told me
there’d be scenes like this.

Womb-weary
I rest
I have travelled.

I have seen goof city.

I have seen the mass mess.

I have heard Kid Ory cry.

I have heard a trombone preach.

I have heard Debussy
strained thru a sheet.

I have slept in a hundred islands
where books were trees.

I have heard the birds
that sound like bells.

I have worn grey flannel trousers
and walked upon the beach of hell.

I have dwelt in a hundred cities
where trees were books.

What subways what taxis what cafes!
What women with blind breasts
limbs lost among skyscrapers!
I have seen the statues of heroes
at carrefours.

Danton weeping at a metro entrance
Columbus in Barcelona
pointing Westward up the Ramblas
toward the American Express
Lincoln in his stony chair
And a great Stone Face
in North Dakota.

I know that Columbus
did not invent America.

I have heard a hundred housebroken Ezra Pounds.

They should all be freed.

It is long since I was a herdsman.

I am leading a quiet life
in Mike’s Place every day
reading the Classified columns.

I have read the Reader’s Digest
from cover to cover
and noted the close identification
of the United States and the Promised Land
where every coin is marked
In God We Trust
but the dollar bills do not have it
being gods unto themselves.

I read the Want Ads daily
looking for a stone a leaf
an unfound door.

I hear America singing
in the Yellow Pages.

One could never tell
the soul has its rages.

I read the papers every day
and hear humanity amiss
in the sad plethora of print.

I see where Walden Pond has been drained
to make an amusement park.

I see they’re making Melville
eat his whale.

I see another war is coming
but I won’t be there to fight it.

I have read the writing
on the outhouse wall.

I helped Kilroy write it.

I marched up Fifth Avenue
blowing on a bugle in a tight platoon
but hurried back to the Casbah
looking for my dog.

I see a similarity
between dogs and me.

Dogs are the true observers
walking up and down the world
thru the Molloy country.

I have walked down alleys
too narrow for Chryslers.

I have seen a hundred horseless milkwagons
in a vacant lot in Astoria.

Ben Shahn never painted them
but they’re there
askew in Astoria.

I have heard the junkman’s obbligato.

I have ridden superhighways
and believed the billboard’s promises
Crossed the Jersey Flats
and seen the Cities of the Plain
And wallowed in the wilds of Westchester
with its roving bands of natives
in stationwagons.

I have seen them.

I am the man.

I was there.

I suffered
somewhat.

I am an American.

I have a passport.

I did not suffer in public.

And I’m too young to die.

I am a selfmade man.

And I have plans for the future.

I am in line
for a top job.

I may be moving on
to Detroit.

I am only temporarily
a tie salesman.

I am a good Joe.

I am an open book
to my boss.

I am a complete mystery
to my closest friends.

I am leading a quiet life
in Mike’s Place every day
contemplating my navel.

I am a part
of the body’s long madness.

I have wandered in various nightwoods.

I have leaned in drunken doorways.

I have written wild stories
without punctuation.

I am the man.

I was there.

I suffered
somewhat.

I have sat in an uneasy chair.

I am a tear of the sun.

I am a hill
where poets run.

I invented the alphabet
after watching the flight of cranes
who made letters with their legs.

I am a lake upon a plain.

I am a word
in a tree.

I am a hill of poetry.

I am a raid
on the inarticulate.

I have dreamt
that all my teeth fell out
but my tongue lived
to tell the tale.

For I am a still
of poetry.

I am a bank of song.

I am a playerpiano
in an abandoned casino
on a seaside esplanade
in a dense fog
still playing.

I see a similarity
between the Laughing Woman
and myself.

I have heard the sound of summer
in the rain.

I have seen girls on boardwalks
have complicated sensations.

I understand their hesitations.

I am a gatherer of fruit.

I have seen how kisses
cause euphoria.

I have risked enchantment.

I have seen the Virgin
in an appletree at Chartres
And Saint Joan burn
at the Bella Union.

I have seen giraffes in junglejims
their necks like love
wound around the iron circumstances
of the world.

I have seen the Venus Aphrodite
armless in her drafty corridor.

I have heard a siren sing
at One Fifth Avenue.

I have seen the White Goddess dancing
in the Rue des Beaux Arts
on the Fourteenth of July
and the Beautiful Dame Without Mercy
picking her nose in Chumley’s.

She did not speak English.

She had yellow hair
and a hoarse voice
I am leading a quiet life
in Mike’s Place every day
watching the pocket pool players
making the minestrone scene
wolfing the macaronis
and I have read somewhere
the Meaning of Existence
yet have forgotten
just exactly where.

But I am the man
And I’ll be there.

And I may cause the lips
of those who are asleep
to speak.

And I may make my notebooks
into sheaves of grass.

And I may write my own
eponymous epitaph
instructing the horsemen
to pass.

Away Above a Harborful Read Poem

Away above a harborful
of caulkless houses
among the charley noble chimneypots
of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines
a woman pastes up sails
upon the wind
hanging out her morning sheets
with wooden pins
O lovely mammal
her nearly naked breasts
throw taut shadows
when she stretches up
to hang at last the last of her
so white washed sins
but it is wetly amorous
and winds itself about her
clinging to her skin
So caught with arms
upraised
she tosses back her head
in voiceless laughter
and in choiceless gesture then
shakes out gold hair
while in the reachless seascape spaces
between the blown white shrouds
stand out the bright steamers
to kingdom come
from These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems.

Copyright © 1955

Come Lie With Me and Be My Love Read Poem

Come lie with me and be my love
Love lie with me
Lie down with me
Under the cypress tree
In the sweet grasses
Where the wind lieth
Where the wind dieth
As night passes
Come lie with me
All night with me
And have enough of kissing me
And have enough of making love
And let our two selves speak
All night under the cypress tree
Without making love
from A Coney Island of the Mind, 1958

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15) Read Poem

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be

For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap

And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

Dog Read Poem

The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are smaller than himself
Fish on newsprint
Ants in holes
Chickens in Chinatown windows
their heads a block away
The dog trots freely in the street
and the things he smells
smell something like himself
The dog trots freely in the street
past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen
He doesn’t hate cops
He merely has no use for them
and he goes past them
and past the dead cows hung up whole
in front of the San Francisco Meat Market
He would rather eat a tender cow
than a tough policeman
though either might do
And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory
and past Coit’s Tower
and past Congressman Doyle
He’s afraid of Coit’s Tower
but he’s not afraid of Congressman Doyle
although what he hears is very discouraging
very depressing
very absurd
to a sad young dog like himself
to a serious dog like himself
But he has his own free world to live in
His own fleas to eat
He will not be muzzled
Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him
The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog’s life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
touching and tasting and testing everything
investigating everything
without benefit of perjury
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with
a real live
barking
democratic dog
engaged in real
free enterprise
with something to say
about ontology
something to say
about reality
and how to see it
and how to hear it
with his head cocked sideways
at streetcorners
as if he is just about to have
his picture taken
for Victor Records
listening for
His Master’s Voice
and looking
like a living questionmark
into the
great gramaphone
of puzzling existence
with its wondrous hollow horn
which always seems
just about to spout forth
some Victorious answer
to everything

The Changing Light Read Poem

The changing light
at San Francisco
is none of your East Coast light
none of your
pearly light of Paris
The light of San Francisco
is a sea light
an island light
And the light of fog
blanketing the hills
drifting in at night
through the Golden Gate
to lie on the city at dawn
And then the halcyon late mornings
after the fog burns off
and the sun paints white houses
with the sea light of Greece
with sharp clean shadows
making the town look like
it had just been painted
But the wind comes up at four o’clock
sweeping the hills
And then the veil of light of early evening
And then another scrim
when the new night fog
floats in
And in that vale of light
the city drifts
anchorless upon the ocean
From How to Paint Sunlight by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Copyright © 2000

To the Oracle at Delphi Read Poem

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1919
Great Oracle, why are you staring at me,
do I baffle you, do I make you despair?

I, Americus, the American,
wrought from the dark in my mother long ago,
from the dark of ancient Europa--
Why are you staring at me now
in the dusk of our civilization--
Why are you staring at me
as if I were America itself
the new Empire
vaster than any in ancient days
with its electronic highways
carrying its corporate monoculture
around the world
And English the Latin of our days--
Great Oracle, sleeping through the centuries,
Awaken now at last
And tell us how to save us from ourselves
and how to survive our own rulers
who would make a plutocracy of our democracy
in the Great Divide
between the rich and the poor
in whom Walt Whitman heard America singing
O long-silent Sybil,
you of the winged dreams,
Speak out from your temple of light
as the serious constellations
with Greek names
still stare down on us
as a lighthouse moves its megaphone
over the sea
Speak out and shine upon us
the sea-light of Greece
the diamond light of Greece
Far-seeing Sybil, forever hidden,
Come out of your cave at last
And speak to us in the poet’s voice
the voice of the fourth person singular
the voice of the inscrutable future
the voice of the people mixed
with a wild soft laughter--
And give us new dreams to dream,
Give us new myths to live by!
from San Francisco Poems by permission of City Lights Foundation.

Copyright © 2001
Read at Delphi, Greece, on March 21, 2001 at the UNESCO World Poetry Day

Away above a Harborful . . . Read Poem

Away above a harborful
of caulkless houses
among the charley noble chimneypots
of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines
a woman pastes up sails
upon the wind
hanging out her morning sheets
with wooden pins
O lovely mammal
her nearly naked breasts
throw taut shadows
when she stretches up
to hang at last the last of her
so white washed sins
but it is wetly amorous
and winds itself about her
clinging to her skin
So caught with arms
upraised
she tosses back her head
in voiceless laughter
and in choiceless gesture then
shakes out gold hair

while in the reachless seascape spaces

between the blown white shrouds

stand out the bright steamers

to kingdom come

Beatitudes Visuales Mexicanas Read Poem

Autobus on Paseo de la Reforma with destination signs:bellas artes insurgentes.

Exactamente.

Just what’s needed: Insurgent Arts.

Poesía Insurgente.

This is not it .

1
Bus to Veracruz via Puebla + Xalapa .

Adobe house by highway, with no roof and one wall, covered with words:la luz del mundo.

2
Passing through Puebla late Sunday afternoon.

A band concert in a plaza next to a Ferris wheel — I have passed through many places like this, I have seen the toy trains in many amusement parks.

When you’ve seen them all you’ve seen One.

3
Halfway to Xalapa a great white volcano snow peak looms up above the hotaltiplano— White god haunting Indian dreams.

4
A boy and three burros run across a stubble field, away from the white mountain.

He holds a stick.

There is no other way.

5
Deep yellow flowers in the dusk by the road, beds of them stretching away into darkness.

A moon the same color comes up.

6
As the bus turns + turns down the winding hill, moon swings wildly from side to side.

It has had too many pathetic phallusies written about it to stand still for one more.

7
In Xalapa I am a head taller than anyone else in town — A foot of flesh and two languages separate us.

8
At a stand in the park at the center of Xalapa I eat white corn on the cob with a stick in the end, sprinkled with salt, butter, grated cheese + hot sauce.

The dark stone Indian who hands it to me has been standing there three thousand years.

9
I’m taking this trip from Mexico City to the Gulf of Mexico and back without any bag or person — only what I can carry in my pockets.

The need for baggage is a form of insecurity.

10
Two hours in this town and I feel I might live forever (foreign places affect me that way).

The tall church tower tolls its antique sign:pray.

11
In early morning in the great garden of Xalapa, with its terraces and immense jacaranda trees, pines + palms, there are black birds with cries like bells, and others with hollow wooden voices like gourds knocked together.

The great white volcano shimmers far off, unreached by the rising sun.

12
Brown men in white palmetto cowboy hats stand about the fountains in groups of three or four, their voices lost to the hollow-sounding birds.

Along a sunlit white stone balustrade, student lovers are studying each other,noviosawaiting the day.

The sun beats down hot and melts not the mountain.

13
On the bus again to Veracruz, dropping down fast to flat coast.

A tropical feeling — suddenly coffee plantation + palms — everything small except the landscape, horses the size of burros, small black avocados, small strong men with machetes — each still saying to himselfMe llamo yo.

The Canticle of Jack Kerouac Read Poem

1.

Far from the sea far from the sea
of Breton fishermen
the white clouds scudding
over Lowell
and the white birches the
bare white birches
along the blear night roads
flashing by in darkness
(where once he rode
in Pop’s old Plymouth)
And the birch-white face
of a Merrimac madonna
shadowed in streetlight
by Merrimac’s shroudy waters
—a leaf blown
upon sea wind
out of Brittany
over endless oceans


2.

There is a garden in the memory of America
There is a nightbird in its memory
There is anandante cantabile
in a garden in the memory
of America
In a secret garden
in a private place
a song a melody
a nightsong echoing
in the memory of America
In the sound of a nightbird
outside a Lowell window
In the cry of kids
in tenement yards at night
In the deep sound
of a woman murmuring
a woman singing broken melody
in a shuttered room
in an old wood house
in Lowell
As the world cracks by
thundering
like a lost lumber truck
on a steep grade
in Kerouac America
The woman sits silent now
rocking backward
to Whistler’s Mother in Lowell
and all the tough old
Canuck mothers
and Jack’s Mémère
And they continue rocking

And may still on stormy nights show through
as a phantom after-image
on silent TV screens
a flickered after-image
that will not go away
in Moody Street
in Beaulieu Street
in ‘dirtstreet Sarah Avenue’
in Pawtucketville
And in the Church of St.

Jean Baptiste


3.

And the Old Worthen Bar
in Lowell Mass.

at midnight
in the now of Nineteen Eighty-seven
Kerouackian revellers
crowd the wood booths
ancient with carved initials
of a million drinking bouts
the clouts of the
Shrouded Stranger
upon each wood pew
where the likes of Kerouack lumberjack
feinted their defiance
of dung and death
Ah the broken wood and the punka fans still turning
(pull-cord wavings
of the breath of the Buddha)
still lost in Lowell’s
‘vast tragedies of darkness’
with Jack


4.

And the Four Sisters Diner
also known as ‘The Owl’
Sunday morning now
March Eighty-seven
or any year of Sunday specials
Scrambled eggs and chopped ham
the bright booths loaded with families
Lowell Greek and Gaspé French
Joual patois and Argos argot
Spartan slaves escaped
into the New World
here incarnate
in rush of blood of
American Sunday morning
And “Ti-Jean” Jack Kerouac
comes smiling in
baseball cap cocked up
hungry for mass
in this Church of All Hungry Saints
haunt of all-night Owls
blessing every booth .

.

.

5.

Ah he the Silent Smiler
the one
with the lumberjack shirt
and cap with flaps askew
blowing his hands in winter
as if to light a flame
The Shrouded Stranger knew him
as Ti-Jean the Smiler
grooking past redbrick mill buildings
down by the riverrun
(O mighty Merrimac
‘thunderous husher’)
where once upon a midnight then
young Ti-Jean danced with Mémère
in the moondrowned light
And rolled upon the greensward
his mother and lover
all one with Buddha
in his arms


6.

And then Ti-Jean Jack with Joual tongue
disguised as an American fullback in plaid shirt
crossing and recrossing America
in speedy cars
a Dr.

Sax’s shadow shadowing him
like a shroudy cloud over the landscape
Song of the Open Road sung drunken
with Whitman and Jack London and Thomas Wolfe
still echoing through
a Nineteen Thirties America
A Nineteen Forties America
an America now long gone
except in broken down dusty old
Greyhound Bus stations
in small lost towns
Ti-Jean’s vision of America
seen from a moving car window
the same as Wolfe’s lonely
sweeping vision
glimpsed from a coach-train long ago
(‘And thus did he see first the dark land’)
And so Jack
in an angel midnight bar
somewhere West of Middle America
where one drunk madonna
(shades of one on a Merrimac corner)
makes him a gesture with her eyes
a blue gesture
and Ti-Jean answers
only with his eyes
And the night goes on with them
And the light comes up on them
making love in a parking lot


7.

In the dark of his fellaheen night
in the light of the illuminated
Stations of the Cross
and the illuminated Grotto
down behind the Funeral Home
by roar of river
where now Ti-Jean alone
(returned to Lowell
in one more doomed
Wolfian attempt
to Go Home Again)
gropes past the Twelve Stations of the Cross
reciting aloud the French inscriptions
in his Joual accent
which makes the plaster French Christ
laugh and cry
as He hefts His huge Cross
up the Eternal Hill
And a very real tear drops
in the Grotto
from the face
of the stoned Virgin


8.

Light upon light
The Mountain
keeps still


9.

Hands over ears
He steals away
with the Bell.

.

.

.

Writ in Lowell and Conway and Boston Mass.

and San Francisco
March-April 1987

Don’t Let That Horse . . . Read Poem

Don’t let that horse
eat that violin

cried Chagall’s mother

But he
kept right on
painting

And became famous

And kept on painting
The Horse With Violin In Mouth

And when he finally finished it
he jumped up upon the horse
and rode away
waving the violin

And then with a low bow gave it
to the first naked nude he ran across


And there were no strings
attached

I Am Waiting Read Poem

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

I Genitori Perduti Read Poem

The dove-white gulls
on the wet lawn in Washington Square
in the early morning fog
each a little ghost in the gloaming
Souls transmigrated maybe
from Hudson’s shrouded shores
across all the silent years—
Which one’s my maybe mafioso father
in his so white suit and black shoes
in his real estate office Forty-second Street
or at the front table wherever he went—
Which my dear lost mother with faded smile
locked away from me in time—
Which my big brother Charley
selling switching-signals all his life
on the New York Central—
And which good guy brother Clem
sweating in Sing Sing’s darkest offices
deputy-warden thirty years
watching executions in the wooden armchair
(with leather straps and black hood)
He too gone mad with it in the end—
And which my nearest brother Harry
still kindest and dearest in a far suburb—
I see them now all turn to me at last
gull-eyed in the white dawn
about to call to me
across the silent grass

In Golden Gate Park That Day . . . Read Poem

In Golden Gate Park that day
a man and his wife were coming along
thru the enormous meadow
which was the meadow of the world
He was wearing green suspenders
and carrying an old beat-up flute
in one hand
while his wife had a bunch of grapes
which she kept handing out
individually
to various squirrels
as if each
were a little joke

And then the two of them came on
thru the enormous meadow
which was the meadow of the world
and then
at a very still spot where the trees dreamed
and seemed to have been waiting thru all time
for them
they sat down together on the grass
without looking at each other
and ate oranges
without looking at each other
and put the peels
in a basket which they seemed
to have brought for that purpose
without looking at each other

And then
he took his shirt and undershirt off
but kept his hat on
sideways
and without saying anything
fell asleep under it
And his wife just sat there looking
at the birds which flew about
calling to each other
in the stilly air
as if they were questioning existence
or trying to recall something forgotten

But then finally
she too lay down flat
and just lay there looking up
at nothing
yet fingering the old flute
which nobody played
and finally looking over
at him
without any particular expression
except a certain awful look
of terrible depression

In Goya’s Greatest Scenes We Seem to See . . . Read Poem

In Goya’s greatest scenes we seem to see
the people of the world
exactly at the moment when
they first attained the title of
‘suffering humanity’
They writhe upon the page
in a veritable rage
of adversity
Heaped up
groaning with babies and bayonets
under cement skies
in an abstract landscape of blasted trees
bent statues bats wings and beaks
slippery gibbets
cadavers and carnivorous cocks
and all the final hollering monsters
of the
‘imagination of disaster’
they are so bloody real
it is as if they really still existed

And they do

Only the landscape is changed

They still are ranged along the roads
plagued by legionnaires
false windmills and demented roosters
They are the same people
only further from home
on freeways fifty lanes wide
on a concrete continent
spaced with bland billboards
illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness


The scene shows fewer tumbrils
but more strung-out citizens
in painted cars
and they have strange license plates
and engines
that devour America

London Crossfigured Read Poem

London

crossfigured
creeping with trams

and the artists on sundays
in the summer
all ‘tracking Nature’
in the suburbs

It
could have been anyplace
but it wasn’t
It was
London

and when someone shouted over

that they had got a model

I ran out across the court

but then
when the model started taking off
her clothes
there was nothing underneath
I mean to say
she took off her shoes
and found no feet
took off her top
and found no tit
under it
and I must say she did look
a bit
ASTOUNDED
just standing there
looking down
at where her legs were
not

But so very carefully then
she put her clothes back on
and as soon as she was dressed again
completely
she was completely
all right

Do it again! cried someone
rushing for his easel

But she was afraid to


and gave up modelling


and forever after


slept in her clothes

People Getting Divorced Read Poem

People getting divorced
riding around with their clothes in the car
and wondering what happened
to everyone and everything
including their other
pair of shoes
And if you spy one
then who knows what happened
to the other
with tongue alack
and years later not even knowing
if the other ever
found a mate
without splitting the seams
or remained intact
unlaced
and the sole
ah the soul
a curious conception
hanging on somehow
to walk again
in the free air
once the heel
has been replaced

Queens Cemetery, Setting Sun Read Poem

Airport bus from JFK
cruising through Queens
passing huge endless cemetery
by Long Island’s old expressway
(once a dirt path for wheelless Indians)
myriad small tombstones tilted up
gesturing statues on parapets
stone arms or wings upraised
lost among illegible inscriptions
And the setting yellow sun
painting all of them
on one side only
with an ochre brush
Rows and rows and rows and rows
of small stone slabs
tilted toward the sun forever
While on the far horizon
Mannahatta’s great stone slabs
skyscraper tombs and parapets
casting their own long black shadows
over all these long-haired graves
the final restless places
of old-country potato farmers
dustbin pawnbrokers
dead dagos and Dublin bouncers
tinsmiths and blacksmiths and roofers
house painters and house carpenters
cabinet makers and cigar makers
garment workers and streetcar motormen
railroad switchmen and signal salesmen
swabbers and sweepers and swampers
steam-fitters and key-punch operators
ward heelers and labor organizers
railroad dicks and smalltime mafiosi
shopkeepers and saloon keepers and doormen
icemen and middlemen and conmen
housekeepers and housewives and dowagers
French housemaids and Swedish cooks
Brooklyn barmaids and Bronxville butlers
opera singers and gandy dancers
pitchers and catchers
in the days of ragtime baseball
poolroom hustlers and fight promoters
Catholic sisters of charity
parish priests and Irish cops
Viennese doctors of delirium
now all abandoned in eternity
parcels in a dead-letter office
inscrutable addresses on them
beyond further deliverance
in an America wheeling past them
and disappearing oblivious
into East River’s echoing tunnels
down the great American drain

Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West Read Poem

Retired ballerinas on winter afternoons
walking their dogs
in Central Park West
(or their cats on leashes—
the cats themselves old highwire artists)
The ballerinas
leap and pirouette
through Columbus Circle
while winos on park benches
(laid back like drunken Goudonovs)
hear the taxis trumpet together
like horsemen of the apocalypse
in the dusk of the gods
It is the final witching hour
when swains are full of swan songs
And all return through the dark dusk
to their bright cells
in glass highrises
or sit down to oval cigarettes and cakes
in the Russian Tea Room
or climb four flights to back rooms
in Westside brownstones
where faded playbill photos
fall peeling from their frames
like last year’s autumn leaves

Sometime During Eternity . . . Read Poem

Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hip
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cat
who really laid it on us
is his Dad

And moreover
he adds
It’s all writ down
on some scroll-type parchments
which some henchmen
leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres
a long time ago
and which you won’t even find
for a coupla thousand years or so
or at least for
nineteen hundred and fortyseven
of them
to be exact
and even then
nobody really believes them
or me
for that matter
You’re hot
they tell him
And they cool him

They stretch him on the Tree to cool

And everybody after that
is always making models
of this Tree
with Him hung up
and always crooning His name
and calling Him to come down
and sit in
on their combo
as if he istheking cat
who’s got to blow
or they can’t quite make it

Only he don’t come down
from His Tree
Him just hang there
on His Tree
looking real Petered out
and real cool
and also
according to a roundup
of late world news
from the usual unreliable sources
real dead

Underwear Read Poem

I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something
we all have to deal with
Everyone wears
some kind of underwear
The Pope wears underwear I hope
The Governor of Louisiana
wears underwear
I saw him on TV
He must have had tight underwear
He squirmed a lot
Underwear can really get you in a bind
You have seen the underwear ads
for men and women
so alike but so different
Women’s underwear holds things up
Men’s underwear holds things down
Underwear is one thing
men and women have in common
Underwear is all we have between us
You have seen the three-color pictures
with crotches encircled
to show the areas of extra strength
and three-way stretch
promising full freedom of action
Don’t be deceived
It’s all based on the two-party system
which doesn’t allow much freedom of choice
the way things are set up
America in its Underwear
struggles thru the night
Underwear controls everything in the end
Take foundation garments for instance
They are really fascist forms
of underground government
making people believe
something but the truth
telling you what you can or can’t do
Did you ever try to get around a girdle
Perhaps Non-Violent Action
is the only answer
Did Gandhi wear a girdle?

Did Lady Macbeth wear a girdle?

Was that why Macbeth murdered sleep?

And that spot she was always rubbing—
Was it really in her underwear?

Modern anglosaxon ladies
must have huge guilt complexes
always washing and washing and washing
Out damned spot
Underwear with spots very suspicious
Underwear with bulges very shocking
Underwear on clothesline a great flag of freedom
Someone has escaped his Underwear
May be naked somewhere
Help!
But don’t worry
Everybody’s still hung up in it
There won’t be no real revolution
And poetry still the underwear of the soul
And underwear still covering
a multitude of faults
in the geological sense—
strange sedimentary stones, inscrutable cracks!
If I were you I’d keep aside
an oversize pair of winter underwear
Do not go naked into that good night
And in the meantime
keep calm and warm and dry
No use stirring ourselves up prematurely
‘over Nothing’
Move forward with dignity
hand in vest
Don’t get emotional
And death shall have no dominion
There’s plenty of time my darling
Are we not still young and easy
Don’t shout