Lost voices that drag upon my heart.
January 1963
Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?
for Brett
Why do you come
to me
hiding in your Jewish
hair
& your crayon
dreams?
My hands grow
hungrily
into your thin
bones.
Your hair is a
fountain,
your green eyes
small fish
darting
into my blood.
On a golden chain,
a green stone
dangles
on your neck.
You take
off
your clothes.
Your eyes are green!
Green
Transformations, Diabolical Urges &
Divine Inspiration
1965—1972
§
Come forth, young poet, and rage against the lies
and deceptions of this world, and seek
always to remember
who you are!
§
I crash thru broken eyeglasses,
the Golden Disc fear and desire.
Her Marilyn Monroe faces melts,
dripping candles into my hands.
from Visions, 1967
We begin with the sun
The orange light flashes,
you cross the street,
your high-heeled steps
a jazz legato
moving you to-
wards me,
wind on grass—
in my mind
a rain goddess,
your short green coat
a forest,
your eyes
beds
of
hotwet
leaves
How beautiful your legs!
I thought,
wanting to drink
in
your wetness
Then we smiled
and brushed
past
each other
forever
3 night letters
Mr President
Is it true
when men die
they die forever,
even in war?
Mr. President
Is it true
French philosophers
claim death comes at dawn,
that even our dreams yawn
from lack of sleep?
Mr. President
Is it true
God has never seen
how a man dies?
Death, too, is a game people play
I remember watch-
ing my father
whip my brother
— Jack was 10
and I was 7—
with a limb
stripped of its leaves
from a backyard peach
tree.
I wept
& clenched my fists
into knives,
my stomach trembling
in rage
& silence.
All that summer
I waited
& swore
someday
I would kill my father.
Now I know
both of us
must
die.
Even God must be lonely at night
even in the dark, the blond girl could hear the
legs of the fuzzy spiders crawling over the
walls. she could hear soft fuzzy plops! as
they fell from the ceiling onto the floor.
the blond girl sat on the edge of her
bed. she listened. breathing. she could
hear their breathing. like muffled canticles,
she thought. outside, she could hear soft
rain. she could hear the rain and the soft
wet crawling of the spiders. they came down
the walls onto the floor. the girl lay on the
bed and waited. if she stirred too quickly,
she could frighten them away. last night
she had frightened them. but tonight, slowly, so
slowly, her blond fingers touched cold buttons. one
arm. then the other. her breasts were naked. white.
even in the dark. white. she shivered. the spiders
crept closer. like prayers over wet lips, she thought.
she knew they were watching her. she could not see
them. but she knew they were waiting.
the girl slipped her small hands down
below her belly. gently she drew up her
knees and slid the pajama pants from her legs
and body. she closed her eyes and touched small
hands to her wiry blond nest. now the spiders had
crossed the room. without seeing them, she knew
they had reached the bed. she could hear their soft
wet prayers. she could feel their fuzzy legs slowly
crawling and crawling. crawling up her legs. crawling
After the Wipe-Out Gang
come the Keepers
Inside the eye a mouth scream.
Inside the mind an i is stolen:
capitalized: spiked and dropped.
Four lumberjacks tag-team trees
inside your head,
you stick out your hands to fight
and draw back to swing and wonder
why the Local Gang Leaders
are laughing and calling you Nubby.
You watch yourself strangling inside
shoe strings,
as ice cold blades
slice you into bite size
and a woman's voice tells you
to drag your split balls off her teeth;
and all the time Dali's watches
are gumming your heart into a clot
but you keep pushing the Rock
toward the top as you discover
too late your hands are taped.
You look at your watch and light a smoke
as words pounds nails into stones
and every blow scrapes your skin
and hangs it in the wind,
and you begin to wonder
how far you can fall,
and if Rimbaud is really dead,
as the log rhythms smash together
and your name is printed
in glowing Roman numerals
which the Marquee Girls dust
each hour upon hour.
And, then, during the night
as the Nuns sleep,
some men with ladders and bad spelling
and nothing to do
come and scramble the stars
into an obscene joke.
All night the river flows
November leaves rattle under
my feet, the street light
flashes WALK.
I cross, holding
these words to you
in my hands,
a flower
in my heart,
a flower
in the Buddha's
hand, true
as a red rose;
as you lie sleeping
in bed
next to your husband,
you dreaming me
touching you;
my hands, an ache
to recognize you,
at last,
my hands, all
that I am,
a man in love,
a kindness in the dark;
your blonde skin
a promise of light;
my hands, touching
you, moving
over the round,
lovely moons of your
breasts and pale
blue-sky veins
that flow
beneath your white
skin, and down
into the warm,
blonde openin
g inside you,
your body a golden ring
into which
I slip my finger,
my mouth
kissing wet
circles
split by your
nipples,
blonde hair between
my lips,
blonde legs under
and over mine.
2
I'm walking and it's cold
I'm dreaming of dying
The leaves taste sweet
in my mouth
They rattle as I step
3
Drowning, I think,
must be a long way to walk
Love outside the asylum
Letters from Jamie Brown
The dog directs the mast of the hunt, she wrote.
It is over for me.
They cut open my head.
Two flowered dresses red blue,
one backwards over a robe,
one pall mall in pocket wheeeee….
A negro nurse dragging me down the hall.
FOLLOW THE NURSE!
FOLLOW THE NURSE!
Bring her to our spiritual meeting,
say blue uniform guarding doors.
Think! The other side!
I was to go but through what door?
In the tub room? Naked? What was I to do?
I wash and wash and wash.
I am still dirty.
I am not clean!
Later, I sit feet dangling from bed.
Were you coming to get me?
I lie down, dream.
2
When I was seventeen, she wrote,
I went to Boston,
alone in a dirty green room.
I fell in love with a homosexual.
He lived across the hall.
We walked along the Charles
in autumn rain,
crystalling orange burnt leaves
against iron fences.
La Jetee', will I ever forget that damn movie?
The pills, they do nothing.
I wanted to take the whole bottle, but didn't.
They would not kill me.
What do they do, David?
These people dressed and perfect in appearance.
How do they live? Where?
Trees, the music says trees
and air and birds and
GARBAGE,
purple pansies.
I wonder who in the hell
ever believed the music,
writing it
and making a bunch of fat old peasants
sit in wonder and paying pennies?
Oh, David, I am so happy!
I will read and be well one day.
I WON'T DIE BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO!
There are kids who fish and throw away
what they catch
and what they aren't going to eat,
but, by Christ, I believe,
and if there was a fish jumping in the pail,
and if he was still jumping
after I walked six miles,
I'd personally walk back and let him swim.
3
In Eugene, last spring,
she wrote,
I saw three birds,
fallen while in midst
of self-imposed hypnotic states.
I knew them to be placed there
for me, dressed in monk's camel coat
and off-white levis,
hunched on corner bench
in view of the fountain,
blooming fuchsia flowers.
Then later at the pot shop,
"It really isn't very good,
it has a hole in it
and the glass is bubbly…"
and the giant sized one
with the funny whiskers,
who in a photo wore a beret,
and on the night I saw him:
"You feel so Goddamn much.
You bleed all over the street,
I've seen you!"
And I, standing there,
knowing nothing to be done.
The girls, she said,
today the girls
were tossing their kitten
in a cheesecloth curtain
given for some unreason by the landlady.
My seeing them and as it is
and what they did
and them singing lullabies
thinking it doesn't hurt
and because its voice isn't very loud
hanging the cat up as mistletoe
in the form
of a hummingbird's nest.
"And never hurt a cat in anger,"
they said,
while driving it insane,
so it will never know the outside
and be frightened to leave.
No one is ever wise, David,
but becomes ageless,
becoming ageless,
David, we don't grow old,
just die.
4
Oh, David, it is no use.
I have no strength,
no mind.
They hurt me.
They loved me so much,
they wouldn't let me go.
They killed me.
And when I awoke
there was a gray stone wall
and I couldn't withstand it.
I couldn't fight.
I couldn't hit them.
I can't hate, I can't.
SHIT! I hate the word;
there are worse.
Vulgarity. Garbage
not worth the heave to the truck.
Scream it.
SEND ME TO THE SCREAMERS!!!!!
Somewhere between streets
& asylum wax-stocked
girlflesh
torments
& wet eye focuses
Time is a child, said Heraclitus,
& we're playing his game.
Is it Hide & Seek?
Blind Man's Bluff?
Red Rover, Red Rover,
send the lovers right over?
Ring around the roses,
a pocket full of holes?
We spackle the god
within us—
he can't escape!
Naked with only sunglasses
he hides to dodge our
Instamatic Eyes,
his hands knotted & tied to
exploding tracks.
Our souls slapped to ceilings
of the body,
our eyes tooth-picked with death,
our heads slam the wall:
we scream: I'LL KILL YOU!
We strangle door knobs,
wrestle shoe strings,
and, winning,
congratulate ourselves.
We strip to a fist of hair,
and eyes like frantic mouths
catsuck the open souls
of our being.
We push water & land through
sun into plant,
into fish,
into crawling snails—
& already with horns.
We stare at the Hemingway bull,
unaware of the blade's red scream,
the obscene roses & peek-a-boo
nipples of ghost madonnas.
Our heads ripped to quick graves,
we hang to concrete curbs
& wonder how to stand higher
than the blades.
We stab each other into holes,
and this time we think the last time
but too soon her fingers feel you
up & down,
she fits your body into her hands
& stripteases your mind
into flashes of night & day
& you're trying to ask WHO?
—as the safety razor falls at dawn
& neatly slices the face
from your hands.
You push a button & clam-
lock the doors,
but the walls a
re mesh,
your flesh embarrassed,
caught at playing naked
& wanting to crawl inside
to stop up the holes,
like cramming keys to make words,
to make sense,
or just to hide all the empty no-returns,
as animals & gods fight in
the open ring of your hands;
& you standing & watching &
wondering what the fuck
you're doing
& why
& how come you
didn't do it sooner.
Leda strips down for swans,
& men die.
Cats stretch in the sun.
Women roll over in dreams
& the moon makes love to a cloud.
We whisper & we're alone
with yin-yang fingers:
they're slowly closing into a fist,
& when we go rushing in
there's no flash…only aloneness.
Cars move straight
like
over streets
and I'm moving
toward
Fuzz is hip.
Fuzz slips a note
under the door
BANG! YOU'RE DEAD!
& Our Hero has
already
ripped the sink,
the dresser,
the bed,
& junked them for $24
& now boards himself
behind shut lids
cause he also is hip
& he is hip to Fuzz
the crutch we hobble on
cause it's the hard way
to walk
& we're hung up
on the Dead Man's noose
the bits of Porsche
mangled in our flesh.
We hear the grass walk
toward us,
we hear the ground quake
throwing stones above
our heads
& we hide to dodge
but they pound us
into the ground
PAY YOUR RENT OR GET OUT!
& inside his tomb
the Old Man screams
FUCK YOU! I AIN'T DEAD!
& they rip the mimeo doors
into clubs,
they slap our words
like baseballs
& we crash into beer cans
that EXIT us
thru scoreboards
into fans
waiting
for the Big Hit
for the Home Runner