Reality Sandwiches: 1953-1960 Read online

  But then, Kiss Me Again

  in the dim brick lounge,

  muted modern music.

  Where shall I fly

  not to be sad, my dear?

  The other businessmen

  bend heavily over armchairs

  introducing women to cocktails

  in fluorescent shadow --

  gaiety of tables,

  gaiety of fat necks,

  gaiety of departures,

  gaiety of national business,

  hands waving away jokes.

  I'm getting maudlin

  on the soft rug watching,

  mixed rye before me

  on the little black table

  whereon lieth my briefcase

  containing market research

  notes and blank paper --

  that airplane ride to come

  -- or a barefaced pilgrimage

  acrost imaginary plains

  I never made afoot

  into Kansas hallucination

  and supernatural deliverance.

  Later: Hawthorne mystic

  waiting on the bench

  composing his sermon also

  with white bony fingers

  bitten, with hometown gold

  ring, in a blue serge suit

  and barely visible blond

  mustache on mental face,

  blank-eyed: pitiful thin body

  -- what body may he love? --

  My god! the soft beauty in

  comparison -- that football boy

  in sunny yellow lovesuit

  puzzling out his Xmas trip

  death insurance by machine.

  A virginal feeling again,

  I'd be willing to die aloft now.

  Can't see outside in the dark,

  real dreary strangers about,

  and I'm unhappy flying away.

  All this facility of travel

  too superficial for the heart

  I have for solitude.

  Nakedness

  must come again -- not sex,

  but some naked isolation.

  And down there's Hollywood,

  the starry world below

  -- expressing nakedness --

  that craving, that glory

  that applause -- leisure, mind,

  appetite for dreams, bodies,

  travels: appetite for the real,

  created by the mind

  and kissed in coitus --

  that craving, that melting!

  Not even the human

  imagination satisfies

  the endless emptiness of the soul.

  The West Coast behind me

  for five days while I return

  to ancient New York --

  ah drunkenness!

  I'll see your eyes again.

  Hopeless comedown!

  Travelling thru the dark void

  over Kansas yet moving nowhere

  in the dark void of the soul.

  Angel woke me to see

  -- past my own reflection,

  bald businessman with hornrims

  sleepy in round window view --

  spectral skeleton of electricity

  illuminated nervous system

  floating on the void out

  of central brainplant powerhouse

  running into heaven's starlight

  overhead. 'Twas over Hutchinson.

  Engine passed over lights,

  view gone.

  Georgeous George on my plane.

  And Chicago, the first time,

  smoking winter city

  -- shivering in my tweed jacket

  walking by the airport

  around the block on Cicero

  under the fogged flat

  supersky of heaven --

  another project for the heart,

  six months for here someday

  to make Chicago natural,

  pick up a few strange images.

  Far off red signs

  on the orphan highway

  glimmer at the trucks of home.

  Who rides that lone road now?

  What heart? Who smokes and loves

  in Kansas auto now?

  Who's talking magic

  under the night? Who walks

  downtown and drinks black beer

  in his eternity? Whose eyes

  Collect the streets and mountain tops

  for storage in his memory?

  What sage in the darkness?

  Someone who should collect

  my insurance!

  Better I make

  a thornful pilgrimage on theory

  feet to suffer the total

  isolation of the bum,

  than this hipster

  business family journey

  -- crossing U.S. at night --

  in a sudden glimpse

  me being no one in the air

  nothing but clouds in the moonlight

  with humans fucking

  underneath. . . .

  SF-NY December 1954

  MALEST CORNIFICI TUO CATULLO

  I'm happy, Kerouac, your madman Allen's

  finally made it: discovered a new young cat,

  and my imagination of an eternal boy

  walks on the streets of San Francisco,

  handsome, and meets me in cafeterias

  and loves me. Ah don't think I'm sickening.

  You're angry at me. For all of my lovers?

  It's hard to eat shit, without having visions;

  when they have eyes for me it's like Heaven.

  SF 1955

  DREAM RECORD: JUNE 8, 1955

  A drunken night in my house with a

  boy, San Francisco: I lay asleep:

  darkness:

  I went back to Mexico City

  and saw Joan Burroughs leaning

  forward in a garden-chair, arms

  on her knees. She studied me with

  clear eyes and downcast smile, her

  face restored to a fine beauty

  tequila and salt had made strange

  before the bullet in her brow.

  We talked of the life since then.

  Well, what's Burroughs doing now?

  Bill on earth, he's in North Africa.

  Oh, and Kerouac? Jack still jumps

  with the same beat genius as before,

  notebooks filled with Buddha.

  I hope he makes it, she laughed.

  Is Huncke still in the can? No,

  last time I saw him on Times Square.

  And how is Kenney? Married, drunk

  and golden in the East. You? New

  loves in the West --

  Then I knew

  she was a dream: and questioned her

  -- Joan, what kind of knowledge have

  the dead? can you still love

  your mortal acquaintances?

  What do you remember of us?

  She

  faded in front of me -- The next instant

  I saw her rain-stained tombstone

  rear an illegible epitaph

  under the gnarled branch of a small

  tree in the wild grass

  of an unvisited garden in Mexico.

  Blessed be the Muses

  for their descent,

  dancing round my desk,

  crowning my balding head

  with Laurel.

  FRAGMENT 1956

  Now to the come of the poem, let me be worthy

  & sing holily the natural pathos of the human soul,

  naked original skin beneath our dreams

  & robes of thought, the perfect self identity

  radiant with lusts and intellectual faces

  Who carries the lines, the painful browed

  contortions of the upper eyes, the whole body

  breathing and sentient among flowers and buildings

  open-eyed, self knowing, trembling with love --

  Soul that I have, that Jack has, Huncke
has

  Bill has, Joan had, and has in me memory yet,

  bum has in rags, madman underneath black clothes.

  Soul identical each to each, as standing on

  the streetcorner ten years ago I looked at Jack

  and told him we were the same person -- look

  in my eyes and speak to yourself, that makes me

  everybody's lover, Hal mine against his will,

  I had his soul in my own body already, while

  he frowned -- by the streetlamp 8th Avenue & 27th

  Street 1947 -- I had just come back from Africa

  with a gleam of the illumination actually

  to come to me in time as come to all -- Jack

  the worst murderer, Allen the most cowardly

  with a streak of yellow love running through

  my poems, a fag in the city, Joe Army screaming

  in anguish in Dannemora 1945 jailhouse,

  breaking his own white knuckle against the bars

  his dumb sad cellmate beaten by the guards

  an iron floor below, Gregory weeping in Tombs,

  Joan lidded under eyes of benzedrine

  harkening to the paranoia in the wall,

  Huncke from Chicago dreaming in Arcades

  of hellish Pokerino blue skinned Times Square light,

  Bill King yelling pale faced in the subway window

  final minute gape-death struggling to return,

  Morphy himself, arch suicide, expiring in blood

  on the Passaic, tragic & bewildered in

  last tears, attaining death that moment

  human, intellectual, bearded, who else

  was he then but himself?

  A STRANGE NEW COTTAGE IN BERKELEY

  All afternoon cutting bramble blackberries off a tottering brown fence

  under a low branch with its rotten old apricots miscellaneous under the leaves,

  fixing the drip in the intricate gut machinery of a new toilet; found a good coffeepot in the vines by the porch, rolled a big tire out of the scarlet bushes, hid my marijuana;

  wet the flowers, playing the sunlit water each to each, returning for godly extra drops for the stringbeans and daisies;

  three times walked round the grass and sighed absently: my reward, when the garden fed me its plums from the form of a small tree in the corner,

  an angel thoughtful of my stomach, and my dry and lovelorn tongue.

  1956

  SATHER GATE ILLUMINATION

  Why do I deny manna to another?

  Because I deny it to myself.

  Why have I denied myself?

  What other has rejected me?

  Now I believe you are lovely, my soul, soul of Allen, Allen --

  and you so beloved, so sweetened, so recalled to your true loveliness,

  your original nude breathing Allen

  will you ever deny another again?

  Dear Walter, thanks for the message

  I forbid you not to touch me, man to man, True American.

  The bombers jet through the sky in unison of twelve

  the pilots are sweating and nervous at the controls in the hot cabins.

  Over what souls will they loose their loveless bombs?

  The Campanile pokes its white granite (?) innocent head into the clouds for me to look at.

  A cripple lady explains French grammar with a loud sweet voice:

  Regarder is to look --

  the whole French language looks on the trees on the campus.

  The girls' haunted voices make quiet dates for 2 O'clock

  -- yet one of them waves farewell and smiles at last -- her red

  skirt swinging shows how she loves herself.

  Another encased in flashy scotch clothes clomps up the

  concrete in a hurry -- into the door -- poor dear! -- who will

  receive you in love's offices?

  How many beautiful boys have I seen on this spot?

  The trees seem on the verge of moving -- ah! they do move

  in the breeze.

  Roar again of airplanes in the sky -- everyone looks up.

  And do you know that all these rubbings of the eyes & painful

  gestures to the brow

  of suited scholars entering Dwinelle (Hall) are Holy Signs? --

  anxiety and fear?

  How many years have I got to float on this sweetened scene

  of trees & humans clomping above ground --

  O I must be mad to sit here lonely in the void & glee & build

  up thoughts of love!

  But what do I have to doubt but my own shiney eyes, what

  to lose but life which is a vision today this afternoon.

  My stomach is light, I relax, new sentences spring forth out

  of the scene to describe spontaneous forms of Time --

  trees, sleeping dogs, airplanes wandering thru the air,

  negroes with their lunch books of anxiety, apples and

  sandwiches, lunchtime, icecream, Timeless --

  And even the ugliest will seek beauty -- 'What are you doing

  Friday night?'

  asks the sailor in white school training cap &

  gilt buttons & blue coat,

  and the little ape in a green jacket and baggy pants and

  overloaded schoolbook satchel says 'Quartets.'

  Every Friday nite, beautiful quartets to celebrate and please my soul with all its hair -- Music!

  and then strides off, snapping pieces chocolate off a bar wrapped in Hershey brown paper and tinfoil, eating chocolate rose.

  & how can those other boys be them happy selves in their brown army study uniforms?

  Now cripple girl swings down walk with loping fuck gestures of her hips askew --

  let her roll her eyes in abandon & camp angelic through the campus bouncing her body about in joy --

  someone will dig that pelvic energy for sure.

  Those white stripes down your chocolate cupcake, Lady (held in front of your nose finishing sentence preparatory to chomp),

  they were painted there to delight you by some spanish industrial artistic hand in bakery factory faraway,

  expert hand in simple-minded messages of white stripes on millions of message cupcakes.

  I have a message for you all -- I will denote one particularity of each!

  And there goes Professor Hart striding enlightened by the years through the doorway and arcade he built (in his mind) and knows -- he too saw the ruins of Yucatan once --

  followed by a lonely janitor in dovegrey italian fruitpeddlar Chico Marx hat pushing his rollypoly belly thru the trees.

  N sees all girls

  as visions of

  their inner cunts,

  yes, it's true!

  and all men walking

  along thinking

  of their spirit cocks.

  So look at that poor dread boy

  with two-day black hair

  all over his dirty face,

  how he must hate his cock

  -- Chinamen stop shuddering

  and now to bring this to an end with a rise and an ellipse --

  The boys are now all talking to the girls 'If I was a girl I'd love all boys' & girls giggling the opposite, all pretty everywhichway

  and even I have my secret beds and lovers under another moonlight, be you sure

  & any minute I expect to see a baby carriage pushed on to the scene

  and everyone turn in attention like the airplanes and laughter, like a Greek Campus

  and the big brown shaggy silent dog lazing openeyed in the shade lift up his head & sniff & lower his head on his golden paws & let his belly rumble away unconcerned.

  . . . the lion's ruddy eyes

  Shall flow with tears of gold.

  Now the silence is broken, students pour onto the square, the doors are crowded, the dog gets up and walks away,

  the cripple swings out of Dwinelle, a nun even, I wonder about her, an old lady distinguished b
y a cane,

  we all look up, silence moves, huge changes upon the ground, and in the air thoughts fly all over filling space.

  My grief at Peter's not loving me was grief at not loving myself.

  Huge Karmas of broken minds in beautiful bodies unable to receive love because not knowing the self as lovely --

  Fathers and Teachers!

  Seeing in people the visible evidence of inner self thought by their treatment of me: who loves himself loves me who love myself.

  1956

  SCRIBBLE

  Rexroth's face reflecting human tired bliss

  White haired, wing browed gas mustache,

  flowers jet out of

  his sad head,

  listening to Edith Piaf street song as she walks the universe

  with all life gone

  and cities disappeared

  only the God of Love

  left smiling.

  AFTERNOON SEATTLE

  Busride along waterfront down Yessler under street bridge to the old red Wobbly Hall --

  One Big Union, posters of the Great Mandala of Labor, bleareyed dusty cardplayers dreaming behind the counter . . . 'but these young fellers can't see ahead and we nothing to offer' --

  After Snyder his little red beard and bristling Buddha mind I weeping crossed Skid Road to 10c. beer.

  Labyrinth wood stairways and Greek movies under Farmers Market second hand city, Indian smoked salmon old overcoats and dry red shoes,

  Green Parrot Theater, Maytime, and down to the harborside the ships, walked on Alaska silent together -- ferryboat coming faraway in mist from Bremerton Island dreamlike small on the waters of Holland to me

  -- and entered my head the seagull, a shriek, sentinels standing over rusty harbor iron clockwork, rocks dripping under rotten wharves slime on the walls --

  the seagull's small cry -- inhuman not of the city, lone sentinels of God, animal birds among us indifferent, their bleak lone cries representing our souls.

  A rowboat docked and chained floating in the tide by a wharf. Basho's frog. Someone left it there, it drifts.

  Sailor's curio shop hung with shells and skulls a whalebone mask, Indian seas. The cities rot from oldest parts. Little red mummy from Idaho Frank H. Little your big hat high cheekbones crosseyes and song.

  The cities rot from the center, the suburbs fall apart a slow apocalypse of rot the spectral trolleys fade

  the cities rot the fire escapes hang and rust the brick turns

  black dust falls uncollected garbage heaps the wall

  the birds invade with their cries the skid row alley creeps

  downtown the ancient jailhouse groans bums snore under the