Reality Sandwiches: 1953-1960 Read online

  'Don't do that now! the cops! the cops!'

  And there was no cop there --

  I looked around my shoulder --

  a pile of crap in the opposite direction.

  Tear gas! Dynamite! Mustaches!

  I'll grow a beard and carry lovely

  bombs,

  I will destroy the world, slip in between

  the cracks of death

  And change the Universe -- Ha!

  I have the secret, I carry

  Subversive salami in

  my ragged briefcase

  'Garlic, Poverty, a will to Heaven,'

  a strange dream in my meat:

  Radiant clouds, I have heard God's voice in

  my sleep, or Blake's awake, or my own or

  the dream of a delicatessen of snorting cows

  and bellowing pigs --

  The chop of a knife

  a finger severed in my brain --

  a few deaths I know --

  O brothers of the Laurel

  Is the world real?

  Is the Laurel

  a joke or a crown of thorns? --

  Fast, pass

  up the ass

  Down I go

  Cometh Woe

  -- the street outside,

  me spying on New York.

  The dark truck passes snarling &

  vibrating deep --

  Leaving us flying like birds into Time

  -- eyes and car headlights --

  The shrinkage of emptiness

  in the Nebulae

  These Galaxies cross like pinwheels & they pass

  like gas --

  What forests are born.

  September 15, 1959

  TO AN OLD POET IN PERU

  Because we met at dusk

  Under the shadow of the railroad station

  clock

  While my shade was visiting Lima

  And your ghost was dying in Lima

  old face needing a shave

  And my young beard sprouted

  magnificent as the dead hair

  in the sands of Chancay

  Because I mistakenly thought you were

  melancholy

  Saluting your 60 year old feet

  which smell of the death

  of spiders on the pavement

  And you saluted my eyes

  with your anisetto voice

  Mistakenly thinking I was genial

  for a youth

  (my rock and roll is the motion of an

  angel flying in a modern city)

  (your obscure shuffle is the motion

  of a seraphim that has lost

  its wings)

  I kiss you on your fat cheek (once more tomorrow

  Under the stupendous Disaguaderos clock)

  Before I go to my death in an airplane crash

  in North America (long ago)

  And you go to your heart-attack on an indifferent

  street in South America

  (Both surrounded by screaming

  communists with flowers

  in their ass)

  -- you much sooner than I --

  or a long night alone in a room

  in the old hotel of the world

  watching a black door

  . . . surrounded by scraps of paper

  DIE GREATLY IN THY SOLITUDE

  Old Man,

  I prophesy Reward

  Vaster than the sands of Pachacamac

  Brighter than a mask of hammered gold

  Sweeter than the joy of armies naked fucking on the battlefield

  Swifter than a time passed between

  old Nasca night and new Lima in the dusk

  Stranger than our meeting by the Presidential Palace in an old cafe

  ghosts of an old illusion, ghosts of indifferent love --

  THE DAZZLING INTELLIGENCE

  Migrates from Death

  To make a sign of Life again to you

  Fierce and beautiful as a car crash in the Plaza de Armas

  I swear that I have seen that Light

  I will not fail to kiss your hideous cheek when your coffin's closed

  And the human mourners go back

  to their old tired Dream.

  And you wake in the Eye of the Dictator of the Universe.

  Another stupid miracle! I'm mistaken again!

  Your indifference! my enthusiasm! I insist! You cough!

  Lost in the wave of Gold that flows thru the Cosmos.

  Agh I'm tire of insisting! Goodby,

  I'm going to Pucallpa to have Visions.

  Your clean sonnets?

  I want to read your dirtiest

  secret scribblings,

  your Hope,

  in His most Obscene Magnificence. My God!

  May 19, 1960

  Note: Chancay, Pachacamic, Nasca -- Pre-incaic cultures of coastal desert Peru. Myriad relics found by graverobbers opening the sand of these necropolises.

  AETHER

  11:15 PM May 27

  4 Sniffs & I'm High,

  Underwear in bed,

  white cotton in left hand,

  archtype degenerate,

  bloody taste in my mouth

  of Dentist Chair

  music, Loud Farts of Eternity --

  an owl with eyeglasses scribbling in the cold darkness --

  All the time the sound in my eardrums of trolleycars below

  taxi fender cough -- creak of streets --

  Laughter & pistol shots echoing

  at all walls --

  tic leaks of neon -- the voice of Myriad

  rushers of the Brainpan

  all the chirps the crickets have created

  ringing against my eares in the

  instant before unconsciousness

  before, --

  the teardrop in the eye to come, --

  the Fear of the Unknown --

  One does not yet know whether Christ was

  God or the Devil -Buddha is more reassuring.

  Yet the experiments must continue!

  Every possible combination of Being -- all

  the old ones! all the old Hindu

  Sabahadabadie-pluralic universes

  ringing in Grandiloquent

  Bearded Juxtaposition,

  with all their minarets and moonlit

  towers enlaced with iron

  or porcelain embroidery,

  all have existed --

  and the Sages with

  white hair who sat crosslegged on

  a female couch --

  hearkening to whatever music came

  from out the Wood or Street,

  whatever bird that whistled in the

  Marketplace,

  whatever note the clock struck to say

  Time --

  whatever drug, or aire, they breathed

  to make them think so deep

  or simply hear what passed,

  like a car passing in the 1960 street

  beside the Governmental Palace

  in Peru, this Lima year I write.

  Kerouac! I salute yr

  wordy beard. Sad Prophet!

  Salutations and low bows from

  baggy pants and turbaned mind and hornèd foot

  arched eyebrows & Jewish Smile --

  One single specimen of Eternity -- each of us poets.

  Breake the Rhythm! (too much pentameter)

  . . . My god what solitude are you in Kerouac

  now?

  -- heard the whoosh of carwheels in the 1950 rain --

  And every bell went off on time,

  And everything that was created

  Rang especially in view of the Creation

  For

  This is the end of the creation

  This is the redemption Spoken of

  This is the view of the Created

  by all the Drs, nurses, etc of creation;

  i.e.,

  --

  The unspeakable passed over my head
for

  the second time.

  and still can't say it!

  i.e. we are the sweepings of the moon

  we're what's left over from perfection --

  The universe is an OLD mistake

  I've understood a million times before

  and always come back to the same scissor brainwave--

  The

  Sooner or later all Consciousness will be eliminated

  because Consciousness is

  a by-product of --

  (Cotton & N2O)

  Drawing saliva back from the tongue --

  Christ! you struggle to understand

  One consciousness

  & be confronted with Myriads --

  after a billion years

  with the same ringing in the ears

  and pterodactyl-smile of Oops

  Creation, known it all before.

  A Buddha as of old, with sirens of

  whatever machinery making cranging noises in

  the street

  and pavement light reflected in the facade

  RR Station window in a

  dinky port in Backwash

  of the murky old forgotten

  fabulous whatever

  Civilization of

  Eternity, --

  with the RR Sta Clock ring midnight,

  as of now,

  & waiting for the 6th

  you write your

  Word,

  and end on the last chime -- and remember

  This one twelve was struck

  before, and never again; both.

  ..........I stood on the balcony

  waiting for an explosion

  of Total Consciousness of the All --

  being Ginsberg sniffing ether in Lima.

  The same struggle of Mind, to reach the

  Thing

  that ends its process with an X

  comprehending its befores and afters,

  unexplainable to each, except in a prophetic

  secret recollective hidden

  half-hand unrecorded.

  way.

  As the old sages of Asia, or the white beards of Persia

  scribbled on the margins of their scrolls

  in delicate ink

  remembering with tears the ancient clockbells of their

  cities

  and the cities that had been --

  Nasca, Paracas, Chancay & Secrecy of the Priests

  buried, Cat Gods

  of all colors, a funeral shroud

  for a museum --

  None remember but all return to the same thought

  before they die --what sad old

  knowledge, we repeat again.

  Only to be lost

  in the sands of Paracas, or wrapped in a mystic shroud

  of Poesy

  and found by some kid in a thousand years

  inspire what dreadful thoughts of his own?

  It's a horrible, lonely experience. And Gregory's letter, and Peter's . . .

  May 28 7:30 PM

  ...In the foul dregs of Circumstance

  'Male and Female He created them' with mustaches.

  There ARE certain REPEATED

  (pistol shot) reliable points

  of reference which the insane

  (pistol shot repeated outside

  the window) -- madman suddenly

  writes -- THE PISTOL SHOT

  outside -- the REPEATED situations

  the experience of return to the

  same place in Universal Creation

  Time -- and every time we return

  we recognise again that we

  HAVE been here & that is the

  Key to Creation -- the same pistol shot

  -- DOWN, bending over his book of Un

  intelligable marvels with his mustache.

  (my) Madness is intelligable reactions to Unintelligable phenomena.

  Boy -- what a marvellous bottle,

  a clear glass sphere of transparent

  liquid ether --

  (Chloraethyl Merz)

  9 PM

  I know I am a poet -- in this universe -- but what

  good does that do -- when in another, without these mechanical

  aids, I might be doomed to be a poor Disneyan Shoe Store

  Clerk -- This consciousness an accident of one of the Ether-

  possible worlds, not the Final World

  Wherein we all look Crosseyed

  & triumph in our Virginity

  without wearing Rabbit's-foot

  ears or eyes looking sideways

  strangely but in Gold

  Humbled & more knowledgeable, acknowledge

  the Vast mystery of our creation --

  without giving any sign that

  we have heard from the

  GREAT CREATOR

  WHOSE NAME I NOW

  PRONOUNCE:

  GREAT CREATOR OF THE UNIVERS, IF

  THY WISDOM ACCORD IT

  AND IF THIS NOT BE TOO

  MUCH TO ASK

  MAY I PUBLISH YOUR NAME?

  I ASK IN THE LIMA

  NIGHT

  FEARFULLY WAITING ANSWER,

  hearing the buses out on

  the street hissing,

  Knowing the Terror of the World Afar --

  I have been playing with Jokes

  and His is too mighty to hold

  in the hand like a Pen

  and His is the Pistol Shot Answer

  that brings blood to the brain

  And--

  What can be possible

  in a minor universe

  in which you can see

  God by sniffing the

  gas in a cotton?

  The answer to be taken in

  reverse & Doubled Math

  ematically both ways.

  Am I a sinner?

  There are hard & easy universes. This is neither.

  (If I close my eyes will I regain consciousness?)

  That's the Final Question -- with

  all the old churchbells ringing and

  bus pickup snuffles & crack of iron

  whips inside cylinders & squeal of brakes

  and old crescendos of responsive

  demiurgic ecstasy whispering in streets of ear

  -- and when was it Not

  ever answered in the Affir-

  mative? Saith the Lord?

  A MAGIC UNIVERSE

  Flies & crickets & the sound of buses & my

  stupid beard.

  But what's Magic?

  Is there Sorrow in Magic?

  Is Magic one of my boyscout creations?

  Am I responsible? I with my flop?

  Could Threat happen to Magic?

  Yes! this the one universe in which

  there is threat to magic, by

  writing while high.

  A Universe in which I am condemned to write statements.

  'Ignorant Judgements Create Mistaken Worlds--'

  and this one is joined in

  Indic union to

  Affirm with laughing

  eyes --

  The world is as we see it,

  Male & Female, passing thru the years,

  as has before & will, perhaps

  with all its countless pearls & Bloody noses

  and I poor stupid All in G

  am stuck with that old Choice --

  Ya, Crap, what Hymn to seek, & in

  what tongue, if this's the most

  I can requite from Consciousness? --

  'That I can skim? & put in words?

  Could skim it faster with more juice --

  could skim a crop with Death, perchance

  -- yet never know in this old world.

  Will know in Death?

  And before?

  Will in

  Another know.

  And in another know.

  And

  in another know.

  And

  Stop conceiving worlds!
r />   says Philip Whalen

  (My Savior!) (oh what snobbery!)

  (as if he cd save Anyone) --

  At least, he won't understand.

  I lift my finger in the air to create

  a universe he won't understand, full

  of sadness.

  -- finally staring straight ahead in surprise

  & recollection into the mirror of

  the Hotel Commercio room.

  Time repeats itself. Including

  this consciousness, which has seen

  itself before -- thus the locust-whistle

  of antiquity's nightwatch in my eardrum . . .

  I propounded a final question, and

  heard a series of final answers.

  What is God? for instance, asks the answer?

  And whatever else can the replier reply but reply?

  Whatever the nature of mind, that

  the nature of both question and answer.

  & yet one wants to live

  in a single universe

  Does one?

  Must it be one?

  Why, as with the Jews

  must the God be One?

  O what does

  the concept ONE mean?

  IT'S MAD!

  GOD IS ONE!

  IS X

  IS MEANINGLESS --

  ADONOI --

  IS A JOKE --

  THE HEBREWS ARE

  WRONG -- (CRIST & BUDDA

  ATTEST, also wrongly!)

  What is One but Formation

  of mind?

  arbitrary madness! 6000 years

  Spreading out in all directions simultaneously --

  I forgive both good & ill

  & I seek nothing, like a painted savage with

  spear crossed by orange black & white bands!

  'I found the Jivaros & was

  entrapped in their universe'

  I'm scribbling nothings.

  Page upon page of profoundest nothing,

  as scribed the Ancient Hebe, when

  he wrote Adonoi Echad or One --

  all to amuse, make money, or deceive --

  Let Wickedness be Me

  and this the worst of all

  the universes!

  Not the worst! Not Flame!

  I can't stand that -- (Yes that's

  for Somebody Else!

  Yet I accept

  O Catfaced God, whatever comes! It's me!

  I am the Flame, etc.

  O Gawd!

  Pistol shot! Crack!

  Circusmaster's whip --

  IMPERFECT!

  and a soul is damned to

  HELL!

  And the churchbell rings!

  and there is melancholy, once again, throughout the realm.

  and I'm that soul, small as it is.

  HAVE FELT SAME BEFORE

  The death of consciousness is terrible

  and yet! when all is ended

  what regret?

  'S none left to remember or forget.

  And's gone into the odd.

  The only thing I fear is the Last

  Chance. I'll see that last chance too

  before I'm done, Old Mind. All them