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from Elegy for Neal Cassidy
"Can ya hear me talkin?
calling your spirit
god echo consciousness, murmuring
sadly to myself.
Happy as light released by the Day
Spirit become spirit,
or robot reduced to Ashes.
Tender Spirit, thank you for touching me with tender hands
When you were young, in a beautiful body,
Such a pure touch it was Hope beyond Maya-meat,
O Spirit.
Sir spirit, forgive me my sins,
Sir spirit give me your blessing again,
Sir Spirit forgive my phantom body’s demands,
Sir Spirit thanks for your kindness past,
Sir Spirit in Heaven, What difference was yr mortal form,
What further this great show of Space?
Sir Spirit, an’ I drift alone:
Oh deep sigh.
Hadja no more to do? Was your work all done?
Had ya seen your first son?
Why’dja leave us all here?
Has the battle been won?
the world is released,
desire fulfilled, your history over,
story told, Karma resolved,
prayers completed
vision manifest, new consciousness fulfilled,
spirit returned in a circle,
world left standing empty, buses roaring through streets—
garbage scattered on pavements galore—
Grandeur solidified, phantom-familiar fate
returned to Auto-dawn,
your destiny fallen on RR track
My body breathes easy,
I lie alone,
living
After friendship fades from flesh forms—
heavy happiness hangs in heart,
I could talk to you forever,
The pleasure inexhaustible,
discourse of spirit to spirit"
10 Feb 1968 5-5:30 AM
Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
credits
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2. |
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from Hiway Poesy L.A. to Wichita
"PAINTED DESERT,
petrified forest
Leslie Howard’s scratchy ’30s image
… eating jurassic steak
Petroglyphs over there the Man in the Moon,
the guy with four fingers …
over there, this is the sun, with two spikes out the North,
two spikes South, two spikes ray East & West
Milky way over here, the Moon,
… and all the animal tentacles
Nebula spiraled “… Roger 1943”
And I hit Julius for eating his avocado cheese sandwich too fast.
Gas flares, oil refinery night smoke,
high aluminum tubes winking red lights
over space ship runways
petrochemical witches’ blood boiling underground—
“Looks like they’re getten ready to go to Mars.”
Approaching Thoreau—
Fort Wingate Army Depot entrance—
and there’s the Continental Divide.
Anti Vietnam War Demonstrator soldiers sentenced
For Contempt of President:
Hard Labor—
Learn thyself in Shell Refinery’s Oil Storage
Seaboard Rackets,
Lying back on the car seat,
eyelids heavy,
legs spread leaned against the table,
Oh that I were young again and the skin in my anus folds rose,
“La illaba el (lill) Allah bu”
Finally bored,
Over a hill, singing Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram
Albuquerque Sparkling blue brilliant
more diamonds & pearls of electricity
running out of power-plants than ever heard of
Turkey or Israel—
intense endless iridescence on black
velvet desert—
Ah what a marvel
orange blue Neon Circling itself Solar System’d
Speed Wash Texaco 19¢ Famous Hamburgers
Lion House Italian Village Pizza ah!
radio warbles Electronic noise
echo chamber vibrations—
Albuquerque streets’ fantastic Neon Stars
collapsing to bright red blinks
Satellite Globes plunging their
tiny lamps in and out—
the eyeball.
* * * *
Space stretching North dotted with silver gastanks
to Sandia Range
Hitchhiking student
supported by National Defense Fund
with his black horn rimmed glasses,
thin blond hair,
“If your country calls you, would you go?”
“If my country drafted me …
then I would go.”
Selfish young american always interested in his own skin
—and blue car speeding along the highway
sticker on back
“I’m proud I’m an American”
right front seat, a 10 gallon hat
driver a fat car salesman—
Sitting icy tipped
distant earth peaks over Hilltops
& here’s an ugly little oasis, used car tractors
fenced off by barbed wire
below roadside—
Evenings cool clear, sharp
brilliant blue stars—
Just what we needed, State Penitentiary!
Two miles off into the brown furze rolling
East of the highway
“This is Ford Country what are you driving?” Be a Ford dealer?
Great snow meadows roof Sangre De Cristo
clouds, North, dipping misty rivulet tails of pointy fog.
………………………………………………………
It’s a hard question …
which would you rescue, your mother-in-law
or the last text of Shakespeare?”
January 28- 29, 1966
Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
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Manhattan Thirties Flash
Long stone streets inanimate, repetitive machine Crash cookie-cutting
dynamo rows of soulless replica Similitudes brooding tank-like in Army Depots Exactly the same exactly the same exactly the same with no purpose but grimness
& overwhelming force of robot obsession, our slaves are not alive
& we become their sameness as they surround us—the long stone streets inanimate, crowds of executive secretaries alighting from subway 8:30 A.M.
bloodflow in cells thru elevator arteries & stairway glands to typewriter consciousness, Con Ed skyscraper clock-head gleaming gold-lit at sun dusk.
1968
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4. |
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Hum Bom!
I
Whom bomb?
We bomb'd them!
Whom Bomb?
We bomb'd them!
Whom Bomb?
We bomb'd them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb'd them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do!
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb you!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb you!
May 1971
II
For Don Cherry
Whydja bomb?
We didn't wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
We didn't wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
You didn't wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
You didn't wanna bomb!
Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who wantsa bomb?
We don't wanna bomb!
Who wantsa bomb?
We don't wanna bomb!
Who wantsa bomb?
We don't wanna bomb!
We don't wanna
we don't wanna
we don't wanna bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
III
Armageddon for the mob
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Ginsberg says Gog & Magog
Armageddon did the job.
February-June, 1991
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War Profit Litany
To Ezra Pound
These are the names of the companies that have made money
from this war
nineteenhundredsixtyeight Annodomini fourthousandeighty
Hebraic
These Corporations have profited by merchandising skinburning phosphorus or shells fragmented to thousands of
fleshpiercing needles
and here listed money millions gained by each combine for manufacture
and here are gains numbered, index'd swelling a decade, set
in order,
here named the Fathers in office in these industries,
telephones directing finance,
names of directors, makers of fates, and the names of the stockholders of these destined Aggregates,
and here are the names of their ambassadors to the Capital, representatives to legislature, those who sit drinking
in hotel lobbies to persuade
and separate listed, those who drop Amphetamines with
military, gossip, argue, and persuade
suggesting policy naming language proposing strategy, this
done for fee as ambassadors to Pentagon, consultants to military, paid by their industry:
and these are the names of the generals & captains military,
who now thus work for war goods manufacturers;
and above these, listed, the names of the banks, combines, investment trusts that control these industries:
and these are the names of the newspapers owned by these
banks
and these are the names of the airstations owned by these
combines;
and these are the numbers of thousands of citizens employed
by these businesses named;
and the beginning of this accounting is 1958 and the end
1968, that statistic be contained in orderly mind,
coherent & definite,
and the first form of this litany begun first day December
1967 furthers this poem of these States.
December 1, 1967
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from Memory Gardens:
...
“I threw a kissed handful of damp earth
down on the stone lid
& sighed
looking in Creeley’s one eye,
Peter sweet holding a flower
Gregory toothless bending his
knuckle to Cinema machine— and that’s the end of the drabble tongued
Poet who sounded his Kock-rup
throughout the Northwest Passage.
Blue dusk over Saybrook, Holmes
sits down to dine Victorian—
& Time has a ten-page spread on
Homosexual Fairies!
Well, while I’m here I’ll
do the work—
and what’s the Work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow."
October 22–29, 1969
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7. |
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First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels
Cool black night thru the redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.
December 1965
Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
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8. |
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An Open Window on Chicago
Midwinter night,
Clark & Halstead brushed with this week’s snow grill lights blinking at
the corner
decades ago
Smokestack poked above roofs & watertower
standing still above the blue
lamped boulevards,
sky blacker than th’ east
for all the steel smoke
settled in heaven from South.
Downtown—like Batman’s Gotham City
battleshipped with Lights,
towers winking under clouds,
police cars blinking on Avenues,
space above city misted w/fine soot
cars crawling past redlites down Avenue,
exuding white wintersmoke—
Eat Eat said the sign, so I went in the Spanish Diner
The girl at the counter, whose yellow Bouffant roots
grew black over her pinch’d face, spooned her coffee with knuckles
puncture-marked,
whose midnight wrists had needletracks,
scars inside her arms:
“Wanna go get a Hotel Room with me?”
The Heroin Whore
thirty years ago come haunting Chicago’s midnite streets,
me come here so late with my beard!
Corner Grill-lights blink, police car turned
& took away its load of bum to jail,
black uniforms patrolling streets
where suffering
lifts a hand palsied by Parkinson’s Disease
to beg a cigarette.
The psychiatrist came visiting this Hotel 12th floor—
Where does the Anger come from?
Outside! Radio messages, images on Television,
Electric Networks spread
fear of murder on the streets—
“Communications Media”
inflict the Vietnam War & its anxiety on every private skin
in hotel room or bus—
Sitting, meditating quietly on Great Space outside—
Bleep Bleep dit dat dit radio on, Television
murmuring, bombshells crash on flesh
his flesh my flesh all the same.—
The Dakini in the hotel room turns in her sleep
while War news flashes thru Aether—
Shouts at streetcorners as bums
crawl in the metal policevan.
And there’s a tiny church in middle Chicago
with its black spike to the black air
And there’s the new Utensil Towers round on horizon.
And there’s red glow of Central Neon
on hushed building walls at 4 A.M.,
And there’s proud Lights & Towers of Man’s Central City
looking pathetic at 4 A.M., traveler passing through,
staring outa hotel window under Heaven—
Is this tiny city the best we can do?
These tiny reptilian towers
so proud of their Executives
they haveta build a big sign in middle downtown to Advertise
old Connor’s Insurance sign fading on brick building side—
Snow on deserted roofs & parkinglots—
Hog Butcher to the World!?
Taxi-Harmonious Modernity grown rusty-old—
The prettiness of Existence! To sit at the window
& moan over Chicago’s stone & brick
lifting itself vertical tenderly,
hanging from the sky.
Elbow on windowsill,
I lean and muse, taller than any building here
Steam from my head
wafting into the smog
Elevators running up & down my leg
Couples copulating in hotelroom beds in my belly
& bearing children in my heart,
Eyes shining like warning-tower Lights,
Hair hanging down like a black cloud—
Close your eyes on Chicago and be God,
all Chicago is, is what you see—
That row of lights Finance Building
sleeping on its bottom floors,
Watchman stirring
paper coffee cups by bronzed glass doors—
and under the bridge, brown water
floats great turds of ice beside buildings’ feet
in windy metropolis waiting for a Bomb.
January 8, 1967
(Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers)
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9. |
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Death On All Fronts
“The Planet Is Finished”
A new moon looks down on our sick sweet planet
Orion’s chased the Immovable Bear halfway across the sky
from winter to winter. I wake, earlier in bed, fly corpses
cover gas lit sheets, my head aches, left temple
brain fibre throbbing for Death I Created on all Fronts.
Poisoned rats in the Chickenhouse and myriad lice
Sprayed with white arsenics filtering to the brook, City Cockroaches
stomped on Country kitchen floors. No babies for me.
Cut earth boys & girl hordes by half & breathe free
say Revolutionary expert Computers:
Half the blue globe’s germ population’s more than enough,
keep the cloudy lung from stinking pneumonia.
I called in Exterminator Who soaked the Wall floor with
bed-bug death-oil: Who’ll soak my brain with death-oil?
I wake before dawn, dreading my wooden possessions,
my gnostic books, my loud mouth, old loves silent, charms
turned to image money, my body sexless fat, Father dying,
Earth Cities poisoned at war, my art hopeless—
Mind fragmented—and still abstract—Pain in
left temple living death—
Cherry Valley, September 26, 1969
Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
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10. |
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O Future bards
chant from skull to heart to ass
as long as language lasts
Vocalize all chords
zap all consciousness
I sing out of mind jail
in New York State
without electricity
rain on the mountain
thought fills cities
I’ll leave my body
in a thin motel
my self escapes
through unborn ears
Not my language
but a voice
chanting in patterns
survives on earth
not history’s bones
but vocal tones
Dear breaths and eyes
shine in the skies
where rockets rise
to take me home
May 1968
Courtesy HarperCollins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
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11. |
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Wales Visitation
White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—
Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
the wisdom of earthly relations,
of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
orchards of mind language manifest human,
of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—
Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower
& network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld
Stillness
clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—
Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!
All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
undulating on mossy hills
a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
on the mountainside
whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
in granitic undertow down—
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
and lifted the lambs to hold still
and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave
A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,
a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean
tonned with cloud-hang,
—Heaven balanced on a grassblade.
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of
daisies,
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—
No imperfection in the budded mountain,
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
horses dance in the warm rain,
tree-lined canals network live farmland,
blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,
pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern —
Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate
gusts of wet air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
myriad-formed—
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells drooped
doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
& look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,
smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,
trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,
Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
Calling our Presence together
The great secret is no secret
Senses fit the winds,
Visible is visible,
rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,
gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
Heaven breath and my own symmetric
Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
Sounds of Aleph and Aum
through forests of gristle,
my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,
All Albion one.
What did I notice? Particulars! The
vision of the great One is myriad—
smoke curls upward from ashtray,
house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
starless
upward in motion with wet wind.
July 29, 1967 (LSD)—August 3, 1967 (London)
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Ayers Rock / Uluru Song (from Sad Dust Glories)
“When the red pond fills fish appear
When the red pond dries fish disappear.
Everything built on the desert crumbles to dust.
Electric cable transmission wires swept down.
The lizard people came out of the rock.
The red Kangaroo people forgot their own song.
Only a man with four sticks can cross the Simpson Desert.
One rain turns red dust green with leaves.
One raindrop begins the universe.
When the raindrop dries, worlds come to their end."
Central Australia, March 23, 1972
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13. |
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Over Laramie
Western Air boat bouncing
under rainclouds stippled
down gray Rockies
Springtime dusk,
Look out on Denver, Allen,
mourn Neal no more,
Old ghost loves departed
New lives whelm the plains, rains
wash Rocky mountainsides
World turns under sun eye
Man flies a moment Cheyenne’s
dry upland highways
A tiny fossil brachiapod in pocket
Precambrian limestone clam
fingernail small
four hundred fifty million years old
Brain gone, flesh passed thru myriad
phantom reincarnations,
the tiny-ridged shell’s delicate
as hardened thought.
—over Laramie, Front Range
pine gully snow pockets,
Monolith Cement plume smoke
casting dust gas over
the red plateau
into the New World.
April 12, 1971
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14. |
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Easter Sunday
Slope woods’ snows melt
Streams gush, ducks stand one foot
beak eye buried in backfeathers,
Jerusalem pillars’ gold sunlight
yellow in window-shine, bright
rays spikey-white flashed in mud,
coo coo ripples thru maple branch,
horse limps head down, pale grass shoots
green winter’s brown vegetable
hair—washed by transparent trickling
ice water freshets
earth’s rusty slough bathed clean,
streams ripple leaf-bottomed
channels sounded vocal, white light
afternoon sky end—
Goat bells move, black kids bounce,
butting mother’s hairy side & tender tit
one maa’ing child hangs under Bessie’s udder
ducks waggle yellow beaks, new grass flooded,
tiger cat maeows on barn straw,
herb patch by stone wall’s a shiny marsh,
dimpling snow water glimmers, birds whistle
from icecrystal beds under bare bushes,
breeze blows rooster crow thru chill light
extended from the piney horizon.
1969
Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
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15. |
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Milarepa Taste
Who am I? Saliva,
vegetable soup,
empty mouth?
Hot roach, breathe smoke
suck in, hold, exhale—
light as ashes.
Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
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16. |
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Bayonne Entering NYC
Smog trucks mile after mile high wire
Pylons trestled toward New York
black multilane highway showered w/blue arc-lamps,
city glare horizoning
Megalopolis with burning factories—
Bayonne refineries behind Newark Hell-light
truck trains passing trans-continental gas-lines,
blinking safety signs KEEP AWAKE
Giant giant giant transformers,
electricity Stacks’ glowing smoke—
More Chimney fires than all Kansas in a mile,
Sulphur chemical Humble gigantic viaducts
networked by road side
What smell burning rubber, oil
“freshens your mouth”
Railroad rust, deep marsh garbage-fume
Nostril horns—
city Announcer jabbering at City Motel,
flat winking space ships descending overhead
GORNEY GORNEY MORTUARY
Brilliant signs the
10 P.M. clock churchspire lit in Suburb City,
New Jersey’s colored streets asleep—
High derrick spotlites lamped an inch above
roofcombs
Shoprite lit for Nite people before the vast
Hohokus marshes and Passaic’s flat gluey
Blackness ringed with lightbulbs.
Blue Newark airport,
Lights at the field edge,
Robot towers blazon’d Eastern Air TWA
above the lavender bulbed runway
across the barrage of car bridges—
I was born there in Newark
Public Service sign of the twenties
visible miles away through smoke
gray night over electric fields
My aunts and uncles died in hospitals,
are buried in graves surrounded by Railroad Tracks,
tombed near Winking 3 Ring Ballantine Ale’s home
where Western Electric has a Cosmic plant,
Pitt-Consoles breathes forth fumes
acrid above Flying Service tanks
Where superhighway rises over Monsanto
metal structures moonlit
Pulaski Skyway hanging airy black in heaven my childhood
neighbored with gigantic harbor stacks,
steam everywhere
Blue Star buses skimming skyroads
beside th’antennae mazes
brilliant by Canalside—
Empire State’s orange shoulders lifted above the Hell,
New York City buildings glitter
visible over Palisades’ trees
Guys From War put tiger in yr Tank—
Radio crawling with Rockmusic youngsters,
STOP—PAY TOLL
let the hitchhiker off in the acrid Mist—
Blue uniformed attendants rocking on their heels in green booths
Light parade everywhere
Cliff rooms, balconies & giant nineteenth century schools,
reptilian trucks on Jersey roads
Manhattan star-spread behind Ft. Lee cliffside
Evening lights reflected across Hudson water—
brilliant diamond-lantern’d Tunnel
Whizz of bus-trucks shimmer in Ear
over red brick
under Whitmanic Yawp Harbor here
roll into Man city, my city, Mannahatta
Lower East Side ghosted &
grimed with Heroin, shit-black from Edison towers
on East River’s rib—
Green-hatted doormen awaken the eve
in statuary-niched yellow lobbies—
zephyrous canyons brightlit, gray stone Empire State
too small to be God
lords it over sweet Macy’s & Seafood City
by junkie Grant Hotel—
Ho Ho turn right by the Blackman who crosses the street
lighting his cigarette, lone on asphalt
as the Lord in Nebraska—
Down 5th Avenue, brr—the irregular spine
of streetlights—
traffic signals all turned red at once—
insect lamps blink in dim artery
replicated down stone vales to Union Square—
In silence wait to see your home
Cemented asphalt, wire roof-banked,
canyoned, hived & churched with mortar,
mortised with art gas—
passing Ginsberg Machine Co.
th’axhead antique Flatiron
Building looms, old photographs
parked in the mind—
Cannastra your 21st Street lofts dark no more raw
meat law business
Tonite Naomi your 18th Westside Stalinesque
madstreet’s blocked by a bus,
Dusty your 16th (drunk in yr party dress) walls
emptiness Hudson River perspectiv’d
Dali in London? Joe Army yr brokenbone Churches
stand brown in time—
How quiet Washington Monument!
& fairy youth turns head downstreet
crossing 5th Avenue under trafficlite,
doorman playing poodledog
on brilliant-lit sidewalk No. 1.
an old reporter w/ brown leather briefcase
leaves the shiny-pillared apartment—
Gee it’s a Miracle to be back on this street
where strange guy mustache
stares in the windowshield—
Lovely the Steak Sign! bleeps on & off
beneath Woman’s prison—
Sixth Avenue bus back-window bright glass
Lady in kerchief leans backward,
corner Whalen’s Drugs, an old Beret familiar face
nods goodbye girl
Humm, Macdougal I lived here,
Humm, perfect, there’s empty space
Park by the bright-lit bookstore—
Where I’ll find my mail
& Harmonium, new from Calcutta
Waiting I come back to New York & begin to Sing.
March 1966
Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
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17. |
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Falling Asleep in America
We’re in the Great Place, Fable Place, Beulah, Man wedded
to Earth, Planet of green Grass
Tiny atomic wheels spin shining, worlds change Heavens
inside out, the planet’s reborn in ashes,
Sun lights sparkle on atomic cinder, plants levitate, green
moss precedes trees trembling sentient,
Stone eats blue skies solar dazzle with invisible mouths &
flowers are the rocks’ excrement—
Each million years atoms spin myriad reversals, worlds in
worlds interchange populations—
from worm to man’s a tiny jump from earth to earth souls
are borne ever forgetful—
populations eat their own meat, roses smell sweet in the
faeces of horses risen red-fac’d.
Consciousness changes nightly, dreams flower new uni-
verses in brainy skulls.
Lying in bed body darkened ear of the bus roar running,
only the eye flickering grass green returns me to
Nashville.
April 1969
Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
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18. |
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Continuation of a Long Poem of These States
S.F. Southward
Stage-lit streets
Downtown Frisco whizzing past, buildings
ranked by Freeway balconies
Bright Johnnie Walker neon
sign Christmastrees
And Christmas and its eves
in the midst of the same deep wood
as every sad Christmas before, surrounded
by forests of stars—
Metal columns, smoke pouring cloudward,
yellow-lamp horizon
warplants move, tiny
planes lie in Avionic fields—
Meanwhile Working Girls sort mail into the red slot
Rivers of newsprint to soldiers’ Vietnam
Infantry Journal, Kanackee
Social Register, Wichita Star
And Postoffice Christmas the same brown place
mailhandlers’ black fingers
dusty mailbags filled
1948 N.Y. Eighth Avenue was
when Peter drove the mailtruck 1955
from Rincon Annex—
Bright lights’ windshield flash,
adrenalin shiver in shoulders
Around the curve
crawling a long truck
3 bright green signals on forehead
Jeweled Bayshore passing the Coast Range
one architect’s house light on hill crest
……………… negro voices rejoice over radio
Moonlit sticks of tea
Moss Landing Power Plant
shooting its cannon smoke
across the highway, Red taillight
speeding the white line and a mile away
Orion’s muzzle
raised up
to the center of Heaven.
December 18, 1965
Courtesy HarperCollins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
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19. |
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Death On All Fronts
“The Planet Is Finished”
A new moon looks down on our sick sweet planet
Orion’s chased the Immovable Bear halfway across the sky
from winter to winter. I wake, earlier in bed, fly corpses
cover gas lit sheets, my head aches, left temple
brain fibre throbbing for Death I Created on all Fronts.
Poisoned rats in the Chickenhouse and myriad lice
Sprayed with white arsenics filtering to the brook, City Cockroaches
stomped on Country kitchen floors. No babies for me.
Cut earth boys & girl hordes by half & breathe free
say Revolutionary expert Computers:
Half the blue globe’s germ population’s more than enough,
keep the cloudy lung from stinking pneumonia.
I called in Exterminator Who soaked the Wall floor with
bed-bug death-oil: Who’ll soak my brain with death-oil?
I wake before dawn, dreading my wooden possessions,
my gnostic books, my loud mouth, old loves silent, charms
turned to image money, my body sexless fat, Father dying,
Earth Cities poisoned at war, my art hopeless—
Mind fragmented—and still abstract—Pain in
left temple living death—
Cherry Valley, September 26, 1969
Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers
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20. |
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From “Falling Asleep in America”
Tiny atomic wheels spin shining, worlds change Heavens
Inside out, the planet’s reborn in ashes,
Sun lights sparkle on atomic cinder, plants levitate, green
moss precedes trees trembling sentient,
Stone eats blue skies solar dazzle with invisible mouths &
flowers are the rocks’
populations eat their own meat,
roses smell sweet...
populations eat their own meat,
roses smell sweet...
Consciousness changes nightly, dreams flower new uni-
verses in brainy skulls.
Lying in bed body darkened ear of the bus roar running,
only the eye flickering grass green
only the eye flickering grass green
only the eye flickering grass green
returns me to back to Nashville
populations eat their own meat,
roses smell sweet...
populations eat their own meat,
roses smell sweet...
April 1969
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All proceeds from the sale of this album will be donated to
HeadCount.org promoting voter registration and participation in democracy through the power of music. It is our tribute project celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s “The Fall of America: Poems of these States 1965-1971”
Special Thanks:
Taylor Deupree at 12k, Nathan Moody at Obsidian Sound, and Scott Petito at Scott Petito Productions, for mastering, astute ears on the highest level. Scott and Sarah and all at AtoZ Media. Darryl Norsen for visually nailing it with his stunning album design. The musicians for selflessly offering these gems & whose dedication to their craft is a perennial inspiration. Peter Wright for pushing for this project to happen and encouraging us every step along the way, and his crew at Virtual Label: Miguel Gallego & John Allen, Dennis McNally for guidance and encouragement, Weston Pagano, Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky/That Subliminal Kid for enthusiastic support and guidance, Rose Solomon, Megan Mann, Antonio Pagano, Rick Blything, Maria Garcia–Teutsch, Peter Shapiro, Andy Bernstein & Sophie Webb at HeadCount, Ken Weinstein of Big Hassle Media, Ian Brennan for producing The Good Ones (Rwanda) and delivering our first track. Barry Miles for compiling original audio of Ginsberg’s poetry. Stanford University Libraries, Maki Hakui & Yasutaka Minegishi at Presspop inc., Norio Fukuda at Sweet Dreams Press. Stacey Lewis and the whole City Lights Crew. Peter London at HarperCollins. The Estate of Fred McDarrah & Timothy McDarrah for use of iconic Ginsberg Uncle Sam Hat image, and The Estate of Elsa Dorfman for photo of Ginsberg in Cherry Valley.
A Peter Hale & Jesse Goodman Production in Association with the Allen Ginsberg Estate presents:
Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America: A 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute
Dedicated to Hal Willner
This exciting tribute celebrates the 50th Anniversary of beloved poet Allen Ginsberg’s “The Fall of America: Poems of these States”, 1965-1971. In the fall of 2020 with the 50th anniversary of those poems fast approaching we reached out to many of Allen’s musician and artist friends. Many responded enthusiastically about interpreting these poems to music; even those poems that presented more of a musical challenge.
Our model for this exciting project was Allen’s 1989 “The Lion for Real” produced by the masterful Hal Willner. We had hoped that he would offer us his guidance and with some musicians on board he might have been persuaded to join us as he had done with other projects over the years. Sadly, fate intervened and Hal became one of the first casualties of this deadly pandemic. Although we cannot come close to the genius he would have brought to this project, he will forever be our guiding light, our guardian angel and inspiration for this project . He has left us a model to work with and we will shoot for the stars as his spirit guides us. His blueprint for unexpected combinations and looking in unexpected places inspired us and to our surprise we found international interest from around the world including Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Korea and Japan.
Music has an incredible power not only to move but also to unite people. With that in mind, all proceeds from the sales of these tracks will be donated to
HeadCount.org, an organization which promotes voter registration and participation in democracy through the power of music.
The Fall of America is the warning and the world is listening.
released February 5, 2021
Cover photos by Fred McDarrah c The Estate of Fred McDarrah, by Elsa Dorfman, c The Estate of Elsa Dorfman, "Buddha's Footprint" symbol drafted by Harry Smith, Cover design: D Norsen.
