To the tune of the English
Fifers in some whiter mine,
‘Brick a brack,
Pliers on your back;
Mick mack
Kidneys in your back;
Bald Boo!
Oranges and you!
Lick lock
The redfaced cock’
8TH CHORUS
Oi yal!
She yawns to lall
La la—
Me Loom—
The weary gray hat
Peacoat ex sailor
Manning meekly
Hands a poop a pocket
Face
Lips
Oh Mo Sea!
The long fat yellow
Eternity cream
Of the Third St Bus
Roof swimming like
A monosyllable
Armored Mososaur
Swimming in my Primordial
Windowpane
Of pain
9TH CHORUS
Alas! Youth is worried,
Pa’s astray.
What so say
To well dressed ambassadors
From death’s truth
Pimplike, rich,
In the morning slick;
Or sad white caps
Of snowy sea men
In San Francisco
Gray streets
Arm waving to walk
The Harrison cross
And earn later sunset
purple
10TH CHORUS
Dig the sad old bum
No money
Presuming to hit the store
And buy his cube of oleo
For 8 cents
So in cheap rooms
At A M 3 30
He can cough & groan
In a white tile sink
By his bed
Which is used
To run water in
And stagger to
In the reel of wake up
Middle of the night
Flophouse Nightmares—
His death no blackern
Mine, his Toast’s
Just as well buttered
And on the one side.
11TH CHORUS
There’s no telling
What’s on the mind
Of the bony
Character in plaid
Workcoat & glasses
Carrying lunch
Stalking & bouncing
Slowly to his job
Or the beauteous Indian
Girl hurrying stately
Into Marathon Grocery
Run by Greeks
To buy bananas
For her love night,
What’s she thinking?
Her lips are like cherries,
Her cheeks just purse them out
All the more to kiss them
And suck their juices out.
12TH CHORUS
A young woman flees an old man,
Mohammedan Prophecy:
And she got avocados
Anyhow.
The furtive whore
Looks over her shoulder
While unlocking the door
Of the tenement
Of her pimp
Who with big Negro Arkansas
Or East Texas Oilfields
Harry Truman hat’s
Been standin on the street
All day
Waiting for the cold girl
Bending in thincoat in the wind
And Sunday afternoon drizzle
To step on it & get some bread
For Papa’s gotta sleep tonite
And the Chinaman’s coming back
13TH CHORUS
“No hunger & no wittles
neither deary”
Said the crone
To Edwin Drood
Okay.
There’ll be an answer.
Forthcoming
When the morning wind
Ceases shaking
The man’s collar
When there’s no starch in’t
And Acme Beer
Runs flowing
Into dry gray hats.
When
Dearie
palm multiply
as you watch
14TH CHORUS
When whistlers stop scowling
Smokers stop sighing
Watchers stop looking
And women stop walking
When gray beards
Grow no more
And pain dont
Take you by surprise
And bedposts creak
In rhythm not at morn
And dry men’s bones
Are not pushed
By angry meaning pelvic
Propelled legs of reason
To a place you hate,
Then I’ll go lay my crown
Body on the heads of 3 men
Hurrying & laughing
In the wrong direction,
my Idol
15TH CHORUS
Sex is an automaton
Sounding like a machine
Thru the stopped up keyhole
—Young men go fastern
Old men
Old men are passionately breathless
Young men breathe inwardly
Young women & old women
Wait
There was a sound of slapping
When the angel stole come
And the angel that had lost
Lay back satisfied
Hungry addled red face
With tight clutch
Traditional Time
Brief case in his paw
Prowls placking the pavement
To his office girl’s
Rumped skirt at 5’s
Five O Clock Shadows
16TH CHORUS
Angrily I must insist—
The phoney Negro
Sea captain
With the battered coat
Who looks like
Charley Chaplin in a
movie about now filmed
in the air by crews
of raving rabid
angels drooling happily
among the funny fat
Cherubim
Leading that serious
Hardjawed sincere
Negro stud
In at morn
For a round of crimes
Is Lucifer the Fraud
17TH CHORUS
Little girls worry too much
For no one will hurt them
Except the beast
Whom they’d knife
In another life
In the as well East
As West of Bethlehem
And do of it much
Rhetorical Third Street
Grasping at racket
Groans & stinky
I’ve no time
To dally hassel
In your heart’s house,
It’s too gray
I’m too cold—
I wanta go to Golden,
That’s my home.
18TH CHORUS
I came a wearyin
From eastern hills;
Yonder Nabathacaque recessit
The eastward to Aurora rolls,
Somewhere West of Idalia
Or east of Klamath Falls,
One—Lost a blackhaired
Woman with thin feet
And red bag hangin
Who usta walk
Down Arapahoe Street
In Denver
And made all the
cabbies cry
And drugstore ponies
Eating pool in Remsac’s
Sob, to See so Lovely
All the Time
And all so Tight
And young.
19TH CHORUS
Pshaw! Paw’s Ford
Got Lost in the Depression
He driv over the Divide
And forgot to cleave the road
Instead put atomic energy
In the ass of his machine
And flew to find
The gory clouds
Of rocky torment
Far away
And they fished him
Outa Miner’s Creek
More dead n Henry
And a whole lot fonder,
Podner—
Clack of the wheel’s
My freight train blues
Third Street I seed
20TH CHORUS
And knowed
And under ramps I writ
The poems of the punk
Who met the Fagin
Who told him ‘Punk
When walkin with me
To roll a Sleepin drunk
Dont wish ya was back
Home in yr mother’s parlor
And when the cops
Come ablastin
With loaded 45’s
Dont ask for gold
Or silver from my purse,
Its milken hassel
Will be strewn
And scattered
In the sand
By an old bean can
And dried up kegs
We’d a sat & jawed on—
21ST CHORUS
Roll my bones
In the Mortiary
My terms
And deeds of mortgagry
And death & taxes
All wrapt up.’
Little anger Japan
Strides holding bombs
To blow the West
To Fuyukama’s
Shrouded Mountain Top
So the Lotus Bubble
Blossoms in Buddha’s
Temple Dharma Eye
May unfold from
Pacific Center
Inward Out & Over
The Essence Center World
22ND CHORUS
For the world’s an Eye
And the universe is Seeing
Liquid
Rare
Radiant.
Eccentrics from out of town
Better not fill in
This blank
For a job on my gray boat
And Monkeysuits I furnish.
Batteries of ad men
Marching arm in arm
Thru the pages
Of Time & Life
23RD CHORUS
The halls of MCA
Singing Deans
In the college morning
Preferable to dry cereal
When no corn mush
Cops & triggers
Magazine pricks
Dastardly Shadows
And Phantom Hero ines.
Swing yr umbrella
At the sidewalk
As you pass
Or tap a boy
On the shoulder
Saying “I say
Where is Threadneedle
Street?”
24TH CHORUS
San Francisco is too sad
Time, I cant understand
Fog, shrouds the hills in
Makes unshod feet so cold
Fills black rooms with day
Dayblack in the white windows
And gloom in the pain of pianos:
Shadows in the jazz age
Filing by; ladders of flappers
Painters’ white bucket
Funny 3 Stooge Comedies
And fuzzy headed Hero
Moofle Lip suckt it all up
And wondered why
The milk & cream of heaven
Was writ in gold leaf
On a book—big eyes
For the world
The better to see—
25TH CHORUS
And big lips for the word
And Buddhahood
And death.
Touch the cup to these sad lips
Let the purple grape foam
In my gullet deep
Spread saccharine
And crimson carnadine
In my vine of veins
And shoot power
To my hand
Belly heart & head—
This Magic Carpet
Arabian World
Will take us
Easeful Zinging
Cross the Sky
Singing Madrigals
26TH CHORUS
To horizons of golden
Moment emptiness
Whither whence uncaring
Dizzy ride in space
To red fires
Beyond the pale,
Rosy gory outlooks
Everywhere.
San Francisco is too old
Her chimnies lean
And look sooty
After all this time
Of waiting for something
To happen
Betwixt hill & house—
Heart & heaven.
27TH CHORUS
San Francisco
San Francisco
You’re a muttering bum
In a brown beat suit
Cant make a woman
On a rainy corner
Your corners open out
San Francisco
To arc racks
Of the Seals
Lost in vapors
Cold and bleak.
28TH CHORUS
You’re as useless
As a soda truck
Parked in the rain
With cases of pretty red
Orange green & Coca Cola
Brown receiving rain
Drops like the sea
Receiveth driving spikes
Welling in the navel void.
I also have loud poems:
Broken plastic coverlets
Flapping in the rain
To cover newspapers
All printed up
And plain.
29TH CHORUS
Guys with big pockets
In heavy topcoats
And slit scar
Head bands down
The middle of their hair
All Bruce Barton combed
Stand surveying Harrison
Folsom St the Ramp
And the redbrick clock
Wishin they had a woman
Or some money, honey
Westinghouse Elevators
Are full of pretty girls
With classy cans
And cute pans
And long slim legs
And eyes for the boss
At quarter of four.
30TH CHORUS
Old Age is an Indian
With gray hair
And a cane
In an old coat
Tapping along
The rainy street
To see the pretty oranges
And the stores
On his big day
When the dog’s let out.
Somewhere in this snow
I see little children raped
By maniacal sex fiends
Eager to make a break
But the F B I
In the form of Ted
Stands waiting
Hand on gun
In the Paranoiac
Summer time
To come.
31ST CHORUS
I knew an angel
In Mexico City
Call’d La Negra
Who the Same eyes
Had as Sebastian
And was reincarnated
To suffer in the poker
House rain
Who had the same eyes
As Sebastian
When his Nirvana came
Sambati was his name.
Must have had one leg once
And expensive armpit canes
And traveled in this rain
With youthful hidden pain
32ND CHORUS
Beautiful girls
Just primp
But beautiful boys
Do suffer.
White wash rain stain
Gravel roof glass black
Red wood blue neon
Green elevators
Birds that change color
And white ants
Climbing to your knee
Earnest for deliverance.
33RD CHORUS
It was a mournful day
The B O Bay was gray
Old man angry-necks
Stomped to escape sex
And find his Television
In the uptown vision
Of the milk & secret
Blossom curtain
Creak it.
Cheese it the cops!
Ram down the lamb!
700 Camels
In Pakistan!
Milk will curdle, honey,
If you sit on stony penises
Three times moving up & down
And 7 times around
34TH CHORUS
While young boys peek
In the Hindu temple window