Who cares? What kinda
Frenchmen are these?
Rimbaud, hit me over the
head with that rock!
Serious Rimbaud composes
elegant & learned articles
for National Geographic
Societies, & after wars
commands Harari Girl
(Ha Ha!) back
to Abyssinia, & she
was young, had black
eyes, thick lips, hair
curled, & breasts like
polished brown with
copper teats & ringlets
on her arms & joined
her hands upon her
central loin & had
shoulders as broad as
Arthur’s, & little ears
—A girl of some
caste, in Bronzeville—
Rimbaud also knew
thinbonehipped Polynesians
with long tumbling hair
& tiny tits & big feet
—
Finally he starts
trading illegal guns
in Tajoura
riding in caravans, mad,
with a belt of gold
around his waist—
Screwed by King Menelek!
The Shah of Shoa!
The noises of these names
in that noisy French
mind!
Cairo for the summer,
bitter lemon wind
& kisses in the dusty park
where girls sit folded
at dusk thinking
nothing—
Havar! Havar!
By litter to Zeyla
he’s carried moaning his
birthday—the boat
returns to chalk castle
Marseilles sadder than
time, than dream,
sadder than water
—Carcinoma, Rimbaud
is eaten by the disease
of overlife—They cut
off his beautiful leg—
He dies in the arms
of Ste. Isabelle
his sister
& before rising to Heaven
sends his francs
to Djami, Djami
the Havari boy
his body servant
8 years in the African
Frenchman’s Hell,
& it all adds up
to nothing, like
Dostoevsky, Beethoven
or Da Vinci—
So, poets, rest awhile
& shut up:
Nothing ever came
of nothing.
1960
from OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT
54.
peep
peep the
bird tear the
sad bird drop heart
the dawn has slung
he aw arrow drape
to sissyfoo & made eastpink
dink the dimple solstice men
crut and so the birds go ttleep
and now bird number two three four five
six seven and seven million of em den
dead bens barking now the birds are yakking
& barking swinging Crack! Wow! Quiet! the
birds are making an awful racket in the Row
tweep? tswip! creet! clink! crack!
ding dong the bell rope bird of break of day
O k a y b i r d s q u i e t
p l e a s e
you birds
robins
black & blue birds
redbreasts & all
sisters,——
my little parents
have the morning
by the golden balls
And over there the sultan forgot
1959
MORE OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT
Old Angel Midnight the swan of heaven fell
and flew cockmeek
Old Angel Midnight the night onta twelve
Year Tart with the long bing bong
and the big ding dong
The boy on the sandbank blooming the moon,
The sound won’t let me sleep and since I
found out time is silence Manjusri won’t
let me hear the swash of snow no mo
in ole no po
O A M
Oh O M
The old Midnacker snacker tired a twit twit twit
the Mc Tarty long true
The yentence peak peck slit slippymeek twang
twall I’d heerd was flip the hand curse
lead pencil in the shaky desk
Ah ow HURT!
Tantapalii the silken tont retchy swan
bent necky I wish I had enuf sense to swim
as I hear
O lousy tired gal
One more!
Choired arranged silence singers imbibing
belly blum
Wreck the high charch chichipa and get firm
juicy thebest thebest no other oil
has ever heard such peanut squeeze
On top of which you yold yang midnockitwatter
lying there in baid imagining casbah concepts
from a highland fling moorish beach
by moonlight medallion indicative spidergirls
with sand legs waiting for the non-Christian
cock, come O World window Wowf
& BARK!
BARK!
BARK for the girls of Tranatat
Because by the time those two Mominuan monks
with girls & boys in their matted hair pans
sense wind in the flower the golden lord will
turn the imbecile himself into slip paper
Or dog paper
Or that pipe blend birds never peck because
their bills are too hard
That window paper
1961
Auro Boralis Shomoheen
In the ancient blue Buick
Machine that cankers the highway
With Alice fed Queens, cards
Indexes burning, mapping machines,
Parting’s sweet sorrow
But O my patine
O my patinat pinkplat Mexican
Canvas for oil in boil
Marrico—has marsh m draw
The greenhouse bong eater from
fence N’awrleans, that—
Bat and be ready, Jesus is steady,
Score’s eight to one, none,
Bone was the batter for McGoy
Poy—
Used as this ditties
for mopping the kitties
in dream’s afternoon
when nap was a drape.
1953?
LONG DEAD’S LONGEVITY
Long dead’s longevity
Coyote Viejo
Ugly un handsome old
puff chin eye crack
Bone fat face McGee
In older rains sat by
new fires
Plotting unwanted pre
doomed presupposing
Odes—long dead
Riverbottom bum
Raunchy
Scrounge
Brakeman bum
Wine cans sand sexless
Silence die tomb
Pyramid cave snake Satan
1952?
SITTING UNDER TREE NUMBER TWO
But the undrawables,
the single musical harp
rainbow’s blue green
shimmer of a cobweb—
the line of thread swimming
in the wind, blue &
silver at intervals that
appear & disappear—
7 songe along the rim
tying to the plant
as birds twurdle over
those massy fort trees
populous with song
—imaginary blossoms in my
eye moving across the
page with definite oily
rainbow water holes &
rims of beaten gold,
with toads of old
silver.
Golden fast ant back
in the hay now fromming
its feelers thru the
thicket of time then
darting across mud looking
for more trees—
A little ant bit my ass
& I said Eeesh with
my wad of gum—I
itch & pain all over
with hate of time &
tedium Save me!
Kill me!
1959
A CURSE AT THE DEVIL
Lucifer Sansfoi
Varlet Sansfoi
Omer Perdieu
I. B. Perdie
Billy Perdy
I’ll unwind your
guts from Durham
to Dover
and bury em
in Clover—
Your psalms I’ll ’ave
engraved
in your toothbone—
Your victories
nilled—
You jailed uner
a woman’s skirt
of stone—
Stone blind woman
with no guts
and only a scale—
Your thoughts & letters
Shandy’d about
in Beth
(Gaelic for grave).
Your philosophies
run up your nose
again—
Your confidences
and essays bandied
in ballrooms
from switchblade
to switchblade
—Your final
duel with
sledge hammers—
Your essential
secret twinned
to buttercups
& dying
Your guide to 32
European cities
scabbed in Isaiah
—Your red beard
snobbed in
Dolmen ruins
in the editions
of the Bleak—
Your saints and
Consolations bereft
—Your handy volume
rolled into
an urn—
And your father
and mother besmeared
at thought of you
th’unspent begotless
crop of worms
—You lay
there, you
queen for a
day, wait
for the “fen-
sucked fogs”
to carp at you
Your sweety beauty
discovered by No Name
in its hidingplace
til burrs
part from you
from lack
of issue,
sinew, all
the rest—
Gibbering quiver
graveyard HOO!
The hospital
that buries you
be Baal,
the digger
Yorrick
& the shoveler
groom—
My rosy tomatoes
pop squirting
from your awful
rotten grave—
Your profile,
erstwhile
Garboesque,
mistook by earth—
eels for some
fjord to
Sheol—
And your timid
voice box
strangled
by lie-hating
earth
forever.
May the plighted
Noah-clouds
dissolve in grief
of you—
May Red clay
be your center
& woven into necks
of hogs, boars,
booters & pilferers
& burned down
with Stalin, Hitler
& the rest—
May you bite
your lip that
you cannot
meet with God—
or
Beat me to a pub
—Amen
The Almoner,
his cup hath
no bottom,
nor I
a brim.
Devil, get thee
back
to russet caves.
1965
Sight is just dust,
Obey it must.
Mind alone
Introduced the bone.
Fire just feeds
On fiery deeds.
Only mind
The flame so kind.
Water from the moon
Appears very soon.
Mind is the sea
Made water agree.
Wind in the trees
Is a mental breeze.
Wind rose deep
From empty sleep.
Space in the ground
Was dirt by the pound.
Devoid of space
Is the mind of grace.
1955?
POEM
How’d they ever get that tap
outa me?
Wasnt I tired givin?
hard tap
Family tree.
I wasnt sweet givin.
1955?
TO EDWARD DAHLBERG
Don’t use the telephone.
People are never ready to answer it.
Use poetry.
1970
TWO POEMS
Wee wee wee poem
angel smoke
We wee not-worth-reading
little poem
You start off by suckin in
milk
And you end up suckin in
smoke
And you know
What milk and smoke
Denote
1957
TO ALLEN GINSBERG
Usta smear ma lips with whiskey
Fred and open up the doors
to make a joke—while
women waited
and Bert Lahr waited
playing what he wanted
like Duke Ellington
used to sit staring at Seymour
who implied to me the swing
of the music by his
low crash
high abidin
shoulders,
and what how who?
T H O T H A T N A P E
Compose Vehicle
Special
Banana
Nine
1959
POEM
Jazz killed itself
But dont let poetry kill itself
Dont be afraid
of the cold night air
Dont listen to institutions
when you return manuscripts to
brownstone
dont bow & scuffle
for Edith Wharton pioneers
or ursula major nebraska prose
just hang in your own backyard
& laugh play pretty
cake trombone
& if somebody give you beads
juju, jew, or otherwise,
sleep with em around your neck
Your dreams’ll maybe better
There’s no rain
there’s no me,
I’m tellin ya man
sure as shit.
1959
TO HARPO MARX
O Harpo! When did you seem like an angel
the last time?
and played the gray harp of gold?
When did you steal the silverware
and bug-spray the guests?
When did your brother find rain
in your sunny courtyard?
When did you chase your last blonde
across the Millionairesses’ lawn
with a bait hook on a line
protruding from your bicycle?
Or when last you powderpuffed
your white flour face
with fishbarrel cover?
Harpo! Who was that Lion
I saw you with?
How did you treat the midget
and Konk the giant?
Harpo, in your recent night-club appearance
in New Orleans were you old?
Were you still chiding with your horn
in the cane at your golden belt?
Did you still emerge from your pockets
another Harpo, or screw on
new wrists?
Was your vow of silence an Indian Harp?
1959
HITCH HIKER
“Tryna get to sunny Californy”—
Boom. It’s the awful raincoat
making me look like a selfdefeated self-
murdering imaginary gangster, an idiot in
a rueful coat, how can they understand
my damp packs—my mud packs—
“Look Joh, a hitchhiker”
“He looks like he’s got a gun underneath
that I.R.A. coat”
“Look Fred, that man by the road”
“Some sexfiend got in print in 1938
in Sex Magazine”—
“You found his blue corpse in a
greenshade edition, with axe blots”
1967
FOUR POEMS from “SAN FRANCISCO BLUES”
1
The rooftop of the beatup
tenement
on 3rd & Harrison
has Belfast painted
black on yellow
on the side
the old Frisco wood is
shown with weatherbeaten
rainboards, & a
washed out blue bottle
once painted for wild
commercial reasons by
an excited seltzerite
as firemen came last
afternoon & raised the
ladder to a fruitless
fire that was not there,
so, is Belfast singing
in this time
when brand’s forgotten
taste washed in
rain the gullies broadened
and everybody gone
and acrobats of the
tenement
who dug bel fast
divers all
and the divers all dove
ah
little girls make
shadows on the
sidewalk shorter
than the shadow
of death
in this town—
2
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.
3
Eccentrics from out of town
Better not fill in
this blank
For a job on my gray boat
And Monkeysuits I furnish.
Sober serious
Marcelle-waved
Heroes only.
4
And
The taste of worms
Is soft & salty
Like the sea