Reality Sandwiches Part 3

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 ident.i.ty radiant with l.u.s.ts 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, b.u.m 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 f.a.g 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 h.e.l.lish 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 Pa.s.saic, 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 G.o.dly extra drops for the stringbeans and daisies; three times walked round the gra.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ney 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 b.u.t.tons & 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 f.u.c.k 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 pus.h.i.+ng his rollypoly belly thru the trees.

N sees all girls as visions of their inner c.u.n.ts, yes, it's true!

and all men walking along thinking of their spirit c.o.c.ks.

So look at that poor dread boy with two-day black hair all over his dirty face, how he must hate his c.o.c.k -- 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 by a cane, we all look up, silence moves, huge changes upon the ground, and in the air thoughts fly all over filling s.p.a.ce.

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 G.o.d 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 Maytime, and down to the harborside the s.h.i.+ps, 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 G.o.d, 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 b.u.ms snore under the pavement a dark Turkish bath the cornice gapes at midnight Seattle! -- department stores full of fur coats and camping equipment, mad noontime businessmen in gabardine coats talk- ing on streetcorners to keep up the structure, I float past, birds cry, Salvation Army offers soup on rotting block, six thousand beggars groan at a meal of hopeful beans.

1956

PSALM III

To G.o.d: to illuminate all men. Beginning with Skid Road.

Let Occidental and Was.h.i.+ngton be transformed into a higher place, the plaza of eternity.

Illuminate the welders in s.h.i.+pyards with the brilliance of their torches.

Let the crane operator lift up his arm for joy.

Let elevators creak and speak, ascending and descending in awe.

Let the mercy of the flower's direction beckon in the eye.

Let the straight flower bespeak its purpose in straightness -- to seek the light.

Let the crooked flower bespeak its purpose in crookedness -- to seek the light.

Let the crookedness and straightness bespeak the light.

Let Puget Sound be a blast of light.

I feed on your Name like a c.o.c.kroach on a crumb -- this c.o.c.kroach is holy.

Seattle 1956

TEARS

I'm crying all the time now.

I cried all over the street when I left the Seattle Wobbly Hall.

I cried listening to Bach.

I cried looking at the happy flowers in my backyard, I cried at the sadness of the middle-aged trees.

Happiness exists I feel it.

I cried for my soul, I cried for the world's soul.

The world has a beautiful soul.