useless to jack off to your youthful shadow anymore.
And I your genius poet first love ignored hypoglycemic,
impotent, gouty, squint-eyed, halfway bald—
Reading this book gives me youth back again, not old
in vain, at last you bring love to Catullus & Poetry
humble enough to print these translations by yourself.
December 2, 1987, 4:30 A.M.
Grandma Earth’s Song
I started down Capitol Hill side along unfamiliar black central avenues warily uncertain which streets thru Fillmore district to City Hall valley center,
and as I passed a block or two I saw a fragile crone marching toward me up hill, Grandma Bag-lady ragged dressed with firm ancient steps Old Ma Earth
dragging a shopping cart filled with cans bottles & plastic newspapers tied
with silk stockings wandering alone singing out loud on way to Civic Center
When dull roots write Laws
Jerusalem to New York
Poor Jews break Arab Jaws
Blacks eat greasy pork
What’s the Planet News?
Wall Street’s poison pill
Palestinians stone Jews
Water runs downhill
Young soldiers gonna die
Old presidents get AIDS
They bankrupted the sky
The ozone layer fades
Crazy people got money
I own State Capitols
Sheriff calls me honey
The army’s a bunch of fools
I want my welfare stamps
I want my movie show
I got ten kerosene lamps
I’m 99 years old
This town’s already dead
This country’s on the skids
This state’s made out of lead
I can’t feed my kids
My name is Gaia ah ha ha
Put me in jail I screw the sky
Nothing to win or lose Poppa
Born your gonna die
Adam bombs & newsboy hoaxes
Fakers yak the Oval Room
I live in cardboard boxes
They killed the ocean’s womb
Tear up your welfare check
I’ll eat my way to Heaven
Throw me in Walnut Creek
I’ll vomit Pacific Ocean
Wakening as she passed by I thought, she’s improvising street doggerel epic popular song cackling in everyone’s Immortal brain Anything comes to mind’s the right politics to ruin Police State.
February 13, 1988, 7:30–9:00 A.M.
Salutations to Fernando Pessoa
Every time I read Pessoa I think
I’m better than he is I do the same thing
more extravagantly—he’s only from Portugal,
I’m American greatest Country in the world
right now End of XX Century tho Portugal
had a big empire in the 15th century never mind
now shrunk to a Corner of Iberian peninsula
whereas New York take New York for instance
tho Mexico City’s bigger N.Y.’s richer think of Empire State
Building not long ago world empire’s biggest skyscraper—
be that as’t may I’ve experienced 61 years’ XX Century
Pessoa walked down Rua do Ouro only till 1936
He entered Whitman so I enter Pessoa no
matter what they say besides dead he wouldn’t object.
What way’m I better than Pessoa?
Known on 4 Continents I have 25 English books he only 3
his mostly Portuguese, but that’s not his fault—
U.S.A.’s a bigger country
merely 2 Trillion in debt a passing freakout,
Reagan’s dirty work an American Century aberration
unrepresenting our Nation Whitman sang in Epic manner
tho worried about in Democratic Vistas
As a Buddhist not proud my superiority to Pessoa
I’m humble Pessoa was nuts big difference,
tho apparently gay—same as Socrates,
consider Michelangelo da Vinci Shakespeare
inestimable comerado Walt
True I was tainted Pinko at an early age a mere trifle
science itself destroys ozone layers this era antiStalinists
poison entire earth with radioactive anticommunism.
Maybe I lied somewhat
rarely in verse, only protecting others’ reputations.
Frankly too Candid about my mother tho meant well
Did Pessoa mention his mother? she’s interesting,
powerful to birth sextuplets
Alberto Cairo Alvaro de Campos Ricardo Reis Bernardo Soares &
Alexander Search simultaneously
with Fernando Pessoa himself a classic sexophrenic
Confusing personae not so popular
outside Portugal’s tiny kingdom (till recently a second-rate police state)
Let me get to the point er I forget what it was
but certainly enjoy making comparisons between this Ginsberg &
Pessoa
people talk about in Iberia hardly any books in English
presently the world’s major diplomatic language extended throughout
China.
Besides he was a shrimp, himself admits in interminable “Salutations to
Walt Whitman”
whereas 5′7½″ height
somewhat above world average, no immodesty,
I’m speaking seriously about me & Pessoa.
Anyway he never influenced me, never read Pessoa
before I wrote my celebrated Howl already translated into 24 languages,
not to this day’s Pessoa influence an anxiety
Midnight April 12 ’88 merely glancing his book
certainly influences me in passing, only reasonable
but reading a page in translation hardly proves “Influence.”
Turning to Pessoa, what’d he write about? Whitman
(Lisbon, the sea etc.) method peculiarly longwinded,
diarrhea mouth some people say—Pessoa Schmessoa.
April 12, 1988
May Days 1988
I
As I cross my kitchen floor the thought of Death returns,
day after day, as I wake & drink lemon juice & hot water,
brush my teeth & blow my nose, stand at toilet a yellow stream
issuing from my body, look out curtained windows, across the street
Mary Help of Christians R.C. Church, how many years
empty the garbage pail, carry black plastic bags to the sidewalk,
before I boil the last soft egg,
day after day glance my altar sitting pillow a sidelong look & sigh,
pass bookcases’ Greek lyrics & volumes of Military Industrial Secrecy?
How many mornings out the window Springtime’s grey clouds drift over a wooden owl
on the Rectory roof, pigeons flutter off the street lamp to an iron fence, I return to kitchen
oatmeal cooking in an iron pot, sit in a wooden chair, choose a soupspoon, dreaming out the window eat my gruel
as ailanthus trees bud & grow thick green, seaweed in rainy Atlantis,
lose leaves after snowfall, sit bare-branched in January’s rusty winds?
Snap photographs focus’d on the clothesline, courtyard chimneypots a block away?
How many years lie alone in bed and stroke my cock
or read the Times on a pillow midnite, answer telephone talk, my Stepmother
or Joe in Washington, wait for a knock on the door it’s portly Peter sober hesitant
inquiring supper, rarely visiting, rueful a life gone by—you got the monthly rent?
armfuls of mid-morn mail arriving with despairing Secretaries—
rise and tuck my shirt in, turn the doorlock key, go down hallway stairs,
enter New York City, Christine’s Polish restaurant around East 12
th Street corner on 1st Avenue
taxi uptown to art museums or visit Dr. Brown, chest x-rays, smoking cough or flu
Turn on the News from Palestine, Listen to Leadbelly’s tape lament, Black Girl, Jim Crow, Irene—and
Sunday Puerto Ricans climb concrete steps week after week to church.
II
Sox in the laundry, snap on the kitchen light midnite icebox
raid, sun-dried tomatoes, soft swiss cheese & ham, Pineapple juice,
low rent control $260 per mo, clear sanded gymseal’d floors, white walls,
Blake’s Tyger on the bedroom bookcase, cabs rattling on dark asphalt below,
Silence, a solitary house, Charles Fourier on bedside table waiting inspection, switch light off—
Pajamas in drawer for sleep, 80 volumes behind the headboard for browsing—
Irving Howe’s Yiddish Poetry, Atilla József, Sashibusan Das Gupta’s Obscure Religious Cults, Céline, De Vulgari Eloquentia—
What riches for old age? What cozy naps and long nights’ dreams? Browsing in Persepolis and Lhasa!
What more ask existence? Except time, more time, ripe time & calm
& Warless time to contemplate collapsing years, tho body teeth brain elbow ache,
a crooked creak at backbone bottom, dry nostrils, mottled ankle
& smart tongue, how many years to talk, snap photos, sing in theaters
improvise in classroom street church radio, far from Congress?
How many more years eyes closed 9 A.M. wake worrying
the ulcer in my cheek is’t cancer? Should I have charged Burroughs’ biographer for photos
reprinted from 40 years ago? Miles the editor’s stylistic competence OK
for Lit Hist Beat Generation? Should I rise & meditate
or sleep in daylight recuperate flu? phone ringing half an hour ago
What’s on the Answer Machine? Give back Advances to Harper’s?
Who promised deadlines for this photo book? Wasn’t I up 2 A.M. revising Poems?
Spontaneous verse?!? Take a plane to Greenland, visit Dublin?
PEN Club meet May 17, decision Israeli Censorship Arabic Press?
Call C—— O—— Yiddish translator poetress Zionist yenta?
Write concentration camp expert moralist Elie Wiesel, what’s his word
“Arabs shd throw words not stones?”—that quote accurate from the Times?
Should I get up right now, crosslegged scribbling Journals
with motor roar in street downstairs, stolen autos doctor’d at the curb
or pull the covers over achy bones? How many years awake or sleepy
How many mornings to be or not to be?
How many morning Mays to come, birds chirp insistent on six-story roofs?
buds rise in backyard cities? Forsythia yellow by brick walls & rusty bedsprings near the fence?
III
How many Sundays wake and lie immobile eyes closed remembering Death,
7 A.M. Spring Sunlight out the window the noise a Nuyorican drunkard on the corner
reminds me of Peter, Naomi, my nephew Alan, am I mad myself, have always been so
waking in N.Y. 61st year to realize childless I am a motherless freak
like so many millions, worlds from Paterson Los Angeles to Amazon
Humans & Whales screaming in despair from Empire State Building top to Arctic Ocean bottom—?
May 1–3, 1988
Numbers in U.S. File Cabinet (Death Waits to Be Executed)
100,000,000 buffalo 17th century on North American Plains
$136,000,000,000 Farm Program costs encouraged chemical overuse 1980s decade
$4,500,000 Agriculture Department research on Natural farm methods 1980s
300,000 National junkies
100,000 alcohol deaths yearly
385,000 tobacco deaths heart attack cancer a year
30,000 deaths “illicit substances” yearly
$11,000,000,000 budget war on drugs 1990
1,000,000,000 people on world malnourished diseased
3,600,000 estimated American Homeless
300,000 mental patients dumped on streets 1970s–1980s
300 homeless slept outdoors Tompkins Park N.Y.C. July 29, 1989
17,000 meals served St. Peter’s soup kitchen Morristown N.J.
110,000,000 man-made deaths Wars holocausts fatality camps XX Century
3°–8° Fahrenheit increase earth temperature next century computers project
Lambert 3-6606 Louis Ginsberg’s phone for 20 years in Paterson N.J.
65 Decibels sound level ordinary speech
100 Decibels rock concert sound level
28,000,000 current cases hearing loss U.S.A.
6,000 workers, Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant
$300,000,000 yearly pay & benefits Rocky Flats Colorado
1% Colorado manufacturing activity’s at Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility
70 FBI agents raided Rocky Flats investigating 10,000 gallon toxic waste tanks 1989
$100,000,000,000 to 200,000,000,000 estimate nuclear weapons complex cleanup costs
Savings & Loan Association bankruptcy taxpayers’ costs it says here $500,000,000,000
70,000 Salvadorians killed in Civil War majority by Government Paramilitary Death Squads funded by U.S.A.
40,000 names Doris Lessing too on National Automated Immigration Lookout System barred entering U.S.A.
3,000 citizens killed by Shining Path, Peru 1972–1979
3,000 citizens disappeared in Government custody Peru 1972–1979
U.S. produces 24% planetary Greenhouse gas, consumes 40% world’s gasoline
$2,000,000,000,000-plus U.S. National debt 1990 ante Iraq War
$65 cost of Harry Smith’s eyeglasses
20 largest World Cities by year 2000 none U.S.-European none speak English
1 in 10 Salvadorians displaced in decade’s counterinsurgency war
1 sun per known solar system
1 set Wisdom teeth
1 mother of all
1 wrong move
1 bad apple
1 way street
1 anus each
1 non-God
1 down 2 to go
March 1990
Return of Kral Majales
This silver anniversary much hair’s gone from my head and I am the King of May
And tho I am King of May my howls & proclamations present are banned by FCC on America’s electric airwaves 6 A.M. to midnight
So King of May I return through Heaven flying to reclaim my paper crown
And I am King of May with high blood pressure, diabetes, gout, Bell’s palsy, kidneystones & calm eyeglasses
And wear the foolish crown of no ignorance no wisdom anymore no fear no hope in capitalist striped tie & Communist dungarees
No laughing matter the loss of the planet next hundred years
And I am the King of May returned with a diamond big as the universe an empty mind
And I am the King of May lacklove bouzerant in Springtime with a feeble practice of meditation
And I am King of May Distinguished Brooklyn English Professor singing
All gone all gone all overgone all gone sky-high now old mind so Ah!
April 25, 1990
Elephant in the Meditation Hall
Yes all spiritual groups scandal the shrine room
What about San Francisco Roshi & the board director’s wife
What about high living limousine expense accounts in Moscow?
What about the late Rajneesh & poisoned gefilte fish in Oregon?
What’s hiding under Rajneeshis’ Orange skullcaps? Brains?
Then old L.A. Mountain Roshi even tap’d his young girls
and East Coast Roshi’s semen dribbled from Hawaii to the broom closets of the Catskills
Maezumi Roshi caused grief his senseis’ hearts wrung out with midnight sake & beer
Later he thanked them for A.A.
Veteran Zenmas
ter with motorcycle & community farm chorale felt up little boys
& a big guy too, tough as nails
Remember a strange Mongolian Russian fruitcake Lama in Polk Gulch Bay Area?
Vajracharya Trungpa! Dont mention the naked poet at the Halloween Party!
And the whispered transmission regent died of AIDS (disciple a straight guy sick they say)
Marxists were right, religion the people’s opium!
But who’re they to talk lookit Mao a Marxist his picture on every Chinese wall & Little Red Book
wherefore everyone stood up bedtime nites reciting his dread slogans?
They still had pictures of Stalin on truckcab windows in Gori 1985 a scandal!
And New Left carried psychedelic pictures of Mao, Che Guevara & Castro up and down Empire State’s stairways
A scandal of the sixties! And marvelous atheist Khmer Rouge read Marx Sartre & Erich Fromm,
how many’d they murder with religious good intentions?
What US President hasn’t sponsored war, Lumumba’s assassination, an H-bomb,
trillion dollar Savings & Loan mistakes? Scandals! taxpayers gotta subsi dize Banks!
Now we gotta digest Plutonium? how evacuate CIA?
Scandal hundreds homeless under Brooklyn Bridge freezing Xmas &
New Year’s Eve! Millions homeless in America!
Who’ll gotta pay for 500,000 U.S. boys & girls visiting Arabian Deserts?
Who’ll cough up billions for Iraq War to save a President’s face?
Twelve Billion dollars mickeymouse the year’s drug wars?
El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala we paid death squads for decades
Nobody does anything right! Gods, Popes, Mullahs, Communists, Poets, Financiers!
My own life, scandal! lazy bum! secondhand royal scarlet ties & Yves St. Laurent Salvation Army blazers
How many boys let me caress their thighs!
How many girls cursed my cold beard? I better commit suicide!
That wouldn’t work either, it’ll be a beatnik scandal
after Cassady’s railroad track death, Joan Burroughs’ bullet in head,
Orlovsky sane in Bellevue 1st Ave., Kerouac’s liver collapse & ruptured esophagus!
Trapped in living nightmare, I made a big mistake I got born,
The world came out of a black hole, whole universe
a scandal, illusion, everyone deluded, a cosmic elephant in the meditation planet,
Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 78