He was delighted also with Havana. Sitting in the bar at the Nacional, we continued to discuss the possibility of having C. pay us a visit at the island. It was not without difficulty that I eventually managed to persuade Racky that writing him would be inadvisable.
We decided to look for an apartment right there in Vedado for Racky. He did not seem to want to come back here to Cold Point. We also decided that living in Havana he would need a larger income than I. I am already having the greater part of Hope’s estate transferred to his name in the form of a trust fund which I shall administer until he is of age. It was his mother’s money, after all.
We bought a new convertible, and he drove me out to Rancho Boyeros in it when I took my plane. A Cuban named Claudio with very white teeth, whom Racky had met in the pool that morning, sat between us.
We were waiting in front of the landing field. An official finally unhooked the chain to let the passengers through. “If you get fed up, come to Havana,” said Racky, pinching my arm.
The two of them stood together behind the rope, waving to me, their shirts flapping in the wind as the plane started to move.
The wind blows by my head; between each wave there are thousands of tiny licking and chopping sounds as the water hurries out of the crevices and holes; and a part-floating, part-submerged feeling of being in the water haunts my mind even as the hot sun burns my face. I sit here and I read, and I wait for the pleasant feeling of repletion that follows a good meal, to turn slowly, as the hours pass along, into the even more delightly, slightly stirring sensation deep within, which accompanies the awakening of the appetite.
I am perfectly happy here in reality, because I still believe that nothing very drastic is likely to befall this part of the island in the near future.
MS Ferncape
(New York- Casablanca)
1947
Harold Norse
Green Ballet
For W. I. Scobie
overhead
on the bridge
trucks are speeding under angels
parks are empty & leaves are falling
erect in mud
their shoes slurping
on the riverbank two people
are breaking laws with their hips
at the top of the steps a sign reads
WORKERS ONLY NO TRESPASSING
one is in rags
he is 16
he has red lips
the other is a man
who sees god as he looks up
at the boy who looks down
the boy is thinking of the whore with the man
he spied on in the shadows
by Hadrian’s Tomb
as he clutches the man’s ears
tensing his thick
thighs
& they come
the man thinks god god
& the terror!
any moment all’s reversed
only the world’s uniform THUD
all this time the Tiber sucking
sucking
the fat mud
Rome, 1960
In Italian the title, balletti verdi, means gay scenes or scandals, in the vernacular.
John Giorno
Hi Risque
I want
to scat
in your mouth,
I want you
to scat
in my mouth,
I want to scat
on your face
and rub it in
chocolate,
caviar,
and champagne,
absolute
preliminaries
pushing
the inner
envelope
to the limit,
one more
time,
mining
diamonds
with your tongue
for the crown
of one
of the kings
of hell,
when the going
gets rough
the tough
get gorgeous
squeezing
money
from the air
squeezing money
from the air,
snake
tongue,
stretching
your tongue
to the Buddhas
diving
into the wreck
diving into
the wreck,
curiosity
and compassion,
and an exercise
in non-aversion,
fear
spiraling
from you
fear spiraling from you,
that gun’s got
blood
in its hole
We do not do
this anymore,
but I still
think about it
when I’m
jerking off,
I was king
of promiscuity,
LSD,
crystal meth,
fist fucking
with 40 guys
for 14 hours,
it’s worse
than I thought
and now,
every one
of them
I ever made
love to,
every single
one,
is dead,
and may they be
resting
in great
equanimity
We gave
a party
for the gods
and the gods
all came.
1990
Allen Ginsberg
On Neal’s Ashes
Delicate eyes that blinked blue Rockies all ash
nipples, Ribs I touched w/ my thumb are ash
mouth my tongue touched once or twice all ash
bony cheeks soft on my belly are cinder, ash
earlobes & eyelids, youthful cock tip, curly pubis
breast warmth, man palm, high school thigh,
baseball bicept arm, asshole anneal’d to silken skin
all ashes, all ashes again.
August 1968
William Burroughs
“Sex as a biological weapon”
INTERVIEWER: Sex seems equated with death frequently in your work.
BURROUGHS: That is an extension of the idea of sex as a biological weapon. I feel that sex, like practically every other human manifestation, has been degraded for control purposes, or really for anti-human purposes. This whole puritanism. How are we ever going to find out anything about sex scientifically, when a priori the subject cannot even be investigated ? It can’t even be thought about or written about. That was one of the interesting things about [Wilhelm] Reich.93 He was one of the few people who ever tried to investigate sex—sexual phenomena, from a scientific point of view. There’s this prurience and this fear of sex. We know nothing about sex. What is it? Why is it pleasurable? What is pleasure? Relief from tension? Well, possibly.
Allen Ginsberg
Rain-Wet Asphalt Heat, Garbage Curbed Cans Overflowing
I hauled down lifeless mattresses to sidewalk refuse-piles, old rugs stept on from Paterson to Lower East Side filled with bed-bugs, grey pillows, couch seats treasured from the street laid back on the street
—out, to hear Murder-tale, 3rd Street cyclists attacked tonite—Bopping along in rain, Choas fallen over City roofs, shrouds of chemical vapour drifting over building-tops—
Get the Times, Nixon says peace reflected from the Moon, but I found no boy body to sleep with all night on pavements 3 AM home in sweating drizzle—
Those mattresses soggy lying by full five garbagepails—
Barbara, Maretta, Peter Steven Rosebud slept on these Pillows years ago, forgotten names, also made love to me, I had these mattresses four years on my floor—
Gerard, Jimmy many months, even blond Gordon later, Paul with the beautiful big cock, that teenage boy that lived in Penn
sylvania, forgotten numbers, young dream loves and lovers, earthly bellies—many strong youths with eyes closed, come sighing and helping me come—
Desires already forgotten, tender persons used and kissed goodbye and all the times I came to myself alone in the dark dreaming of Neal or Billy Budd
—nameless angels of half-life—heart beating & eyes weeping for lovely phantoms—
Back from the Gem Spa, into the hallway, a glance behind and sudden farewell to the bedbug-ridden mattresses piled soggy in dark rain.
August 2, 1969
Harold Norse
Now France
now france yesterday italy & it’s fall
special paris light slant on treetops gray
buildingtops clear hard like french eyes bulge
of intellect chalcedony eyes slightly
inhuman no? & how
architecture creates the sky
will someone stop me in the street saying
how wonderful! we don’t know each other?!
just walk arm in arm
& never ask our names!
make love at sight! anonymous as monks!
esperanto lips!
africa in my arms! near east!
but how to slow down i’m running away
are those my arteries or steel tracks?
stations in the dawn old man
sourly pushing letters in huge sacks
are they my unfinished plans?
paris of leaves beards duffel coats!
am i interested in radio telescopes?
the kind that look inside the moon?
parabolic mirrors? limits of the solar system?
izvestia follows me around sneers at my life
no wonder i’m feeling blue
i’m here to tell you of a finer fate
to explore trees
listen to colors
pick the golden flower
feel under someone’s duffel coat
for the clear light
of the void
down on your knees! pray to the holy human body! worship god in the fork of the thighs!
i can’t blow the ‘socialist vicory’
nor raise any flag but my lilywhite ass
to all the silly nations who want me to choose sides
I’ve chosen orgasm/feeling/smell/soul
freedom of dream who is freer than when he dreams?
i choose the light of the sky over the boulevards
& the bookstalls full of sexy pictures
& occult prophecies THE EARTH
Allen Ginsberg
“Drag up your soul to its proper bliss…”
from an interview in the PARIS REVIEW, 1965
… the only way you can be saved is to sing. In other words, the only way to drag up, from the depths of this depression, to drag up your soul to its proper bliss, and understanding, is to give yourself, completely, to your heart’s desire. The image will be determined by the heart’s compass, by the compass of what the heart moves toward and desires. And then you get on your knees or on your lap or on your head and you sing and chant prayers and mantras, till you reach a state of ecstasy and understanding, and the bliss overflows out of your body.
William Burroughs
“The gay state”
from Howard Brookner’s 1984 film WILLIAM BURROUGHS
The gay state, that’s what I’m aiming for and I want us to be as tough as the Israelis. Anybody fucks around with a gay any place in the world we’re gonna be there. [Cut.] Well we’re a minority, why the hell don’t we have the right to protect ourselves? [Cut.] We have to build up an international organization with false passports, guns on arrival, the whole lot, the whole terrorist lot. We are a precarious minority, we gotta fight for our lives. Do you understand? If they oppose the gay state we’re going to find them, track them down and kill them. [Pauses to finish drink.] Why not?
* Excerpt from Jamie Russell’s Queer Burroughs, 112.
Permissions
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for granting permission to reprint copyrighted material:
I. The Road of Excess (Or, Saintly Sinners)
Allen Ginsberg: “In Society,” from Collected Poems 1947–1980 by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright © 1984 by Allen Ginsberg. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Herbert Huncke: “On Meeting Kinsey,” from The Herbert Huncke Reader. Reprinted by permission of the Herbert Huncke Estate.
William Burroughs: “Nobler, I thought, to die a man than live on, a sex monster…” from Queer by William S. Burroughs, copyright © 1985 by William S. Burroughs. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Alan Ansen: “Dead Drunk,” from Disorderly Houses, copyright © 1961 by Alan Ansen, and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Herbert Huncke: “Youth,” from The Herbert Huncke Reader. Reprinted by permission of the Herbert Huncke Estate.
William Burroughs: “I don’t mind being called queer…” Letter to Allen Ginsberg; 4/22/52, from Letters of William S. Burroughs: 1945–1959 by William S. Burroughs, edited by Oliver Harris, copyright © 1993 by William S. Burroughs. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Norman Mailer: “Burroughs may be gay, but he’s a man…” from Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs by Ted Morgan. Fair use.
Gore Vidal: “We owed it to literary history…” from Palimpsest by Gore Vidal, copyright © 1995 by Literary Creations Enterprises, Inc. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Gore Vidal: “Norman wanted to know what really happened…” from Palimpsest by Gore Vidal, copyright © 1995 by Literary Creations Enterprises, Inc. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Allen Ginsberg: “Something strange has happened…” from Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties by Allen Ginsberg, copyright © 1977. Used by permission of Grove/ Atlantic, Inc.
Allen Ginsberg: “I sit naked in my room remembering…” from Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties by Allen Ginsberg, copyright © 1977. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Diane di Prima: “It was a strange, nondescript kind of orgy…” from Memoirs of a Beatnik by Diane di Prima, copyright © 1969, 1988 by Diane di Prima. Used by permission of Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
II. Male Muses (Or, Sex Without Borders)
Jack Kerouac: “Oh, I love, love, love women!” from On the Road by Jack Kerouac, reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright © 1957 by John Sampas, Literary Rep.
Neal Cassady: “I’m on a spree tonight…” from a letter to Allen Ginsberg, April 10, 1947. Reprinted by kind permission of Carolyn Cassady.
Allen Ginsberg: “Love is not controllable…” from a letter to Carolyn Cassady, June 1952. Reprinted by kind permission of The Allen Ginsberg Trust.
William Burroughs: “Bradley the Buyer,” from Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, copyright © 1959. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Jack Kerouac: “Posterity will laugh at me…” from Jack Kerouac, Selected Letters: 1940–1956, edited by Ann Charters. Reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright © 1957 by John Sampas, Literary Rep.
Allen Ginsberg: “Love Poem on Theme by Whitman,” from Collected Poems 1947–1980 by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright © 1984 by Allen Ginsberg. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Elise Cowen: “Teacher—Your Body My Kabbalah,” reprinted with permission from Women of the Beat Generation, edited by Brenda Knight, copyright © 1996.
Allen Ginsberg and Allen Young: “Accept my soul with all its throbbings and sweetness…” from The Gay Sunshine Interview, copyright © 1972. Reprinted by kind permission of Allen Young.
Jack Kerouac: “If like me you renounce love and the world…” from Jack Kerouac, Selected Letters: 1940–1956, edited by Ann Charters. Reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc
. Copyright © 1957 by John Sampas, Literary Rep.
Allen Ginsberg: “Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo,” from Collected Poems 1947–1980 by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright © 1984 by Allen Ginsberg. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Allen Ginsberg: excerpt from “Howl,” from Collected Poems 1947–1980 by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright © 1955 by Allen Ginsberg. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
William Burroughs: “I find myself getting jealous of Kiki…” Letter to Jack Kerouac: 8/18/54. Letters of William S. Burroughs: 1945–1959 by William S. Burroughs, edited by Oliver Harris, copyright © 1993 by William S. Burroughs. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Alan Ansen: “The Newport News has arrived in Venice for a week’s stay…” from Disorderly Houses, copyright © 1961 by Alan Ansen, and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
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