Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen. Страница 163

A mosquito comes round your head buzzing

you know he’s going to bite you if he can—

First you look at your thoughts

then you look at the moon

then look at the reflection of the moon in your eyeball

splatter of light on surface retina

opening and closing the blotched circle

and the mosquito buzzes, disturbing your senses

and you remember your itching thumb as mind

wanders again.

Shobo-an

The Acorn people

read newspapers

by kerosene light.

By Kitkitdizze Pond in June with Gary Snyder

Bookkeeping in the moonlight

—“frogs count

my checks.”

Driving Volkswagen

with tired feet

returned from camping

in Black Buttes

thru sad dust glories

turning off Malakoff

Diggings road

Blinded by sunlight

squirrel in

windshield.

September 1974

Ego Confessions

(1974–1977)

Ego Confession

I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America

Introduced to Gyalwa Karmapa heir of the Whispered Transmission Crazy Wisdom Practice Lineage

as the secret young wise man who visited him and winked anonymously decade ago in Gangtok

Prepared the way for Dharma in America without mentioning Dharma—scribbled laughter

Who saw Blake and abandoned God

To whom the Messianic Fink sent messages darkest hour sleeping on steel sheets “somewhere in the Federal Prison system” Weathermen got no Moscow Gold

who went backstage to Cecil Taylor serious chat chord structure & Time in a nightclub

who fucked a rose-lipped rock star in a tiny bedroom slum watched by a statue of Vajrasattva—

and overthrew the CIA with a silent thought—

Old Bohemians many years hence in Viennese beergardens’ll recall

his many young lovers with astonishing faces and iron breasts

gnostic apparatus and magical observation of rainbow-lit spiderwebs

extraordinary cooking, lung stew & Spaghetti a la Vongole and recipe for salad dressing 3 parts oil one part vinegar much garlic and honey a spoonful

his extraordinary ego, at service of Dharma and completely empty

unafraid of its own self’s spectre

parroting gossip of gurus and geniuses famous for their reticence—

Who sang a blues made rock stars weep and moved an old black guitarist to laughter in Memphis—

I want to be the spectacle of Poesy triumphant over trickery of the world

Omniscient breathing its own breath thru War tear gas spy hallucination

whose common sense astonished gaga Gurus and rich Artistes—

who called the Justice department & threaten’d to Blow the Whistle

Stopt Wars, turned back petrochemical Industries’ Captains to grieve & groan in bed

Chopped wood, built forest houses & established farms

distributed monies to poor poets & nourished imaginative genius of the land

Sat silent in jazz roar writing poetry with an ink pen—

wasn’t afraid of God or Death after his 48th year—

let his brains turn to water under Laughing Gas his gold molar pulled by futuristic dentists

Seaman knew ocean’s surface a year

carpenter late learned bevel and mattock

son, conversed with elder Pound & treated his father gently

—All empty all for show, all for the sake of Poesy

to set surpassing example of sanity as measure for late generations

Exemplify Muse Power to the young avert future suicide

accepting his own lie & the gaps between lies with equal good humor

Solitary in worlds full of insects & singing birds all solitary

—who had no subject but himself in many disguises

some outside his own body including empty air-filled space forests & cities—

Even climbed mountains to create his mountain, with ice ax & crampons & ropes, over Glaciers—

San Francisco, October 1974

Mugging

Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street’s dusk—

Walked out of my home ten years, walked out in my honking neighborhood

Tonite at seven walked out past garbage cans chained to concrete anchors

Walked under black painted fire escapes, giant castiron plate covering a hole in ground

—Crossed the street, traffic lite red, thirteen bus roaring by liquor store,

past corner pharmacy iron grated, past Coca Cola & Mylai posters fading scraped on brick

Past Chinese Laundry wood door’d, & broken cement stoop steps For Rent hall painted green & purple Puerto Rican style

Along E. 10th’s glass splattered pavement, kid blacks & Spanish oiled hair adolescents’ crowded house fronts—

Ah, tonite I walked out on my block NY City under humid summer sky Halloween,

thinking what happened Timothy Leary joining brain police for a season?

thinking what’s all this Weathermen, secrecy & selfrighteousness beyond reason—F.B.I. plots?

Walked past a taxicab controlling the bottle strewn curb—

past young fellows with their umbrella handles & canes leaning against a ravaged Buick

—and as I looked at the crowd of kids on the stoop—a boy stepped up, put his arm around my neck

tenderly I thought for a moment, squeezed harder, his umbrella handle against my skull,

and his friends took my arm, a young brown companion tripped his foot ’gainst my ankle—

as I went down shouting Om Ah Hu? to gangs of lovers on the stoop watching

slowly appreciating, why this is a raid, these strangers mean strange business

with what—my pockets, bald head, broken-healed-bone leg, my softshoes, my heart—

Have they knives? Om Ah Hu?—Have they sharp metal wood to shove in eye ear ass? Om Ah Hu?

& slowly reclined on the pavement, struggling to keep my woolen bag of poetry address calendar & Leary-lawyer notes hung from my shoulder

dragged in my neat orlon shirt over the crossbar of a broken metal door

dragged slowly onto the fire-soiled floor an abandoned store, laundry candy counter 1929—

now a mess of papers & pillows & plastic car seat covers cracked cockroachcorpsed ground—

my wallet back pocket passed over the iron foot step guard

and fell out, stole by God Muggers’ lost fingers, Strange—

Couldn’t tell—snakeskin wallet actually plastic, 70 dollars my bank money for a week,

old broken wallet—and dreary plastic contents—Amex card & Manf. Hanover Trust Credit too—business card from Mr. Spears British Home Minister Drug Squad—my draft card—membership ACLU & Naropa Institute Instructor’s identification

Om Ah Hu? I continued chanting Om Ah Hu?