Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen. Страница 239

May 6, 1986, 3:10 A.M.

Cosmopolitan Greetings

To Struga Festival Golden Wreath Laureates

& International Bards 1986

Stand up against governments, against God.

Stay irresponsible.

Say only what we know & imagine.

Absolutes are coercion.

Change is absolute.

Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.

Observe what’s vivid.

Notice what you notice.

Catch yourself thinking.

Vividness is self-selecting.

If we don’t show anyone, we’re free to write anything.

Remember the future.

Advise only yourself.

Don’t drink yourself to death.

Two molecules clanking against each other require an observer to become scientific data.

The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal world after Einstein.

The universe is subjective.

Walt Whitman celebrated Person.

We are observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person.

Universe is Person.

Inside skull vast as outside skull.

Mind is outer space.

“Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound.”

“First thought, best thought.”

Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.

Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.

Syntax condensed, sound is solid.

Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.

Consonants around vowels make sense.

Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.

Subject is known by what she sees.

Others can measure their vision by what we see.

Candor ends paranoia.

Kral Majales

June 25, 1986

Boulder, Colorado

FIFTH INTERNATIONALE

Fifth Internationale

To Billy MacKeever

Arise ye prisoners of your mind-set

Arise Neurotics of the Earth

For Insight thunders Liberation

A sacred world’s in birth

No more Attachment’s chains shall bind us

Mind’s Aggression no more rules

The Earth shall rise on new foundations

We have been jerks we shall be Fools

’Tis the Path of Accumulation

Let each sit on his place

The International Crazy Wisdom School

Could save the Human Race

July 1986

Naropa

EUROPE, WHO KNOWS?

Europe, Who Knows?

All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Asphodel’s fine but next year what comes with the rose?

Cabbage smells good but depends which way the wind blows

All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Wormwood skies’ll poison the sea: Revelation

Oslo to Athens black clouds’ve enlightened the nations

Cesium mushrooms & milk may mutate the Creation

All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Crossing the park in Munich Max Planck Institute

On my forearm and brow a film of invisible soot

Fell on my skin out of heaven, a new set of clothes

All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Woke up in Poland, maple leaves just wilted down

Not a cloud in the sky inexplicably cold on the ground

Kids in the yard were playing without any clothes

All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Phoned up the doctor, official reply: “Never mind”

Same afternoon suggested we take iodine

Three days later Chernobyl’s error disclosed

All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

Slaughtered the reindeer in Lapland, Lapps on the dole

Camembert radioactive, in Zurich, the gold

In the Cotswolds of England all the sheep markets were closed

All over Europe people are saying, “Who knows?”

If a liter of water’s one x-ray in Washington State

So in milk bars of Minsk what does it cost a milkshake?

Big apples this year, we still have to eat up what grows

If we didn’t eat poison we’d starve, Brother, everyone knows.

September 12, 1986 (with Steven Taylor)

Warsaw Airport

Graphic Winces

In highschool when you crack your front tooth bending down too fast over the porcelain water fountain

or raise the tuna sandwich to your open mouth and a cockroach tickles your knuckle

or step off the kitchen cabinet ladder on the ball of your foot hear the piercing meow of a soft kitten

or sit on a rattling subway next the woman scratching sores on her legs, thick pus on her fingers

or put your tongue to a winter-frozen porch door, a layer of frightening white flesh sticks to the wooden frame—

or pinch your little baby boy’s fat neck skin in the last teeth of his snowsuit zipper

or when you cross Route 85 the double yellow line’s painted over a dead possum

or tip your stale party Budweiser on the windowsill to your lips, taste Marlboro butts floating top of the can—

or fighting on the second flight of the tenement push your younger sister down the marble stairs she bites her tongue in half, they have to sew it back in the hospital—

or at icebox grabbing the half-eaten Nestle’s Crunch a sliver of foil sparks on your back molar’s silver filling

or playing dare in High School you fall legs split on opposite sides of a high iron spiked fence

or kicked in the Karate Dojo hear the sound like a cracked twig then feel a slow dull throb in your left forearm,

or tripping fall on the sidewalk & rip last week’s scab off your left knee

You might grimace, a sharp breath from the solar plexus, chill spreading from shoulderblades and down the arms,

or you may wince, tingling twixt sphincter and scrotum a subtle electric discharge.

December 8, 1986

Imitation of K.S.

The young kid, horror buff, monster Commissar, ghoul connoisseur, attic bedroom postered with violet skulls, cigarette butts on the floor, thinks he’d strangle girls after orgasm—pumping iron 13 years old, 175-pound muscleman, his father shot at him, missed, hit the door, he saw his mother’s tiny apron, father clutched his throat, six foot four drunk, today’s in Alcohol Anonymous. Even eyes, symmetric face, aged twenty, acid-free-plastic packages of Ghoul Ghosts, Monsters Nowhere, Evil Demons of the Dead, Frenzy Reanimator, Psycho Nightmare on Elm Street stacked by his mattress; he followed me around, carried my harmonium box, protected me from the drunk Tibetan, came to my bed; head on his shoulder, I felt his naked heart, “my Cock’s half dead,” he thinks he’ll cut it off, can’t stand to be touched, never touches himself, iron legs, “skinny dynamite,” thick biceps, a six-day black fuzz on his even jaw, shining eyes, “I love you too.”