My hands did numb to beauty as they reached into Death and tightened!
O sovereign was my touch upon the tan-inks's fragile page!
Quickly, my eyes moved quickly, sought for smell for dust for lace for dry hair!
I would have taken the page breathing in the crime! For no evidence have I wrung from dreams-- yet what triumph is there in private credence?
Often, in some steep ancestral book, when I find myself entangled with leopard-apples and torched-skin mushrooms, my cypressean skein outreaches the recorded age and I, as though tipping a pitcher of milk, pour secrecy upon the dying page.
Marriage
Should I get married? Should I be Good? Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood? Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries and she going just so far and I understanding why not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel! Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-
When she introduces me to her parents back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie, should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa and not ask Where's the bathroom? How else to feel other than I am, often thinking Flash Gordon soap- O how terrible it must be for a young man seated before a family and the family thinking We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou! After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living? Should I tell them? Would they like me then? Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter but we're gaining a son- And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?
O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded just waiting to get at the drinks and food- And the priest! He looking at me if I masturbated asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife? And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue! I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha! And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-
then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates! All streaming into cozy hotels All going to do the same thing tonight The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen The lobby zombies they knowing what The whistling elevator man he knowing The winking bellboy knowing Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything! Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye! Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon! running rampant into those almost climatic suites yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel! O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy a saint of divorce-
But I should get married I should be good How nice it'd be to come home to her and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen aproned young and lovely wanting by baby and so happy about me she burns the roast beef and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf! God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married! So much to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky! And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him When are you going to stop people killing whales! And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-
Yet if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn, up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me, finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear not Roman coin soup- O what would that be like! Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus For a rattle bag of broken Bach records Tack Della Francesca all over its crib Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon
No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father not rural not snow no quiet window but hot smelly New York City seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job! And five nose running brats in love with Batman And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired like those hag masses of the 18th century all wanting to come in and watch TV The landlord wants his rent Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking- No! I should not get married and I should never get married! But-imagine if I were to marry a beautiful sophisticated woman tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves holding a cigarette holder in one hand and highball in the other and we lived high up a penthouse with a huge window from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days No I can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-
O but what about love? I forget love not that I am incapable of love it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes- I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible And there maybe a girl now but she's already married And I don't like men and- but there's got to be somebody! Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married, all alone in furnished room with pee stains on my underwear and everybody else is married! All in the universe married but me!
Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible then marriage would be possible- Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover so I wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.
The American Way
1 I am a great American I am almost nationalistic about it! I love America like a madness! But I am afraid to return to America I'm even afraid to go into the American Express
2 They are frankensteining Christ in America in their Sunday campaigns They are putting the fear of Christ in America under their tents in their Sunday campaigns They are driving old ladies mad with Christ in America They are televising the gift of healing and the fear of hell in America under their tents in their Sunday campaigns They are leaving their tents and are bringing their Christ to the stadiums of America in their Sunday campaigns They are asking for a full house an all get out for their Christ in the stadiums of America They are getting them in their Sunday and Saturday campaigns They are asking them to come forward and fall on their knees because they are all guilty and they are coming forward in guilt and are falling on their knees weeping their guilt begging to be saved O Lord O Lord in their Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday campaigns
3 It is a time in which no man is extremely wondrous It is a time in which rock stupidity outsteps the 5th Column as the sole enemy in America It is a time in which ignorance is a good Ameri-cun ignorance is excused only where it is so it is not so in America Man is not guilty Christ is not to be feared I am telling you the American Way is a hideous monster eating Christ making Him into Oreos and Dr. Pepper the sacrament of its foul mouth I am telling you the devil is impersonating Christ in America America's educators & preachers are the mental-dictators of false intelligence they will not allow America to be smart they will only allow death to make America smart Educators & communicators are the lackeys of the American Way They enslave the minds of the young and the young are willing slaves (but not for long) because who is to doubt the American Way is not the way?
The duty of these educators is no different than the duty of a factory foreman Replica production make all the young think alike dress alike believe alike do alike Togetherness this is the American Way The few great educators in America are weak & helpless They abide and so uphold the American Way Wars have seen such men they who despised things about them but did nothing and they are the most dangerous Dangerous because their intelligence is not denied and so give faith to the young who rightfully believe in their intelligence Smoke this cigarette doctors smoke this cigarette and doctors know Educators know but they dare not speak their know The victory that is man is made sad in this fix Youth can only know the victory of being born all else is stemmed until death be the final victory and a merciful one at that If America falls it will be the blame of its educators preachers communicators alike America today is America's greatest threat We are old when we are young America is always new the world is always new The meaning of the world is birth not death Growth gone in the wrong direction The true direction grows ever young In this direction what grows grows old A strange mistake a strange and sad mistake for it has grown into an old thing while all else around it is new Rockets will not make it any younger— And what made America decide to grow? I do not know I can only hold it to the strangeness in man And America has grown into the American Way— To be young is to be ever purposeful limitless To grow is to know limit purposelessness Each age is a new age How outrageous it is that something old and sad from the pre-age incorporates each new age— Do I say the Declaration of Independence is old? Yes I say what was good for 1789 is not good for 1960 It was right and new to say all men were created equal because it was a light then But today it is tragic to say it today it should be fact— Man has been on earth a long time One would think with his mania for growth he would, by now, have outgrown such things as constitutions manifestos codes commandments that he could well live in the world without them and know instinctively how to live and be —for what is being but the facility to love?
Was not that the true goal of growth, love? Was not that Christ? But man is strange and grows where he will and chalks it all up to Fate whatever be— America rings with such strangeness It has grown into something strange and the American is good example of this mad growth The boy man big baby meat as though the womb were turned backwards giving birth to an old man The victory that is man does not allow man to top off his empirical achievement with death The Aztecs did it by yanking out young hearts at the height of their power The Americans are doing it by feeding their young to the Way For it was not the Spaniard who killed the Aztec but the Aztec who killed the Aztec Rome is proof Greece is proof all history is proof Victory does not allow degeneracy It will not be the Communists will kill America no but America itself— The American Way that sad mad process is not run by any one man or organization It is a monster born of itself existing of its self The men who are employed by this monster are employed unknowingly They reside in the higher echelons of intelligence They are the educators the psychiatrists the ministers the writers the politicians the communicators the rich the entertainment world And some follow and sing the Way because they sincerely believe it to be good And some believe it holy and become minutemen in it Some are in it simply to be in And most are in it for gold They do not see the Way as monster They see it as the 'Good Life' What is the Way? The Way was born out of the American Dream a nightmare— The state of Americans today compared to the Americans of the 18th century proves the nightmare— Not Franklin not Jefferson who speaks for America today but strange red-necked men of industry and the goofs of show business Bizarre! Frightening! The Mickey Mouse sits on the throne and Hollywood has a vast supply— Could grammar school youth seriously look upon a picture of George Washington and 'Herman Borst' the famous night club comedian together at Valley Forge? Old old and decadent gone the dignity the American sun seems headed for the grave O that youth might raise it anewl The future depends solely on the young The future is the property of the young What the young know the future will know What they are and do the future will be and do What has been done must not be done again Will the American Way allow this? No. I see in every American Express and in every army center in Europe I see the same face the same sound of voice the same clothes the same walk I see mothers & fathers no difference among them Replicas They not only speak and walk and think alike they have the same facel What did this monstrous thing? What regiments a people so?
How strange is nature's play on America Surely were Lincoln alive today he could never be voted President not with his looks— Indeed Americans are babies all in the embrace of Mama Way Did not Ike, when he visited the American Embassy in Paris a year ago, say to the staff—'Everything is fine, just drink Coca Cola, and everything will be all right.' This is true, and is on record Did not American advertising call for TOGETHERNESS? not orgiasticly like today's call nor as means to stem violence This is true, and is on record. Are not the army centers in Europe ghettos? They are, and O how sad how lost! The PX newsstands are filled with comic books The army movies are always Doris Day What makes a people huddle so? Why can't they be universal? Who has smelled them so? This is serious! I do not mock or hate this I can only sense some mad vast conspiracy! Helplessness is all it is! They are caught caught in the Way— And those who seek to get out of the Way can not The Beats are good example of this They forsake the Way's habits and acquire for themselves their own habits And they become as distinct and regimented and lost as the main flow because the Way has many outlets like a snake of many tentacles— There is no getting out of the Way The only way out is the death of the Way And what will kill the Way but a new consciousness Something great and new and wonderful must happen to free man from this beast It is a beast we can not see or even understand For it be the condition of our minds God how close to science fiction it all seemsl As if some power from another planet incorporated itself in the minds of us all It could well bel For as I live I swear America does not seem like America to me
Americans are a great people I ask for some great and wondrous event that will free them from the Way and make them a glorious purposeful people once again I do not know if that event is due deserved or even possible I can only hold that man is the victory of life And I hold firm to American man
I see standing on the skin of the Way America to be as proud and victorious as St. Michael on the neck of the fallen Lucifer
The Mad Yak
I am watching them churn the last milk they'll ever get from me. They are waiting for me to die; They want to make buttons out of my bones. Where are my sisters and brothers? That tall monk there, loading my uncle, he has a new cap. And that idiot student of his-- I never saw that muffler before. Poor uncle, he lets them load him. How sad he is, how tired! I wonder what they'll do with his bones? And that beautiful tail! How many shoelaces will they make of that!
