A Coney Island of the Mind
1
In Goya’s greatest scenes we seem to see
the people of the world
exactly at the moment when
they first attained the title of
‘suffering humanity’
They writhe upon the page
in a veritable rage
of adversity
Heaped up
groaning with babies and bayonets
under cement skies
in an abstract landscape of blasted trees
bent statues bats wings and beaks
slippery gibbets
cadavers and carnivorous cocks
and all the final hollering monsters
of the
‘imagination of disaster’
they are so bloody real
it is as if they really still existed
And they do
Only the landscape is changed
They still are ranged along the roads
plagued by legionnaires
false windmills and demented roosters
We are the same people
only further from home
on freeways fifty lanes wide
on a concrete continent
spaced with bland billboards
illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness
The scene shows fewer tumbrils
but more strung-out citizens
in painted cars
and they have strange license plates
and engines
that devour America
2
Sailing thru the straits of Demos
we saw symbolic birds
shrieking over us
while eager eagles hovered
and elephants in bathtubs
floated past us out to sea
strumming bent mandolins
and bailing for old glory with their ears
while patriotic maidens
wearing paper poppies
and eating bonbons
ran along the shores
wailing after us
and while we lashed ourselves to masts
and stopt our ears with chewing gum
dying donkeys on high hills
sang low songs
and gay cows flew away
chanting Athenian anthems
as their pods turned to tulips
and helicopters from Helios
flew over us
dropping free railway tickets
from Lost Angeles to Heaven
and promising Free Elections
so that
we set up mast and sail
on that swart ship once more
and so set forth once more
forth upon the gobbly sea
loaded with liberated vestal virgins
and discus throwers reading Walden
but
shortly after reaching
the strange suburban shores
of that great American
demi-democracy
looked at each other
with a mild surprise
silent upon a peak
in Darien
3
The poet’s eye obscenely seeing
sees the surface of the round world
with its drunk rooftops
and wooden oiseaux on clotheslines
and its clay males and females
with hot legs and rosebud breasts
in rollaway beds
and its trees full of mysteries
and its Sunday parks and speechless statues
and its America
with its ghost towns and empty Ellis Islands
and its surrealist landscape of
mindless prairies
supermarket suburbs
steamheated cemeteries
cinerama holy days
and protesting cathedrals
a kissproof world of plastic toiletseats tampax and taxis
drugged store cowboys and las vegas virgins
disowned indians and cinemad matrons
unroman senators and conscientious non-objectors
and all the other fatal shorn-up fragments
of the immigrant’s dream come too true
and mislaid
among the sunbathers
4
In a surrealist year
of sandwichmen and sunbathers
dead sunflowers and live telephones
house-broken politicos with party whips
performed as usual
in the rings of their sawdust circuses
where tumblers and human cannonballs
filled the air like cries
when some cool clown
pressed an inedible mushroom button
and an inaudible Sunday bomb
fell down
catching the president at his prayers
on the 19th green
O it was a spring
of fur leaves and cobalt flowers
when cadillacs fell thru the trees like rain
drowning the meadows with madness
while out of every imitation cloud
dropped myriad wingless crowds
of nutless nagasaki survivors
and lost teacups
full of our ashes
floated by
5
Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hip
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cat
who really laid it on us
is his Dad
And moreover
he adds
It’s all writ down
on some scroll-type parchments
which some henchmen
leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres
a long time ago
and which you won’t even find
for a coupla thousand years or so
or at least for
nineteen hundred and fortyseven
of them
to be exact
and even then
nobody really believes them
or me
for that matter
You’re hot
they tell him
And they cool him
They stretch him on the Tree to cool
and everybody after that
is always making models
of this Tree
with Him hung up
and always crooning His name
and calling Him to come down
and sit in
on their combo
as if he is the king cat
who’s got to blow
or they can’t quite make it
Only he don’t come down
from his Tree
Him just hang there
on his Tree
looking real Petered out
and real cool
and also
according to a roundup
of late world news
from the usual unreliable sources
real dead
6
They were putting up the statue
of Saint Francis
in front of the church
of Saint Francis
in the city of san Francisco
in a little side street
just off the Avenue
where no birds sang
and the sun was coming up on time
in its usual fashion
and just beginning to shine
on the statue of Saint Francis
where no birds sang
And a lot of old Italians
were standing all around
in the little side street
just off the Avenue
watching the wily workers
who were hoisting up the statue
with a chain and a crane
and other implements
And a lot of young reporters
in button-down clothes
were taking down the words
of one young priest
who was propping up the statue
with all his arguments
And all the while
while no birds sang
any Saint Francis Passion
and while the lookers kept looking
up at Saint Francis
with his arms outstretched
to the birds which weren’t there
a very tall and very purely naked
young virgin
with very long and very straight
straw hair
and wearing only a very small
bird’s nest
in a very existential place
kept passing thru the crowd
all the while
and up and down the steps
in front of St Francis
her eyes downcast all the while
and singing to herself
7
What could she say to the fantastic foolybear
and what could she say to brother
and what could she say
to the cat with future feet
and what could she say to mother
after that time the she lay lush
among the lolly flowers
on that hot riverbank
where ferns fell away in the broken air
of the breath of her lover
and birds went mad
and threw themselves from trees
to taste still hot upon the ground
the spilled sperm seed.
8
In Golden gate Park that day
a man and his wife were coming along
thru the enormous meadow
which was the meadow of the world
He was wearing green suspenders
and carrying an old beat-up flute
in one hand
while his wife had a bunch of grapes
which she kept handing out
individually
to various squirrels
as if each
were a little joke
And then the tow of them came on
thru the enormous meadow
which was the meadow of the world
and then
at a very still spot where the trees dreamed
and seemed to have been waiting thru all time
for them
they sat down together on the grass
without looking at each other
and ate oranges
without looking at each other
and put the peels
in a basket which they seemed
to have brought for that purpose
without looking at each other
And then
he took his shirt and undershirt off
but kept his hat on
sideways
and without saying anything
fell asleep under it
And his wife just sat there looking
at the birds which flew about
calling to each other
in the stilly air
as if they were questioning existence
or trying to recall something forgotten
But then finally
she too lay down flat
and just lay there looking up
at nothing
yet fingering the old flute
which nobody played
and finally looking over
at him
without any particular expression
except a certain awful look
of terrible depression
9
See
it was like this when
we waltz into this place
a couple of far out cats
is doing an Aztec two-step
And I says
Dad let’s cut
but then this dame
comes up behind me see
and says
You and me could really exist
Wow I says
Only the next day
she has bad teeth
and really hates
poetry
10
I have not lain with beauty all my life
telling over to myself
its most rife charms
I have not lain with beauty all my life
and lied with it as well
telling over to myself
how beauty never dies
but lies apart
among the aborigines
of art
and far above the battlefields
of love
It is above all that
oh yes
It sits upon the choicest of
Church seats
up there where art directors meet
to choose the things for immortality
And they have lain with beauty
all their lives
And they have fed on honeydew
and drunk the wines of Paradise
so that they know exactly how
a thing of beauty is a joy
forever and forever
and how it never never
quite can fade
into a money-losing nothingness
Oh no I have not lain
on Beauty Rests like this
afraid to rise at night
for fear that I might somehow miss
some movement beauty might have made
Yet I have slept with beauty
in my own weird way
and I have made a hungry scene or two
with beauty in my bed
and so spilled out another poem or two
and so spilled out another poem or two
upon the Bosch-like world
11
The wounded wilderness of Morris Graves
is not the same wild west
the white man found
It is a land that Buddha came upon
from a different direction
It is a wild white nest
in the true mad north
of introspection
where ‘falcons of the inner eye’
dive and die
glimpsing in their dying fall
all life’s memory
of existence
and with grave chalk wing
draw upon the leaded sky
a thousand threaded images
of flight
It is the night that is their ‘native habitat’
these ‘spirit birds’ with bled white wings
these droves of plover
bearded eagles
blind birds singing
in glass fields
these moonmad swans and ecstatic ganders
trapped egrets
charcoal owls
trotting turtle symbols
these pink fish among mountains
shrikes seeking to nest
whitebone drones
mating in air
among hallucinary moons
And a masked bird fishing
in a golden stream
and an ibis feeding
‘on its own breast’
and a stray Connemara Pooka
(life size)
And then those blown mute birds
bearing fish and paper messages
between two streams
which are the twin streams
of oblivion
wherein the imagination
turning upon itself
with white electric vision
refinds itself still mad
and unfed
among the hebrides
12
‘One of those paintings that would not die’
its warring image
once conceived
would not leave
the leaded ground
no matter how many times
he hounded it
into oblivion
Painting over it did no good
It kept on coming through
the wood and canvas
and as it came it cried at him
a terrible bedtime song
wherein each bed a grave
mined with unearthly alarmclocks
hollered horribly
for lovers and sleepers
13
Not like Dante
discovering a commedia
upon the slopes of heaven
I would paint a different kind
of Paradiso
in which the people would be naked
as they always are
in scenes like that
because it is supposed to be
a painting of their souls
but there would be no anxious angels telling them
how heaven is
the perfect picture of
a monarchy
and there would be no fires burning
in the hellish holes below
in which I might have stepped
nor any altars in the sky except
fountains of imagination
14
Don’t let that horse
eat that violin
cried Chagall’s mother
But he
kept right on
painting
And became famous
And kept on painting
The Horse With Violin In Mouth
And when he finally finished it
he jumped up upon the horse
and rode away
waving the violin
And then with a low bow gave it
to the first naked nude he ran across
And there were no strings
attached
15
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he’s the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence
16
Kafka’s Castle stands above the world
like a last bastille
of the Mystery of Existence
Its blind approaches baffle us
Steep paths
plunge nowhere from it
Roads radiate into air
like the labyrinth wires
of a telephone central
thru which all calls are
infinitely untraceable
Up there
it is heavenly weather
Souls dance undressed
together
and like loiterers
on the fringes of a fair
we ogle the unobtainable
imagined mystery
Yet away around on the far side
like the stage door of a circus tent
is a wide wide vent in the battlements
where even elephants
waltz thru
17
This life is not a circus where
the shy performing dogs of love
look on
as time flicks out
its tricky whip
to race us thru our paces
Yet gay parading floats drift by
decorated with gorgeous gussies in silk tights
and attended by moithering monkeys
make-believe monks
horny hiawathas
and baboons astride tame tigers
with ladies inside
while googly horns make merrygoround music
and pantomimic pierrots castrate disaster
with strange sad laughter
and gory gorillas toss tender maidens heavenward
while cakewalkers and carnie hustlers
all gassed to the gills
strike playbill poses
and stagger after every
wheeling thing
While still around the ring
lope the misshapen camels of lust
and all us Emmet Kelley clowns
always making up imaginary scenes
with all our masks for faces
even eat fake Last Suppers
at collapsible tables
and mocking cross ourselves
in sawdust crosses
And yet gobble up at last
to shrive our circus souls
the also imaginary
wafers of grace
18
Frightened
by the sound of my own voice
and by the sound of birds
singing on hot wires
in sunday sleep I see myself
slaying sundry sinners and turkeys
loud dogs with sharp dead dugs
and black knights in iron suits
with Brooks labels
and Yale locks upon the pants
Yes
and with penis erectus for spear
I slay all old ladies
making them young again
with a touch of my sweet swaying sword
retrouving them their maiden
hoods and heads
ah yes
in flattering falsehoods of sleep
we come we conquer all
but all the while
real standard time ticks on
and new bottled babies with real teeth
devour our fantastic
fictioned future
19
In woods where many rivers run
among the unbent hills
and fields of our childhood
where ricks and rainbows mix in memory
although our ‘fields’ were streets
I see again those myriad mornings rise
when every living thing
casts its shadow in eternity
and all day long the light
like early morning
with its sharp shadows shadowing
a paradise
that I had hardly dreamed of
nor hardly knew to think
of this unshaved today
with its derisive rooks
that rise above dry trees
and caw and cry
and question every other
spring and thing
20
The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum
Outside the leaves were falling as they died
A wind had blown away the sun
A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room
Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!
21
She loved to look at flowers
smell fruit
And the leaves had the look of loving
But halfass drunken sailors
staggered thru her sleep
scattering semen
over the virgin landscape
At a certain age
her heart put about
searching the lost shores
And heard the green birds singing
from the other side of silence
22
Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass
Kids chase him
thru screendoor summers
Thru the back streets
of all my memories
Somewhere a man laments
upon a violin
A doorstep baby cries
and cries again
like
a
ball
bounced
down steps
Which helps the afternoon arise again
to a moment of remembered hysteria
Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass
Kids chase him
23
The Widder Fogliani
otherwise known as Bella Donna
the Italian lady
of American distraction
the Widder Fogliani
was a merryoldsoul
she had whiskers
on her soul
But she had a hard coming of it
that time I beat her
at her own game
which was painting moustaches
on statues
in the Borghese gardens
at three in the morning
and nobody the wiser
if ever she gave
some stray Cellini
a free Christmas goose
24
We squat upon the beach of love
among Picasso mandolins struck full of sand
and buried catspaws that know no sphinx
and picnic papers
dead crabs' claws
and starfish prints
We squat upon the beach of love
among the beached mermaids
with their bawling babies and bald husbands
and homemade wooden animals
with icecream spoons for feet
which cannot walk or love
except to eat
We squat upon the brink of love
and are secure as only squatters are
among the puddled leavings
of salt sex’s tides
and the sweet semen rivulets
and limp buried peckers
in the sand’s soft flesh
And still we laugh
and still we run
and still we throw ourselves
upon love’s boats
but it is deeper
and much later
than we think
and all goes down
and all our lovebuoys fail us
And we drink and drown
25
Cast up
the heart flops over
gasping ‘Love’
a foolish fish which tries to draw
its breath from flesh of air
And no one there to hear its death
among the sad bushes
where the world rushes by
in a blather of asphalt and delay
26
That ‘sensual phosphorescence
my youth delighted in’
now lies almost behind me
like a land of dreams
wherein an angel
of hot sleep
dances like a diva
in strange veils
thru which desire
looks and cries
And still she dances
dances still
and still she comes
at me
with breathing breasts
and secret lips
and (ah)
bright eyes
27
Peacocks walked
under the night trees
in the lost moon
light
when I went out
looking for love
that night
A ring dove cooed in a cove
A cloche tolled twice
once for the birth
and once for the death
of love
that night
28
Dove sta amore
Where lies love
Dove sta amore
Here lies love
The ring dove love
In lyrical delight
Here love’s hillsong
Love’s true willsong
Love’s low plainsong
Too sweet painsong
In passages of night
Dove sta amore
Here lies love
The ring dove love
Dove sta amore
Here lies love
29
And that’s the way it always is and that’s the way
it always ends and the fire and the rose are one
and always the same scene and always the same
subject right from the beginning like in the Bible
or The Sun Also Rises which begins Robert Cohn
was middleweight boxing champion of his class
but later we lost our balls and there we go again
there we are again there’s the same old theme
and scene again with all the citizens and all
the characters all working up to it right from
the first and it looks like all they ever think of
is doing It and it doesn’t matter much with who
half the time but the other half it matters more
than anything O the sweet love fevers yes and
there’s always complications like maybe she has
no eyes for him or him no eyes for her or her no
eyes for her or him no eyes for him or something
or other stands in the way like his mother or
her father or someone like that but they go right
on trying to get it all the time like in Shakespeare
or The Waste Land or Proust remembering his Things
Past or wherever And they are all struggling
toward each other or after each other like those
marble maidens on that Grecian Urn or on any market
street or merrygoground around and around they go
all hunting love and half the hungry time not even
knowing just what is really eating them like Robin
walking in her Nightwood streets although it isn’t
quite as simple as all that as if all she really
needed was a good fivecent cigar oh no and those
who have not hunted will not recognize the hunting
poise and then the hawks that hover where the
heart is hid and the hungry horses crying and
the stone angels and heaven and hell and Yerma
with her blind breasts under her dress and then
Christopher Columbus sailing off in search and
Rudolph Valentino and Juliet and Romeo and John
Barrymore and Anna Livia and Abie’s Irish Rose
and so Goodnight Sweet prince all over again
with everyone and everybody laughing and crying
along wherever night and day winter and summer
spring and tomorrow like Anna Karenina lost in
the snow and the cry of hunters in a great wood
and the soldiers coming and Freud and Ulysses
always on their hungry travels after the same
hot grail like King Arthur and his nighttime knights
and everybody wondering where and how it will all
end like in the movies or in some nightmaze novel
yes as in a nightmaze Yes I said Yes I will and he
called me his Andalusian rose and I said Yes my
heart was going like mad and that’s the way Ulysses
ends as everything always ends when that hunting
cock of flesh at last cries out and has his glory
moment God and then comes tumbling down the sound
of axes in the wood and the trees falling and down
it goes the sweet cock’s sword so wilting in the
fair flesh fields away alone at last and loved
and lost and found upon the riverbank along a
riverrun right where it all began and so begins again