So much forgotten already
So much forgotten
So much to forget

Once the idea of purity born,
all was lost irrevocably

The Black Musician in a house up the hill

Nigger in the woodpile
Skeleton in the closet

Sorry. Didn't mean you.

An old man, someone's daughter

Arises
and sees us still in the room
of off-key piano and bad paintings

him off to work
and new wife arriving

(The candle-forests of Notre-Dame)

beggar nuns with moving smiles, small velvet sacks
and cataleptic eyes

straying to the gaudy
Mosaic calendar
Windows

I write like this to seize you

give me your love, your tired eyes,
sad for delivery

A small and undiscover'd
park - we ramble

And the posters scream
safe revolt

and the tired walls barely fall, graffiti into
dry cement sand

an overfed vacuum
dust-clock

I remember freeways

Summer, beside you
Ocean - brother

Storms passing

electric fires in the night

"rain, night, misery -
the back-ends of wagons"

Shake it! Wanda,
fat stranded swamp
Woman

We still need you

Shake your roly-poly
Thighs inside that
Southern tent

So what.

It was really wild
She started nude and put
on her clothes.

An old and cheap hotel
with bums in the lobby
genteel bums of satisfied
poverty

Across the street, a
famous pool-hall
where the actors meet

former ace - home of
beat musicians
beat poets and beat
wanderers

in the Zen tradition
from China to the
Subway
in 4 easy lifetimes

Weeping, he left his pad
on orders from police
and furnishings hauled
away, all records and
momentos, and reporters
calculating tears and curses for the press:

"I hope the Chinese junkies get you"

and they will
for the poppy
rules the world

That handsome gentle
flower

Sweet Billy!

Do you remember
the snake
your lover

tender in the tumbled
brush-weed
sand and cactus

I do.

And I remember
Stars in the shotgun
night

eating pussy
til the mind runs
clean

Is it rolling, God

in the Persian Night?

"There's a palace
in the canyon
where you and I
were born

Now I'm a lonely Man
Let me back into
the Garden

Blue Shadows of the Canyon
I met you and now you're gone
and now my dream is gone
Let me back into your Garden

A man searching for lost Paradise
Can seem a fool to those who never sought the other world

Where friends do lie and drift
Insanely in
Their own private gardens"

The cunt bloomed and the paper walls
Trembled

A monster arrived in the mirror
To mock the room and its fool alone

Give me songs to sing
and emerald dreams to dream

and I'll give you love
unfolding

Sun

underwater, it was immediately strange
and familiar

the black boy's
from the boat, fins and mask,

Nostrils bled liquid crystal blood
as they rose to surface

Rose and moved strong
in their wet world

Below was a Kingdom
Empire of still sand
and yes, party-colored
fishes - they are the last to leave

The gay sea

I eat you
avoiding your wordy bones

and spit out pearls

The little girl gave
little cries of surprise
as the club struck
her sides

I was there
By the fire in the
Phonebooth

I saw them charge
and heard the indian
war-scream

felt the adrenalin
of flight-fear

the exhilaration of terror
sloshed drunk in
the flashy battle blood

Naked we come
and bruised we go
nude pastry
for the slow soft worms
below

This is my poem
for you
Great flowing funky flower'd beast

Great perfumed wreck of hell

Great good disease
and summer plague

Great god-damned shit-ass
Mother-fucking freak

You lie, you cheat,
you steal, you kill

you drink the Southern
Madness swill
of greed

you die utterly and alone

Mud up to your braces
Someone new in your
knickers

and who would that be?

You know

You know more
than you let on

Much more than you betray

Great slimy angel-whore
you've been good to me

You really have

been swell to me

Tell them you came and saw
and look'd into my eyes
and saw the shadow
of the guard receding
Thoughts in time
and out of season
The Hitchhiker stood
by the side of the road
and levelled his thumb
in the calm calculus
of reason.