Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 83

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quiet supper in the carpet room,

music twangling from the Orient to my ear,

old friends at rest on bright mattresses,

old paintings on the walls, old poetry

thought anew, laughing at a mystic toy

statue painted gold, tea on the white table.

New York, April 26, 1964

I Am a Victim of Telephone

When I lie down to sleep dream the Wishing Well it rings

“Have you a new play for the brokendown theater?”

When I write in my notebook poem it rings

“Buster Keaton is under the brooklyn bridge on Frankfurt and Pearl…”

When I unsheath my skin extend my cock toward someone’s thighs fat or thin, boy or girl

Tingaling—“Please get him out of jail… the police are crashing down”

When I lift the soupspoon to my lips, the phone on the floor begins purring

“Hello it’s me—I’m in the park two broads from Iowa … nowhere to sleep last night… hit ’em in the mouth”

When I muse at smoke crawling over the roof outside my street window

purifying Eternity with my eye observation of gray vaporous columns in the sky

ring ring “Hello this is Esquire be a dear and finish your political commitment manifesto”

When I listen to radio presidents roaring on the convention floor

the phone also chimes in “Rush up to Harlem with us and see the riots”

Always the telephone linked to all the hearts of the world beating at once

crying my husband’s gone my boyfriend’s busted forever my poetry was rejected

won’t you come over for money and please won’t you write me a piece of bullshit

How are you dear can you come to Easthampton we’re all here bathing in the ocean we’re all so lonely

and I lie back on my pallet contemplating $50 phone bill, broke, drowsy, anxious, my heart fearful of the fingers dialing, the deaths, the singing of telephone bells

ringing at dawn ringing all afternoon ringing up midnight ringing now forever.

New York, June 20, 1964

Today

O I am happy! O Swami Shivananda—a smile!

O telephone sweet little black being, what many voices and tongues!

Tonight I’ll call up Jack tell him Buster Keaton is under the Brooklyn Bridge

by a vast red-brick wall still dead pan alive in red suspenders, portly abdomen.

Today I saw movies, publishers, bookstores, checks—wait, I’m still poor

Poor but happy! I saw politicians we wrote a Noise Law!

A Law to free poetry—Poor Plato! Whoops here comes Fascism! I rode in a taxi!

I rode a bus, ate hot Italian Sausages, Coca-Cola, a chili-burger, Kool-Aid I drank—

All day I did things! I took a nap—didn’t I dream about lampshade academies and ouch! I am dying?

I stuck a needle in my arm and flooded my head with drowsy bliss …

And a hairy bum asked Mr. Keaton for money drink! Oh Buster! No answer!

Today I was really amazed! Samuel Beckett had rats eyes and gold round glasses—

I didn’t say a word—I had my picture taken and read all thru the NY Times

and Daily News, I read everybody’s editorials, I protested in my mind I have the privilege of being

Mad. Today I did everything, I wore a pink shirt in the street, at home in underwear

I marveled Henry Miller’s iron sink, how could he remember so clearly?

Hypnagogic vision in Brooklyn 50 years ago—just now my eyeball

troops marched in square mufti battalion dragging prisoners to—

eyelids lifted I saw a blue devil with fifteen eyes on the wall—everything’s mine, antique Tibetan Tankas, a siamese cat asleep on its side relaxed—

I looked out of the window and saw Tonight, it was dark—someone said ooo! in Puerto Rican.

But it was light all day, sweating hot—iron eyes blinking at the human element—

Irreducible Me today, I bought cigarettes at a machine, I was really worried

about my gross belly independent of philosophy, drama, idealism imagery—

My fate and I became one today and today became today—just like a mystic prophecy—I’ll conquer my belly tomorrow

or not, I’ll toy with Mr. Choice also for real—today I said “Forever”

thrice—

and walked under the vast Ladder of Doom, insouciant, not merely innocent

but completely hopeless! In Despair when I woke this morning,

my mouth furry smoked a Lucky Strike first thing when I dialed telephone to check on the Building Department—

I considered the License Department as I brushed my teeth with an odd toothbrush

some visitor left I lost mine—where? rack my brains it’s there

somewhere in the past—with the snubnosed uncle cock from the freakshow

The old man familiar today, first time I thought of him in years, in the rain

in Massachusetts but I was a child that summer The pink thing bulged at his open thigh fly

he fingered it out to show me—I tarried till startled when the whiskied barker

questioned mine I ran out on the boardwalk drizzle confronting the Atlantic Ocean

—so trotted around the silent moody blocks home speechless

to mother father vaginal jelly rubber instruments discovered in the closet—

a stealthy memory makes hackles rise—“He inserts his penis into her vagina”—

What a weird explanation! I who collected matchbook covers like J. P. Morgan

gloating over sodden discoveries in the wet gutter—O happy grubby sewers of Revere—distasteful riches—

hopeless treasure I threw away in a week when I realized it was endless to complete—

next year gathered all the heat in my loins to spurt my white surprise drops into the wet brown wood under a

steamy shower, I used the toilet paper cardboard skeleton tube

to rub and thrill around my unconscious own shaft—playing with myself unbeknownst to the entire population of Far Rockaway—

remembered it all today—many years thinking of Kali-Ma and other matters—

a big surprise it was Me—Dear Reader, I seem strange to myself—

You recognize everything all over again where you are, it’s wonderful

to be introduced to strangers who know you already—

like being Famous—a reverberation of Eternal Consciousness—

Today heraldic of Today, archetypal mimeograph machines reprinting everybody’s poetry,

like finishing a book of surrealism which I haven’t read for years—

Benjamin Peret & Rene Crevel heroic for real—the old New Consciousness reminded

me today—how busy I was, how fatal like a man in the madhouse, distracted with presence of dishes of food to eat—Today’s “ stringbeans in the moonlight”

Like today I brought home blueberry pie for the first time in years—

Also today bit by a mosquito (to be precise, toward dawn)

(toward dusk ate marshmallows at the News Stand and drank huge cold grape soda eyeing:

this afternoon’s Journal headline FBI IN HARLEM, what kind of Nasty old Epic

Afternoons I imagine!) Another event, a $10 bill in my hands, debt repaid,

a cafe espresso smaller event—Feeling rich I bought a secondhand record of Gertrude Stein’s actual Voice—

My day was Harmonious—Though I heard no mechanic music—

I noticed some Nazi propaganda—I wrote down my dream about Earth dying—I wanted to telephone Long Island—I stood on a street corner and didn’t know where to go—

I telephoned the Civil Liberties Union—discussed the Junk Problem & Supreme Court—

I thought I was planting suggestions in everybody’s Me-ity—

thought a few minutes of Blake—his quatrains—I climbed four flights &

stood at Fainlight’s Chinatown door locked up—I’m being mysterious—

What does this mean? Don’t ask me today, I’m still thinking,

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