Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 240

March 22, 1987

I Went to the Movie of Life

In the mud, in the night, in Mississippi Delta roads

outside Clarksdale I slogged along Lights flashed

under trees, my black companion motioned “Here they are,

your company.”—Like giant rhinoceri with painted faces

splashed all over side and snout, headlights glaring in rain,

one after another buses rolled past us toward Book Hotel

Boarding House, up the hill, town ahead.

                              Accompanying me, two girls

pitched in the dark slush garbaged road, slipping in deep ruts

wheels’d left behind sucking at their high heels, staining granny

dresses sequined magic marked with astral signs, Head groupies

who knew the way to this Grateful Dead half-century heroes’

caravan pit stop for the night. I climbed mid-road, a toad

hopped before my foot, I shrank aside, unthinking’d kicked it off

with leather shoe, animal feet scurried back at my sight—

a little monster on his back bled red, nearby this prey a lizard

with large eyes retreated, and a rat curled tail and slithered

in mud wet to the dirt gutter, repelled. A long climb ahead, the girls’d

make it or not, I moved on, eager to rejoin old company.

Merry Pranksters with aged pride in peacock-feathered beds,

shining mylar mirror-paper walls, acid mothers with strobe-lit radios,

long-haired men, gaunt 60s’ Diggers emerged from the night

to rest, bathe, cook spaghetti, nurse their kids,

smoke pipes and squat with Indian sages round charcoal

braziers in their cars; profound American dreamers,

I was in their company again after long years, byways

alone looking for lovers in bar street country towns

and sunlit cities, rain & shine, snow & spring-bud backyard

brick walls, ominous adventures behind the Iron Curtain.

Were we all grown old? I looked for my late boyfriends,

dancing to Electric Blues with their guns and smoke round jukebox walls

the smell of hash and country ham, old newspaper media stars

wandering room after room: Pentagon refugee Ellsberg, old dove

Dellinger bathing in an iron tub with a patch in his stomach wall

Abbie Hoffman explaining the natural strategy of city political saint

works, Quicksilver Messenger musicians, Berkeley orators

with half-grown children in their sox & dirty faces, alcohol

uncles who played chess & strummed banjos frayed by broken fingernails.

     Where’s Ken Kesey, away tonite in another megalopolis hosting

hypnosis parties for Hell’s Angels, maybe nail them down on stage

or radio, Neal must be tending his daughters in Los Gatos,

pacifying his wife, coming down amphetamines in his bedroom,

or downers to sleep this night away & wake for work

in the great Bay Carnival tented among smokestacks, railroad

tracks and freeways under box-house urban hills.

Young movie stars with grizzled beards passed thru bus corridors

looking for Dylan in the movie office, re-swaggering old roles,

recorded words now sung in Leningrad and Shanghai, their wives

in tortoise shell glasses & paisley shawls & towels tending

cauldrons bubbling with spaghetti sauce & racks of venison,

squirrel or lamb; ovens open with hot rhubarb pies—

Who should I love? Here one with leather hat, blond hair

strong body middle age, face frowned in awful thought,

beer in hand by the bathroom wall? That Digger boy I knew

with giant phallos, bald head studying medicine walked by,

preoccupied with anatomy homework, rolling a joint, his

thick fingers at his chest, eyes downcast on paper & tobacco.

One by one I checked out love companions, none whose beauty

stayed my heart, this place was tired of my adoration,

they knew my eyes too well. No one I could find to give me

bed tonite and wake me grinning naked, with eggs scrambled

for breakfast ready, oatmeal, grits, or hot spicy sausages

at noon assembly when I opened my eyelids out of dream. I

wandered, walking room to room thru psychedelic buses

wanting to meet someone new, younger than this crowd of wily

wrinkled wanderers with their booze and families, Electronic

Arts & Crafts, woe lined brows of chemical genius music

producers, adventurous politicians, singing ladies & earthy paramours

playing rare parts in the final movie of a generation.

                                        The cameras

rolled and followed me, was I the central figure in this film?

I’d known most faces and guided the inevitable cameras room to room,

pausing at candle lit bus windows to view this ghostly caravan of gypsy

intellects passing thru USA, aged rock stars whispering by coal stoves,

public headline artists known from Rolling Stone & N.Y. Times,

actors & actresses from Living Theater, gaunt-faced and eloquent

with lifted hands & bony fingers greeting me on my way

to the bus driver’s wheel, tattered dirty gloves on Neal’s seat

waiting his return from working the National Railroad, young kids

I’d taught saluting me wearily from worn couches as I passed