Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 273

A golden mean

For a heavenly life

He went to the city

Tried all tricks

Sadness & pity

many highs, many kicks

Saved by music

Books & dance bands,

Generous, correct

Taught class, steady hands

Married, had a boy

Whom he sang into life

He’ll long enjoy

His Child & Wife

Air Shuttle Boston—N.Y.

March 4, 1997, 5 P.M. in milky sky

Half Asleep

Moved six months ago left it behind for Peter

He’d been in Almora when we bought it,

an old blanket, brown Himalayan wool

two-foot-wide long strips of light cloth

bound together with wool strings

That after 3 decades began to loosen

Soft familiar with use in Benares & Manhattan

I took it in my hands, searched to match the seams,

          fold them, sew together as I thought

But myself, being ill, too heavy for my arms,

Leave it to housekeeper’s repair

          it disappeared suddenly in my hands—

back to the old apartment

where I’d let go half year before

March 7, 1997

Objective Subject

It’s true I write about myself

Who else do I know so well?

Where else gather blood red roses & kitchen garbage

What else has my thick heart, hepatitis or hemorrhoids—

Who else lived my seventy years, my old Naomi?

and if by chance I scribe U.S. politics, Wisdom

meditation, theories of art

it’s because I read a newspaper loved

teachers skimmed books or visited a museum

March 8, 1997, 12:30 A.M.

Kerouac

I can’t answer,

reason I can’t answer

I haven’t been dead yet

Don’t remember dead

I’m on 14th St & 1st Avenue

Vat’s the qvestion?

March 12, 1997

Hepatitis Body Itch …

Hepatitis

Body itch

nausea

hemorrhage

tender Hemorrhoids

High Blood

Sugar, low

leaden limbs

lassitude

bed rest

shit factory

this corpse

cancer

March 13, 1997

Whitmanic Poem

We children, we

          school boys,

girls in America

          laborers, students

dominated by lust

March 18, 1997

American Sentences 1995–1997

I felt a breeze below my waist and realized that my fly was open.

April 20, 1995

*   *   *

Sitting forward elbows on knees, oh what luck! to be able to crap!

April 17, 1995

“That was good! that was great! That was important!” Standing to flush the toilet.

June 22, 1995

Relief! relief! O Boy O Boy! That was necessary, wash behind!

January 18, 1997

“A good shit is worth a thousand dollars if your purse can afford it.”

February 10, 1997, 5 A.M.

Heard at every workplace—obnoxious slogan: “Shit or get off the pot!”

January 24, 1997

How did I know? How did my ass know? Suddenly, go to the bathroom!

March 10, 1997

*   *   *

Chateau d’Amboise

Sun setting on their faces the diners chatter over plates of duck.

June 22, 1995

Baul Song

“Oh my mad mind, my mad mind, where’ve you been all my life, my old mad mind?”

October 7, 1996

The three-day-old kitchen fly’s flown into my bedroom for company.

December 9, 1996

“Hi-diddly-Dee, a poet’s life for me,” Gregory Corso sang in Paris sniffing H.

January 16, 1997

Chopping apples for the fruit compote—suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer!

January 24, 1997

Courageous little lemon with so many pits! sliced into the pot.

January 25, 1997

The young dog—he jumped out the TV tube stood still then barked for supper.

January 26, 1997

Stupid of me, stupid of me, just dumb plain stupid ass! Where’s my pen?

February 19, 1997, 2:45 A.M.

My father dying of Cancer, head drooping, “Oy kindelach.”

February 24, 1997

Whatcha do about little girls who want to play Horsey on my knee?

March 10, 1997

“Hey Buster! Whatcha looking at me like that for?” in the Bronx subway.

March 10, 1997, 2:45 A.M.

To see Void vast infinite look out the window into the blue sky.

March 23, 1997

Variations on Ma Rainey’s See See Rider

“I’ve been down at the bus stop

     Buy my jellyroll there

If I can’t sell it in Memphis

               you can

     buy it in Eau St. Claire.

See See Rider

          you got me

                    in your chair

          But if I have

               my fanny

                    can sell it anywhere

          See what I want today

                    yes yes yes

          Need a man who

                    really can do

     anything I say

          Do that for me

                    Then I