Ginsberg & Friends

For Those Stary-Eyed Dynamos Burning Up in the Machinery of Night

Take three deep
mind breaths

and forget everything you know -
dock the censorship
and open your eyes.

The poems read like
uncooked rants from
the bleeding heart of chaos;

Who's words appear as naked as he was on stage;
reliving his nightmares on stage.

He mocked America;
taunted America;
begged a cross-dressing America to take off her clothes;

Wrote to Gary Snyder through
a holy cloud of laughing gas;
visited Kerouac in Queens, while Hunke talked to Kinsey;

Cried for Cassidy to beat him while
he screamed crazed confessions to
the secret hero of his poems.

He read Blake; heard Blake; saw Blake in 1948.

1952 - starred as David in JC Holmes' Go -
Holmes kept going until 1988.

Howl on trial 56;
elders screaming
while he was riding around in green automobiles
shouting Europe!Europe!

He saw afternoon in Seattle,
and road the Witchita vortex
all the way to Tangier where
Burroughs went to the junk-house for a naked lunch.

O'Hara gone in 1966;
1968 - Cassidy counts railway ties until he dies.

Wrote eulogies for Kerouac, 1969;
Converted to California-Buddhism
like B. Kaufman (b.1925 -d.1986), who spent the 1950s speaking poetry
into San Fransisco cars -
sat on Carson's couch in 1970.

No Pulitzer;
No Poet Laureate;
No Lew Welch after 23 May 1971.

National Book Award in 72.

Ask him about
the Jester, Carl Solomon, Rockland,
O'Hara's ghost wandering Fire Island, Moloch, Buddhism, Natalie Jackson, Cassidy,
suicidal dreams, penetration,
Dr. Williams, Louis Ginsberg,
J. Edger Hoover, the West,
Kerouac, Kammerer,
secret police, state terror,
anger, self-loathing,
the callous stench in the capitol air,
what research shows,
partying with Kesey and the Angels,
hitchhiking with Snyder,
the virtues of Corso,
the sins of Times Square,
the cold-water flats of the East Village, the apartments on the Negro streets,
the couches and blowing smoke rings from tea,
the sage-like advice of Rexroth,
the cottage in Berkeley,
3119 Fillmore Street,
Ferlinghetti shining the City Lights on Howl,
Uncle Max, Orlovsky,

& Naomi.