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A song I wrote called Skyline
Sway With Me, by Charles Bukowski
sway with me, everything sad —
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure
the sky;
sway with me, sad things —
fingers split on a forge
old age like breakfast shell
used books, used people
used flowers, used love
I need you
I need you
I need you:
it has run away
like a horse or a dog,
dead or lost
or unforgiving.
In San Francisco Ginsberg saw a $1 an hour psychiatrist, Philip Hicks, who asked him what he would like to do. “Doctor,” as Ginsberg recalls his answer…
“I don’t think you’re going to find this very healthy and clear, but I really would like to stop working forever. Never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now, and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends. And I’d like to keep living with someone - maybe even a man - and explore relationships that way. And cultivate my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in me. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence. Then he said “Well, why don’t you?” I asked him what the American Psychoanalytic Association would say about that, and he said … if that is what you really feel would please you, what in the world is stopping you from doing it?
“
| — | A brief excerpt from David Burner’s Making Peace with the Sixties (Princeton University Press, 1996) |
Where O America are you
going in your glorious
automobile, careening
down the highway
toward what crash
in the deep canyon
of the Western Rockies,
or racing the sunset
over Golden Gate
toward what wild city
jumping with jazz
on the Pacific Ocean!
going in your glorious
automobile, careening
down the highway
toward what crash
in the deep canyon
of the Western Rockies,
or racing the sunset
over Golden Gate
toward what wild city
jumping with jazz
on the Pacific Ocean!
“
Just a Note; May 23, 2012
Summer Time Respiratory Blues
.
Rain drops softly splash down,
On the roof, and out the gutter.
While skewed tremors vibrate
wildlife’s viced flutter.
.
Thunder clasps, rough and courtly,
Straining the crickets chorus.
Muted eyes survey skies
delicate, fine, and formless.
.
Clotted thoughts ran with fury
Clashed in cracks of lost hours,
Before celestial winds struck
Senses to a singular power.
.
Illuminated by dusk
Lightning’s branches now overgrow
Idles screams n’ buzzn’ bees
Musing broken prose.
I walked into the cocktail party
room and found three or four queers
talking together in queertalk.
I tried to be friendly but heard
myself talking to one in hiptalk.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said, and
looked away. “Hmn,” I mused. The room
was small and had a double-decker
bed in it, and cooking apparatus:
icebox, cabinet, toasters, stove;
the hosts seemed to live with room
enough only for cooking and sleeping.
My remark on this score was under-
stood but not appreciated. I was
offered refreshments, which I accepted.
I ate a sandwich of pure meat: an
enormous sandwich of human flesh,
I noticed, while I was chewing on it,
it also included a dirty asshole.
More company came, including a
fluffly female who looked like
a princess. She glared at me and
said immediately: “I don’t like you,”
turned her head away, and refused
to be introduced. I said, “What!”
in outrage. “Why you shit-faced fool!”
This got everybody’s attention.
“Why you narcissistic bitch! How
can you decide when you don’t even
know me,” I continued in a violent
and messianic voice, inspired at
last, dominate the whole room
“
| — | Allen Ginsberg, In Society, 1947 |
Just a Note; May 21, 2012
Brisk wind rolls through my hair,
Forbearing, modest, and slick.
Cover your eyes, signs points to a consumer eclipse!
.
Downstairs smoke bellows out thick,
convicting, honest, and scared,
Ad-mist shots heard in the sodden-sulked night air.
.
Kids fighting over what they’ve declared,
somewhere out where young girls get kissed,
Forceful cats praying, ‘only death proclaims that a god exists!’
.
Beware, these people are sensualists,
adrift in thought, adrift in stares,
they became disoriented, only after, they became aware.
Fools have had a hard time this year.
They’ve been displaced by wise men who’ve grown foolish.
These men no longer know how to use their brains,
And they don’t know how to behave except by foolishly imitating others.
They’ve been displaced by wise men who’ve grown foolish.
These men no longer know how to use their brains,
And they don’t know how to behave except by foolishly imitating others.
“
Pull my daisy
tip my cup
all my doors are open
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts
all my eggs are broken
Jack my Arden
gate my shades
woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden
rose my days
now my prayers awaken
Bone my shadow
dove my dream
start my halo bleeding
Milk my mind &
make me cream
drink me when you’re ready
Hop my heart on
harp my height
seraphs hold me steady
Hip my angel
hype my light
lay it on the needy
Heal the raindrop
sow the eye
bust my dust again
Woe the worm
work the wise
dig my spade the same
Stop the hoax
whats the hex
where’s the wake
how’s the hicks
take my golden beam
Rob my locker
lick my rocks
leap my cock in school
Rack my lacks
lark my looks
jump right up my hole
Whore my door
beat my door
eat my snake of fool
Craze my hair
bare my poor
asshole shorn of wool
say my oops
ope my shell
Bite my naked nut
Roll my bones
ring my bell
call my worm to sup
Pope my parts
pop my pot
raise my daisy up
Poke my pap
pit my plum
let my gap be shut
“
| — | “Pull My Daisy” by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady |
