Xitro

D PRESS
SEBASTOPOL 1998


for Allen Ginsberg, 1926-1997


I

I'm sitting in Tsultrim's kitchen Pagosa Springs looking at a picture you took of her at a table in your kitchen Manhattan clear autumn day thinking how long it's been since you sat in my kitchen Fairbanks in thin winter light

I'm one of your many colorful children spawned from Howl breath spontaneous exuberant misconduct passing original uncensored yelp around Miss Jacobi's Latin class yes I know the pluperfect of amare amaveram amaveras amaverat amaveramus amaveratis amaverant my mind eager for peyote solidities green tree cemetery dawn wine drunkeness over rooftops I am a candle you are the sun

Wanting to plug in and dig the symbiotic intersubjective meta-aleatoric patramorphesis my first peckertrack poems written to you making them into paper airplanes and sending them airmail from open Derby Street parlor window

Looking for North Beach with my surfer buddies Stinson Beach Bolinas Bodega Bay where is this North Beach further north? looking south finding Monterey Jazz Festival seeing you or a lookalike reading in a candlelit art gallery Beatniks that's what these must be Art Ball and me on Dexedrine and Glick Stite writing copy for Ralph Gleason wide-eyed taking it in licking it up sniffing it out poking about


II

A difficult labor Berkeley Poetry Conference two weeks dinosaurs grazing in pastures of hemp micro-orgasms under an airtight lid færy-dæmon foxfire dynamos bunraku hooded puppeteers all poets Beat Black Mountain and Reed strutting their stuff playing it fast and loose sector Xn relative to Yn a trig question here a Geminian martyrdom there two synthetic a priori approximations but the real you the King of the May recently rearrived with Planet News even if forcibly expelled from Myakovski's bedroom with a broomstick up your butt

I filled vials with violets and grass I made baggies of marigolds and grass I loaded a triangular-shaped bottle with grass and delivered these to various heads announcing "An Inaugural Party for Allen" You were selected President of the Poets by Charles Olsen's decree and the oligarchical consent of Snyder-Duncan-Dorn starchamber poetry politics dada I underestimated by a hundred how many would attend this bash and in a spot I put out my stash and passed my Stetson

Extracting some bills from your coin purse you started the collection wisely sending Peter Orlovsky with me to the liquor store no telling what scam a mustachioed poet might contrive to pick up some quick cash The wild eyes! The holy yells! when we return you seated in the posture of Milarepa a joint in one hand a glass of wine in one with one you sign your name for the 100 thousandth time with one hand you pat my infant daughter's head Kirsten dead now two years from Aids so young grim pedophile death what is the age of consent?

Always encouraging the young Richard Kretch reads a diatribe seated on an antique commode while Lew Welsh swings from the chandelier it is Creely's remark that everyone should know where the firemen and police are located that clears the place I add up the cost and the cost of the cost = nothing was stolen nothing was broken save for the chandelier


III

All day all night readings to shut down the Wobbly Hall I ask you about your costume acrylic shirt Van Heusen Classic Collection 35% cotton you say washes and dries overnight traveling bodhiseed mala some one gave you Salvation Army kaki trousers and women's tennis shoes I question "Men's shoes women's feet woman's shoes men's feet?" you shrug A wake for the Labor Hall and the end of an era the party rolls on Kali ap pears with a necklace of 69 flavored heads atomic fudge spinach nicotine cosmic grout Pythagorean lotus jade shuttle fissigemination chainshot aleatory fruit us entangled in a mass of bodies leaped on and dazed I hand you a book from the shelf entitled The Black Box which you sign with the dementia of a crazed Benzedrine addict a black line forming an ever increasing square

You Paul X and I hail a cab and ride up Grant Avenue to Gary Snyders pad and you comment that I'm a real clown because I'm wearing a suit and my Stetson with a feather which I take as a compliment even though I'm excluded from the party you and Paul have planned me throwing up in an alley to the whail of Pony Pondexter's tenor sax ride Pony ride I remember you in the cab bebob skat reading neon signs and billboards Star Fun Club Glass Shop Pet Talk Full Service Quality without Compromise first word best word poetry in action

We meet in front of Moe's Bookstore Berkeley and go for coffee meeting Robert and Bobbie Creeley and Ed Dorn at Robbie's Cafeteria I can't help flirting unabashedly with Bobbie checking out her miniskirt me asking you whether it's better to be a bad poet or a good business man and in exasperation you saying to be a good something but to shut up and let Ed talk a gunslinging wordsmith lucky of me to get out alive Creely saying there'll never be another conference in Berkeley Berkeley is too bizarre

A Human Be In the next best thing Turn On Tune In Drop Out Cheri and I meeting you at Harold Adler's apartment after your Public Television reading of Wichita Vortex Sutra and you congratulate me for my illustrated poems in the Berkeley Barb cutting my thumb on jagged door latch and holding my hand and applying a Band-Aid 0 Jewish mother chicken soup nurse telling me we're not our skin you exem plify muse power


IV

Fairbanks Alaska Allen Ginsberg arriving on the wrong plane from Ayers Rock Central Australia summer there minus 10 when you land wait ing for you with an airforce parka and white rubber bunny boots our breath making cartoon balloons

Where does this road lead? I am so excited to be your driver we can drive north only as far as Circle but south as far as Cape Hope "Quit fooling around; my time is short; where can we drive around here?" A few miles from Fairbanks is Fox giving you my tour guide spiel 1901 Captain Barnette sets up a trading post at the juncture of the Chena and Tanana Rivers Felix Pedro disco gold near Fox site of Red Dog Saloon and the Ice Worm Saga--Wild and wide are my borders/Stern as death is my sway/From my ruthless throne I have ruled for a million years a day/Hugging my mighty treasure/ Waiting for man to Come-- Robert Service verse miners call this place Fairbanks after an admired Senator from Indiana Charles Fairbanks later a vice- president under Teddy Roosevelt census in 1912 is 3500 present population 84000 Barnette became the most hated man in town when his bank failed

You have on your maroon Tibetan wool scarf your glasses and balding head peaking out we meet a bush pilot in the Red still a funky bar and make plans to fly to an arctic village called Arctic Village spaced out we have to go back for your scarf and on the way I ask you for a mantra to help with cold driving in my VW bus without heat taking out the battery and draining the oil every night to get it started an un butchered leg of moose frozen in the back taxi-deepfreeze to transport transmission of Padmasambhava's heart mantra my first mantra 0 root poet you had been sitting with Choyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Tsultrim Devi at Naropa and founding the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics Feeling like you were in another world at the village a full ceremony and feast having trouble integrating beaver tail into one taste a young brave recognizing you and having a copy of Howl left by a Peace Corps worker reminding you of being asked by an abo youth in Aus tralia about Dylan and The Beatles small world

Meanwhile I'm on the astral plane pasting up the Polar Star Lit Supplement hearing you intoning Blakean melody Caribou Blues with harmonium— your mantra "Hum Bom! Whom Bomb! We Bomb Them" you've invaded the airwaves US over Cambodia you over the campus at College "How big is the president's prick?"

Setting up the SUB ballroom for your reading I have STUD ACT Student Activities which you admire Words for my perfect teacher on my tee-shirt we do up a bowl of grass soaked in hash oil left brain right brain splits and I walk into the sea of abyss ceiling tiles tilt and I see hierarchies of judges stacked in tiers my tears and fears of molestation you calm me in meditation until I come down sensitive to my having been forcibly sodomized Berkeley backroom balling and Alameda County Jail solitary confinement terror attack

There's a lot of cunt and ass out there does love hurt? yes it hurts gobs of swarming semen from throbbing organs against aghast esophagus sweet burning drippings in eyes in ears on breasts across continents O City of Fuck I seize your rising scrapers and winding subways the dweller in the body shines with neon forever rapturous illumination rapturous flesh rapturous parking meters rapturous rapturous homage to your sweet street crossings nose and eyes come to me toes and thighs roll with me in asphalt pleasure tongue clit cock to die is to come to come is to die

Ah kind Allen helping me to undo my homophobia revealing the problem to be aggression start with the self be calm and the answer is on the zafu working back to the Beloved

Your insatiable curiosity leads you me and young Theo grown with kids of his own now to the musk ox farm musk oxen a kind of sheep with long hair called quivit softer than silk stronger than wool the care taker shows some prehistoric bones and a researcher shows her di agrams to teach native Alaskans how to knit mittens and shawls for Manhattan Fifth Avenue boutiques

Time for your reading the house packed just like the first time I watched you read at Dwinelle Hall in Berkeley when I was a freshman now I'm a senior many years later and a long way from Cal I mention recently hearing Ciardi say that Kerouac was an immature writer who wrote psychoanalyst couch ramblings you said not to worry about Jack his spirit survives his legacy is sound Ciardi just jealous and insecure

And then it's time to say goodbye the last time I see your flesh in the sad airport cafe so many times I think of you Allen Allen take this Athabascan beadwork my favorite "No you keep it if it means so much to you" but I want you to have it because it does mean so much to me goodbye Allen hello Heaven goodbye hello Nirvana

goodbye Elysium hello goodbye you crazy kind misunderstood lacklove honeybreasted semen soaked long-haired commie Jew dopesmoking gentle little wierdo freak you stopped a war freed the youth fed them with your mind skillful means and compassionate wise heart bodhisattva so many smiles and tears life life life you sang love and life lord of song god of flowers peace and gladness


V

I manifest now as Vajrasattva as you enter the Bardo Realms visualizing the 42 Peaceful Dieties the Assembly of the Rig'dzin and the 58 Wrathful Dieties sing Father Death Blues—Genius Death my art is done/ Lover Death my body's gone/ Father Death I'm going home/ Father breath farewell

Your dance is the dance of the babe in the womb/ your dance is the dance of the corpse in the grave/ your dance is the dance of the spirit veiled/ your mind dances within all

Your phonecall comes a mes sage on my answering machine at Tara Mandala hoping to contact Tsultrim for one last chat but she's in Nepal and by the time I've faxed her and gotten back you've gone gently into that...into that...

Now you're with Carl Solomon and he can teach you to be dead don't hang out too long in the god realms you know that rich diet is bad for your heart let your queer shoulder rest good graybeard you made a difference golden sunflower visionary holy rolling your way through this world in the active-present amo amas amat amamus amatis amant



To Volume 3, Book 9