listening to joy division, i decided to take the afternoon and read, HOWL by Allen Ginsberg seemed a likely choice, it had been a gift and was patiently waiting for me... the colors that were being painted outside my window had a strange lighting; yellow and grey... the shadows struggled to have it´s last seconds of the day... this inspired the setting... i quickly got into it and let the music run on, as i finished the book, an unusual feeling crept into my mind for the pairing of both...
both sublime tragedy..
so i continue..
it´s truly interesting to analyze how ginsberg manages to paint such vast perspectives in simple phrases, phrases that turn ones mind into a channel of ones depths. the introspection on a poetry book such as HOWL, makes raw emotions symmetrically/ asymmetrically beautiful, real and human, visual images created through text and irony... a whole universe of reality is quickly presented before ones hand.
a cathartic experience is evident to say.
one that leaves this lingering feeling of truth and contemplation through life´s extreme dysphoria, bliss, and everything that lies in between.
fragment. HOWL & OTHER POEMS.
HOWL FOR CARL SALOMON
I.
.... a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon...
screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars...
.. who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons...
.. who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads everyday for the next decade...
... or where run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality...
... who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if i had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity...
...who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other´s salvation and light and breasts until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,..
... and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychoteraphy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia...
... and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the eclipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane...
... to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head.
II.
...Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the mind!...
... Moloch in whom i sit lonely! Moloch in whom i dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!...
... Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom i am a consciousness without a body!
::. Moloch! Moloch! robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible mad houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
III.
...
i´m with you in rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
i´m with you in rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter.
i´m with you in rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio
...
i´m with you in rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse
...
i´m with you in rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls airplanes roaring over the roof they´ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we´re free.
...
TRANSCRIPTION OF ORGAN MUSIC
...
the room closed down on me, i expected the presence of the Creator, i saw my gray painted walls and ceiling, they contained my room, the contained me
as the sky contained my garden,
i opened my door.
...the animal heads of the flowers where they had arisen
to think of the sun.
... the privilege to witness my existence- you too must seek the son...
i am so lonely in my glory-- except they too out there-- i looked up--those red bush blossoms beckoning and peering in the window waiting in blind love, their leaves too have hope and are upturned top flat to the sky to receive-- all creation open to receive-- the flat earth itself.
...
the closet door is open for me, where i left it, since i left it open, it has graciously stayed open....
SUNFLOWER SUTRA
... how many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?
poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive?
... you were never no locomotive, sunflower, you were a sunflower!
and you locomotive, you are a locomotive...
we´re not our skin of grime, we´re not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we´re all beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we´re blessed by our own seed & golden hairy naked accomplishment bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sit-down vision.
AN ASPHODEL
... to be so lying in the living
room drunk naked
and dreaming in the absence
of electricity...
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