我領悟了草坪，我領悟了山坡，我領悟了高速公路群，
我領悟了泥路，我領悟了在停車場路上的汽車，
我領悟了售票員，我領悟了現金和支票以及卡片，
我領悟了公共汽車群，我領悟了哀悼者，我領悟了他們
的穿紅色連衣裙的孩子們，
我領悟了高速公路，領悟了別墅，領悟了旗幟…
領悟了信徒們，領悟了他們的卡車和面包車，領悟了穿
着卡其布製服的保衛員
我領悟了人群，領悟了有薄霧的天空，領悟了所有的彌
漫着的笑容和虛無的眼睛
我領悟了枕頭，着着紅色與籄E色的，方的枕頭和圓的……
我領悟了拱門，領悟了弓，領悟了男人和女人的遊行，領
悟了前進，領悟了風笛，領悟了鼓、喇叭，領悟了
高的頭飾和番紅的長袍，領悟了整套西裝……
我領悟了花驕，領悟了雨傘，領悟了塔
領悟了繪製過的手飾，四個方向的顔色
領悟了代表慷慨大方的琥珀色，領悟了代表因果報應規
律的緑色，
領悟了代表佛祖的白色，領悟了代表心的紅色……
我領悟了塔上的十三個世界，領悟了鈴把和傘，領悟了
空心的鈴
領悟了那將裝入鈴心的屍體
領悟了那些正在吟唱着的僧侶，喇叭在我們的耳朵裏，煙
霧從防火磚的空心鈴的頭上升起
領悟了人群的沉默，領悟了智利的詩人，領悟了彩虹，
我領悟了死了的印度教首領，我領悟了他裸體胸部的老
師在看着一個在塔內燃燒的屍體，領悟了哀悼的學生
在他們的書前盤腿地坐，誦唱着忠誠的經，
我領悟了用他們的手指表現着的神秘的手勢，領悟了在
他們手中的鈴和銅的閃電
我領悟了從旗和電綫和傘和漆着枯黃之柱子上升起的火焰
我領悟了天空，領悟了太陽，圍繞着太陽的彩虹
我領悟了薄霧之雲過這太陽……
我領悟了自己心靈的跳動，我的呼吸穿過着我的鼻孔
我的腳走着，我的眼看着，我的腦子領悟着從被屍體燃
燒的紀念碑上升起的煙霧
我領悟了下山的小路，我領悟了嚮公共汽車移動着的人群
我領悟了食品，萵苣沙拉，我領悟了老師缺席了，
我領悟了我的朋友們，我領悟了我們的瑞典汽車藍色的，
我領悟了一個抓住我手的年青小夥子
我領悟了我們的在汽車旅館門鎖裏的鑰匙，我領悟了黑
暗，我領悟了一個夢，就忘了
我領悟了在早餐上的桔子和檸檬和魚子醬，
我領悟了高速公路，我的疲倦，我的關於作業的觀念，小
夥子的在微風中的有乳頭的胸部
當汽車開下山迫穿過緑色的樹林駛嚮水，
我領悟了屋群，曬臺眺望着有薄霧的地平綫，海岸和老
化的石頭在沙子中
我領悟了海，我領悟了音樂，我想跳舞。

1987年5月23日

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by 

madness, starving hysterical naked, 

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn 

looking for an angry fix, 

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly 

connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, 

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat 

up smoking in the supernatural darkness of 

cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities 

contemplating jazz, 

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and 

saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, 

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes 

hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy 

among the scholars of war, 

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & 

publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, 

burning their money in wastebaskets and listening 

to the Terror through the wall, 

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through 

Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, 

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in 

Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their 

torsos night after night 

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares,

alcohol and cock and endless balls, 

incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and 

lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson,

illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, 

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery 

dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, 

storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon 

blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree 

vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn,

ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, 

who chained themselves to subways for the endless 

ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine 

until the noise of wheels and children brought 

them down shuddering mouth-wracked and 

battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance 

in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's 

floated out and sat through the stale beer after

noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack 

of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, 

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to 

pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, 

lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping 

down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills 

off Empire State out of the moon, 

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts 

and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks 

and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, 

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days 

and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the 

Synagogue cast on the pavement, 

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a 

trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, 

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-ings and 

migraines of China under junk-with-drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room, 

who wandered around and around at midnight in the 

railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, 

leaving no broken hearts, 

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing 

through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-father night, 

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy 

and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively 

vibrated at their feet in Kansas, 

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary 

indian angels who were visionary indian angels, 

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore 

gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, 

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight street

light smalltown rain, 

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston 

seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the 

brilliant Spaniard to converse about America 

and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, 

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving 

behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees 

and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, 

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the 

F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist 

eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets, 

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting 

the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, 

who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union 

Square weeping and undressing while the sirens 

of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed 

down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, 

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked 

and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, 

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight 

in policecars for committing no crime but their 

own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, 

who howled on their knees in the subway and were 

dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, 

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly 

motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, 

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, 

the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, 

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose

gardens and the grass of public parks and 

cemeteries scattering their semen freely to 

whomever come who may, 

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up 

with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath 

when the blond & naked angel came to pierce 

them with a sword, 

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate 

the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar 

the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb 

and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but 

sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden 

threads of the craftsman's loom, 

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of 

beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along 

the floor and down the hall and ended fainting 

on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and 

come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, 

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling 

in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning 

but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun

rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, 

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad 

stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these 

poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy 

to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls 

in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' 

 rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with 

gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station 

solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, 

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in 

dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and 

picked themselves up out of basements hung

over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third 

Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices, 

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on 

the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the 

East River to open to a room full of steamheat and opium, 

who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment 

cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime 

blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall 

be crowned with laurel in oblivion, 

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested 

the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, 

who wept at the romance of the streets with their 

pushcarts full of onions and bad music, 

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the 

bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, 

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned 

with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded 

by orange crates of theology, 

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty 

incantations which in the yellow morning were 

stanzas of gibberish, 

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht 

& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, 

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, 

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot 

for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks 

fell on their heads every day for the next decade, 

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique 

stores where they thought they were growing 

old and cried,

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits 

on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse 

& the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments 

of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the 

fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the 

drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, 

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten 

into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley

ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, 

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of 

the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, 

cried all over the street, 

danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed 

phonograph records of nostalgic European 

1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and 

threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans 

in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles, 

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying 

to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude 

watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, 

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 journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who 

came back to Denver & waited in vain, who 

watched over Denver & brooded & loned in 

Denver and finally went away to find out the 

Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

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, 

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for 

impossible criminals with golden heads and the 

charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet 

blues to Alcatraz, 

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky 

Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys 

or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or 

Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the 

daisychain or grave, 

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp

notism & were left with their insanity & their 

hands & a hung jury, 

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism 

and subsequently presented themselves on the 

granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads 

and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, 

and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin 

Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational 

therapy pingpong & amnesia, 

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic 

pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of 

blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad

man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, 

Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid 

halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, 

rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench 

dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, 

bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, 

with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book 

flung out of the tenement window, and the last 

door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone 

slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room 

emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, 

a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, 

and even that imaginary, 

nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and 

now you're really in the total animal soup of time

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed 

with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use 

of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space 

through images juxtaposed, and trapped the 

archangel of the soul between 2 visual images 

and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun 

and dash of consciousness together jumping 

with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus 

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, 

the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, 

yet putting down here what might be left to say 

in time come after death, 

and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in 

the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the 

suffering of America's naked mind for love into 

an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone 

cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio 

with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered 

out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open 

their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? 

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob

tainable dollars! Children screaming under the 

stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men 

weeping in the parks! 

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the 

loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy 

judger of men! 

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the 

crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of 

sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! 

Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! 

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose 

blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers 

are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! 

Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! 

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! 

Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long 

streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories 

dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose 

smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch 

whose soul is electricity and banks! 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 

who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! 

Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! 

Light streaming out of the sky! 

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! 

skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic 

industries! spectral nations! invincible mad 

houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs! 

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-

ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to 

Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us! 

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! 

gone down the American river! 

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole 

boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! 

gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! 

Ten years' animal screams and suicides! 

Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on 

the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the 

wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! 

They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! 

carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland 

where you're madder than I am 

I'm with you in Rockland 

where you must feel very strange 

I'm with you in Rockland 

where you imitate the shade of my mother 

I'm with you in Rockland 

where you've murdered your twelve secretaries 

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 the faculties of the skull no longer admit 

the worms of the senses 

I'm with you in Rockland 

where you drink the tea of the breasts of the 

spinsters of Utica 

I'm with you in Rockland 

where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the 

harpies of the Bronx 

I'm with you in Rockland 

where you scream in a straightjacket that you're 

losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss 

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 fifty more shocks will never return your 

soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a 

cross in the void 

I'm with you in Rockland 

where you accuse your doctors of insanity and 

plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the 

fascist national Golgotha 

I'm with you in Rockland 

where you will split the heavens of Long Island 

and resurrect your living human Jesus from the 

superhuman tomb 

I'm with you in Rockland 

where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-

rades all together singing the final stanzas of 

the Internationale 

I'm with you in Rockland 

where we hug and kiss the United States under 

our bedsheets the United States that coughs all 

night and won't let us sleep 

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 

I'm with you in Rockland 

in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-

journey on the highway across America in tears 

to the door of my cottage in the Western night

美國，我已經將一切交給你，現在我一無所有。
 
美國，兩塊兩毛七分，1956年1月17日
 
我無法忍受我自己的思想。
 
美國，我們幾時才能結束這人類的戰爭？
 
去你*，你那原子彈
 
我不舒服，別惹我
 
我非到腦子正常了無法寫詩，
 
美國，你什麽時候能象天使一樣？
 
你什麽時候剝去你的衣裳？
 
你什麽時候透過墳墓看你自己？
 
你什麽時候纔對得起你那百萬托派分子？
 
美國，為什麽你的圖書館充滿了眼淚？
 
美國，你什麽時候將雞蛋送往印度？
 
我厭倦你那瘋狂的要求
 
什麽時候我能到超級市場
 
憑我的美貌來買我的必需品？
 
歸根結底，美國，是你和我美好，而非來生
 
你的機械太過分了．我無法接受
 
你使我想當一個聖人
 
總該有些什麽別的方法解决這場爭論
 
波銳斯在坦澤爾．我想他不會回來
 
這是陰暗的，你是否陰暗，還是這是一種具體的玩笑？
 
我想說到點子上
 
我拒絶放棄我的頑念
 
美國別強迫我，我知道該幹什麽
 
美國，梅花落了
 
我幾個月都不讀報了，每天有人因謀殺罪受審
 
美國，我對華伯萊斯抱有感傷的感情
 
美國，當我是個孩子時我曾是*
 
我不後悔。
 
我一有機會就吸大麻葉
 
我一連幾天在屋裏靜坐．瞧看壁櫥中的玫瑰
 
當我去唐人街時我喝得大醉．但從不去睡覺。
 
我相信就會發生麻傾
 
你應當看看我念馬剋思
 
我的心理醫生相信我一切正常
 
我拒絶祈禱
 
我有神秘的幻覺和宇宙的震波
 
美國．我還沒有告訴你，馬格斯叔叔
 
從俄國回來後，你怎樣對待他
 

我是嚮你說話．
 
你是想讓時代雜志控製你的感情生活吧
 
我被時代雜志控製着
 
我每周都在讀它
 
每次我悄悄走過街角的糖果鋪
 
時代雜志的封面總在瞪着我
 
我在伯剋菜公共圖書館的地下室讀它
 
它總嚮我說責任。買賣人是嚴肅的
 
電影商是嚴肅的，人人，除了我，是嚴肅的。
 
它使我想到我是美國
 
我又對自己喃喃自語了。
 
亞洲起來反對我，
 
我沒有一個中國人那樣的機會。
 
我最好考慮自己民族的資源
 
我的民族資源包括兩傢大麻煙館，幾百萬
 
生殖器官，一部未出版的私人作品，它
 
每小時傳播一千四百邁，
 
和兩萬五千個神經病院
 
我還沒有提我的監獄和幾百萬受歧視的人們
 
他們活在我的花盆裏在五百個太陽的照耀下，
 
我廢除了法國的妓院，下一個是但澤爾
 
我的志願是要當總統，雖說我是天主教徒
 

美國，在你這傻瓜情調中我怎能寫一麯神聖禱歌
 
我將繼續下去 亨利福特我的詩節是有特性的
 
正象他的汽車，更甚者，它們有不同的性別
 
美國我把詩節賣結你，一節2500元，將你
 
的老詩節減價500元，
 
美國釋放了湯姆，慕尼
 
美國解救了西班牙的忠誠黨
 
美國沙可與範參替不能死，
 
美國我是斯葛斯郡的孩子們
 
美國，當我七歲時，媽媽帶我去*的
 
密室會議，他們賣給我們毛豆
 
一張票一把毛豆
 
一張 一分鎳幣
 
講演白聽，人人象天使一樣
 
人人對工人懷着深情
 
一切如比真誠
 
你不知在1835黨有多好
 
期葛德尼林是一個了不起的好老人
 
一個真正的負責明理的人
 
布魯爾媽媽讓我落淚
 
我一次清楚看到以色列阿姆特
 
大概每個人那是一個間諜
 
美國，你不會真的想打仗
 
美國，這都怪那壞俄國人
 
那些俄國人，那些俄國人，還有中國人
 
俄國要把我們活吞，俄國是權力狂，
 
她要將我們的汽車從車庫槍走
 
她要搶走芝加哥，她需要一個紅色的
 
讀者文摘
 
她要我們的汽車廠在西伯利亞
 
她的大官僚主義統治我們的加油站
 
這可不好，哦，她讓印第安人學會識字
 
她需要黑人大個子，哦，她讓我們人人每
 
天工作十六小時，救命啊
 
美國，這可是件嚴重的事
 
美國，這是我看電視時所得到的印象
 
美團，這些是真的嗎？
 
我最好立刻處理這件事，
 
我確實不願去參軍，或在精密零件工廠開
 
車床，我近視，而且心理有病
 
美國，我是將我的古怪的肩膀靠在輪子上。

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

America two dollars and twentyseven cents January

17, 1956.

I can't stand my own mind.

America when will we end the human war?

Go * yourself with your atom bomb.

I don't feel good don't bother me.

I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.

America when will you be angelic?

When will you take off your clothes?

When will you look at yourself through the grave?

When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?

America why are your libraries full of tears?

America when will you send your eggs to India?

I'm sick of your insane demands.

When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I

need with my good looks?

America after all it is you and I who are perfect not

the next world.

Your machinery is too much for me.

You made me want to be a saint.

There must be some other way to settle this argument.

Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back

it's sinister.

Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical

joke?

I'm trying to come to the point.

I refuse to give up my obsession.

America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.

America the plum blossoms are falling.

I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday

somebody goes on trial for murder.

America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.

America I used to be a communist when I was a kid

I'm not sorry.

I smoke marijuana every chance I get.

I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses

in the closet.

When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.

My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.

You should have seen me reading Marx.

My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.

I won't say the Lord's Prayer.

I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.

America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle

Max after he came over from Russia.
 

I'm addressing you.

Are you going to let your emotional life be run by

Time Magazine?

I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.

I read it every week.

Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner

candystore.

I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.

It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-

men are serious. Movie producers are serious.

Everybody's serious but me.

It occurs to me that I am America.

I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.

I haven't got a chinaman's chance.

I'd better consider my national resources.

My national resources consist of two joints of

marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable

private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour

and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.

I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of

underprivileged who live in my flowerpots

under the light of five hundred suns.

I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers

is the next to go.

My ambition is to be President despite the fact that

I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly

mood?

I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as

individual as his automobiles more so they're

all different *es.

America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500

down on your old strophe

America free Tom Mooney

America save the Spanish Loyalists

America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die

America I am the Scottsboro boys.

America when I was seven momma took me to Com-

munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a

handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the

speeches were free everybody was angelic and

sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-

cere you have no idea what a good thing the

party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand

old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me

cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody

must have been a spy.

America you don't really want to go to war.

America it's them bad Russians.

Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.

And them Russians.

The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power

mad. She wants to take our cars from out our

garages.

Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'

Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.

Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-

tions.

That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.

Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us

all work sixteen hours a day. Help.

America this is quite serious.

America this is the impression I get from looking in

the television set.

America is this correct?

I'd better get right down to the job.

It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes

in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and

psychopathic anyway.

America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

當我死後，
 
我不在乎我的屍體如何被處置，
 
把骨灰拋嚮天空，一部分扔嚮東河，
 
把骨灰甕埋在新澤西州伊麗莎伯布萊猶太人墓地。
 
不過，我希望舉行一次盛大的葬禮
 
在聖帕特裏剋教堂，聖馬剋教堂，以及曼哈頓最大的猶太教堂，
 
出席者首先是我的傢人，我哥哥，侄子外甥，９６歲高齡的繼母埃迪絲精力仍充沛，
 
還有亨妮姨媽，從紐瓦剋趕來
 
還有喬依醫生，堂弟朱迪，哥哥尤金，他一隻耳聾，一隻眼失明。
 
嫂子布隆德康尼，還有五個侄子，繼母方面的兄弟姐妹以及他們的孫兒女，
 
我的伴侶彼得奧洛夫斯基，管傢人羅森塔爾以及赫爾，比爾莫金
 
然後，是我的宗師金剛大師宗喀巴的靈魂，格勒剋活佛，薩康雍法師
 
某喇嘛的緊急悼念信，他正巧來美國訪問，還有薩齊擔南塔斯瓦米
 
希瓦南塔，德霍拉哈瓦巴巴，喀瑪巴十六世，降魔法師ｋａｔａｇｉｖｉ以及鈴木羅什的幻影
 
貝剋，華倫，戴多路裏，翁，已經老邁，白發蒼蒼的卡普洛羅希以及圓徹喇嘛，
 
當然最重要的有我半世紀以來所有熱愛過的人，
 
數十個，上百，也許還要更多，那些老夥計們頭已經光禿，而滿頭濃發
 
的年輕人不久前還在床上赤裸相遇，這麽多人相互聚會真不勝驚異，口若懸河，
 
親切無拘無束，勾起無限回憶，
 
“他教我冥思，這不，我現在可是一個老資格閉門一千天的冥思者……”
 
“我總愛在地鐵站臺上彈奏樂器，我很直率愛他他也愛我。”
 
“我們躺在一起蓋着被聊天，讀我的詩，擁抱親吻。”
 
“我常常穿着內衣上了他的床，次日早晨我的內衣褲全都扔在地板上。”
 
“我們整夜談論着剋魯亞剋和卡塞迪，不睡覺坐在他的大床上像佛陀。”
 
“他似乎需要更多的愛，真慚愧沒能使他快活。”
 
“我以前從沒有單獨同誰在床上赤裸，他真可愛我的肚子震顫不已當他的手指在我的乳頭上撫摸……”
 
“我什麽也不想衹是躺下閉着眼任憑他的嘴唇和手指沿伸滑嚮我的胸脯聽憑他隨心所欲。”
 
瞧，就是這樣一些閑聊交織着１９４８年的愛，尼爾卡塞迪的亡魂
 
與１９９７年年輕的肌膚與激情，
 
於是隨之而來的是驚訝“你們也這麽幹過，可我認為你們挺正常的，”
 
“我倒是，可金斯伯格卻是例外，他總有理由來令我開心，”
 
“我不記得我是否算是個真格的男同性戀者，儘管可怪或可笑，我
 
衹感到他溫柔深情的吻仍在我的頭頂停留……
 
在我的前額，脖子、胸膛和太陽神經上，腹中部，用他的舌頭從後舔我。”
 
“我喜歡他朗讀，可在我身後，我常常聽見時間帶翼的輕車緊緊追來時的神態，
 
頭靠着頭，雙目相視，倚在枕頭……”
 
在這衆多的夥伴中跚跚來遲的是一個英俊年輕的小夥兒，
 
“十七歲時，我選修他的詩歌課，總愛找些緣由跑上他居住的沒有電梯的公寓大樓，
 
挑逗沒有興致的我，讓我再去，後來我回了傢，從此再也沒見過他，也沒了那心思………
 
“他總是力不從心，可他喜歡我，…‘一個可愛的老頭，…‘他總讓我最先衝動興奮。”
 
參加追悼儀式的公衆最出乎意料而且誇誇其談的莫過於這些往事……
 
悼念者還有詩人和音樂傢大學生樂隊老資格的搖滾明星，
 
披頭士，吉它演奏者多午來始終不渝，男同性戀者，古典音樂指揮，默默無聞的流行爵士樂
 
作麯傢，身上散發着怪味的號手，吹奏低音樂器和法國小號的黑人精英，民歌手，
 
小提琴手，伴隨着手鼓、口琴曼陀林，自動竪琴，袖珍口哨以及玩具小笛中發出的樂聲，
 
當然，也還會有藝術傢，意大利浪漫主義現實主義作傢，六十年代曾到過神秘印度求學
 
後期野獸派畫傢詩人，古典作品繪製者麻塞諸塞州超現實頑童派還有來自歐洲大陸
 
的夫人兒童。從邊遠各地趕來的窮愁潦倒的素描畫油畫水彩石粉畫傢。
 
最後還有高級中學教師，生性孤寂的愛爾蘭圖書管理員，考究優雅的藏書傢，
 
參加性解放運動的群衆，不，豈止群衆，簡直就是一支大軍，女士們的性別難以區分
 
“我見過他十數次，可他一直沒能記住我的名字，不管怎麽樣，我喜歡他，他是個真正的藝術傢。”
 
“絶經期間我精神不振，是他詩歌的幽默感拯救了我沒在醫院自殺。”
 
“他真有魅力，才華橫溢而且彬彬有禮，在布達佩斯我的居室作客一周，還親自在洗滌槽裏清洗餐具。”
 
啊，到場的還會有衆多讀者，“《嚎叫》改變了我在伊利諾州利伯蒂維爾城的生活。”
 
“我最先在蒙特剋萊爾州立師範學院聽他朗誦詩，從此也立志要成為詩人”
 
“他使我恍然大悟，我在汽車修理廠幹活時便開始熱衷於滾石音樂，在堪薩斯城演唱過我
 
寫作的歌麯。”
 
“《卡第緒》使我為我自己以及在內華達城的父親而哭泣。”
 
“我妹妹１９８２年在波士頓去世時是《父親之死》這首詩給予我安慰。”
 
“我在一傢新聞雜志上讀到他的文章，豁然開朗明白了某些人的處境同我一樣。”
 
甚至還來了一些詩人歌手雖又聾又啞可他們用手勢代替詩歌語言歌唱。
 
也來了新聞記者，編輯部秘書，經紀人，攝影迷，搖滾樂批評傢，有教養的勞工，
 
文化歷史學家也來參加這有歷史的葬禮充當見證人
 
還有超級詩歌迷，自以為是的詩人，上了年紀當年的“垮掉”分子和曾免費搭車的人，
 
熱衷於搜集手稿親筆簽名的人，不惜一切手段以圖聲名的自由攝影師，
 
智力不俗站在那兒呆呆地觀看的人
 
每個人都已明白他們已成為“歷史”的一部分，除了被悼念者，
 
可這正發生的一切我真是一無所知，儘管我仍活在這人世。
 

１９９７年２月２２日

When I die
I don't care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But l want a big funeral
St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in
Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother
96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister-
 in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters
their grandchildren,
companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--
Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche,
there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting
America, Satchitananda Swami
Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche,
Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms
Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau
Roshis, Lama Tarchen --
Then, most important, lovers over half-century
Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich
young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each
other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousand
 day retreat --"
"I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he
loved me"
"I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone"
"We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly
arms round each other"
"I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my
skivvies would be on the floor"
"Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master"
"We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then
sleep in his captain's bed."
"He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy"
"I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my
stomach
shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- "
"All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth
& fingers along my waist"
"He gave great head"
So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin-
 gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997
and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!"
"I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me."
"I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender
and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head,
my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick,
tickled with his tongue my behind"
"I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged
chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a
pillow --"
Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear
"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his
walk-up flat,
seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him
again never wanted to... "
"He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made
sure I came first"
This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--
Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock
star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con-
 ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum-
 peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger
fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto-
 harp pennywhistles & kazoos
Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India,
Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massa-
 chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty
sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American
provinces
Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio-
 philes, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex
"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved
him anyway, true artist"
"Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me
from suicide hospitals"
"Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my
studio guest a week in Budapest"
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas
City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized
others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures
Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo-
 graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural
historians come to witness the historic funeral
Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph-
 hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers
Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased
who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive

 February 22, 1997