Read Mexico City Blues Page 3

using their own Immemorial

  Salvation Mind

  SLIPPITY BOP

  44th Chorus

  Waves of cantos and choruses

  And lilypads of anything

  Like flying carpets that are

  nowhere

  And all’s bugged with the scene –

  Ah I wish I could fight out

  Of this net of mistakes

  And anxieties among others

  Who wait in my silence

  Till I end up my work

  Which never began and

  Never will end – hah –

  Bespeak thyself not, soft spot,

  Aurorum’s showed his Mountain

  Top

  Of Eastern be Western morning

  To Indicate by Moon Magic

  Constellative Stardom

  of

  Gazers

  in Mock Roman

  Arabian Kimonos,

  the lay of the pack

  in the sky

  45th Chorus

  Euphonism, a softening of sounds

  Euphemism, a softened word –

  One is sonic, one is human

  Both are imaginary metaphors

  Metaphysical Exception taken

  by the old euphonious

  phoney of Arkansaw

  River bridge

  Excisor of taxes via tickets

  of taxes

  With what Euphonic

  doesnt-matter

  Really pronunciation

  price

  Dolichocephalic?

  Ichthyocephalic,

  Encephalotherapy.

  Dont point at your head

  The Judge says you’re crazy

  Breaky cephalic

  Ouch

  Inch of Grace, sigh.

  46th Chorus

  I had a dream that Bill

  G. here, was lying on his bed

  talking to me in a room

  in Mexico City on a

  horrible afternoon, as

  he mumbles information

  about the crossroads of the world

  I wander like a Giggling Ling

  Chinese boy without rice

  in a Fog Over Grass

  Land vast and like life,

  – in my thoughts – but

  return to re-listen to what

  he was saying, about loaning

  money on interest, Christians,

  Medicis, Churches, therefores,

  Coats of Arms, Balls,

  Bridge Post Pots, Guards,

  I realize I am dreaming

  In beginnings already

  And ending’s nowhere

  To be seen

  Yet forgotten –

  Is all

  47th Chorus

  Where is Italy?

  How can I find it in my mind

  If my mind is endless.

  Skulls on the slavemarket,

  blacksmiths, doctors –

  I end up bleakly giggling

  in gleak romany rooms

  Sliced by Sardinian fiends

  And shot fulla morphine

  By sadistic doctors

  That didnt dream of Japan

  With me the night I dreamed

  Of the Japanese Boy

  With black wool cap

  Sitting on a wall

  On Kamikaze Boulevard

  Near the Sea’s Hurricane,

  In low gloomy dark

  Dusk of War 1943 –

  What happened in Italy?

  48th Chorus

  Marco Polo had canals

  and Venetian genitals,

  In the war between Genoa

  and Venicia,

  Marco Polo’s was captured

  And then they wrote the book

  And that’s all she wrote,

  Because after that

  the Wandering Jesuit

  Italian Monk

  made his way to the wall

  in the China – far

  in the Indes of the

  Saints,

  far in the cave of reality

  down the suicide steps

  into underground caves

  where worshippers

  like Ignatius Loyola

  and the Hearer & Answerer

  of Prayer, Samantabhadra,

  what’s his Indian name,

  preside

  (like before they were born)

  49th Chorus

  They got nothing on me

  at the university

  Them clever poets

  of immensity

  With charcoal suits

  and charcoal hair

  And green armpits

  and heaven air

  And cheques to balance

  my account

  In Rome benighted

  by White Russians

  Without care who puke

  in windows

  Everywhere.

  They got nothing on me

  ‘Cause I’m dead

  They cant surpass me

  ‘Cause I’m dead

  And being dead

  I hurt my head

  And now I wait

  Without hate

  For my fate

  To estate

  50th Chorus

  Maybe I’m crazy, and my parts

  Are scattered still – didnt gather

  Em when form was passin out

  The window of the giver,

  So I’m looking for derangement

  To bring me landward back

  Through logic’s cold moon air

  Where water everywhere

  Appears from magic gems

  And Asphasiax the Nymph

  of India by the Sea

  Dances princely mincing

  churly jargots

  In the oral eloquent air

  of tents’

  Canopied majesty,

  Ten thousand Buddhas

  Hiding Everywhere –

  How can I be crazy

  Even here?

  – or wait

  Maybe I’m an Agloon

  doomed to be spitted

  on the igloo stone

  of Some North mad

  51st Chorus

  America is a permissible dream,

  Providing you remember ants

  Have Americas and Russians

  Like the Possessed have Americas

  And little Americas are had

  By baby mules in misty fields

  And it is named after Americus

  Vespucci of Sunny Italy,

  And nobody cares how you hang

  Your spaghetti wash

  On the Pasta Rooftops

  Of Oh Yawn Opium

  Fellaheen Espagna

  Olvierto Milano

  Afternoon, when men

  gamble & ramble & fuck

  and women watch the wash

  with one eye on the grocer boy

  and one eye on the loon

  and one eye

  in the universe

  is Tathagata’s

  Transcendental

  orb of balloon

  52nd Chorus

  I’m crazy everywhere

  Like the guy sailed on that ferry

  for 3 years

  Between Hong Kong & China –

  The British shoulda given him

  temporary residence in Hong Kong;

  but they didnt want any part

  of him first place he didnt

  have any money

  Citizen somehow

  of a country behind the Iron Curtain

  Ex-Spy from Skid Row

  I’m crazy everywhere

  like Charlie Chaplin

  dancing in moral turpitude

  playing Bluebeard killer

  on satin asskiss couches

  with itchy mustache

  so well known to dreamers

  of Choice’s Century

  Every one of us Roman Circus

  sacrifices, every one,

&nb
sp; Returned for payment

  In America Madhouse

  53rd Chorus

  Merrily we roll along

  Dee de lee dee doo doo doo

  Merrily merrily all the day

  Roll along, roll along,

  O’er the deep blue sea

  “Yes, life woulda been

  a mistake without music”

  Most primitive thing we know

  About man is music, drums –

  first thing we hear – drums,

  fifes, reed instruments –

  naturals – catgut violins

  and heavenly lyres

  and along that line

  what the hell’s the name

  of that instrument

  the Aeolian Lyre

  by the Sea

  The Organ they made too –

  Demosthenes listened by the sea

  with a rock in his teeth

  And complained when he spent

  more on bread than wine –

  S h h h says the Holy Sea

  54th Chorus

  One night in 1941 I was a kid

  And ran away from college

  And took a bus to the South

  Where bedbugs got in my hair

  In the Heatwave Night

  And all I saw on the long

  Avenue were Negroes

  Once I went to a movie

  At midnight, 1940, Mice

  And Men, the name of it,

  The Red Block Boxcars

  Rolling by (on the Screen)

  Yessir

  life

  finally

  gets

  tired

  of

  living –

  On both occasions I had wild

  Face looking into lights

  Of Streets where phantoms

  Hastened out of sight

  Into Memorial Cello Time

  55th Chorus

  When I was in the hospital

  I had a big fat nurse

  Who kept looking over my shoulder

  At the book I was reading,

  ‘The Brothers Karamazov,’

  By Gambling Man Fyodor

  Dostoevsky

  Of Czarist Russia, a Saint,

  And in the chapters

  called Pro and Con

  She kept giggling & insisting

  That Pro meant Prophylactic

  and Con Contraceptive

  In all her laughs & gestures.

  Of this Holy Nurse

  I learned bed wet

  comforts of hot water

  and senile satisfaction

  ‘I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen’

  Sang the old white Cancer man

  in the corner

  when the children guitared

  at my footbed,

  Kolya Krosotkins

  of my railroad

  56th Chorus

  At another hospital

  I almost died

  With ecstasy

  Glancing at the Babylonian

  Rooftops of the Bronx,

  And at my fellow

  Kaiser was dying of Leukemia,

  Not enough thick blood,

  I had too much.

  I was dying of die-sadness,

  Others had diabetes

  like my Uncle John;

  Others had sores in the stomach,

  ulcers, worriers? –

  Sexfiends I’d say.

  Old Italian Fruiterer

  Had Banti’s Awful Disease,

  the bloating of the belly

  by undigested water

  come from food,

  everything he ate

  turned to water.

  57th Chorus

  Green goofballs,

  Blue Heavens,

  Sodium amythol,

  Sleeping compound.

  Thirty of em

  To commit suicide –

  Lethal dose is 30 to 50

  Times the therapeutic dose,

  The therapeutic dose is une –

  Take thirty to be safe –

  Or else praps forty be better –

  If you take too many

  You throw em up –

  You gotta let alone

  Your stomach, if you

  threw it right down

  you would throw it up

  then, in lethal powder

  form

  Better to eat the capsules

  Swallow about six at a time,

  Take em with cold water,

  Till you get about 35 in ya

  And then lay down on your back

  58th Chorus

  All about goofballs,

  all about morphine,

  so I read all about it,

  that’s what it said,

  ‘Lethal dose is 30 times

  the Therapeutic dose’

  Very painful death, morphine

  or heroin; never

  Try to kill yourself with

  heroin or morphine;

  It’s a very painful death.

  Doctor gave me a mainline shot

  Of H grain – Jesus I

  thought the whole building

  was falling on me –

  went on my knees, awake,

  lines come under my eye

  I looked like a madman

  In 15 minutes I begin

  to straighten up a little bit

  Says “Jesus Bill I thought

  you was dead

  A goner, the way you

  looked

  When you’re standin there”

  59th Chorus

  Then I always manage to get

  my weekly check on Monday,

  Pay my rent, get my laundry

  out, always have enough

  Junk to last a coupla days

  Have to buy a couple needles

  tomorrow, feels like

  Shovin a nail in me

  Just like shovin a nail in me

  Goddamn – (Cough) –

  For the first time in my life

  I pinched the skin

  And pushed the needle in

  And the skin pinched together

  And the needle stuck right out

  And I shot in and out,

  Goofed half my whole shot

  On the floor –

  Took another one –

  Nothin a junkey likes better

  Than sittin quietly with a new shot

  And knows tomorrow’s plenty more

  60th Chorus

  Cil

  Rubberbands Seventyfivedollars

  I came out of the dream

  That time with mind made

  Of misery and tried to remember

  the member

  of the ball

  who it did seem to me

  was the most proficient

  at devaluating the advance

  of my profit & loss

  company, Holmes –

  Whatever that means

  It means that I have been asked

  To receive a brother

  Who sinned against me

  And I knew all the time

  The Saints were for me.

  The Saints are still for me,

  are Still,

  Chico,

  small angels,

  I am still for them

  I got eyes of Avalokitesvara

  61st Chorus

  And all my own sins

  Have been forgiven somewhere –

  I dont even remember them,

  I remember the sins of others.

  Let me meditate on my sins.

  (Judgment Gate, somebody

  stuck a spear

  through the heart

  of the Judgment Gate)

  (with her surl of leer)

  and that’s how we got in

  Powerful Tea you gotta smoke

  to believe that

  About the actual honey

  of women’s limbs

  Archangels have true eyes ?
??

  They look sideways at you

  And make you excise

  The end from the tax bit

  of your doubts –

  ’S all about angels’ sins

  62nd Chorus

  A warrant for arrest

  Is a mandate,

  An order from the Court

  Or from the Roayal Coart

  Or from the Royal King

  Or from

  the Royal Coast,

  or Coat of Arms,

  or Charms,

  Boudoirs,

  Histories by Voltaire,

  Arrested disorderly

  Louis Ferdinand Celine’s

  of South Africa

  murderous intelligent

  If you got a lot a money

  You’re a felon

  If you got not but little money

  Misdemeanor

  Mal-Hishaps-Deameaning

  Lost Ass-Kicked Out

  or go to jail

  Keep the door locked

  63rd Chorus

  Rather gemmy,

  Said the King of Literature

  Sitting on a davenport

  at afternoon butler’s tea.

  Rather gemmy, hm,

  Always thought these sonnets

  Of mine, were rather gemmy,

  As you say,

  pureperfect gems

  of lucid poetry

  Poetry being what it is today

  Rather gemmy, I concluded,

  thinking you were right –

  It isnt my fault that Buddha

  gave me helmet

  Of Right Thought, and indices

  of long Saints

  To Cope my Lope along

  with,

  Seeing I never had harm

  from anything

  But a Heavenly Farm.

  64th Chorus

  I’d rather die than be famous,

  I want to go live in the desert

  With long wild hair, eating

  At my campfire, full of sand,

  Hard as a donut

  Cooked by Sand

  The Pure Land

  Moo Land

  Heavenland Righteous

  sping

  the thing

  I’d rather be in the desert sand,

  Sitting legs crossed, at lizard

  High noon, under a wood

  Board shelter, in the Dee Go

  Desert, just west a L A,

  Or even in Chihucha, dry

  Zackatakies, High Guadalajara,

  – absence of phantoms

  make me no king –

  rather go in the high lone land

  of plateau where you can hear

  at night the zing of silence

  from the halls of Assembled

  65th Chorus

  To understand what I’m say in