The Noble Path


This poem was written in 1961, in Chicago,
in between two perfomance clubs and my
first experience with that demon reefer. LOL
Gives you an idea of where my head has been
alll my life. It was the summer after I graduated
highschool. So I was 17 or 18. easy


Just blowin' through
Nebraska dust at noon
& soon I'll be high
in the Mile High City
while I meet literati
from old St. Paul.

Talk the same damn talk
while thinkin' that talk
is a new kind of talk
not the old talk at all talk
just talk with a change
and a rearrange
of old ways changin' to the new day.

& now Ezra Pound
keeps changin' form and verse
just to see
if we
are even sure it's him
& not some duplicate poet
from a streetlamp fog
who coughs up
blood
mixed thick with lung-soaked marinade
of Tokay wine

- sayin' -

"All poets must go to the capitol,
(with us or alone)
to piss on the white-washed stone,
& watch the yellow rivulets, like a stream
begin to gleam, as they go with the flow,
crawlin' down 'till they hit common ground
that we all gave our all to call our own.
& then the women and the men
who work with overzealous pride
on the inside
of the white-stone
hallowed hallways of hootenanny high-brow
will understand a new plan."

Then suddenly a dung infested
stink from a link to the bureaucratic pimps
and their willy-nilly whores,
wearin' blacked-out glasses
with their cracked-glass lenses,
empty out their stream of consciousness
that's runnin' like a sweat-ring
clear across their brow.
Until they once again begin to scream
about a dream
where they heard that the herd
headed south down to Dixie.

Just mealy minded jerk-offs
bitchin' 'bout a handout
they gave to a hobo,
in a dirty bowl;
a hobo from Frisco,
who once belonged to Cleveland
then on to Waukegan,
but these little bitty parasitic bureaucrats
keep takin' their pay,
while everyday they take away
the golden hope of hobos
from Frisco
who need a little rope just to cope.

But they never heard
the Negro note
or painted rhythmic "blues"
(thinkin' all along,)
Charlie Parker was a flute playin' song-man
in Mr. Miller's integrated band,
until you went to bed or tried to eat your supper
with the band, man,
in the land with the rebel flags a-flyin;
a jack-crap burger joint proud to be part,
at the start of equal but deceitful doctrines of disgust.

But this was all before the plane went down,
down to the ground, killin' everyone around,
includin' integrator Glen and all of his men;
'cept Chalie Parker, 'cause Charlie missed the plane,
couldn't find a cab for a Negro, with a sax
and some bags in his hands,
standin right in line with the take me to the airport taxicab sign!
Goddamn, Mr. Sax Man,
got yourself some justice in the land of the flyin' rebel flags, man!

NOT ENOUGH!

& then we realize it was
Comrade Ezra after all,
changin' hats again,
so we would know that he could go
to the Capitol:

i-n-c-o-g-n-i-t-o

Just a poet pissin'
not a pissed off poet
headed for his Port of
Authority Deportation destiny.

& I'm tryin' to find my Bodhi notepad
with my final divinations written down inside.

The essence of self (revealed)
First thought - best thought (ignored)

wisdom I find.....(epiphany, epiphany)
is best left in the lead sometimes
and then I realize
that a thought is best defined
by the loss of the thought left behind.

& if that pad is found
then Buddha disappears
with my notes on Nirvana
and child isolation
surrounding corporation labor violation.

&
if Jesus is the Son, well hell,
so am I & so is every Bodhisattva,
in the Casba, according to the koan
where you take a crayon
and you draw a picture
of your bodhi nature
long before you were a baby born.

& then your drawing gets hung
in the Christian, Jew and Muslim
section at American Museum Number # I:
Modern Art,
and it is signed:

"Jesus Christ: Nazarene - A Likeness Done in Crayon"

and now you know
that you & God are One
because you both love boxcars
& sippin' Rhemy Rum
with the been-down, broke-down,
hobo troubled troubadours of life;

who knew
the nature of their essence
long before
THEY were born
into their misty fog-street
of despair - dying every day
with liver rot and brain decay;
poetic compensation overwhelmin' simple sensibilities.

But now you've gone the Mile
while your head is High...
& gangha smoke escapes from
the car parked
behind you at the bar
as you decide to climb
out, to join esoterica......"in review"
as everything returns to:

"Life! a dream forever ending."

Bodhisattva taught by Alan Watts, pale
white-man spreading bulldung
found around the Universities
of the green Ivy East
and brown Tile West of Palo Alto, California!

Where is Suzuki when you're down & out?
Still pining over Hiroshima?
Maybe Nagasaki in a formal kind of way,

teaching the benevolent
& ignorant Americans

THAT

life is suffering
& the path to noble wisdom
is the Eight Nobel Truths
which lead to the big double U -
Unity with the Universe.
Goodbye suffering life!

& they ask Mr. S.
if he might know the best
sushi joint
in reconstructed Tokyo?
& of course,
this sell-out, Buddha poseur, vomits
vast sushi knowledge

all over:

two big and fine
American prime
US Grade-A
Frantic all the time
Midwest housewife
Do the bump and grind
Freud conflicted, life constricted,
perfectly shaped and gaped at pair

of American TITS.

And she has pride in her tits;
'cause get her by
envy of the cock &
pressure felt performing
her brand new, IBM Blue,
rocky-robot husband's
every night request:
"to kiss my little buddy
when it points straight west!"

Not to mention deep intensions
to rise above her
country-club, white-wine, stroke your own tonight line,
capabilities -

in Levittown America,

........1959.