Reality Sandwiches Part 1

REALITY SANDWICHES.

by ALLEN GINSBERG.

Acknowledgement

Anyone who asked for writings I sent them -- the Needle Needle, Provincetown Review, Mattachine Review Mattachine Review, Beat.i.tude Beat.i.tude, Yugen Yugen, Evergreen Review, Sw.a.n.k Sw.a.n.k, Partisan Review Partisan Review, White Dove White Dove, Chicago Review, i.e. Cambridge Review Cambridge Review, New Directions 16 New Directions 16, Grecourt Review, Combustion Combustion, Folio Folio, Isis Isis, Nomad Nomad, Venture Venture, The Beat Scene, Rhinozerous Rhinozerous, Hasty Papers Hasty Papers, & Between Worlds Between Worlds.

Contents:

My Alba

Sakyamuni Coming out from the Mountain

The Green Automobile

Havana

Siesta in Xbalba

On Burroughs' Work

Love Poem on Theme By Whitman

Over Kansas

Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo

Dream Record

Blessed be the muses

Fragment 1956

A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley

Sather Gate Illumination

Scribble

Afternoon Seattle

Psalm III

Tears

Ready To Roll

Wrote This Last Night

Squeal

American Change

'Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square'

My Sad Self

Funny Death

Battleship Newsreel

I Beg You Come Back & Be Cheerful

To An Old Poet in Peru

Aether

MY ALBA

Now that I've wasted five years in Manhattan life decaying talent a blank talking disconnected patient and mental sliderule and number machine on a desk autographed triplicate synopsis and taxes obedient prompt poorly paid stayed on the market youth of my twenties fainted in offices wept on typewriters deceived mult.i.tudes in vast conspiracies deodorant battleships serious business industry every six weeks whoever drank my blood bank innocent evil now part of my system five years unhappy labor 22 to 27 working not a dime in the bank to show for it anyway dawn breaks it's only the sun the East smokes O my bedroom I am d.a.m.ned to h.e.l.l what alarmclock is ringing

NY 1953

SAKYAMUNI COMING OUT FROM THE MOUNTAIN Liang Kai, Southern Sung

He drags his bare feet out of a cave under a tree, eyebrows grown long with weeping and hooknosed woe, in ragged soft robes wearing a fine beard, unhappy hands clasped to his naked breast -- humility is beatness humility is beatness -- faltering into the bushes by a stream, all things inanimate but his intelligence -- stands upright there tho trembling: Arhat who sought Heaven under a mountain of stone, sat thinking till he realized the land of blessedness exists in the imagination -- the flash come: empty mirror -- how painful to be born again wearing a fine beard, reentering the world a bitter wreck of a sage: earth before him his only path.

We can see his soul, he knows nothing like a G.o.d: shaken meek wretch -- humility is beatness before the absolute World.

NY Public Library 1953

THE GREEN AUTOMOBILE

If I had a Green Automobile I'd go find my old companion in his house on the Western ocean.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

I'd honk my horn at his manly gate, inside his wife and three children sprawl naked on the living room floor.

He'd come running out to my car full of heroic beer and jump screaming at the wheel for he is the greater driver.

We'd pilgrimage to the highest mount of our earlier Rocky Mountain visions laughing in each others arms, delight surpa.s.sing the highest Rockies, and after old agony, drunk with new years, bounding toward the snowy horizon blasting the dashboard with original bop hot rod on the mountain we'd batter up the cloudy highway where angels of anxiety careen through the trees and scream out of the engine.

We'd burn all night on the jackpine peak seen from Denver in the summer dark, forestlike unnatural radiance illuminating the mountaintop: childhood youthtime age & eternity would open like sweet trees in the nights of another spring and dumbfound us with love, for we can see together the beauty of souls hidden like diamonds in the clock of the world, like Chinese magicians can confound the immortals with our intellectuality hidden in the mist, in the Green Automobile which I have invented imagined and visioned on the roads of the world more real than the engine on a track in the desert purer than Greyhound and swifter than physical jetplane.

Denver! Denver! we'll return roaring across the City & County Building lawn which catches the pure emerald flame streaming in the wake of our auto.

This time we'll buy up the city!

I cashed a great check in my skull bank to found a miraculous college of the body up on the bus terminal roof.