Reality Sandwiches Part 2

Jump in time to the immediate future, another poem: return to the old land penniless and with a disconnected ma.n.u.script, the recollection of a few sensations, beginning: logboat down Rio Michol under plantain and drifting trees to the railroad, darkness on the sea looking toward the stations of the cla.s.sic world -- another image descending in white mist down the lunar highway at dawn, above Lake Catemaco on the bus -- it woke me up -- the far away likeness of a heavenly file of female saints stepping upward on miniature arches of a gold stairway into the starry sky, the thousands of little saintesses in blue hoods looking out at me and beckoning: SALVATION!

It's true, simple as in the image.

Then the mummies in their Pantheon at Guanajuato -- a city of Cortesian mines in the first creva.s.se of the Sierras, where I rested -- for I longed to see their faces before I left: these weren't mythical rock images, tho stone -- limestone effigies out of the grave, remains of the fatal character -- newly resurrected, grasping their bodies with stiff arms, in soiled funeral clothes; twisted, knock-kneed, like burning screaming lawyers -- what hallucinations of the nerves? -- indecipherable-s.e.xed; one death-man had raised up his arms to cover his eyes, significant timeless reflex in sepulchre: apparitions of immortality consumed inward, waiting openmouthed in the fireless darkness.

Nearby, stacked symmetrically, a skullbone wall ending the whitewashed corridor under the graveyard -- foetid smell reminiscent of sperm and drunkenness -- the skulls empty and fragile, numerous as sh.e.l.ls, -- so much life pa.s.sed through this town . . .

The problem is isolation -- there in the grave or here in oblivion of light.

Of eternity we have a numbered score of years and fewer tender moments -- one moment of tenderness and a year of intelligence and nerves: one moment of pure bodily tenderness -- I could dismiss Allen with grim pleasure.

Reminder: I knelt in my room on the patio at San Miguel at the keyhole: 2 A.M.

The old woman lit a candle.

Two young men and their girls waited before the portal, news from the street. She changed the linen, smiling.

What joy! The nakedness!

They dance! They talk and simper before the door, they lean on a leg, hand on a hip, and posture, nudity in their hearts, they clap a hand to head and whirl and enter, pushing each other, happily, happily, to a moment of love. . .

What solitude I've finally inherited.

Afterward fifteen hours on rubbled single lane, broken bus rocking along the maws and continental crags of mountain afternoon, the distant valleys fading, regnant peaks beyond to days on the Pacific where I bathed -- then riding, fitful, gazing, sleeping through the desert beside a wetback sad-faced old-man- youth, exhausted to Mexicali to stand near one night's dark shack on the garbage cliffs of bordertown overhanging the tin house poor man's village below, a last night's timewracked brooding and farewell, the end of a trip.

-- Returning armed with New Testament, critic of horse and mule, tanned and bearded satisfying Whitman, concerned with a few Traditions, metrical, mystical, manly . . . and certain characteristic flaws -- enough!

The nation over the border grinds its arms and dreams of war: I see the fiery blue clash of metal wheels clanking in the industries of night, and detonation of infernal bombs . . . and the silent downtown of the States in watery dusk submersion.

Guanajuato -- Los Angeles, 1954 [NOTE: Uxmal and other proper names mentioned in the first part of the poem are those of ruined cities. Xbalba, translatable as morning Star in Region Obscure, or Hope, and p.r.o.nounced Chivalva, is the area in Chiapas between the Tobas...o...b..rder and the Usumascintla River at the edge of the Peten Rain Forest; the boundary of lower Mexico and Guatemala today is thereabouts. The locale was considered a Purgatory or Limbo, the legend is vague, in the (Old) Mayan Empire. To the large tree at the crest of what is now called Mount Don Juan, at the foot of which this poem was written, ancient craftsmen came to complete work left unfinished at their death.]

ON BURROUGHS' WORK

The method must be purest meat and no symbolic dressing, actual visions & actual prisons as seen then and now.

Prisons and visions presented with rare descriptions corresponding exactly to those of Alcatraz and Rose.

A naked lunch is natural to us, we eat reality sandwiches.

But allegories are so much lettuce.

Don't hide the madness.

San Jose 1954

LOVE POEM ON THEME BY WHITMAN

I'll go into the bedroom silently and lie down between the bridegroom and the bride, those bodies fallen from heaven stretched out waiting naked and restless, arms resting over their eyes in the darkness, bury my face in their shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, breathing their skin, and stroke and kiss neck and mouth and make back be open and known, legs raised up crook'd to receive, c.o.c.k in the darkness driven tormented and attacking roused up from hole to itching head, bodies locked shuddering naked, hot lips and b.u.t.tocks screwed into each other and eyes, eyes glinting and charming, widening into looks and abandon, and moans of movement, voices, hands in air, hands between thighs, hands in moisture on softened lips, throbbing contraction of bellies till the white come flow in the swirling sheets, and the bride cry for forgiveness, and the groom be covered with tears of pa.s.sion and compa.s.sion, and I rise up from the bed replenished with last intimate gestures and kisses of farewell -- all before the mind wakes, behind shades and closed doors in a darkened house where the inhabitants roam unsatisfied in the night, nude ghosts seeking each other out in the silence.

OVER KANSAS

Starting with eyeball kicks on storefronts from bus window on way to Oakland airport: I am no ego these are themselves stained grey wood and gilded n.i.g.g.e.r gla.s.s and barberpole tha.s.s all.

But then, Kiss Me Again in the dim brick lounge, muted modern music.

Where shall I fly not to be sad, my dear?

The other businessmen bend heavily over armchairs introducing women to c.o.c.ktails in fluorescent shadow -- gaiety of tables, gaiety of fat necks, gaiety of departures, gaiety of national business, hands waving away jokes.

I'm getting maudlin on the soft rug watching, mixed rye before me on the little black table whereon lieth my briefcase containing market research notes and blank paper -- that airplane ride to come -- or a barefaced pilgrimage acrost imaginary plains I never made afoot into Kansas hallucination and supernatural deliverance.

Later: Hawthorne mystic waiting on the bench composing his sermon also with white bony fingers bitten, with hometown gold ring, in a blue serge suit and barely visible blond mustache on mental face, blank-eyed: pitiful thin body -- what body may he love? -- My G.o.d! the soft beauty in comparison -- that football boy in sunny yellow lovesuit puzzling out his Xmas trip death insurance by machine.

A virginal feeling again, I'd be willing to die aloft now.

Can't see outside in the dark, real dreary strangers about, and I'm unhappy flying away.

All this facility of travel too superficial for the heart I have for solitude.

Nakedness must come again -- not s.e.x, but some naked isolation.

And down there's Hollywood, the starry world below -- expressing nakedness -- that craving, that glory that applause -- leisure, mind, appet.i.te for dreams, bodies, travels: appet.i.te for the real, created by the mind and kissed in coitus -- that craving, that melting!

Not even the human imagination satisfies the endless emptiness of the soul.

The West Coast behind me for five days while I return to ancient New York -- ah drunkenness!

I'll see your eyes again.

Hopeless comedown!

Travelling thru the dark void over Kansas yet moving nowhere in the dark void of the soul.

Angel woke me to see -- past my own reflection, bald businessman with hornrims sleepy in round window view -- spectral skeleton of electricity illuminated nervous system floating on the void out of central brainplant powerhouse running into heaven's starlight overhead. 'Twas over Hutchinson.

Engine pa.s.sed over lights, view gone.

Georgeous George on my plane.

And Chicago, the first time, smoking winter city -- shivering in my tweed jacket walking by the airport around the block on Cicero under the fogged flat supersky of heaven -- another project for the heart, six months for here someday to make Chicago natural, pick up a few strange images.

Far off red signs on the orphan highway glimmer at the trucks of home.

Who rides that lone road now?

What heart? Who smokes and loves in Kansas auto now?

Who's talking magic under the night? Who walks downtown and drinks black beer in his eternity? Whose eyes Collect the streets and mountain tops for storage in his memory?

What sage in the darkness?

Someone who should collect my insurance!

Better I make a thornful pilgrimage on theory feet to suffer the total isolation of the b.u.m, than this hipster business family journey -- crossing U.S. at night -- in a sudden glimpse me being no one in the air nothing but clouds in the moonlight with humans f.u.c.king underneath. . . .

SF-NY December 1954

MALEST CORNIFICI TUO CATULLO

I'm happy, Kerouac, your madman Allen's finally made it: discovered a new young cat, and my imagination of an eternal boy walks on the streets of San Francisco, handsome, and meets me in cafeterias and loves me. Ah don't think I'm sickening.

You're angry at me. For all of my lovers?

It's hard to eat s.h.i.t, without having visions; when they have eyes for me it's like Heaven.

SF 1955

DREAM RECORD: JUNE 8, 1955

A drunken night in my house with a boy, San Francisco: I lay asleep: darkness: I went back to Mexico City and saw Joan Burroughs leaning forward in a garden-chair, arms on her knees. She studied me with clear eyes and downcast smile, her face restored to a fine beauty tequila and salt had made strange before the bullet in her brow.

We talked of the life since then.

Well, what's Burroughs doing now?

Bill on earth, he's in North Africa.

Oh, and Kerouac? Jack still jumps with the same beat genius as before, notebooks filled with Buddha.

I hope he makes it, she laughed.

Is Huncke still in the can? No, last time I saw him on Times Square.

And how is Kenney? Married, drunk and golden in the East. You? New loves in the West -- Then I knew she was a dream: and questioned her -- Joan, what kind of knowledge have the dead? can you still love your mortal acquaintances?

What do you remember of us?

She faded in front of me -- The next instant I saw her rain-stained tombstone rear an illegible epitaph under the gnarled branch of a small tree in the wild gra.s.s of an unvisited garden in Mexico.

Blessed be the Muses for their descent, dancing round my desk, crowning my balding head with Laurel.