February 28, 2002

• I seek not fun nor entertainment, but inspiration in whatever form arises. This leaves me open to sudden surprises from untoward sources: saints of bigamy and a scourge of divorces. ...And so they ran out on the road--those Beats with stories seldom told, but with emboldened hearts to take on the load of a cosmic ennui lazily legacied by terminal policities of the powers that be. Beat them down? Beat them up? NO! Beatific was the stuff from which their vision sprung and grew. Beatify me and I'll beatify you. Rage against complacency and howl at the moon.

  
  

  So Gregory Corso was friend and fellow Beat of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, and many. When he read the following poem at New College in Oxford in 1958, a lot of the members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament who were there didn't catch the Beat, but allowed their ideology to seize their guts and squeeze their nuts until they all sounded like frantic goats in rut. Ginsberg came to his fellow poet's defense, pleading for surrender unto the poet's muse with a woo of ecstatic release, hoping their angst they'd lose. But to no luck. Ultimately disgusted, he then called the dissident students a bunch of assholes, thus reifying the great cliché of nature: that assholes yearn to bunch.

  
  

  Hey, if you can't suck the whole BOMB down, grab a piece of shrapnel here and there...

  
  

                             BOMB by Gregory Corso
  
                             ---------------------
  
                 Budger of history   Brake of time   You   Bomb
  
        Toy of universe   Grandest of all snatched sky   I cannot hate you
  
          Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt   the jawbone of an ass
  
       The bumpy club of One Million B.C.   the mace   the flail    the axe
  
     Catapult Da Vinci   tomahawk Cochise   flintlock Kidd   dagger Rathbone
  
      Ah and the sad desparate gun of Verlaine   Pushkin   Dillinger   Bogart
  
   And hath not St. Michael a burning sword   St. George a lance   David a sling
  
   Bomb   you are as cruel as man makes you   and you're no crueller than cancer
  
    All Man hates you   they'd rather die by car-crash   lightning   drowning
  
  Falling off a roof   electric-chair  heart-attack   old age   old age   O Bomb
  
       They'd rather die by anything but you   Death's finger is free-lance
  
    Not up to man whether you boom or not   Death has long since distributed its
  
    categorical blue   I sing thee Bomb   Death's extravagance   Death's jubilee
  
     Gem of Death's supremest blue   The flyer will crash   his death will differ
  
      with the climbor who'll fall   to die by cobra is not to die by bad pork
  
  Some die by swamp   some by sea  and some by the bushy-haired man in the night
  
     O there are deaths like witches of Arc   Scarey deaths like Boris Karloff
  
      No-feeling deaths like birth-death   sadless deaths like old pain Bowery
  
    Abandoned deaths   like Capital Punishment   stately deaths like senators
  
     And unthinkable deaths like Harpo Marx   girls on Vogue covers   my own
  
       I do not know just how horrible Bombdeath is   I can only imagine
  
        Yet no other death I know has so laughable a preview   I scope
  
        a city   New York City   streaming   starkeyed   subway shelter
  
          Scores and scores   A fumble of humanity   High heels bend
  
              Hats whelming away   Youth forgetting their combs
  
            Ladies not knowing what to do   with their shopping bags
  
              Unperturbed gum machines   Yet dangerous 3rd rail
  
            Ritz Brothers   from the Bronx   caught in the A train
  
                  The smiling Schenley poster will always smile
  
                     Impish death   Satyr Bomb   Bombdeath
  
                       Turtles exploding over Istanbul
  
                           The jaguar's flying foot
  
                          soon to sink in arctic snow
  
                       Penguins plunged against the Sphinx
  
                          The top of the Empire state
  
                      arrowed in a broccoli field in Sicily
  
                   Eiffel shaped like a C in Magnolia Gardens
  
                         St. Sophia peeling over Sudan
  
                       O athletic Death   Sportive Bomb
  
                         the temples of ancient times
  
                           their grand ruin ceased
  
                        Electrons   Protons   Neutrons
  
                           gathering Hersperean hair
  
                      walking the dolorous gulf of Arcady
  
                            joining marble helmsmen
  
                         entering the final ampitheater
  
                       with a hymnody feeling of all Troys
  
                          heralding cypressean torches
  
                           racing plumes and banners
  
                   and yet knowing Homer with a step of grace
  
                         Lo the visiting team of Present
  
                             the home team of Past
  
                         Lyre and tube together joined
  
                       Hark the hotdog soda olive grape
  
                        gala galaxy robed and uniformed
  
                        commissary   O the happy stands
  
                        Ethereal root and cheer and boo
  
                       The billioned all-time attendance
  
                            The Zeusian pandemonium
  
                              Hermes racing Owens
  
                            The Spitball of Buddha
  
                              Christ striking out
  
                             Luther stealing third
  
                        Planeterium Death   Hosannah Bomb
  
                       Gush the final rose   O Spring Bomb
  
                       Come with thy gown of dynamite green
  
                         unmenace Nature's inviolate eye
  
                           Before you the wimpled Past
  
                     behind you the hallooing Future   O Bomb
  
                          Bound in the grassy clarion air
  
                           like the fox of the tally-ho
  
                    thy field the universe thy hedge the geo
  
                   Leap Bomb   bound Bomb   frolic zig and zag
  
                  The stars a swarm of bees in thy binging bag
  
                        Stick angels on your jubilee feet
  
                      wheels of rainlight on your bunky seat
  
                       You are due and behold you are due
  
                         and the heavens are with you
  
                     hosanna incalescent glorious liaison
  
                   BOMB O havoc antiphony molten cleft BOOM
  
                      Bomb mark infinity a sudden furnace
  
                   spread thy multitudinous encompassed Sweep
  
                           set forth awful agenda
  
                Carrion stars   charnel planets   carcass elements
  
               Corpse the universe   tee-hee finger-in-the-mouth hop
  
                         over its long long dead Nor
  
                      From thy nimbled matted spastic eye
  
                      exhaust deluges of celestial ghouls
  
                        From thy appellational womb
  
                     spew birth-gusts of of great worms
  
                          Rip open your belly Bomb
  
                 from your belly outflock vulturic salutations
  
                 Battle forth your spangled hyena finger stumps
  
                         along the brink of Paradise
  
                           O Bomb   O final Pied Piper
  
                  both sun and firefly behind your shock waltz
  
                            God abandoned mock-nude
  
                   beneath His thin false-talc's apocalypse
  
                          He cannot hear thy flute's
  
                          happy-the-day profanations
  
                 He is spilled deaf into the Silencer's warty ear
  
                      His Kingdom an eternity of crude wax
  
                        Clogged clarions untrumpet Him
  
                          Sealed angels unsing Him
  
                        A thunderless God   A dead God
  
                         O Bomb   thy BOOM His tomb
  
                   That I lean forward on a desk of science
  
                    an astrologer dabbling in dragon prose
  
                 half-smart about wars   bombs   especially bombs
  
                That I am unable to hate what is necessary to love
  
                  That I can't exist in a world that consents
  
              a child in a park   a man dying in an electric-chair
  
                      That I am able to laugh at all things
  
            all that I know and do not know   thus to conceal my pain
  
                That I say I am a poet and therefore love all man
  
             knowing my words to be the acquainted prophecy of all men
  
                  and my unwords no less an acquaintanceship
  
                             That I am manifold
  
                       a man pursuing the big lies of gold
  
                        or a poet roaming in bright ashes
  
                      or that which I imagine myself to be
  
                  a shark-toothed sleep   a man-eater of dreams
  
                     I need not then be all-smart about bombs
  
                Happily so   for if I felt bombs were caterpillars
  
                     I'd doubt not they'd become butterflies
  
                           There is a hell for bombs
  
                        They're there   I see them there
  
                         They sit in bits and sing songs
  
                       mostly German songs
  
                        And two very long American songs
  
                      and they wish there were more songs
  
                     especially Russian and Chinese songs
  
                    and some more very long American songs
  
                      Poor little Bomb that'll never be
  
                         an Eskimo song   I love thee
  
                          I want to put a lollipop
  
                              in thy furcal mouth
  
                       A wig of Goldilocks on thy baldy bean
  
                    and have you skip with me Hansel and Gretel
  
                          along the Hollywoodian screen
  
                        O Bomb in which all lovely things
  
                     moral and physical anxiously participate
  
                   O fairylike plucked from the
  
                            grandest universe tree
  
                        O piece of heaven which gives
  
                       both mountain and anthill a sun
  
                  I am standing before your fantastic lily door
  
                  I bring you Midgardian roses   Arcadian musk
  
                   Reputed cosmetics from the girls of heaven
  
                     Welcome me   fear not thy opened door
  
                       nor thy cold ghost's grey memory
  
                     nor the pimps of indefinite weather
  
                         their cruel terrestial thaw
  
                            Oppenheimer is seated
  
                         in the dark pocket of Light
  
                      Fermi is dry in Death's Mozambique
  
                           Einstein his mythmouth
  
                   a barnacled wreath on the moon-squid's head
  
               Let me in   Bomb   rise from that pregnant-rat corner
  
                  nor fear the raised-broom nations of the world
  
                             O Bomb I love you
  
                   I want to kiss your clank   eat your boom
  
                      You are a paean   an acme of scream
  
                        a lyric hat of Mister Thunder
  
                          O resound thy tanky knees
  
                       BOOM   BOOM   BOOM   BOOM   BOOM
  
                        BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns
  
                      BOOM BOOM ye moons   ye stars BOOM
  
                       nights ye BOOM   ye days ye BOOM
  
                   BOOM BOOM ye winds   ye clouds ye rains
  
                      go BANG ye lakes   ye oceans BING
  
                       Barracuda BOOM and cougar BOOM
  
                         Ubangi BOOM   orangutang
  
                   BING BANG BONG BOOM   bee bear baboon
  
                          ye BANG ye BONG ye BING
  
                         the tail the fin the wing
  
                   Yes   Yes   into our midst a bomb will fall
  
                   Flowers will leap in joy their roots aching
  
            Fields will kneel proud beneath the halleluyahs of the wind
  
              Pinkbombs will blossom   Elkbombs will perk their ears
  
             Ah many a bomb that day will awe the bird a gentle look
  
                   Yet   not enough to say a bomb will fall
  
                    or even contend celestial fire goes out
  
                  Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb
  
           that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born
  
              magisterial bombs wrapped in ermine   all beautiful
  
                 and they'll sit plunk on earth's grumpy empires
  
                       fierce with moustaches of gold
  
  

  • 12:16 am
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