Sunset, a marble tea table on Kusadasi’s
hotel yacht harbor, I remembered
a stork flapped wings upward meeting atop one
ragged column
left of old Cybele’s Artemisium at Ephesus, favorable
omen;
Halicarnassus’ mausoleum a wonder vanished from
Bodrum’s coast
a million glass shards left over, shipwrecked six
Moslem centuries past;
The Pythian Oracle’s Divinity fled Didyma to
Earth’s bowels early in the last millennium,
At sunset Apollo’s columns echo with
the bawl of one God;
Looking for words at Pergamum, only
a one-walled shell
stands on a peaktop over plain,
Hippocrates’ library shipped to Alexandria long
ago
Zeus and Diana’s marble loins raptured to
London Paris & Berlin;
Musician & poet sit silent on a long stone
bench in fig tree shade
with Croesus above Aphrodesia’s weedy
Stadium
Go roar thru sulphurous dawn’s rosy haze
heavenward over Homer’s odorous Smyrna
to meet United States of America’s Jewish
Ambassador to Ankara.
— 8 a.m., June 29, 1990
Unpublished.
The moon in the dewdrop is the real moon
The moon in the sky’s an illusion
Which Madhyamaka school does that represent?
—Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, CO, August 1991
Published in: Shambhala Sun, vol. 1, no. 5 (January/February 1993), p. 57.
New Years Greeting
(for Ron Padgett)
It is a beauteous evening calm and free
Spanish voices on Our Lady Help of Xtians steps
a new year’s come, eternity & I can’t eat baloney
& avoiding any salt probably can’t drink Schweppes.
You got to hand it to the Doctor’s Hospital
Your heart your liver kidneys and arteriosclerosis
Fortunately sick going in I came out well
Before my time the threat of Death a nosy gnosis
This can’t go on forever short of breath weak heart
Wasn’t my fault don’t drink don’t drive don’t smoke
don’t stir sugar in my coffee don’t you start
up with me ‘bout eating bacon sniffing coke
I could have suffocated didn’t but live on
upon this earth I walk and eat and write this poem to
Ron.
—New York, 2 a.m., January 4, 1992
Published in: The Northern Centinel, vol. 205, no. 4 (Fall 1993), p. 8.
I bought a
pretty boy
at the hermaphrodite
market and
lived happily
ever after.
I sold a
sweet thing
at the hermaphrodite
market &
went home
happy.
—May 2, 1994
Published in: Ma!, no. 7 (ca. 1994), front cover.
Last Conversation with Carl or In Memoriam
[re: Twin Towers Explosion on TV]
Carl: It’s a real turn-on
to be well and functioning
in the middle of the mess.
It’s hard to find
anything real because
the physical thing
changes so quickly
you don’t know which way to turn
because … I’m incontinent
… don’t know the proper way
to behave …
I hope my suffering
doesn’t last too long.
So maybe pneumonia
will do it in like my mom
Pain I haven’t had
to deal with much
lately … they’ve got
me on the anti pain …
and they also insist
on the oxygen which
is no longer too meaningful
effective
I feel like my mother’s
way — go off into pneumonia
and heart failure … but
my heart is too damn
strong …
Allen: What do
you think death is?
Carl: Death is a fading away —
which I’d like to go easily
like my mother … imitate
my mother … this last
year of grace has been
excessive — I just want
to get it over with —
I just want to say a
few words about (the literary scene
of) Kerouac Burroughs
There’s not much more
for me to say anyway, but
it’s been a lot of fun
At that time it was
very exciting to me —
I wasn’t that mad,
I was intellectually adventurous
and interested myself in Artaud and
I was a loner — even
in my own family circles
eccentric — How much
recognition I got from
my family? I got very little
I guess. (coughing)
It’s like strangulation …
As who’ll take me back to my room
For a while I was very
serious about surrealism —
It was just another movement
I was serious about these
movements —
Allen: Do you feel I did the wrong
thing putting the spotlight on you
by using your name in “Howl”?
Carl: You gave me my first
outlet in Neurotica — for
some recognition … I guess
it went to my head
The life I spent was all right
I’m dying of lung cancer
an unusual thing — can’t
bother to figure it out.
Too bad if I was foolish,
it won’t matter much much
longer. I hope I
get out without too
much agony. For my mother
it was nice, she just waved
I was there before
she died … (then) they notified
me about my mother
Then I felt my repson–
sibility was really over.
I spent the next year
just wandering about …
until this
It was a wonderful
year — wonderful and
meaningless with
my mother gone … I had
no responsibility … I had
a girlfriend Elaine … now
she claims she loves me …
marry me, all kinds of
things —
Allen: Kerouac stuck by his
mother
Carl: “Boys and their mothers”
The beats were kind of a
Cosmopolitan grouping, some from
the suburbs, some from the
inner city, and some people
wanted to be beats, some were
real beats, some made believe they
were and they weren’t.
A mid-century
So I’m still somewhat
reluctant to say good-bye —
I don’t know why I’m
hanging on so desperately …
It’s just hard to let
go … you hang on
with a kind of bulldog
rapacity … I suppose
like people being executed …
the animal in it is still
there
Carl to Allen: except
… you’re really
looking good …
You look younger
to me — spirits are young —
Rabbi was here — He said
he’d pray for me … That’s
about it … The Jewish
thing is OK — I let it
pass … This is a formal
social status — against
which I make no challenge …
Back in room, with oxygen
mask.
Allen: Does it help?
Carl: it relieves me a little,
makes it a little better.
(Carl volunteered) … One thing that
still interests me is sex
(gestures towards his lap)
I looked at him grizzled
and thin, but calm, seemed to’ve
gained strength, up on pillow
bed head raised a bit so he
wasn’t flat, a bed by window
in a two man room, other bed
leathery and empty.
Allen: You mean even now, you have
enuf strength to be interested
in that?
Carl: Yes … my last sex was with …
8 months ago — I had
the strength & acquitted
myself adequately. So I feel
I’d fulfilled my last responsibility.
— VA Hospital, Bronx, NY, February 26, 1993
Published in: Poetry Project Newsletter, vol. 149 (April/May 1993), pp. 6–7.
I meet Carl Solomon.
“What’s it like in the afterworld?”
“It’s just like in the mental hospital.
You get along if you follow the rules.”
“What are the rules?”
“The first rule is: Remember you’re dead.
The second rule is: Act like you’re dead.”
— ca. 1996
Published in: Marc Olmsted, Don’t Hesitate: Knowing Allen Ginsberg (Beatdom Books, 2004).