The Ballade of Susie Lamont

 

Some talk of Hegel.  Some of Kant.

But permit me to speak of Susie Lamont

Who jumped for the Frisbee and there in the air

Was eternally present with no underwear.

This was in the Sixties.  I was at Marquette.

By the bones of St. Thomas I see her yet.

She taught me so much of becoming and being.

“Help me Aristotle I can’t believe what I’m seeing!”

And she was much sweeter than Hegel and Kant

So much more demure was Susie Lamont.

It happened so fast.  The moment soon passed

Of Becoming and Being revealed.

Then she went away with her boyfriend Ray

And left me alone in the field.

Oh that very day I took the philosopher’s way

Went home alone as per plan

And for the rest of the day wrote a boring essay

That ended with three words: “What is Man?”

About “Oh what the loss is that the world is in process!”

And I cited Teilhard de Chardin.

 

 

1968

 

Mary said "I have a plan.

I'm reading Teilhard De Chardin."

I can't remember what she said

When I suggested Alfred North Whitehead.

We were high on LSD

And I was happy that she spoke to me.

Jimi Hendrix was on the wall

And she seemed so frail and small

And trembled.   Outside it snowed.

She said she hated "On the Road"

Went out in the snow with her boyfriend,  Jack.

Always remember   "Don't look back."

Next year I heard that she was dead.

In a car accident they said.

For what it's worth she's ever here

In the trembling  noösphere.

 

 

Go Tell the Achyans

 

Go tell the Achyans
That here obedient to their wish we lie.
Or something like that.
I remember
Drizzle in Coatesville
Meeting Kevin outside the Bongo.
Always smoking then.
“That rich bitch Lucy McIlvane
Jumped off the bridge at Exton.”
Looking around
For the police.
“She was high on acid.
Here it is."
“Something to do with her name,”
I said. And Kevin laughed.
Probably sold it to her.
We didn’t want to remember.
But I do now.
A PINK! VW.
“Slow down.”   Her grinding the gears.
Talking about meeting the Panthers.
Her blue veined hand.   Small girl.
Fluttering.  “Read “Catcher in the Rye”
At least 20 times,” she said.
Asking about Kevin, Gary, Steve.
“Kevin’s in California last I heard.
Gary joined the Marines.
How about that?”
Nervous girl.
Falling.

No one to catch her.
Thirty (More!) years later.

Go tell the Achyans.
Whatever that should mean.

 

Kevin Anent Jimi

 

December 31, 1969

I am on the train to NYC

To visit my friend Kevin

Who, a few years too

Late for San Francisco,

Moved  there.   Going

To the Jimi Hendrix New year’s Eve

Concert (With the “Sounds of East Harlem”)

And you can read about it as I did

Only yesterday in a very nice

Coffee table kind of book

On the Fillmore East.

 

Finding his walk up flat

(He called it that) going in

Two of his friends there

Maybe Five in the afternoon

In any case and Kevin

Shooting up smack

 

I say “Kevin I am

Fucking appalled.” maintaining

A certain distance as I did

From all that looking at

His arm (now gone, nothing at all)

And he grinning then sighing.

 

Wake up let’s go and somehow

We do.  I have the tickets

The Sounds of East Harlem first

Kevin nodding and then

Bill Graham introducing

Jimi and Kevin is awake

And then the man is there!

 

Looks out can’t see.

 

An instant before he starts Kevin

Leaning forward and I say

“You keep doing that shit

You’ll be dead in two years.”

 

“Man,” Kevin says, “Shutup

Can’t you ever be serious?”

 

 

I Love Them Old Hippies

 

I love them old hippies. The kind like before.

Like my poor old friend Kevin who slept on my floor

Who told me he wouldn’t be sick anymore

But went back to the streets in the morning.

Saying “You know you’re in trouble and you got the blues

When you forgot all you learned from Mother Earth News.”

“I’m going to Mexico.  Sleep under the stars.”

He went down to Mexico.  Found many fine bars

Where he could drink down the night and forget about wars

And wake up in the desert in the morning.

“I’ll tell you what Dooley.  I’m not going to stay.

I’m going to New York instead of L. A.

With my Carmelita.  Our love will abide.”

But they lost it to junk on the Lower East Side.

The water is waly.  The water is wide.

I got a call early one morning.

Now, my poor friend Kevin’s gone down to the dark.

His VW bus is in permanent “Park.”

He’d talk until morning then light up a Lark

And tell me he believed in transcendence.

“You know you’re in trouble and you got the blues

When you forgot all you learned from Mother Earth News.”

A Ballade

 

The Vietnam War was going on

And I was at Fort Hood

Sometimes feeling pretty sad.

Most times pretty good.

 

I’ll sing of soldiers in the rain

And how it’s sometimes pretty hard

And tell you how it was so strange

On Tank Destroyer Boulevard.

 

I reported to the Orderly Room

To good old Major Moore.

Who said to me “Godammit, son

Why don’t you close the door?”

 

I about faced and about faced

Then Major Moore put on his hat.

Said “Sergeant Green, I’m leaving now

Don’t let out the cat.”

 

I stood there in amazement.

He said, “That cat talks in Latin.

He pretty mean and crazy

And his name is General Patton.”

 

Now, I know the General Reader

Will cry out sans belief.

But Major Moore strode out that door

With his secret grief.

 

He had just returned from Vietnam

And was thinking “Fuck the Army.”

And he was not the only one.

All of us were barmy.

 

Major Moore went out the door

To his Buddha garden.

The Buddha looted from Saigon

When Major Moore was parting.

 

He had two guys assigned just there

To care for the flowers and trees.

You don’t believe me? I don’t care.

This was the Seventies.

 

I went back to the Orderly Room

Right up to the company clerk.

“Jesus Christ what is my doom?

Where do I go for work?”

 

The company clerk stopped typing.

Said, “Here, take a look at this.”

It was a novel he was writing

Entitled: “The Last Kiss.”

 

“It’s set in 1984

When everyone is dead

Except for a boy and his little dog.”

That’s really what he said.

 

He looked at me inquiringly

As he adjusted his toupee.

He was a Mormon and a novelist

And, quite bitterly, was gay.

 

And he played fine jazz piano

In a melancholy way.

 

Yes, he played fine jazz piano

In a melancholy way.

 

I read the page and looked at him

And pronounced the writing fine.

He perked right up. Said, “My name is Jim.

Do you really like the final line?”

 

I looked at Jim quite closely

And felt that I had no choice

And said in a voice quite ghostly

“It makes me think of Joyce.”

 

Then I picked up my duffel bag

And headed out the door

And I seemed to hear a Joplin rag

As I saw who I stood before.

 

It was Sergeant Major Gilmore Davis

Who said, “Boy, put down your gear

And go back and get a pair of pliers

And bring them over here.”

 

Sergeant Major Gilmore Davis!

In his Gilmore Davis way

Had a face like “Jesus Save Us!”

But a smile like Sugar Ray.

 

Last days in Army service

He’d been in since 44.

And you’ll think he might be nervous

With all the shit he did endure:

 

World War Two and then Korea.

Three tours of Vietnam.

But you have the wrong idea.

He was mellow. He was calm.

 

He took the pliers. Said, “Come with me.”

We went to the Rec room.

Where he adjusted the TV

Until Nat King Cole began to croon.

 

“Stay here, boy” he said to me.

But he didn’t mean it meanly.

“After Andy Williams.

We’ll watch ‘I Dream of Jeannie.’”

I went out into the Fort Hood night

With my gear upon my shoulder

Humming “Mama, It’s  Alright.”

I had a chance of getting older.

 

I was there near the Second Armor

And the First Cavalry

A screw-up in a lost brigade

In a Lost Company.

 

The Cobras shivered above us.

The tanks drove down the road.

And left us alone. God loved us.

Just like he loved Tom Joad.

 

I got assigned to language school

To that strange faculty

Or draftees, drunks and derelicts

Teaching deportees:

 

Wives brought back to the USA

From Korea and Vietnam

From little villes and long lost hills

From Seoul and from Saigon.

 

So they could work in restaurants

Or dance in topless clubs

And smoke opium in trailers

And give those  fine “back rubs.”

 

One day Captain Thomas

Came looking for his wife.

“Where’s that gook bitch? I’ll kill her!”

Then he took his life.

 

And she got all of his insurance.

She had quite a business sense.

And opened up a pawnshop

With Sergeant Gilkey, hence

Her marriage to the Sergeant

Which followed hard upon

The orders Sergeant Gilkey

Got to go to Vietnam.

 

And when he was listed missing

And then he turned up dead.

She said “I was always lucky lucky.”

And then was quickly wed

 

To the guy across the street

Who had the Army Surplus store.

If you don’t find that just and meet

It’s what this country’s for.

 

She was in my English class

Before these sad events.

It was time for her to give a speech

And she seemed somewhat tense.

 

“I was at the movie.

On Tet. We in Saigon.

Big noise. Scream everywhere.

Go up a big bomb.

 

Kill everyone.  My mother!

My mother, my sister died.”

She looked at me and then sat down

And never never cried.

 

And I remember young John Kostovich.

He was from Chicago.

He had a Ford Econo—Hippie van

With the usual strange cargo.

 

On one side was the Peace Sign.

On the other side a frog

And underneath that was the line

“Onward through the Fog!”

He drove that van to Mexico

And came back with some grass.

He told me, “Joe, I wanted to just go.

They all can kiss my ass.”

 

And I remember him a year from then

On the phone.  I heard him scream.

“My brother got killed in Fucking ‘Nam.”

It all seems like a dream.

 

He ran right out.  Got in the van.

Screaming all the way.

Jim Linden said to me

“Do you think he’ll be ok?”

 

He got a “compassionate discharge.”

And then in 71

I got a letter:  “I’m living large.

Up here in Oregon.”

 

The real war was still going on.

Then Sergeant Davis said “You losers.

Grab your packs and get your guns.

We’re going on maneuvers.”

 

I was in charge of our two squads.

Prayed “God, I thee implorest.

Enlighten all the little gods

To get us lost inside the forest.”

 

I told my guys, “We’ll need a lot of beer

For this goddamn fake war

And guitars and books and a lot of grass.

What are you waiting for?”

 

So we drove off in our Army truck

And I did not feel bereft.

Said “Damn, I can’t believe our luck.”

When they turned right then we turned left.

The real war was still going on.

The fake war did not alarm us.

I lounged outside in the Texas sun

In my Grateful Dead pajamas.

 

I had brought along “Ulysses.”

Joyce was always such a charmer.

But I lounged outside in that Texas breeze

Reading Philip Jose Farmer.

 

And that night Tom played his guitar

Beneath the Texas moon

So far away from the real war.

“Lay Down Your Weary Tune.”

 

“Lay down your weary tune, lay down,

Lay down the song you strum,

And rest yourself ‘neath the strength of strings

No voice can hope to hum.”

 

Thirty years ago and more.

Some are dead. All to me are gone so long.

What in hell was all that for?

I end this weary song.

 

“Lay down your weary tune, lay down,

Lay down the song you strum,

And rest yourself ‘neath the strength of strings

No voice can hope to hum.”

 

 

The Ballad of Little Noddy

 

Up the magic mountain
Down the rushy glen
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men.

Little Kants and Hegels
Socrates' and Platos
Pissing in our garden
Eating our tomatoes.

Preaching their philosophy
To prove their very piss is
The cockle shell theosophy
Of Hermes Trismigistus.

Once there was a little boy
Little Noddy was he name
Who held on to his little joy
Beneath his counterpane.

What a pretty wanton boy
Slaughtering the flies
And spattering the bourgeoisie
In their dogmatic stys!

What a brave young Nimrod!
Who with lists prefers to hunt
For Consciousness and Cabbages
Coelacanths and Cunt.

Vile rumor states our lad avers
All three the same dish
But Rumor's wrong:  "I much prefer
The last sans consciousness.

I am a carefree deliquant!

Will take a cabbage everyday
Though Coelacanths are elegant
When in a family way.
I prefer the simple vegetable

Much before another.
Its inner silk suggestible
Of my late lamented mother.
Picture a silken draped boudoir

And Daddy behind the arras
The cabbage in a pink peignoir
And certain scents from Paris
Daddy chained and gagged. O! Rare!

And a slit for him to see
And another in the cabbage dear
Just big enough for me.
Then I caress the vegetable

And read her Havelock Ellis
And poetry pansexual
Of the dying on the trellis
Of many a time-blown rose

Wailing for her demon lover
And many a well-blown nose
Ever waiting for another
Finger than the one it loves!

A nose whose passion lingers
Stars above -- though penetrated nightly
By the finger it abhors.
Until the turf lies lightly, lightly

And the doors, the golden doors
Of Eternity open!
And the dear digit it adores
d
e
s
c
e
n
d

s
All Beatrice to its bosogger.
And then I take my daddy's Luger
This is how my Daddy wooed her
And then, and then! I leap! I leap!
Ravaging that cabbage
With a passion so steep
It o'ertops Dante's!

And then I calm her
With a murmured verse von
Jeffery Dahmer.

Daddy thinks the cabbage mother
Daddy's always getting thinner
Though every night he has another
Piece of mother for his dinner."

You can see that little Noddy
Had quite eccentric passions
Perhaps banal to anybody
Who keeps up with the fashions:

Vile poetry and matricide
A bit of old Jocasta
A weariness of time and tide
And, to make the moment last

A burning in a gemlike flame
Of all of his relation.
But he is like the gentle rain
The leaders of a nation

Direct ten million tons of bombs
Upon the place beneath
Bunkers, bridges, dads, and moms!
Roll me over Lethe!

Our little Noddy after all
Is rather ineffectual
His sins are white and do appall
But, at least, not intellectual.

All passion spent he rests his cheek
And recites a soothing psalm
And, perhaps, he dreams of leeks
But the vision of napalm

Is sugar plums and marzipan
To those across the sea
Who calculate the body count
Sing "Nearer my God to thee.

Nearer to thee Lord!"  Then they
Adjust their calculations
And (100,000 say)
Are gone
gone
gone
Quite away.

And then, they face the tribulations
Of dog shit in Harvard Yard.
(Professor Booby's Lhaso Apso again)

Many miles away
The General says:
"Men, here is you mission. We want numbers!”
Arise ye nations from your dogmatic slumbers!!

In a geste most incandescent
The jungle algebras luminescent.
The mother, child, and sturdy peasant
All become quite deliquescent.

Flowing in a fiery stream!
Flowing in a golden dream!
Till they arrive at Harvard Yard
Where Booby thinks it a canard
"That's not my dog's shit in Harvard Yard.
Not my dog's shit in Harvard Yard.

The priest, the King, the simple clown.
Intellectual vileness trickles down.

As does this verse. O comic Muse
Make my bowels and bladder swell!
Jesus Christ, I've paid my dues.
Deliver me to Infidel.
Who is not a little Noddy.
Little Noddy's anybody.

Souls of poets dead and gone
Be sure to keep your condoms on.
Be advised your lissome muse
Won't be as prankish as she used.
And though, perhaps, your stiffened chillness
Will seem to some a formal stillness
And the worm your daily wage is:
You'll still be better than John Cage is.

Ah, she's back. My verse becomes more regular.
Except for that last line. A rhyme! A rhyme!
Hey, Tim the keg-u-la
You bought is all drunk up.

That's a lie.
He isn't even here.
Hasn't been for a year.
I loved him best.
We were the "Owl Oak Press"
He had three wives and a silver star.
And killed himself in Carmel Ca.
1/1/91

Car
Car
Car

the cars said.

Did it the American way. In his car with a .45.
The word I want to rhyme is "alive."
Alive!  Alive O!
Silver stars, and wars and wars,
And pretty maids all in a row.

O Tim! You lost your town the race.
But at least you found a parking space.

Alas, poor Tim is not no body
Let's go back to Little Noddy.

One night little Noddy
Maddened by the crowds
Who danced the limbic limbo
Neath the Magellanic clouds

Went up the magic mountain
And down the rushy glen
And by St. Tommy's fountain
He met the little men!

O see their vile symposium
Underneath the trees
A cacophile colloquium
Of venal venomy.

Buboes like bijous!
Transcendent logorrheas
Blood or beetlejuice
On their paideas.

Socrates accouchant
Plato on his knees
Hegel only kegeled
While Kant begged, "Please."

Poor panting pooh bahs
And moon-botched mullatos
Hear the ontic ohh ahs
In their secret grottos

The very meagre spewing
The sudden going slack
The strangled senseless mooing.
I want my money back.

Poor Noddy thought them pixies
A typical cathexis
With many a cunning lick he
Sought logosrhythmic nexus.

"O fondle all my fabula
Make my bowels go whoosh
Bite my incunabula
Gerbil my cartouche!"

They crowned him then with laurel
And pulled his undies down
And had a little quarrel
About quintessence brown

And who would have the precedent
And who would wait behind
But in concord incrudescedent
They chose symbol over sign.

First they gave him No-Doz
And then they bound his arms
Then spoke to him of Logos
And of his manly charms

Then they put him in a toga
And in the best Platonic forms
Whispered he was deathless
And buggered him in swarms

Drizzled him with powdered gold
And decked his dick with lapis
Diddled with his tiny fold
And called him "Dear Priapus."

Filled his behind with sea dark wine
And then they crammed the ice in
"How do you feel?" "Why I feel fine,
Rather Dionysian."

Then they took a silver spoon
And scraped him out all hollow.
He laughed and bayed right at the moon
"I feel just like Apollo."

Then they stroked his little bum
(It really was quite flexible)
And gashed a hole between his legs
Until he wasn't very sexable.

See the timeless golden dial!
Hear the crystal spheres!
See the unmoved crocodile
Cry his pearly tears!

The good, the true, the beautiful
A frenzy fine and flighty
And Noddy shouts, "O! take me! Do!
I feel like Aphrodite."

Plato did and him y-thrid.
"Dear master, are you peeing?"
"It's just the God you silly sod.
You're just becoming being."

Let's leave him there. O my dear Muse
I must say that I detest
The words that I am forced to use
Like "bugger" and the rest

And pee and fuck and dick and cunt
(Poor Noddy's vade mecum)
But I only sing as he was wont
Which is, it seems, "fair dinkum"

Or whatever they say near Botany Bay
In the land of Noddy's fellows,
Australia the Fair! And, anyway
Even old Catullus

And a murder thick of other bards
Were forced to this vile usage.
Don't ask me who. It's rather hard
Living in a loose age

Where buggery is thought a crime
(I mean the kind consensual)
While helping thousands out of time
Is reaching your potential.

Sing mea culpa everyone
Pick up the muse and lug her
Guts to the top of Helicon
And bugger, gently, bugger.

Sweet Christ! Not yet! Unhand her, Mark
It's a swerving so to swive
We're still on Wilson River Drive
And Noddy's still alive.

He guards the sacred oxen
The oxen of the Sun.
But a glamour seems to mock him.
He only sees the one.

And this one looks just like a cow.
So what does Noddy dare?
"Flossie my own fleur du mal!"
Then he goes all Baudelaire.

And takes her in unnatural ways
Ways so vile and low
They were unmatched until the days
Of Verlaine and Rimbaud.

The cow just mooed and chewed and mooed.
Noddy did what should be banned.
O depths of Moral Turpitude!
He mentioned old Ayn Rand!

He only muttered out the word
To try to keep from coming
He was dreaming of the pliant herds
And of his different drumming.

The cow cried out! The levin flashed!
Noddy screamed in pain.
The cow dissolved! The levin flashed!
Little Noddy came.

What against he couldn't tell
But it was the Goddess Io
Who had simply been through hell.
You can read it in her bio.

Noddy struggled to get off
And gave a little cry-a
The goddess gave a little cough
"They call the wind Mariah.

The fire is Tess, the rain is Joe
I hope I get this straight.
Apollo has a golden bow.
Aphrodite's always late.

Zeus has the juice and just hangs loose
Hera's such a hassle.
And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce
That Plato is an asshole."

The goddess felt a tiny pinch
And touched her sacred portal
Little Noddy dared not flinch
"I think I smell a mortal."

And then she felt a nasty itch
In the derriere direction.
"Oh dear", she sighed "This is a bitch
I've got a yeast infection.

A douche might work. A douche divine.
Of amaranth and rue
And equal parts of turpentine
And a little Mountain Dew."

She sighed and wished. Behold the douche!
A boiling viscous fluid
That chuckled like a Scaramouch
In a cunning little cruet.

"Douche to the Gods, my lady fair,"
The douche cried with panache
Made little Fairbanks in the air
And fondled his moustache.

But what of Noddy? Damn my eyes.
I seem to have forgotten.
He hung there by a mild surmise
And smelled like fish most rotten

Behold! The douche leaps from the cup
And quivers on the quim.
Noddy weeps and covers up
And sings an English hymn

A quavering tune: "I thee implore
To save a wretch like me."
That Little Noddies like to sing
When far away at sea

And their mothers are so far away
And it's really dark at night
And it's a long way to Bristol bay
With that nasty bosun tight.

But the douche just laughed and tried to peer
Through the deific tangle
He was a jolly musketeer
Who held his sword a dangle

That sword had killed a thousand yeasts
From Moscow to Peoria
And drank the blood of judas priests
All for the greater glory...

"Ah", he cried when he saw the lad
This is to damn too damn too damn bad
And the douche just wept: "Sad sad sad
This is just too damn too damn too damn bad."

And little Noddy wept. He knew the truth.
His only friend was a goddamn douche.
The douche heaved a heavy sigh.
"All of this will pass."

And picked up a crab just passing by
Who bit Noddy in his ass.
"Free at last", the poor boy squeaked
Unstuck from his own jism

And saw where his becoming leaked
All sparkling like a prism.
He reached his hand around behind
And plucked out the owl feather

Preferring matter over mind
Started running for the heather.
The Goddess laughed and saw him run
(It really wasn't fair)

"A mortal. Oh, what jolly fun."
Then seemed to catch the air.
Little Noddy shrieked and fell
And cried out (rather quizzical)

"Jesus Christ this hurts like hell
My dick is metaphysical!"
And so it was! It dandled there
At least ten or twenty versts
What once was meat was passing rare.

God knows how that hurts.
That mini-length of Oscar Mayer
Now thinner than the thistle
Upon the head of Richard Pryor

Or Nancy Reagan's pistle
Stretched out in far flung molecules
Like a St. Tommy's angel band
One end near his follicles

The other in her hand!
She reeled him back and played with him
Like a fish upon a string.
He'd make a pretty pendant

She could even make him sing.
Poor Noddy begged and sobbed and moaned
As he dandled twixt her breasts
He bitched and kvetched and groaned and groaned

Till the goddess got depressed.
She took the little minnikin
And held him up to see
"I once knew a Mick named Finnigan

That sounded just like thee.
What do you want you little shit?"
Then Noddy did reply
"I want this terrible dream to quit

If not, I want to die."
The goddess sighed and twitched her nose
The little guy was free!
He ended up upon the ranch
With Hoss and Pa and me.
He's happy now cause all he does
He does it all for Lorne.
And what a wiz he was he was
Shucking all the corn.
He talks philosophy with Hoss
Does his oriental thing
Bitches and bemoans his loss
And buggers poor Hop Sing!

The little men? Why she found them.
In their tiny elfin grot.
And listened to their boring talk
Screwed up her nose, said "NOT!"
And they were changed, changed udderly
To ugly leprechauns
And, though they are more cudderly,
They'll still fuck up your lawns
And bugger moths and butcher flies
As they were wont to do
And fashion little priestly stys
All in the morning dew
They'll "crucify the butterflies"
"Break gnats upon the wheel."
Then tell you with a wild surmise,
"I guess it's how we feel."

Four and twenty blackbirds
Eat the ever-dying swan
Tiresius eats Jesus
All bloody flows the Don
Aristotle in his bottle
Keeps looking for a ship
But tiny sailors sail away
And let the big seas slip.

Straight for the heart of Lyra.

"I'm so pleased we're not dining at the ranch tonight.
Hop Sing's such a filthy cook."
Peter O'Toole

"Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle?
Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in
the delerium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of
rejection invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity
of the satellite of the planet."