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CHAPTER 1

Hymn for Lanie Poo

Vous êtes des faux Nègres – Rimbaud

O,
these wild trees will make charming wicker baskets,
the young woman the young black woman the young black beautiful woman said.
  These wild-assed trees
  will make charming
  wicker baskets.

(now, I'm putting words in her mouth ... tch)

1

All afternoon we watched the cranes humping each other
  dropped
  our shadows
  onto the beach and covered them over with sand.

Beware the evil sun ...
turn you black turn your hair crawl your eyeballs rot your teeth.

All afternoon we sit around near the edge of the city
  hacking open
  crocodile skulls
  sharpening our teeth.

The god I pray to got black boobies got steatopygia

make faces in the moon make me a greenpurple &
maroon winding sheet.
  I wobble out to
  the edge of the water

give my horny yell
& 24 elephants stomp out of the subway with consecrated hardons.

(watch out for that evil sun turn you black)
  My fireface

my orange and fireface squat by the flames.
She had her coming out party with 3000 guests from all parts of the country.
Queens, Richmond, Togoland, The Camerooons;
A white hunter, very unkempt,
with long hair,
whizzed in on the end of a vine.
(spoke perfect english too.)

"Throw on another goddamned Phoenecian,"
I yelled, really getting with it.

John Coltrane arrived with an Egyptian lady.
he played very well.

"Throw on another goddamned Phoenecian."

We got so drunk (Hulan Jack brought his bottle of Thunderbird),
nobody went hunting the next morning.

2

o,
don't be shy honey.
we all know these wicker baskets would make wild-assed trees.

Monday, I spent most of the day hunting Knocked off about six, gulped down a couple of monkey foreskins, then took in a flick. Got to bed early.

Tuesday, same thing all day. (Caught a mangy lioness with one tit.) Ate.
Watched television for awhile. Read the paper, then hit the sack.

Wednesday, took the day off.
Took the wife and kids to the games.
Read Garmanda's book, "14 Tribes of Ambiguity," didn't like it.

Thursday, we caught a goddamn ape.
Must've weighed about 600 pounds.
We'll probably eat ape meat for the rest of the month. Christ, I hate ape meat.

Friday, I stayed home with a supposed cold. Goofed the whole day trying to rethatch the roof. Had run in with the landlord.

We spent the weekend at home.
I tried to get some sculpting done,
but nothing came of it. It's impossible to be an artist and a bread winner at the same time.
Sometimes I think I oughta chuck the whole business.

3

The firemasons parade.

(The sun is using this country as a commode.

Beware the sun, my love.)

The firemasons are very square.
They are supposed to be a civic and fraternal organization, but all they do is have parades and stay high. They also wear funny looking black hats, which are round and have brims. The fire-masons are cornballs.

4

Each morning I go down to Gansevoort St.
and stand on the docks.
I stare out at the horizon until it gets up and comes to embrace me. I make believe it is my father.
This is known as genealogy.

5

We came into the silly little church shaking our wet raincoats on the floor.
It wasn't water,
that made the raincoats wet.
  The preacher's
  conning eyes
  filed when he saw
  the way I walked towards
  him; almost
  throwing my hips out
  of whack.
  He screamed,

He's wet with the blood of the lamb!!

And everybody got real happy.

6 (die schwartze Bohemien)

They laught,
and religion was something he fount in coffee ships, by God.

It's not that I got enything against cotton, nosiree, by God

It's just that ...
  Man lookatthatblonde
    whewee!

I think they are not treating us like Mr. Lincun said they should
  or Mr. Gandhi For that matter. By God.
  ZEN is a bitch! Like "Bird" was,
  Cafe Olay for me, Miss.
  But white cats can't swing ...
Or the way this guy kept patronizing me —
like he was Bach or somebody
  Oh, I knew John Kasper when he hung around with shades ...
  She's a painter, Man.
It's just that it's such a drag to go Way uptown for Bar B Cue,
  By God ...
How much?

7

About my sister.
  (O, generation revered
  above all others.
  O, generation of fictitious
  Ofays
    I revere you ...
    You are all so beautiful)
    my sister drives a green jaguar

my sister has her hair done twice a month my sister is a school teacher my sister took ballet lessons my sister has a fine figure: never diets my sister doesn't like to teach in Newark
  because there are too many colored
  in her classes my sister hates loud shades my sister's boy friend is a faggot music teacher
  who digs Tschaikovsky my sister digs Tschaikovsky also it is because of this similarity of interests that they will probably get married.
  Smiling & glad/in
  the huge & loveless
  white-anglo sun/of
  benevolent step
  mother America.


In Memory of Radio

Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?
(Only Jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.
The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,
Or something equally unattractive.)

What can I say?
It is better to have loved and lost Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?

Am I a sage or something?
Mandrake's hypnotic gesture of the week?
(Remember, I do not have the healing powers of Oral Roberts ...
I cannot, like F. J. Sheen, tell you how to get saved & rich!
I cannot even order you to gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goody Knight

& Love is an evil word.
Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean?
An evol word. & besides who understands it?
I certainly wouldn't like to go out on that kind of limb.

Saturday mornings we listened to Red Lantern & his undersea folk.
At 11, Let's Pretend/& we did/& I, the poet, still do, Thank God!

What was it he used to say (after the transformation, when he was safe
& invisible & the unbelievers couldn't throw stones?) "Heh, heh, heh,
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."

O, yes he does O, yes he does.
An evil word it is,
This Love.


Look for You Yesterday,
Here You Come Today

Part of my charm:
  envious blues feeling
  separation of church & state
  grim calls from drunk debutantes

Morning never aids me in my quest.
I have to trim my beard in solitude.
I try to hum lines from "The Poet In New York".

People saw metal all around the house on Saturdays. The Phone rings.

terrible poems come in the mail. Descriptions of celibate parties
  torn trousers: Great Poets dying
  with their strophes on. & me
  incapable of a simple straightforward anger.

It's so diffuse being alive. Suddenly one is aware
  that nobody really gives a damn.
  My wife is pregnant with her child.
  "It means nothing to me", sez Strindberg.

An avalanche of words could cheer me up. Words from Great Sages.
  Was James Karolis a great sage??
  Why did I let Ora Matthews beat him up
  in the bathroom? Haven't I learned my lesson.

I would take up painting If I cd think of a way to do it better than Leonardo. Than Bosch Than Hogarth. Than Kline.

Frank walked off the stage, singing
'my silence is as important as Jack's incessant yatter.'

I am a mean hungry sorehead.
Do I have the capacity for grace??

To arise one smoking spring
& find one's youth has taken off for greener parts.

A sudden blankness in the day as if there were no afternoon.
& all my piddling joys retreated to their own dopey mythic worlds.

The hours of the atmosphere grind their teeth like hags.

  (When will world war two be over?)

I stood up on a mailbox waving my yellow tee-shirt watching the grey tanks stream up Central Ave.
  All these thots
  are Flowers Of Evil
  cold & lifeless
  as subway rails

the sun like a huge cobblestone flaking its brown slow rays primititi
  once, twice, . My life
  seems over & done with.
  Each morning I rise
  like a sleep walker
  & rot a little more.

All the lovely things I've known have disappeared.
I have all my pubic hair & am lonely.
There is probably no such place as BattleCreek, Michigan!

Tom Mix dead in a Boston Nightclub before I realized what happened.

People laugh when I tell them about Dickie Dare!
What is one to do in an alien planet where the people breath New Ports?
Where is my space helmet, I sent for it
3 lives ago ... when there were box tops.

What has happened to box tops??

O, God ... I must have a belt that glows green in the dark. Where is my Captain Midnight decoder??
I can't understand what Superman is saying!

THERE MUST BE A LONE RANGER!!!

* * *

but this also is part of my charm.
A maudlin nostalgia that comes on like terrible thoughts about death.

How dumb to be sentimental about anything To call it love
& cry pathetically into the long black handkerchief of the years.

  "Look for you yesterday
  Here you come today
  Your mouth wide open
  But what you got to say"?

    – part of my charm

      old envious blues feeling
      ticking like a big cobblestone clock.

I hear the reel running out ...
the spectators are impatient for popcorn:
It was only a selected short subject

F. Scott Charon will soon be glad-handing me like a legionaire My silver bullets all gone My black mask trampled in the dust

& Tonto way off in the hills moaning like Bessie Smith.


To a Publisher ... Cut-Out

The blight rests in your face.
For your unknown musiks. The care & trust Undeliberate. Like an axe-murder Or flat pancake. The night cold & asexual A long sterile moon lapping at the dank Hudson.
The end of a star. The water more than any Other thing. We are dibbled here. Seurat's Madness. That kind of joke. Isolate Land creatures in a wet unfriendly world.

We must be strong. (smoke Balkan Sobranie)
People will think you have the taste In this hyar family. Some will stroke your face.
Better posture is another thing. Watch out for Peanuts,
he's gonna turn out bad/ A J.D./ A Beatnik! A Typical wise-ass N.Y. kid. "X" wanted to bet me that Charlie Brown spent most of his time whacking his doodle, or having weird relations with that dopey hound of his (though that's a definite improvement over "Arf Arf" & that filthy little lesbian hes hung up with.)

As if any care could see us through. Could defend us.
Save us from you, Little Darling. Or me, which is worse.
"A far far worser thing I do/than I has ever done".
Put that in your pipe & watch out for the gendarmes.
They arresses people for less than that. For less Than we are ever capable of. Any kind of sincerity

Guarantees complete disregard. Complete abnegation.
"Must dig with my fingers/as nobody will lend me or sell me a pick axe." Axe the man who owns one.
Hellzapoppin. The stars might not come on tonight ...
& who the hell can do anything about that?? Eh,
Milord/ Milady/ The kind Dubarry wasn't. Tres slick.

But who am I to love anybody? I ride the 14th St. bus every day ... reading Hui neng/ Raymond Chandler! Olson ...
I have slept with almost every mediocre colored woman On 23rd St ... At any rate, talked a good match. And Frightened by the lack of any real communication I addressed several perfumed notes to Uncle Don
& stuffed them into the radio. In the notes,
Of course, crude assignations, off color suggestions,
Diagrams of new methods for pederasts, lewd poems That rime. IF ONLY HE WOULD READ THESE ON THE AIR.
(There are other things could take my mind from this childe's play ... but none nearly as interesting.)

I long to be a mountain climber
& wave my hands up 8,000 feet.
Out of sight & snow blind/the tattered Stars and Stripes poked in the new peak.

& come down later, Clipper by my side,
To new wealth & eternal fame. That Kind of care. I could wear Green corduroy coats & felt tyroleans For the rest of my days; & belong to clubs.

Grandeur in boldness. Big & stupid as the wind.
But so lovely. Who's to understand that kind of con?
As if each day, after breakfast, someone asked you,
"What do you want to be when you grow up??" &
Day in, Day out, you just kept belching.


Ostriches & Grandmothers!

All meet here with us, finally: the uptown, way-west, den of inconstant moralities.
Faces up: all my faces turned up to the sun.

1

Summer's mist nods against the trees till distance grows in my head like an antique armada dangled motionless from the horizon.

Unbelievable changes. Restorations.
Each day like my niña's fan tweaking the flat air back and forth till the room is a blur of flowers.

Intimacy takes on human form ...
& sheds it like a hide.
  Lips, eyes,
tiny lace coughs reflected on night's stealth.

2

Tonight, one star.
eye of the dragon.
  The Void signaling.
Reminding someone it's still there.

3

It's these empty seconds I fill with myself. Each a recognition. A complete utterance.

Here, it is color; motion;
the feeling of dazzling beauty Flight.

As the trapeze rider leans with arms spread

wondering at the bar's delay


Scenario VI

... and I come out of it with this marvelous yellow cane in my hand, yellow cashmere jacket green felt pants & green boater ... & green &
black clack shoes, polished & fast, jiggling in the wings ... till Vincente says "rollllem"
& I jiggle out on the stage, hands in my pockets,
the cane balanced delicately under my arm, spinning
& clack clack clacking across the bare sunday clothesline tilting the hat to avoid the sun & ginergerly missing the dried branch I had put there yesterday.

The motion of the mind! Smooooth; I jiggle
& clack stomping one foot & the clothesline swings.
Fabulei Verwachsenes. Ripping this one off in a series of dramatic half-turns I learned many years ago in the orient; Baluba:
'the power to cloud men's minds? &c., which I'm sure you must have heard about, doodle-doo.
& then I'm sitting in this red chair, humming,
feet still pecking at the marble floor, the line motionless with only the tiniest leaf on the dead branch waving, slowly, with a red background,
& I can't see anything, only hear this raspy 1936 voice singing in german a very groovy love song; to me.
There's a train whistle, too. In and out like this.
When out the open window of early spring, sharp browns & greens fuzzy through the shade
& a fence somehow too bleak to describe, or even be made sad by.

& I'm not even breathing hard. Tapping my feet so nicely, the cane too, on the red marble. No echo, that's distant thunder for these early summer storms,
cools off the whole scene too. But waiting for my next cue, Vincente comes over, lights my cigarette,
We make a date for next wednesday, at the rainbow hut,
& he has a fabulous cigarette holder. & he pats my cane-hand & says, "you do it up, baby". I'm on again.

Sylvia has come out in her smashing oranges & jewelry,
she has her mouth wide & I can hear her listening to my feet clackings for her deep beauty doesn't include rhythm. But we make it in great swirls out to the terrace,
which overlooks Sumer ... & the Indus river, where next week probably all kinds of white trash will ride in on stolen animals we will be amazed by.


Way Out West

for Gary Snyder

As simple an act as opening the eyes. Merely coming into things by degrees.

Morning: some tear is broken on the wooden stairs of my lady's eyes. Profusions of green. The leaves. Their constant prehensions. Like old junkies on Sheridan Square, eyes cold and round. There is a song Nat Cole sings ... This city
& the intricate disorder of the seasons.

Unable to mention something as abstract as time.

Even so, (bowing low in thick smoke from cheap incense; all kinds questions filling the mouth,
till you suffocate & fall dead to opulent carpet.) Even so,

shadows will creep over your flesh
& hide your disorder, your lies.

There are unattractive wild ferns outside the window where the cats hide. They yowl from there at nights. In heat
& bleeding on my tulips.

Steel bells, like the evil unwashed Sphinx, towing in the twilight.
Childless old murderers, for centuries with musty eyes.

I am distressed. Thinking of the seasons, how they pass,
how I pass, my very youth, the ripe sweet of my life; drained off ...

Like giant rhesus monkeys;
picking their skulls,
with ingenious cruelty sucking out the brains.

No use for beauty collapsed, with moldy breath done in. Insidious weight of cankered dreams. Tiresias?
weathered cock.

Walking into the sea, shells caught in the hair. Coarse waves tearing the tongue.

Closing the eyes. As simple an act. You float


The Bridge

for wieners & mcclure

I have forgotten the head of where I am. Here at the bridge. 2
bars, down the street, seeming to wrap themselves around my fingers, the day,
screams in me; pitiful like a little girl you sense will be dead before the winter is over.

I can't see the bridge now, I've past it, its shadow, we drove through, headed out along the cold insensitive roads to what we wanted to call "ourselves."
"How does the bridge go?" Even tho you find yourself in its length strung out along its breadth, waiting for the cold sun to tear out your eyes. Enamoured of its blues, spread out in the silk clubs of this autumn tune. The changes are difficult, when you hear them, & know they are all in you, the chords

of your disorder meddle with your would be disguises.
Sifting in, down, upon your head, with the sun & the insects.

(Late feeling) Way down till it barely, after that rush of wind & odor reflected from hills you have forgotten the color when you touch the water, & it closes, slowly, around your head.
The bridge will be behind you, that music you know, that place,
you feel when you look up to say, it is me, & I have forgotten,
all the things, you told me to love, to try to understand, the bridge will stand, high up in the clouds & the light, & you,

(when you have let the song run out) will be sliding through unmentionable black.

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Excerpted from "S O S Poems 1961–2013"
by .
Copyright © 2014 The Estate of Amiri Baraka.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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