Michael McClure. PEYOTE POEM

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LOVE
thy
!oh my oohblesh! Hung midsea
Like a boat mid-air
The liners boiled their pastures:
The liners of flesh,
The Arctic steamers
Brains the size of a teacup
Mouths the size of a door
The sleek wolves
Mowers and reapers of sea kine.
THE GIANT TADPOLES
(Meat their algae)
Lept
Like sheep or children.
Shot from the sea''s bore.
Turned and twisted
(Goya!!)
Flung blood and sperm.
Incense.
Gnashed at their tails and brothers
Cursed Christ of mammals,
Snapped at the sun,
Ran for the Sea''s floor.
Goya! Goya!
Oh Lawrence
No angels dance those bridges.
OH GUN! OH BOW!
There are no churches in the waves,
No holiness,
No passages or crossings
From the beasts'' wet shore.
________________________________________
THE ROBE
Sleepwalkers . . . Ghosts! Voices
like bodies coming through the mists of sleep,
we float about each other --
bare feet not touching the floor.
Talking in our lovers'' voice
NAMING THE OBJECTS OF LOVE
(Inventing new tortures,
machines to carry us.
Wonders full blown in our faces.
Eyes like sapphires or opals.
Aloof as miracles. Hearing
jazz in the air. We are passing --
our shapes like nasturtiums.)
Frozen, caught held there
my shoulders won''t hold you.
HEROIC ACTS
won''t free us. Free us. Love.
We are voices. Sleep is with us.
________________________________________
PEYOTE POEM, PART I
________________________________________
Clear -- the senses bright -- sitting in the black chair -- Rocker --
the white walls reflecting the color of clouds
moving over the sun. Intimacies! The rooms
not important -- but like divisions of all space
of all hideousness and beauty. I hear
the music of myself and write it down
for no one to read. I pass fantasies as they
sing to me with Circe-Voices. I visit
among the peoples of myself and know all
I need to know.
I KNOW EVERYTHING! I PASS INTO THE ROOM
there is a golden bed radiating all light
the air is full of silver hangings and sheathes
I smile to myself. I know
all there is to know. I see all there
is to feel. I am friendly with the ache
in my belly. The answer
to love is my voice. There is no time!
No answers. The answer to feeling is my feeling.
The answer to joy is joy without feeling.
The room is a multicolored cherub
of air and bright colors. The pain in my stomach
is warm and tender. I am smiling. The pain
is many pointed, without anguish.
Light changes the room from yellows to violet!
The dark brown space behind the door is precious
intimate, silent and still. The birthplace
of Brahms. I know
all that I need to know. There is no hurry.
I read the meanings of scratched walls and cracked ceilings.
I am separate. I close my eyes in divinity and pain.
I blink in solemnity and unsolemn joy.
I smile at myself in my movements. Walking
I step higher in carefulness. I fill
space with myself. I see the secret and distinct
patterns of smoke from my mouth
I am without care part of all. Distinct.
I am separate from gloom and beauty. I see all.
_______________________________________
(SPACIOUSNESS
And grim intensity -- close within myself. No longer
a cloud
but flesh real as rock. Like Herakles
of primordial substance and vitality.
And not even afraid of the thing shorn of glamour
but accepting.
The beautiful things are not of ourselves
but I watch them. Among them.
__________________________________________
And the Indian thing. It is true!
Here in my apartment I think tribal thoughts.)
___________________________________________
STOMACH!!!
There is no time. I am visited by a man
who is the god of foxes
there is dirt under the nails of his paw
fresh from his den.
We smile at one another in recognition.
I am free from time. I accept it without triumph
-- a fact.
Closing my eyes there are flashes of light.
My eyes won''t focus but leap. I see that I have three feet.
I see seven places at once!
The floor slants -- the room slopes
things melt
into each other. Flashes
of light
and meldings. I wait
seeing the physical thing pass.
I am on a mesa of time and space.
! STOM-ACHE!
Writing the music of life
in words.
Hearing the round sounds of the guitar
as colors.
Feeling the touch of flesh.
Seeing the loose chaos of words
on the page.
(ultimate grace)
(Sweet Yeats and his ball of hashish.)
_________________________________
My belly and I are two individuals
joined together
in life.
__________________________________
THIS IS THE POWERFUL KNOWLEDGE
we smile with it.
___________________________________
At the window I look into the blue-gray
gloom of dreariness.
I am warm. Into the dragon of space.
I stare into clouds seeing
their misty convolutions.
The whirls of vapor
I will small clouds out of existence.
They become fish devouring each other.
And change like Dante''s holy spirits
becoming an osprey frozen skyhigh
to challenge me.
________________________________________
from Dark Brown (1961)
________________________________________
OH EASE OH BODY STRAIN OH LOVE OH EASE ME NOT!
WOUND-BORE
be real, show organs, show blood, OH let me
be as a flower. Let ugliness arise without care
grow side by side with beauty. Oh twist
be real to me. Fly smoke! Meat-real, as nerves
TENDON
Ion, FLAME, Muscle, not banners but bulks as
we are all "deer"
and move as beasts. Stalking in our forest
as these are speech words!
Burn them pure as above they rise from attitude are
stultified. Are shit. Burn
what arises from habit. Let custom
die. Smash patterns and forms let spirit
free to blasting liberty. Smash the
habit shit above! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

LET PURE BLACK WORDS MOVE FROM THOUGHT BEHIND

* * *
((OH BRING OH BLOOD BACK THE COURAGE THE DEEP
THE NEGATIVE CHALLENGE
I deny. Love. Deny. Defy oh love. In blackness
a forest, oh damp earth. Put forth. Decry! Put down
until a shoot is sent forth matching. The purity
the image within. Oh crass and easy polemic
say
!I LOVE !
Let me be a torch to myself.))
OH HEART-SICK BURN STRIVE Past the drift-ease
to the depth within making a film of the gene
over the surface. Say meat hand, the hand black
in the deed as the strain toward the act. Each strike
an ugly huge music. Walking walking huge Love.
All a web from the black gene to the black
edge.
(((torture destroy tradition seek what gives damned
pleasure.)))
Exult in drugs
draw back to sight,
VISION
of purity & liberty,
MORALITY IS BEAUTY THE BEAST SPIRIT LIVES FOREVER
! !
!
I REST
________________________________________
from The New Book/A Book of Torture (1961)
________________________________________

FOR JACK KEROUAC: THE CHAMBER
IN LIGHT ROOM IN DARK HELL IN UMBER AND CHROME
I, sit feeling the swell of the cloud made about by movement
of arm leg and tongue. In reflections of gold
light. Tints and flashes of gold and amber spearing
and glinting. Blur glass . . . blue Glass,
black telephone. Matchflame of violet and flesh
seen in the clear bright light. It is not night
and night too. In Hell, there are stars outside.
And long sounds of cars. Brown shadows on walls
in the light
of the room. I sit or stand
wanting the huge reality of touch and love.
In the turned room. Remember the longago dream
of stuffed animals ( owl, fox ) in a dark shop. Wanting
only the purity of clean colors and new shapes
and feelings.
I WOULD CRY FOR THEM USELESSLY
I have ten years life to worship youth
Billy the Kid, Rimbaud, Jean Harlow
* * *
IN DARK HELL IN LIGHT ROOM IN UMBER AND CHROME I feel the swell of
smoke the drain and flow of motion of exhaustion, the long sounds of cars the brown shadows
on the wall. I sit or stand. Caught in the net of glints from corner table to dull plane
from knob to floor, angles of flat light, daggers of beams. Staring at love''s face.
The telephone in cataleptic light. Matchflames of blue and red seen in the clear grain.
I see myself -- ourselves in Hell without radiance. Reflections that we are.
The long cars make sounds and brown shadows over the wall.
I am real as you are real whom I speak to.
I raise my head, see over the edge of my nose. Look up
and see nothing is changed. There is no flash
to my eyes. No change to the room.
Vita Nuova--No! The dead, dead, world.
The strain of desire is only a heroic gesture.
An agony to be so in pain without release
when love is a word or kiss.
* * *
LA PLUS BLANCHE
JEAN HARLOW, YOU ARE IN BEAUTY ON DARK EARTH WITH WHITE FEET! MICHAEL
slaying the dragon is not more wonderful than you. To air
you give magical sleekness. We shall carry you into Space
on our shoulders. You triumph over all with warm legs and a
smile of wistful anxiety that''s cover for the honesty
spoken by your grace! Inner energy presses out to you in warmness -
you return love. Love returned for admiration! Strangeness
is returned for you by desire. How. Where
but in the depth of Jean Harlow is such strangeness
made into grace? How many women are more beautiful
in shape and apparition! How few can /have/
draw such love to them? For you are the whole creature of love!
Your muscles are love muscles!
Your nerves -- Love nerves!
And your upturned
comic eyes!
Sleep dreams of you.
* * *
FOR THELONIUS MONK
ALL IS COOL AND BOUNDLESS AS A ROLLING LAMB OF JAZZ, I SEE
the shades slipt behind me. Avolekiteshvara!
I am blessed and protected. I hear the beauty
of the tossing notes. I am safe!
I it does not matter Love, Avolekiteshvara, Kwannon,
love you pale beauty
see my twisted head and face grow
thin again.
PURSUE THE SLIM SHADES IN AND OUT LOST IN IT ALL
hide you from yourself., choke
on my love for you, happy
for an instant.
( All is fire and I fat myself to be a candle. )
( Careful, careful crazy man and burning heart.
) OH! OH! OH! OH! Tired old fear. OH! OH!
________________________________________
from Little Odes (1969)
________________________________________
ME RAPHAEL
THE POINT OF AGONY IS THE POINT OF AGONY!!! ALL THAT I AM,
CONVERGES
IN BLACK RIFFS, IN BLACK RIFFS. I RAISE MY HAND
to the dark dark woman. i cry stop!
to the deep repetitions -- and this is the Meat
of poesy of the secret lost secret of Writing.
I''ve said it all in my book of torture and beyond that point
the black riff returned in the color of dark brown
to strike finally to that same point that
I dripped in my agony -- to make a visible shield
of fleshy chivalry and nobility in my sight
of sleek skin! OH OH it is all beautiful
I HAVE DEFINED BEAUTY
I RESENT MY AGONY AND I DESPISE MY SUFFERING
SAVE FOR THEIR BEAUTY
and that I have become immortal
AND I RAISE MY DARK EYES AND MY BROWS TO SEE THEM
PAINTED ON THE FOREHEAD OF RAPHAEL
____________________________________________________
damn all!!!
damn all!!!
damn all!!!
I HAVE LEARNED EASILY THE STAR OF GLAMOR
AND I RETURN TO MANLINESS
carrying a black machinegun

* * *
HUMMINGBIRD ODE
THE FAR-DARTER IS DEAD IN MY HAND, THE BEAUTIFUL
SHABBY COLORS
and the damp spots where the eyes were. Small form
that was all spirit, smashed on the plate
glass window. The green head and ruby
ruffles. The beautiful shabby colors
and the damp spots where the eyes were.
All head and chest and the Eros-spear
of the beak. Moving like Cupid
in the fuschias.
Hummingbird and spike of desire.
The huge chest and head and the beautiful
shabby colors. Tiny legs
thrust back in the last stiff agony.
WHAT''S ON YOUR SIDE OF THE VEIL??
DO YOU DIP YOUR BEAK
in the vast black lily
of space? Does the sweetness
of the pain go on forever?
IS THERE COURAGE THERE IN THE NIGHT?
WHERE ARE THE LOVES THAT MAKE THE BLOSSOM
of your body? Do they still spin
in the air? Your wives
and loves? Are you now
more than this meat? Finally
A STAR??