Allen Ginsberg on Visionary Experience continues & concludes from here
Allen presents three early poems:
Complaint of the Skeleton to Time
Take my love, it is not true,
So let it tempt no body new;
Take my lady, she will sigh
For my bed where’er I lie;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
Take my raiment, now grown cold,
To give some poor poet old;
Take the skin that hoods this truth
If his age would wear my youth;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
Take the thoughts that like the wind
Blow my body out of mind”
Take this heart to go with that
And pass it on from rat to rat;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
Take the art which I bemoan
In a poem’s crazy tone;
Grind me down, though I may groan,
To the starkest stick and stone;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
Most of these were then almost self-immolating, both of reason and of body, dualistic, thinking, the body had to drop down, the body had to die, and the mind had to die.
Bop Lyrics
I get a goofy feeling;
Then I catch my breath:
Zero is appealing,
Appearances are hazy.
Smart went crazy,
Smart went crazy.A flower in my head
Has fallen through my eye;
Someday I’ll be dead:
I love the Lord on high,
I wish He’d pull my daisy.
Smart went crazy,
Smart went crazy.I asked the lady what’s a rose,
She kicked me out of bed.
I asked the man, and so it goes,
He hit me on the head.
Nobody knows,
Nobody knows,
At least nobody’s said.The time I went to China
To lead the boy scout troops,
They sank my ocean liner,
And all I said was ” Oops! “All the doctors think I’m crazy;
The truth is really that I’m lazy:
I made visions to beguile ’em
Till they put me in th’asylum.I’m a pot and God’s a potter,
And my head’s a piece of putty.
Ark my darkness,
Lark my looks,
I’m so lucky to be nutty.
Then (Jack) Kerouac and I [and Neal Cassady – sic] collaborated on a little mad ditty, referring still to the subject of mad light. The basic idea being that only by being torn apart, or dying, or being cracked open, or going nuts, or making a breakthrough, or being turned upside down. or inside out, or ass by mouth, or finally sort of mind-suicided would there be any breakthrough opening.
Pull my daisy
tip my cup
all my doors are open
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts
all my eggs are broken
Jack my Arden
gate my shades
woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden
rose my days
now my prayers awaken
Bone my shadow
dove my dream
start my halo bleeding
Milk my mind &
make me cream
drink me when you’re ready
Hop my heart on
harp my height
seraphs hold me steady
Hip my angel
hype my light
lay it on the needy
Heal the raindrop
sow the eye
bust my dust again
Woe the worm
work the wise
dig my spade the same
Stop the hoax
what’s the hex
where’s the wake
how’s the hicks
take my golden beam
Rob my locker
lick my rocks
leap my cock in school
Rack my lacks
lark my looks
jump right up my hole
Whore my door
beat my boor
eat my snake of fool
Craze my hair
bare my poor
asshole shorn of wool
say my oops
ope my shell
Bite my naked nut
Roll my bones
ring my bell
call my worm to sup
Pope my parts
pop my pot
raise my daisy up
Poke my papa
pit my plum
let my gap be shut
Those were the most intense registers of those experiences, but then by 1950 ….
Student: Allen?
tape ends here