by Michael McClure

THE WING – FACE OF THE LITTLE
BROWN MOTH
looks up
desperately

MY
MOSS
HEAD
(tiny red
maple
leaves,
lichens)

makes
light

LOVELY ELONGATED LOPING
COYOTE
speeding
to the beach dunes

IN SUMMER SOLSTICE,
twilight shine,
robins pass
almost
touching
wings
WAVE BOOMS
BOOM
BOOM
on
sheer
cliff crumble.

Silver
ripples
float
kelp snakes

WET
BEACH ROCK
JEWELS
fall
apart
in
crash

SKINNY
SURF
GREBES
dive

REFINED AS A WILD
BLACKBERRY
I am
this
old face
and
HANDPRINT

WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUM,
RIPENING PERSIMMON
in
Winter
sun

DRESSED
in
SKIN
and
soul – making:
many
beings
on wave – wet
rocks

In sun,
ODD BROWN
sow bug people
H
I
D
E
OUT
in my tin mailbox

FEATHERED MEAT – BODIES
IN SPRING SUN
—the wild turkeys’ strut
is spirit!

BLACK PLASMA AND IMAGINATION
ARE THE RAVEN’S SOURCE.
Also mine!

I AM THE FIRELIGHT,
THE MIRROR.
In
between
are beach flies

HAIKU – LIKE
the dainty
dried
up
wild
rose
trembles

THIS TINY, CURLED
(GRAY – BLACK) PILL BUG
is
consciousness

THE NEARBY LEMON BLOSSOM
SCENT
wrestles
the
hummingbird’s mind

by Philip Lamantia

GO! my calfheaded drone! O sheep faced Ana Stekel
turning into dove’s dung, Ana Black Ana Noir
over niagra of bureau lips, rococo of bad taste
your brassier window of New York drenched in marijuana rain
Bianca dead on the chessboard field
Bianca of torn down elevators Bianca projected from mexican days
            of the dead
in true baroque dream
at the house in shape of a monstrance
only there on rotten colonial streets autos da fe for you, Bianca
            jet song of blood /fires in yr toenails walls of yr great cunt
            emblazoned in bile!
I’m choking to see you Bianca
Bianca a vapor
at blackfender stockings burning witches hair
at obelisk of crayfish mornings mysterious Daughter Scorpiana
who nailed the corpse of wood on flesh
Scorpiana sculpted in white opium
head of Scorpiana circled by entrails
Scorpiana flown from wounds of women beaten to death by the Gestapo

Ana Black       Ana Noir       Ana Stekel       Bianca       Scorpiana
            Scorpiana       Bianca       Ana Noir       Ana Black       Ana Stekel

from Destroyed Works, Auerhahn Press, 1962

by Philip Lamantia

Last night Mike told me he believed the stars are alive
Today we walk with the yellow haired child
Eyes of the auctioneer’s furniture
                           fell into mirror specks
the mirror specks reflect Mike’s wife Jo Ann
the expanding universe of Foster’s on the corner
                                                   of Polk and Sutter

A four or five headed portrait of Ginsberg Corso McClure
                                                               Lamantia and Kerouac

I hope LaVigne paints it
Haselwood is washing his teeth
The yellow haired child like the light in Foster’s cafeteria
             Boobus McClure
             is making all kinds of metallic sounds in the kitchen
Publicity! Public spectacles!
         Artaud writing against the superstitions of the text
The morning is burnt with smells of cooking and cooked stars
It’s nirvana!
It’s the last goof!
It’s pungent silk worm disease!
It’s beautiful ship of state undulating its ribs!

from Ekstasis, Auerhahn Press, 1959

by Philip Lamantia

          Narcotic air
          simple as a a cone
          spun
          interior suck of the night

                           blood shot eyes of my geni
As the first branch of clouds hang for the infinite
I go across streets with candles aimed for lost windows
your nothing engraved on a cherry button heart
your smile folding over the tables of the law

                              Opium
                                            in a butterfly’s dream
             windows open on broken stem of pipe
                               chimes, cuneiforms
        of the marvelous and you! my innocent!
a shadow encrusted on a light beam
your eyes
                    the daughters of your eyes!
I see the salt spoon of the sibyl’s you crooked
my hair my threads my nails with!

from Ekstasis, Auerhahn Press, 1959