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

by Philip Lamantia

Just before landing —
        eerie sound like metallic gut string of
        atonal eeeeeh!

My first con on the system
my first big income justification of
        pariahic wandering
the poet paid off by oblivion
thanx to airline insurance!
the what’s – the – matter – with – him ended
and some sad
young beast now conjures the fatal axle
change — more than orbitical tilt —
stares thru my magic as I stop
the flow of verbiage
coming from fission of flesh
become spirit and vice – versa
my phantoms ride to port
as this plane’s wheels crash land
and recover
and what if I should smoke out ?
Ah some happiness this could bring
by lucre’s gloomy hook
grown beyond my frame’s obliteration
Death I think I’ve felt enough
and seen a set of beings
black, snowed, god – like, demonic, uncertain,
and all my work, stunned, frozen
like this ghost plane thru window
while landing
the virgin girl next to me
doesn’t want to crash —
and it’s a grim joy
on brink of wide – eyed wish
thru oblivion’s blinding core

for thee o twisting obscure futures,
        mine and theirs,

lost over Chicago

gods of antique blood memory
and angels form transcendent flights
even Moloch’s maldororian visage —
sexual blue/stalactited tropic of
      mephitic duration
— and the whirling depth charges
and heights of love – light!
Ah the communion of spirits talking
vegetables, singing stars,
cruel gods gored my loves
I hemorrhaged for man thru
voiceless midcentury
Faults of sensibility
and those traps time set
for those mad by loneliness
and sane by horror’s objective
      existence —
Nation of the Blind Beast
For it’s best to go down to
death and live its frost
than pile up Woton’s pride
better to love one night without
        strictures
release of Erato triumphant
than thousands of dull armies and
     prisons of psychiatry
Oh! foolish time, dryfucker’s
         paradise
I would not see more
and my theme’s Assassination
       stares out
to another world come
back from pre – dynastic real forests
devoid of gasses
where ghosts materialize
to haunt you Oh beautiful
    opium creatures!
Yes, fiends of sick religion
      and sicker mankind
under the metal Mocker —
my flesh bleeds cut from earth
though I’d return thru Jeanlu and drugs —
Oh oblivion’s welcome from
steel compartment minds
having less than the moss of
           tombs
to show us —
Ha! I’ve come back from death
        screaming I
want to die!
Life that’s not given to extasie
      /erotic wildness /
the outgoing ten thousand foot
depth and from it
    orgonotic light
Life that’s less
        than
    frontiers of
        poet’s madness —
eye of Unnameable Vision
          rolled on
          pages to|
catch your spinning souls —
Life’s not
blood /spurting soul knifing
    DELIBERATE
    CRIMINAL
     ACT
Is NOT.     And not — it’s ended,
as star
          watcher
           skyred.

previously unpublished; late 1950s

by Philip Lamantia

Who’s the white Lady ?
can you answer — I cant make it
who’s the white lady ?

We walked in yr room talking of the white lady
we walked round yr room with the white lady

It came, I fell back to the white lady
we made it — what turned on in our heads ?
We go thru a Door of Heroin
and it is poetrie
— there must be some way OUT
— the answers are infinite
I await the sum total
of answers flung back to me
in the sea where I become something else —

White lady turning around in yr room
talking of us! A dream! I float the log
of chance, Fortuna — a bad shot —
it’s alright, Mercy is ours
                                       — we scored!

previously unpublished; circa 1959

by Joanne Kyger

           You can see little hearts in the branches
        of Douglas fir trees on the computer screen

  Just for fun
       let us assume that a very familiar word carries with it
          ‘a corona of lightly indicated uses’

                  like Wittgenstein suggests

Romantic language gets boring really fast. Like about now

                          A small cold hand creeps into yours
               it belongs to Vladimir Putin

                           Where did he go?

               The wild boar are worse than deer
            omnivorous, opportunistic, highly mobile

          Notice how subtly one can control the flow
                             of this narrative

                          thinking is not believing