Jet Powered Suicide
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