Poems from The Awakening (1968)

THE AWAKENING

I found the bee as it fumbled about the ground

Its leg mangled, its wing torn, its sting

gone

I picked it up, marvelled at its insistence

to continue on, despite the dumb brute

thing that had occurred

I considered, remembered the fatal struggle

the agony on the face of wounded friends

and the same dumb drive to continue

I became angry at the unfair conflict suffered

by will and organism

I became just, I became unreasoned, I became

extravagant

I observed the bee, there, lying in my palm

I looked and I commanded in a harsh and angry shout –

STOP THAT!

Then it ceased to struggle, and somehow suddenly

became marvellously whole, and it arose

and it flew away

I stared, I was appalled, I was overwhelmed

with responsibility, and I knew not where to begin.

WITHOUT LAYING CLAIM

without laying claim

to an impossible innocence

I must tell you how

in the midst of that crowd

we calmly pulled the pins

from six grenades

mumbling an explanation

even we didn’t believe

& released the spoons

a lump in our throats

PUSAN LIBERTY

the 6 x 6 bounces me down the

washboard roads, I see the

sun-eaten walls of Korea, my

girl-wife & child in mud &

straw hut back in Taegu & here

I am meeting the SEAL as he

sits on his roller-skate cart

minus arms & legs but beneath

his ass a million $’s worth

of heroin – I make my buy

walk through the 10,000 cam-

era market-place, jeeps for

sale, people for sale, I’m

even for sale as I find the

porch of Cutie’s suckahatchi

house and fix, sitting in the

sun on the adobe veranda, the

two Chinese agents come around

to make their buy, 2 young

boys, they’re hooked bad & I

charge them too much – we sit

there and fix, I fix again, the

so-called Enemy & I, but just

3 angry boys lost in the immense

absurdity of War and state sudden

friends who have decided that

our hatred of Government exceeds

our furthest imaginable limits

of human calculation

INITIATION

What we doing, being

cool?

That argument Kitten, on

the freeway

I couldn’t keep up our

habits and

We cruised along sick,

seeking magic

And you said – Hit some

chump over his head

But I didn’t dig that so

you offered

To find some good tricks

I got hot, indignant like

a square with tears

And you felt pity, saying

- Don’t cry Daddy, it’s just

another way to burn a sucker

POETRY

I’ve got to be honest. I can

make good word music and rhyme

at the right times and fit words

together to give people pleasure

and even sometimes take their

breath away – but it always

somehow turns out kind of phoney.

Consonance and assonance and inner

rhyme won’t make up for the fact

that I can’t figure out how to get

down on real paper the real or the true

which we call life. Like the other

day. The other day I was walking

on the lower exercise yard here

at San Quentin and this cat called

Turk came up to a friend of mine

and said Ernie, I hear you’re

shooting on my kid. And Ernie

told him So what, punk? And Turk

pulled out his stuff and shanked

Ernie in the gut only Ernie had a

Metal tray in his shirt. Turk’s

shank bounced right off him and

Ernie pulled his stuff out and of

course Turk didn’t have a tray and

caught it dead in the chest, a bad

one, and the blood that came to his

lips was a bright pink, lung blood,

and he just laid down in the grass

and said Shit. Fuck it. Sheeit.

Fuck it. And he laughed a long

time, softly, until he died. Now

what could consonance or assonance or

even rhyme do to something like that?

THE DAY THE DAM BURST

& what if the dam should

suddenly burst

If suddenly I should run

headlong, frothing, haphazardly

hurling shrapnel grenades

into high-noon crowds?

if suddenly tossing aside

the dead ugly ache of it

all, I equalled the senseless

with my brute senseless act?

O My, wouldn’t I

shine? wouldn’t

I shine then?

wouldn’t it be I then who

had created God

at last?

FOR THE PEYOTE GODDESS

This is the comic end

All the paths, all the

chances, all the choices

all the decisions, and so

I took the exact ones at

every little crossroads

actually the only ones

which would place me at

this terminal point

in order to dwell with

myself where, in the cold

light of consciousness, the

barrenness of the world extends

even to the stars

and so I forgot the dream of

earth – but the dream once

around again became the

reality – and we are living

our dreams and perhaps, Ah

dreaming our lives

You knew, didn’t you?

All the time I was on

my pale horse, my idiot

other self, you knew that

we were really one. And

if that knowledge seemed

like a poor solution to

me, you knew it was the

only possible answer. So

to help me into the merging

which is our only goal, you

destroyed the phony drama of

my life, all the narcissistic

solutions, the foolish old

lies I told myself, the pale

rationalisations, you took

them all up in your delicate

fist and dashed them to the

earth, THE EARTH, and you

left me with the words which

would only make sense after

you were irremedially gone –

‘Let a man listen to his dream

so he may hear the story of all

men and let him say as he did

when he was a child: This is

true; it does not matter what

they tell me.’

DIRGE IN SPRING

There

high on a hill

a man plows his field.

The sun warm, the day still

and the air

still also, a shield

for the earth.

And below

blind from new birth

hide the young of a hare.

Crouched in the lair

soft, without will

they dream. The doe runs

fast over the field, turns

before the plow, urging

the man to take up her dare.

He is blind to her. Without concern

or rancor, he rips the soft dream.

His plow a high scream

in her ear, the doe runs on.

It is not rare

for such to be ripped

from the lair of life.

And the man?

THE DEATH OF CARYL CHESSMAN

Little did I know, then

The price of my revenge

If someone had foretold

Those long years of quiet

terror and grey steel

I would have shrugged and

laughed, saying

‘A hard price for having my

way with a virgin.’

Then the long years began

And setting aside my hot

dreams of glory

I came to understand…

So they bathed my body with

gas

LETTER FROM KICKAPOO (pop. 250)

I’m

hiding out

from the heat here

this time

they want me

for Living without Believing

for Working without Slavery

Playing without Misery

please don’t give me away?

FOR A NORDIC CHILD

You are a cold northern woman from a cold

northern land, a dark land, windy & wild

with mist-shrouded cliffs and constant

hunger, where the wolves howl from snow-

torn ledges. I see your ancestors, the

race of blond ones that sprang from strange

distant places. The Cro-Magnon hunches

over a small fire in the crevice of a cliff.

He rips his meat in blood chunks & searches

an early dusk with grey falcon eyes. A

stir in the cave behind him catches the

corner of his eye & he sees again the

lush virgin being prepared for the Old Man

of the tribe. Her golden hair is being

greased & braided by the old crones, but

she smiles cunningly at the fire watcher.

Her eyes are blue. She licks her lips &

it is the meat she smiles for, the antici-

pation of it, warm and blood-odored. But

the fire-watcher, young, stronger than any,

has another hunger. Power is his goad, &

lust, now that his cruder hunger is appeas-

ed. He moans in back of his throat & rises,

yellow-furred form hunched, holds the warm

juiced chunk of meat before him & approaches

the rear of the cave. The crones have seen

this happen before. They scurry away. The

girl smiles again, victoriously, reaches

out for the warm odored offering & tears it

with her small, sharp, milk-white teeth as

the fire-watcher pushes her down & takes

her there on the rock strewn ground. When

this tale has reached the Old Man & he

roars his anger down upon them, the fire-

watcher kills him in sudden crushing com-

bat and his power is born. These were your

ancestors. This is you, now, with layer

upon layer of concepts added. And it fas-

cinates me.

‘AT THE MARKET-PLACE’

at the market-place

we sell many things

including love & courage

but these you must bring

with you

& pay for as you leave

FOR A GIRL WHO DOESN’T LIKE HER NAME

You are young and slender and sitting straight

in the seat as you peer at me over the edge of

your glass

- Call me Kim, you say

- I think Camille sounds so silly

O Baby you don’t know how good Camille sounds

to this poor simple poet

Camille Camille Camille Camille

How it runs over my tongue like butter and honey

and how it calls out to the butter of your hair

and the cream and honey of your long full legs

and the cool look on your tangerine lips

(To really get crude Baby, how it goes with

drool

and

fruit

Camille Camille Camille Camille

(Cream Honey Butter Fruit Drool Camille

Hoo !

Ha !

Oboy !

I’m a dog)

But wait – even poets can be serious – it’s

permitted once in a while

Don’t you know Baby, how your legs will change

and the butter will run out of your hair and

the cream and honey will leave you

Even the cool tangerine lips will lose their

cool smile

You’ll grow old and none will remember youas

I see you now

Unless they can let Camille Camille Camille

run over their tongues and know as I know

when I hear how you once were and how

it sounds and looks and smells to me now

LEMONADE 2c

Kathy was my

first customer

naturally, I

turned her on

free

she put her

cool hand in

mine

led me to her

dark & sweaty

cellar

kissed me

Lord, how our

lips trembled

how bitter-sweet

& cool

that lemonade

TIME AND THE CITY

SOME SEVENTEEN SYLLABLE COMMENTS

On the freeway

I follow redglow taillights

to my city of glass

I was not here yesterday

also

I will not be here tomorrow

Will you please explain this

I hate you

I fear you

I return always

The pain of your people

tears my flesh

Still…

There is the hour before dawn

I will not be here yesterday

also

I was not here tomorrow

Reproduced with the kind permission of Ruth Wantling. Copyright @ Ruth Wantling, 2006.