Desolation Angels (8 page)

37

For morning in lightning Gorge is only a beautiful dream—the wick wicky wick of a bird, the long blue-brown shadow of primal mist dews falling sun wise across the firs, the hush of the creek ever-constant, the burlying bum trees with smoke heads around a dewdrop central pew pool, and all the phantasmagoria of orange golden imaginary heaven light-blossoms in my eyeball apparatus that connects in Wile to see it, the porches of the ear that balance liquidly to purify hearings into sounds, the ever busy gnat of mind that discriminates and vexes differences, the old dry turds of mammals in the shed, the bizong bizong of morning flies, the few wisps of cloud, Amida's silent East, the hill bump heavy matter-knock balled, it's all one rare liquid dream imprinting (
imprinting?
) on my end plates of nerves and as I say not even that, my God why do we live to be fooled?—Why do we fool to be alive—holes in the wood wurl, wiss water from sky to jean kidney, pulp from park to paper stall, dirt from dry to reening receive, soak, in, up, twirl, green worm leaves wrung out of toil of constant—eeeeing little bug dingly lingers whinging sings morning void devoid of
loi
—Enough I've said at it all, and there's not even a Desolation in Solitude, not even this page, not even words, but the prejudiced show of things impinging on your habit energy—O Ignorant brothers, O Ignorant sisters, O Ignorant me! there's nothing to write about, everything is nothing, there's everything to write about!—Time! Time! Things! Things! Why? Why? Fools! Fools! Three Fools Twelve Fools Eight and Sixty Five Million Swirls of Innumerable Epochs of Fools!—Whatyawamme do, rail?—It was the same for our forefathers, who are long dead, long of dirt compounded they, fooled, fooled, no transmission of Great Knowing to us from their chromosome worms—It will be the same for our great grandchildren, long unborn, of space compounded they, and dirt and space, whether as dirt or whether as space what matters it?—come, now, children, wake up—come, now is the time, wake up—look closely, you're being fooled—look close, you're dreaming—come, now, look—being and not being, what's the difference?—Prides, animosities, fears, contempts, slights, personalities, suspicions, sinister forebodings, lightning storms, death, rock, WHO
TOLD
YOU
THAT
RADAMANTHUS WAS
ALL
THERE?
WHO
WRITES WRONG ON THE WHO THE WHY THE WHAT WAIT O THING I I I I I I I I I I I I I O MODIIGRAGA NA PA RA TO
MA
NI
CO
SA
PA
RI
MA
TO
MA
NA
PA
SHOOOOOOO BIZA RIIII – – – – – – – I O O O O—M M M—S O–S O–S O–S O–S O–S O—SO–S O S O—SO—S O

After that there never was

That's all there is to what there's not—

Boom

Up in the valley

    and down by the mountain,

The bird—

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake

Wake Wake Wake AWAKEN

AWAKEN  AWAKEN

AWAKEN

NOW

This is the wisdom

    of the millennial rat

—Theriomorphous, highest perfect

Rat

Black black black black bling bling bling

bling black black black black

bling bling bling bling

black black black black

bling bling bling

38

Sword etc., flat part of an oar or calamity, sudden vio-dashing young fellow, lent gust of wind; forcible stream of leaf, air, blare of a trumpet or horn, blamable deserving of Explosion as of gunpowder, blame, find fault with Blight; censure, Imputation of a blatant Brawling noisy, Speak ill, blaze, Burn with a blameful meriting flame, send forth a flaming light, less without blame innocent, torch, firebrand, stream of blamelessly blameless flame of light, bursting out, actness, worthy of blame, cul-blaze, Mark trees by pable, paring off part of the bark, mark blanch, whiten, par-out a way or path in this manner, boil, parboil and skin, as almonds, mark made by parking bark from grow white, a tree, white spot on the face of white, a horse or cow, pale, blancmange, blazon, publish or Jelly like preparation of sea-moss, proclaim extensively, herald, em-arrowroot, corn-starch or the like, blazon, embellish, adorn, eat art of accurately describing coats of bland, mild, balmy suave arms, blazonry art smooth of delineating or of explaining coats, blandishment of arms, coat of arms, art of expressing fondness, artful bleach, make pale or white caress, amenity pleasure, grow pale, flatter bleak, unsheltered deso-blank, white or pale late, cheerless cold cutting, not written or printed upon or keen, bleakly bleakness marked, void empty vacant pale, confused unqualified complete blear, make the eyes unrhymed, paper un-sore and watery, becloud bedim written upon, form not filled in observe, inflamed and watery lottery ticket which draws no prize dim or blurred, with inflammation empty space, mental vacancy modification of blur, white bleat cry as a sheep, blanket woolen cor-cry of a sheep, bleatering for beds, covering for horses bleed, bleeding bled bled broad wrapping or covering or draw blood from shed

Anykind blanket dim of blood

Blare sound loudly as a blemish impair tar

Trumpet blast nigh that which tarnishes

Blarney smooth wheed-flaw defect soil

Ling speech cajole wheedle stain fault

speak de

From Castle Blarney in Ireland

Blast and rend praise or glorify

Part of a bridle which is placed

    in a fidence

Tattle telltale

Vain boast—

box, blow on the head or er boastful

Combining of persons to have nobles

and rich gravy,

And slow baking commercial dealings

with a person afterward,

Meat so cooked

See?

39

The moon—she come peekin over the hill like she was sneakin into the world, with big sad eyes, then she take a good big look and show her no-nose and then her ocean cheeks and then her blemish jaw, and O what a round old moon lugu face it is, OO, and a lil twisted pathetic understanding smile for me, you—she got a swirl surl like a woman's been dustin all day and didnt wash her face—she got tongue-a-cheek—and say “Is dis wort me comin?”—She say, “OO la la,” and got creases in her eye sides, and looketh over ridges of rocks, as yellow as a blind lemon, and O she sad—She let Old Sun go first cause he's after her this month, now cat-mouse-play moon come, late—She got a rougey twooty mouth like little girls who dont know how to smear on lipstick—She got a bump in her forehead from a fire rock—She is bursting at the seams with moon goodness and moon fat and moon golden fire and over her Golden Eternal angels sprinkle imaginary flowers—She is Lord and Master Lesbian King of all the blue and purple survey of her ink kingdom—Though the sun's left his ravage glow she looks on't content and convinced in a minute his fire'll bank as always then she'll ensilver the night whole, rise higher too, her triumph is in our east-rolling kneel of earth—From her big pocky face I see (and planetary rims) epithalamial roses—Potpourri seas mark her smoothskin sailing, her character features that's dry dust and hairy rock—The big mosquitoes of straw that smile on the moon are going bzzz—She wears a light fire-latent lavender veil, prettiest hat since rose was wove and garland made, and the hat bedazzles on an angle and now'll drop like fair fire hair and soon be dim veil for brow of round hard woe—hack wow what a roll skull bowed bone sorrow that moon can hold in her roily poily joints—she is tendered on an insect's leg—Violent black purple is the west as her veil spreads, face-covers, wisps, ineffates, mmm—Pretty soon now she blears in her veil of blurs—now mystery marks where oft you've seen expressive sadness—Now is just level sneer of moon conveying her round respects to us moon men mad—All right, I buy—It's just a old dut ball burling into view because we're rolling upside bulky down around in planetary arrangements and it's just to come, what's all the pose and posy about?—Finally she is abandoning her veil for cleaner pastures, she heads for higher stores, her veil drops off in little strips of silk as soft as a baby's eyes and softer than what he sees in dreams of lambs and fairies—Blimps of clouds dimple her chin—She has a twisted round mustache tootered up and puckywucked and so the moon looks like Charley Chaplin—Not a breath of wind attend her rising, and the west is a still coal—the south is mauve and majesties and heroes—The north: white strips and lavender silks of ice and Arctic steadfast voids—

The moon is a piece of me

40

One morning I find bear stool and signs of where the unseen monster has taken cans of frozen hardened can-milk and squeezed it in his apocalyptical paws and bit with one insane sharp tooth in, trying to suck out the sour paste—Never seen, and in the foggy dusk I sit and look down the mysterious Ridge of Starvation with its fog-lost firs and humping-into-invisibility hills, and the fog-wind blowing by like a faint blizzard, and somewhere in that Zen Mystery Fog stalks the Bear, the Primordial Bear—all of it, his house, his yard, his domain, King Bear who could crush my head in his paws and crack my spines like a stick—King Bear with his big mysterious black horseshit by my garbage pit—Tho Charley may be in the bunkhouse reading a magazine, and I sing in the fog, Bear can come and take us all—How vast that power must be—He is a tender silent thing crawling towards me with interested eyes, from the mist unknowns of Lightning Gorge—The Sign of the Bear is in the gray wind of Autumn—The Bear will carry me to my cradle—He wears on his might the seal of blood and reawakening—His toes are webbed and mighty—they say you can smell him downwind at a hundred yards—His eyes glint in the moonlight—He and the buck deer avoid each other—He will not show himself in the mystery of those silent foggy shapes, tho I look all day, as tho he were the inscrutable Bear that cant be looked into—He owns all the Northwest and all the Snow and commands all mountains—He prowls among unknown lakes, and at early morning the pearl pure light that shadows mountainsides of fir make him blink with respect—He has millenniums of thus-prowling here behind him—He has seen Indians and Redcoats come and go, and will see it again—He continually hears the reassuring rapturous rush of silence, except near creeks, he continually is aware of the light material the world is made of, and never discourses, nor makes signs for meaning, nor complains a breath, but nibbles and paws, and lumbers along snags paying no attention to inanimate things or animate—His big mouth chew-chews in the night, I can hear it across the mountain in the starlight. Soon he will come out of the fog, huge, and come and stare in my window with big burning eyes—He is Avalokitesvara the Bear

I am waiting for him

41

In my midnight sleep suddenly the rainy season begins and rain pours heavily on the entire forest including the great fire on McAllister and Thunder Creeks, while men shiver in the woods I lie in my warm-as-toast sleepingbag and dream—I do dream of a cold gray pool I'm swimming in, it presumably belongs to Cody and Evelyn, it's raining in my dream head all right, I come out of the pool proudly and go fish in the icebox, Cody's “two sons” (actually Tommy & Brucie Palmer) are in bed playing, they see me poking for butter—“Listen—now you hear the noises” (meaning the noises of my foraging) (like noises of a rat)—I pay no attention, sit down and start eating raisin toast with butter and Evelyn comes home and sees me and I proudly boast how I've been swimming—It seems to me she eyes my toast begrudgingly but she says “Couldnt you get something bettern that to eat?”—Passing through what everything is, like the Tathagata, I reappear in Frisco walking along toward Skid Row Street which is like Howard Street but not Howard Street like West 17th in old Kansas City and full of swingin door honkytonk bars, as I go along I see shelves of cheap wine in stores and the big bar where all the men and bums go, Dilby's, on the corner, and simultaneously I see a newspaper story about the wild boys of the Washington D.C. reformatory (redheads, rough looking blackhaired car thieves, tough and young) they're sitting on a park bench in front of the State House and just out of stir and the news photo shows a brunette in jeans going by sucking on a coke bottle and the story tells how she is the famous trouble-making temptress who has had dozens of guys sent to reform school for trying to make her tho she flaunts in front of them (as picture shows) on purpose, you see the boys lounging on the bench staring at her, smiling for the photo, in the dream I'm mad at her for being a bitch but when I wake up I realize all this is just pathetic tricks of her own invention to get one of these boys to impregnate her so she can turn soft and mother lovey with a little infant at her breast, a Madonna Suddenly—I see that same gang of boys now going into Dilby's, I dont think I'll go there—Up around Broadway and Chinatown I roam around looking to amuse myself but it's that bleak Frisco of Dreams with nothing but wooden houses and wooden bars and cellars and underground caves, like Frisco in 1849 the look of it, except for Seattle-like dismal neoned bars, and rain—I wake up from these dreams to a cold rainy north wind marking the end of the fire season—In trying to remember the details of the dreams I recall the words of Tathagata to Mahamati: “What think you, Mahamati, would such a person” (seeking to recall details of a dream, since it's only dreams) “would such a person be considered wise or foolish?”—O Lord, I see it all—