The search for human remains
will soon be discontinued.
—July 13, 2002
TV news

CELESTIAL GRAFFITI

Collected by Ira Cohen

For Randy Roark’s For Immediate Release

with special thanks to The Pink Pony

New York’s own Akashic Bistro

NOTE: This is a text-only version of an anthology collected and edited by Ira Cohen, which includes an additional forty pages of illustrated poems, collages, photographs, and handwritten poems.

Contents:

Marty Matz: Two Poems

Ira Cohen: Three Poems

Angus Maclise: from “The Subliminal Report”

Petra Vogt: Hello, Nothing

Ronnie Burk: Six Poems

Aidan Andrew Dun: Canto IV from “Universal”

Louise Landes-Levi: Six Poems

Paul Grillo: Eleven Poems

John Brandi: Nine Poems from “Distance”

Daniel Moore: Two Poems

Renee Gregorio: Ten Poems

Janine Pommy Vega: Seven Poems

Jack Hirschman: The Apocryphon Arcane

David Rattray/Ira Cohen: Sweetmeat / White Ashes

Agneta Falk: Four Poems

Allan Graubard: Seven Poems

Judith Malina: Five Poems

Peter Lamborn Wilson: The Cohen Gene

Ira Cohen: Ten Poems

Penny Arcade: I Love New York
 

HATS OFF!

Charles Henri Ford

Died at 93, on September 27^th, 2002, in New York City

Peacefully

In Celebration of his Transcendence

www.milkmag.org/fordpage.htm

I know where rainbows go to die
            I followed your footprints
   Across a strange uncharted land
Where silver whispers tried to hide
            Beneath demented shadows
                                    And oboe skies 

Together we walked through a fabled city
                        Of hallucinating green
            And talked away
   A thousand smoking nights
            As your aching heart
                        Beat its bones
   In time to Bird’s brilliant sounds
Over the neon streets of murdered schemes
Yes I was there
            And I saw your love proclaimed
                        In a fractured smile
   Like yesterday’s headlines printed in blood
            On a bumble bee’s wings
   And yes
            I would wear your eyes

On January 12^th
   The dawn came up singing the blues
            The calendar fell apart
In the face of that wounded Sunday
   And even the redwoods wept
                                    At your passing
But no bell tolled in the bowels of winter
            The snail did not grin at the grandfather clock
                        Nor did any roses grow
From the tail of a rustling comet
            Only a woolly starfish groaned
               On a beach of stolen planets
                        As a tattooed lizard
            Shed its suit of cold echoes
                And you danced with
                                    Harlem’s Great King
                Down the alleys of Paradise
                        To a feast of blazing umbrellas

   I remember
            Long gone doorways
     Where ancient dealers leaned
And sold their twenty dollar bags of dreams
                        To those in need
And Poet
   I saw you buy the truth in a red balloon
And like some mythical alchemist
            You cooked up the blood of stars
But instead of death
     You drew music from your spoon

from “Ode for Bob Yarra”
 

Let us soar then
            You and I
Beyond the confines of planet and satellite
To reach that somewhere place
Not in this land or the next
Where the sun is rising
Shining pure
On beauty without interruption.
 

Summer Solstice
   for Sheldon Rochlin

Today is the first day of summer
now is the time of the unthinkable
Sheldon being breathed on the ventilator
gasping for breath, all the lights turned off
There are still Tibetans who fill
the room with sound, holy mantras
We are all bereft
I will board a plane for London & cry
in the sky
I am running out of film
I stumble in the light of day
I find my glasses & consider it a miracle
I thought I lost my passport
I need help to sing my song
Sheldon father of our common dream,
the halls of summer prepare us for
the silence to come—
Friendship fallen, sirens of the morning
call out your name—Sheldon, Sheldon,
I have lost my dictionary
The summer is over before it begins
You were the world’s best friend
The shore of the sea washed by the waves
Now you have reached the highest point.
like the sun you stand still with Angus.
 
June 22, 2002
 

Song of the Hennaed Ringseller
(from “Kings with Straw Mats”)

O my brothers, the rich & the poor
live in two different worlds
The rich are racing in their fast cars
while the poor eat sadness in every house
 
The dogs of the rich eat luxury dishes
while the children of the poor
are lucky to get a few beans.
The rich fill themselves with sweet desserts
while the poor have not even one crumb of a dream
The rich entertain themselves in beautiful gardens
but it is to the house of the poor
that Krishna comes to play his flute.
 
English rendering by Ira Cohen & William Gans (Ram Puri)
 

In the dressing room of the deathless children

     staring long Avenues clear

     glistening stars

whirling the hallowed seed-image down

     Its breathing distances

impel astonished moment

the mingled strains darkened through

     the Greater Siren’s whisperings

       remembering aloft

the glazed-with-soma eyes of ringing

     citadels Everything will be

and everything is seen

        with other eyes With

rivers There & silver the

     gliding barque you’re on

Nameless airs of its passing

From aloft a Starsystem

          causing

                         the drawn-out

delight & Dawning

     dream of Earth

     The massive

Primal weather endlong

     Facing

                     it is a night unknown Giving it

hushed glee Of radio

                               announcers in the Void

                                       The Grail

The fifth sequence of “Or Else”

The matter isn’t it Case in point

Object under

Scrutiny To be

Glistening throughout some kind

 Of: have it broken down by:

========

 I will call back the Huns -& the light will

   rage into my eyes.

========

          -(mysteries over

    Then and there as I

passed on the way it came to me

          how all of our

      kind, questing,

       need no other sorely at all

moments to joy in in the clear) uncertainty,

loving it with a will, willing it to be

       Being none too

       as it is, will thus Be

       it known To all the House:

You’ll never know what hit you- stunned

under peculiar devastating jolts, under

light’s roaring panic seizures, throes Aghast

       ...and when you make your way

to where your place was, be not

                Alarmed over

the unclean & tricky- little pranks of the

  ENTITY

       —DOWN WITH THE ENTITY—

 -He’s copped all the bliss-music

       .You were glowing on the Tree

  till the last Gaspbelonging

          Thing of mine

       It’s no

archaic System, almost

         Stone

    Age (Slngspaca: yes till

        I know

   where to set this

       One part

       Down) so

     as I won’t need no constant Meetings

        to the Magic

      wood I want to

           set this One apart

        Track

       Down so

      all of its

   emotional litters gasp

      belonging

     to me Silken

   Its Deep moan

      I’ll be with you   It’s no

     archaic System:

      I want to Believe

           My urging pastures

     reviving delicate

  thresholds Revving Up

And away

     OVERSPACE OF

The bliss-attics giving us no room

  next here w/o a hard time

   Along my sun-tracks of casual-

       Thrived

     till the last

      Shudders

    Huge with its

       Glistening

      Where is it

   Heart huge with

   Afterlight

       shudders

    Huge with its

       Glistening

       Tremors of minstrelsy

   The freaky pulse of non-entity its

grief in our

amazed palm shrinking too rapidly

— locking arms with our

embodied dismay —

bristling &

   drooling with your

   powers buzzing

  in myriad clouds & beams emanating

   from the seething

   electric cruelty of your brain —

   Your brain that is

    like a mirror held

    with unfeeling hands impatient with the

    eternally unsatisfied

    lusts of vast deity without end

    -Announcements of the rewards awaiting

   metaphysical courage under the face of the Eternal—

           — And now

heads for the Vacant Seat and the offices

   of the Executor

      From Beyond where the                      

   Great Light prepares its

   subtle pervasive

    radiance- inbetween

the great bursts of sinister Blackout

   are its brief glowing rays

    -shrieks of lesser

  angels calling thru

every intervening barrier put up

and maintained by the astonished

    center of our inner mart—

    —jangle of their need,

creaking buzz-tone, to turn off

onto forested path leading

    Elsewhere—

   -Surfacing with all arterial code Intact

   -Gave out broadcast of the Human Hour

   I couldn’t reach the fleeing demonic figure,

bright spired darkness

crashing w/in the circles out from

the sharp currents & mounds

all of their karma in swirling

clouds large with self and night-

massive wings flutter, pause, & then flutter on—

surprising shocks of being there

—I woke and walked in a straight

tangent to the pets

of the Executor— all the

crushing emblems

of the Almighty arrayed before

the Reviewing Board—

He was lying on black lawns

strewn dimly

with the orchids

   sustained by my insane mind—

Oh it crows

  mysteriously with a total crowing, towards

the unlimited

   ceilings of THERE, WE ARE THERE
 

Petra Vogt

Hello, Nothing

main
TOC

I am standing next to Nothing

Hello, Nothing, I love you,

I am as strange and pale as you

I love without clinging the

absence of your being. It is

Nothing which I adore,

Embrace me, Nothing, so I can

feel more

the darkness into which I’m born.

Nothing, only Nothing can

take away the pain

of my useless love for

Nothing, which I have

searched in vain. Only Nothing

hears my cry, and

Nothing will be dancing

when I die.

Sing, sweet Nothing, sing for me

the lullabye of someone

who loved Nothing more than

going by Hello Nothing,

I love you, Nothing,

You and I

dressed in the colours of the sky.

High Frequency

Geryon’s the first monster to leave the room

The planets move on high wires

The clock of the world is held together

with masking tape

Bug spray, hair spray, deodorants, flurocarbons

roach pills, neurotoxic shampoos & rug cleaner

were only a few of the items I saw in her medicine chest

Heart of the spider weaving this spell

A tiny incision in the fur coat of Grandmother Spider

knitting the constellations

Having given back the lingerie of the Holy Virgin

Polluted air forced me to grow gills.

                *

You cannot kill amaku’a without incurring a karma

impossible to rectify

Now’ that all the porpoises have committed suicide

nostalgic for life before the white man arrived

I had a bowl of poi sat down on tin can beach

& ate a banana

fragrant banana flower dripping with flower sperm

you cannot kill amaku’a without bombing your children’s

children to genetic malevolence

So much for your fetal obsession meeting its wax double!

Take a vacation to neon cities return to TV

eat plastic food & vomit your bile soaked brain

with assorted chemotherapeutic poisons

Bury lead tooth marks of uranium bullets

in all the breasts of Diana

Whatever you do just remember

you cannot kill amalcu’a without putting a scowl

on the face of Nuestra Senora de los Remedios

                        *

Wolf boy sharpens his claws pressing wormwood

through a meat grinder

Giant spider in a maze working the lattice

of the radium screw

Thunder is loose in Hercules mineral bath

Dipped in starlight the planets

whirl on out to metamorphose

new halos of the human larvae

Chrysalis in a purple ray

Banded with the seven colors

black flowers droop

in a dissolving shower of methadone

Stalagmite the crystal magnet of the ghost horse nostril

                                    *
 

Over the blue rolling outline of Surrey to the coast

from Hydon’s Ball, fairy-hill of magnetic Godalming,

the old roads go down to the seaport town of Southampton

on Southampton Water where the generations were severed

as that white freight-steamer and banana-boat raised anchor,

marking on the winter Solent’s hazy face two tangent lines,

the lines of that parting long ago, a moving apart,

when we, little family of exodus and outward-crossing,

waved down to you on the fog-bound waterside, Grandfather.

And under the baritone funnel throwing coal-smoke heavenward

it rained enough to float the Windward Islands downstream

unloaded into the south-western ocean on my tears,

tears I cried in a delta-like way down my face

like the deviant lines from the wave of the vessel as she ran,

in scattering directions, never again to be one.

Outward-bound! Sailing to the Fortunate Islands!

Fierce skies of the hurricanes! Gaudy sunsets! Dark skins!

With both eyes closed I hallucinated Port of Spains

while you rode an iron train back to the fogs of London.

(Dispensing gloom like a national inebriant, Aidan,

now unlock another condition of your utterance!

In the nautical mood of this song-cycle you will colour

a resolutely forward-looking atmosphere of departure.

In great doubtful fogs of transition we cast off,

unclear as to where we go, unsure of the sea,

godlike schizophrenic ocean with her mood-swings.

Uncertain we take leave of spent days, we driven ships,

forgetting how the perfect full-circle of the future

turns round through the whole returning circumference of time.

Now say no more of the apparent separation but look forward

from the single point of the bow to the promising horizon.)

Out of the Solent hull-down from Land’s End we ran south

for the old chain of spice-islands under Hispaniola.

hi seven days’ sailing the impossible ocean changed colour

from grey-green turbulent mountains of brine ever-tossing

to blue in the off-shore zones of the midway Azores,

a long swell of blue valleys, great white-spuming summits,

somehow transforming to mirrors of turquoise rolling,

the little Windward Islands riding like a pond-skater now.

not like some poor kite that tumbles on airwaves of the weather

when a little boy flies his wind-craft in contrary skies.

Have you heard of the blue-white supernova, city-dwellers,

generation blinded by the paltry twinkling of street-lights,

slaves under sentence of monotony in concrete?

I was a city-child born on a bombsite in London,

horror-struck among the white expressionless faces,

learning to walk with dead men under their sun,

ominous body of materialistic light.

And only when I saw that blue-gold guiding-star

from the deck of a tarantula-infested banana-freighter,

ocean spangled with the terrible perfection of her spaces,

dazzling expanse of freshening breezes, mobile

wilderness of fishes, endless playground of seabirds,

mystery of mariners, aqueous symbol of the cosmos,

then and only then was I born into existence like a man.

And my father’s spirits lifted like the bow of the ship,

he, exotic creature, victim of winterland climates,

child of tropic Cuba, his romantic background of islands.

And we stood dancing., father and son, on the deck-planks.

And he pointed out, skimming low over blue distances,

flocks of those strange half-bird half-fish-like creatures

flashing in dense formations at an angle to the ship,

plunging back into the diamond face of the waters,

sometimes flying unobstructed straight through a wave

to emerge again with broad silver parachutes working,

versatile gliders between two worlds, transcending

dimensions, determinants, frontiers of wonderful existence.

But shadow where no cloud intervened suddenly

collapsed the tropical sunlight across your face.

Your eyes went out! And silhouetted by vastness

in the blue and gold oceanic theatre of emptiness

I stood looking for the image that crossed your eyes,

eclipsing the sunlight on the foredeck of the flying ship.

And I saw her briefly, for a moment, blazing,

Baal-child burnt up by rays of the green lantern-flies,

star-spangled false-idol, adolescent Lilith,

radioactive sacrifice, virgin of seventeen years.

And in her ashes collapsed the plantocracy of Cuba,

lusting for her incandescent green-flashing body of cold light,

madonna of the green candles, sinister consort,

doomsday bride, Hispanic Cassandra forecasting

atom-wars in the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow,

early-warning systems in Florida on frill red-alert,

all precious diodes and seismographs broken and smashed,

science lying in a debris of abortions, empire

breeding demons in the red back-streets of Havana.

She was the only daughter of an island-lord.

Her father’s kingdom was outside of Sancti Spiritus.

Her country saw the generation of spectacular bodies,

black-skinned commodities of Mali and Dahomey,

young men and women of western Afrik whip-driven

without wedding-songs of the Bozo and Tamaschek,

on mandatory grounds of eugenic common-sense,

to acts of love ungoverned by any tenderness

to fill the bellies of slaves with children for the driver,

terrible red circumcisions of tragedy showing,

the cat-of-nine-tails descending on tile canefield, red lines

starting out of black shoulders on the burning estate-ground,

fields of King Sugar clouded in dense whirling smoke.

The time is turn-of-the-century republican Cuba.

How much has changed in the days that are imminent?

(O island-chain of slave-states liberated superficially!)

Look! The great tandem-mill still clanks beside the river

belching brown sugar and rum into the brothels of Sancti.

The rains have stopped. That is all. Fete-season in Sancti

rises again from the perspiring island, a rainbow.

It is the mating-season of the lords and masters!

Young girls get overexcited. Dark secrets flower.

Spicy taffeta and muslin rustle out of teak cupboards.

Older girls talk of undergarments in quiet corners

down the veranda. The big poui blossoms blush.

But voltages build in jealous atmospheres.

Whispers of static arc in conversation fiercely.

A mauve sky discharges a yellow-green thunderbolt!

Black Cinderella, African princess in bondage,

barefoot beauty in rags with her chastened shoulders

walks like a swaying sidewinder or diamondback

up from the house-kitchen climbing a flight of white stairs.

Ah! When she walks to the river at the hot end of day

to bathe her slim nakedness in cool liquid upstream,

brown voodoo Isis in the waterfall singing contradanza,

sons of the great house in bamboo smoke shag and watch,

whisper in hot midnight bedrooms of their temptress,

hypnotic Ashtoreth, statuesque ravishing woman,

slender black African virgin of seventeen years.

Santiago! The only daughter has green eyes. Heartburning,

she too needs strong magic. And her thoughts become splendiferous

dreams of hot-season night-dresses with little green suns

flashing, strategic green stars winking over bare flesh,

a strange invented petticoat enclosing green fire and nakedness,

a see-through Venusian cloud of tantalizing. Diosa!

She alone will dominate the candlelit ballrooms of Havana,

creole goddess of the Sancti Spiritus ancient country-night.

Quickly! Quick! A thousand green fires of allurement

lead her small brothers trawling in darkness with hand-nets,

with little glass prisons to trap the green phosphor bugs,

a galaxy of fireflies to clothe a divinity with light.

And so! Come the dry-season grand-fête in Sancti,

full-moon and mountain-people coming down to town,

dawn made her entrance in the middle of the night,

the sun-covered Queen of Heaven in translucent white,

the Milky Way for her train through an open-mouthed evening,

a vision of splendour, nakedness clothed with emeralds,

candlelight from all the golden wax-candles eclipsed,

glory moving in a transparent air-green fire-skirt,

lace cage flashing with tiny luminescent prisoners.

Arid every man’s heart in the great place going crazy!

And every girl’s dreams of the night in the cruel dust.

Arid glory moved over the dance-floor clouded in stars,

barefoot incandescent white goddess of the island.

Queues formed for dances. Rum-soaked offers of marriage

tumbled from the lips of slave-owners’ eligible sons.

Older men, suffocating lust with expensive cigar-smoke,

disappeared into lascivious shrubbery with groans.

The hot Cuban night sighed deeply for what it had seen.

But O! Dark radiance came up with sunrise, sickness,

twisted prostrations and poisoned agonies following,

rays of the green winged-insects, the pretty lantern-flies,

smouldering deep in her bones, a killing necrosis,

life-overshadowing twentieth-century flames.

Slowly the proud girl destroyed lay dying. She passed!

And from that indolent countryside dark cries of pathos

sounded, torn from shuttered mansions of sugar-estates.

And from that genteel republic of plenty came curses

screaming from the red lip of dawn with malediction

against the great god of insane vengeance manslaughtering

virgin girl-children of the good white lineage of Spain,

a sky-queen taken to the terrible heaven of the planters.

Only for a moment your face clouded over.

Perhaps you were thinking of that Cuban nemesis,

the long road you marched out to Aldermaston, father,

you and the other twelve thousand prophets of wormwood.

Or perhaps as we moved down through more torrid latitudes

it was only a memory of vanished seasons of manhood,

long-married sweethearts of Port of Spain coming borne.

But father, the sorrows of the generated flesh came to bear

as we, in the sunship of the Winward Islands ran south

towards the hotter suns of the new world in the south-west.

With superheated blood circulating in heavier bodies,

sure indications of mortality in the grandsons of Atum

we stood there admiring the weightless flying-fishes,

planing the Atlantic on the windward side of Barbados,

airborne ones of the double-life we also know.