Friday, December 13, 2019

The Beatniks and the Russians (On the Virtue of Poetry And Show-and-Tell of Truth)




What does Poetry
of the Golden Gate do
when its look,
its spell, is cast—
across the world which it knows
but little or not that much?

Far and into Russia
from those City Lights,
across a dozen of zones of space and time,
so distant and so vast,

from behind a window of a cable car
with sunlit whiffs        from whitish hills,
            orange orchards and wineries
under the skirts and scrawls
            of the low-laid towns
where the Spring
is always close to
                                    becoming—permanent.

That poetry thinks
well, like Kerouac,
the poet,          a new centaur,
the one who died
of St. Petersburg,
                        even though in Florida—

and it thinks of “a yakking blond
                        with an awful, way wide smile,”
willing to grasp and panhandle
                        even this Beatnik & Bohemian
with another beer       
Butt and Bud,

and he—the poet—would preach,
would talk and bubble—
hiccup glasses
with the spirit
and zanism pure
to her display echoed and the charm,

brimming with corn field heat
and Midwest dust
in the dark that closes                        
on a deal—
per some gossip,
& high up star-crossed            at the bar.

And there the keeper of the Golden Gate
            Suddenly saw a man voiceless, oddly depthless,
a chunk and parcel      of “the winter sad and broken—
in late cold March,”
            a Russian boxer with a brand of “lostness,
something grim and Slavic”—reaper-like,
nay, witless
            and “so helpless”—

to make one shudder
from a deadly frozen touch

            by a tomb that blackly gapes
and blankly stares
underneath and nevertheless nearby
the coldest,      brutal,              lifeless stone,

            a man-monument—to “old awful sickness”
in which life, a rose, or a breath of soul
                                                are not there anymore
than the stink and gagging pong
of life drained and gutted and life darkly decomposed.

Oh, what happened to Tchaikovsky?
                                                Or to Rimski-Korzakov?

Or where did those Chekhov’s cherries,
their rosy blossoms,
                                    fly and go?

            Or did perhaps Pushkin himself
                                                            trade his lyre
for a pat on shoulders
                                    with a mug of moldy kvas

                        from some pimp or Putinist oligarch
who was merely one day early

a big shot, a true communist,
                                                with a car and a tapped telephone
and one growling, mighty baritone,
and was duly checked and verified?

Where did the lyric wane?
                        Did it go like Onegin’s dull and stupid Moon
that could never pardon
                                    the Plebs—the Bolsheviks

their crimes against the mores
of French libertines
or their communist sins
against the finest
                                                            soirée etiquette

or their lack of faith in justice
                                                extorted and exacted
            by the priests of Israel
from the hussies and the slaves?

Where did the ship with Scarlet Sails
                                                and with the dream
of marrying a nobleman,
her secret English captain,
turn so devious and wily
for a poor fisherman’s             Russian girl

even if the dons and goons
celebrate now every year
the ship’s arrival in triumph
as the sign of union
and the New and Golden
Age of Holy Saturn,
even if callous, vicious, harsh—
like anything that ditched and trampled
conscience, goodness and a heart?

Once in Russia, once upon a recent time,
life was sung and thought
to be of light,
            when, in a whisper
                                    that would usher a burst of flare
made, yet quickly hushed—
a teacher rather old and, therefore, still a believer,
unlike all the others—already much jaded types,
                        told us at some now forgotten lecture
that the USSR was the first and only
            where the Romantics came to build
what Campanella wanted—
a chapel of humanity renewed—
a country of the Sun.

            Once upon a time in Russia
a country was
                        that of heroic Titans,
but those were the first                        to die
and the first                 who had been sacrificed

            so that, below and down
their absence, death and prize
                                    left a lethal gap,
a growing vacant space
from which worthless scum
has slowly grown         and bred its spawn
            from a well kept---underground,

so meticulously served and protected
                        down to Hell and all the way
from above
thanks to those late at night
gentlemen’s agreements—
on surrender or “convergence,”
the greatest sting and power grab.
           
And the land, as Ferlinghetti noted
                       
from the blackness
            of a bleak—dark March,
from loneliness
and midnight Moscow airport,
back in 67,
was the realm of Stalingrads,
                        but now—already gutted,

for the poet-diagnostician—
done and spirit-broken,
            a concrete coffin
                                    with a flake,
a shiver of dying—failing coughing

of a Poe-like victim
                        who was once loved, but now,
            being buried, and still so early,
gives the living a bout of nausea
with creeping dread.
           
And in that spirit,
                        in memoriam already
                                                and post mortem
            on the scanner of a Beatnik

who listens always for the inside vibes,
            the land of the Victors
                                                from wars colossal
was already hanged up,
                                    nailed—
                                                and dried,

and Judases, the highest apparatchiks
with the rotten and willing
KGB smarts
            started taking from the carcass
their piece of flesh and fill and cut.

Once upon a time in Russia
the heroes and past glory
turned to shadows
took off and flew
off with silent cranes above
            from the scythes and sickles
of other fruitless Falls—
from the land had been theirs
just a while ago
                        and still so close
like the eve of yesterday.

            Oh, no, just a while ago,
                                    Russia wasn’t yet
                                                this hollowed land,
it wasn’t yet repainted—
                                    with drab on gray,
            being still a home

where life was lived
and lovingly held
to have a meaning,
                                    its deep and true,
own—ennobling sense,
           
            and like an epiphany
of a poem,
both natural and divine,
            its meaning      which was struck
in the soul        like a writ in gold
            stood firm—upright
                                    and was serious
and still sincere
                        in being bent and set
to ascend and climb—

and then—then
                        it was swiped and swapped
            as the country’s biosphere
started to change
                        down to rats and pigs and slime—

            who carry Saturnian watches,
                                                a self-adoring decoration
of their rank and pride
                        made to the likeness of an eyeless,
                                                                        fascist skull:
“N’est-ce pas, monsieur Peskov,
playboy et porte-parole de Poutine?”
                                   
                        And that’s where Ferlinghetti
had already smuggled
            more than the line
about “heroin at Taganka”

                        into his poem on Moscow
            “in the wilderness”

                                    (that’s where Satan comes
to a Son of God
                                                on a fasting diet,
a propos please do note
the sight of an awakening
of  the “Kremlin’s horny head
at the poem’s “gut”—its “static” end).

Right from the start
            Ferlinghetti speaks of Segovia—
in Russia’s center, eclipsed heart,
and its “dark ways with black boulevards,”

and Segovia is McLuhan’s message
that “has no message”—
for “he is his own message,”
spinning on the wheels of minds,
                        and way better than on panzer tigers & leopards,
like Kali’s whirling swastika—

            To Ferlinghetti’s ears
this Segovia says and means
Nada—
“no meaning”—
for Russia anymore,

and “Segovia bursts thru,
            and Segovia’s hands grasped
                                    Russia’s steering wheel,
the dark bus” full of dead souls—
“Gogol’s Dark People,”
            “Segovia comes!” “He comes!”

                        Ferlinghetti sounds alarm,
so loud and late—
                                    in the poet’s deafened isolation.

“Segovia keeps on coming & coming
                                    thru the Russian winters.”

            So who or what
is this nightly ghost
who is “no Goya and no Picasso”—
but who “might have slept
with Franco” too?

Why, Segovia means
                        (in Celtic) Victory,
a kin of German Sieg,
the root of which hailed—intoned
overpowering
and absolute possession
            of a country or a woman—      or a soul
                        like a gush, a flood,
an overriding flow.

And in a nod of seeming mock
Segovia¸ Ferlinghetti’s brooding ghastly, undead ghost,
            warns his “generation marked
                                                            for result”:
“All that is lost
must be looked for once more.”
Surely—
in the Underworld,

while my music streams
through the tremble
of this heart on shivered—
subtly troubled strings.

“O hope, O Pope! O Nope!”
                                    wrote Kerouac
Those are the pawns that pawn the country,
            whether it is the Father, Mother—
or another for whom millions
                        once fearlessly suffered, fought and died—
while building, teaching, loving
            in one another—a strong, brave spirit
and its godly spark.

But now…what now?
            The spirit and its spark
                                                have been puttined,
put down—like an animal
                        by someone who had it
and had enough
and now—wants to break and abuse other ones,
            with new fresh blood—

For Russia has been puttanized.
And put on (fire) sale.

In the spate of some old sickness,
“helpless lostness—“
by which nations end…

while the Beatniks sail and blaspheme
            as God, the Poet, conceived—willed,
smuggling souls and spirits
                        back—into the bottles of the songs and poems

from which only voices who rebel,
            the beat and free, do sip and drink
                                                in this worldly night,

and in the one huge emptiness
that breeds in man
horny heads and beasts
            and “monsters’ great gut mouths”—
those poets do their part and dance
                                                and are dancing still
their vertigo Soleares
and new Orphic Sorelas,
like heels to Heaven lifting all
                        that hasn’t been yet
either sold or nailed.

For even now
            as in any then
                        the Zen of Transcendental Brilliance
can be and may combine, and do it well,
                        a wonder on the tap,

jazz of bodies
with souls that nip and snap
the vile—the ugly
            caught in damning and in the Beatniks’ spells

so that beauty fresh—
                        may pass above the arch of the Golden Gate

and do once more
            what it knows and does the best—

                        its old-fashioned          good old show and tell!

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