Book of Longing Read online

  over someone’s evanescent beauty

  and design after design

  they fade like kingdoms with no writing

  and, look, I wheeze my way

  up to the station of Sahara’s

  incomparable privacy

  and churn the air into a dark cocoon

  of effortless forgetting –

  why should I shiver on the altar of enlightenment?

  why should I want to smile forever?

  EARLY MORNING AT MT. BALDY

  Alarm awakened me at 2:30 a.m.:

  got into my robes

  kimono and hakama

  modelled after the 12th-century

  archer’s costume:

  on top of this the koroma

  a heavy outer garment

  with impossibly large sleeves:

  on top of this the ruksu

  a kind of patchwork bib

  which incorporates an ivory disc:

  and finally the four-foot

  serpentine belt

  that twists into a huge handsome knot

  resembling a braided challah

  and covers the bottom of the ruksu:

  all in all

  about 20 pounds of clothing

  which I put on quickly

  at 2:30 a.m.

  over my enormous hard-on

  LEAVING MT. BALDY

  I came down from the mountain

  after many years of study

  and rigorous practice.

  I left my robes hanging on a peg

  in the old cabin

  where I had sat so long

  and slept so little.

  I finally understood

  (some of them practitioners)

  I had no gift

  for Spiritual Matters.

  ‘Thank You, Beloved’

  I heard a heart cry out

  as I entered the stream of cars

  on the Santa Monica Freeway,

  westbound for L.A.

  A number of people

  have begun to ask me angry questions

  about The Ultimate Reality.

  I suppose it’s because

  they don’t like to see

  old Jikan smoking.

  – 1999

  THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE WORLD

  Then a lot of things happened. I was struck on the head by an atheist. I never recovered my sense of confidence. Even today I am frightened by the smallest things. Old Mother Hubbard moved into the wound and produced her brood. For many years my head was laced up. I pretended to help everyone.

  I sobered up. I faced my misery. Pine trees appeared, grey mountains, misty vistas in the early morning, people with interesting lives. G-d, your life is interesting, I never stopped saying. I never stopped shaking my head in convivial disbelief.

  There’s so much I want to tell you. I’m the luckiest man in the world. I learned to skin a rabbit with very few incisions and a lot of elbow grease. Easter is my big season. The whole thing comes off in one swoop and you stuff it with Kleenex and sell it.

  Saturday night really is, as they say, ‘the loneliest night of the week.’ I hunker down with my radio and a few balls of twine, in case I want to tie something up. I let the cabin get very cold and I rejoice in my good fortune. Sometimes a spider will descend on its hideous wet thread and threaten my hard-earned disinterest.

  My advice is highly valued. For instance, don’t piss on a large pine cone. It may not be a pine cone. If you are not clear about which spiders are poisonous, kill them all. The daddy longlegs is not a true spider: it actually belongs to the Seratonio crime family. Although insects value their lives, and even though their relentless industry is an example for all of us, they rarely have a thought about death, and when they do, it is not accompanied by powerful emotions, as it is with you and me. They hardly discriminate between life and death. In this sense they are like mystics, and like mystics, many are poisonous. It is difficult to make love to an insect, especially if you are well endowed. As for my own experience, not one single insect has ever complained. If you are not sure which mystics are poisonous, it is best to kill the one you come across with a blow to the head using a hammer, or a shoe, or a large old vegetable, such as a petrified giant daikon radish.

  – Mt. Baldy, 1997

  THE PARTY WAS OVER THEN TOO

  When I was about fifteen

  I followed a beautiful girl

  into the Communist Party of Canada.

  There were secret meetings

  and you got yelled at

  if you were a minute late.

  We studied the McCarran Act

  passed by the stooges in Washington

  and the Padlock Law

  passed by their lackeys in colonized Quebec;

  and they said nasty shit

  about my family

  and how we got our money.

  They wanted to overthrow

  the country that I loved

  (and served, as a Sea Scout).

  And even the good people

  who wanted to change things,

  they hated them too

  and called them social fascists.

  They had plans for criminals

  like my uncles and aunties

  and they even had plans

  for my poor little mother

  who had slipped out of Lithuania

  with two frozen apples

  and a bandana full of monopoly money.

  They never let me get near the girl

  and the girl never let me get near the girl.

  She became more and more beautiful

  until she married a lawyer

  and became a social fascist herself

  and very likely a criminal too.

  But I admired the Communists

  for their pig-headed devotion

  to something absolutely wrong.

  It was years before I found

  something comparable for myself:

  I joined a tiny band of steel-jawed zealots

  who considered themselves

  the Marines of the spiritual world.

  It’s just a matter of time:

  We’ll be landing this raft

  on the Other Shore.

  We’ll be taking that beach

  on the Other Shore.

  THIS IS IT

  This is it

  I’m not coming after you

  I’m going to lie down for half an hour

  This is it

  I’m not going down

  on your memory

  I’m not rubbing my face in it any more

  I’m going to yawn

  I’m going to stretch

  I’m going to put a knitting needle

  up my nose

  and poke out my brain

  I don’t want to love you

  for the rest of my life

  I want your skin

  to fall off my skin

  I want my clamp

  to release your clamp

  I don’t want to live

  with this tongue hanging out

  and another filthy song

  in the place

  of my baseball bat

  This is it

  I’m going to sleep now darling

  Don’t try to stop me

  I’m going to sleep

  I’ll have a smooth face

  and I’m going to drool

  I’ll be asleep

  whether you love me or not

  This is it

  The New World Order

  of wrinkles and bad breath

  It’s not going to be

  like it was before

  eating you

  with my eyes closed

  hoping you won’t get up

  and go away

  It’s going to be something else

  Something worse

  Something sillier

  Something like this

  only shorter

  THIS ISN’T CHINA

  Hold
me close

  and tell me what the world is like

  I don’t want to look outside

  I want to depend on your eyes

  and your lips

  I don’t want to feel anything

  but your hand

  on the old raw bumper

  I don’t want to feel anything else

  If you love the dead rocks

  and the huge rough pine trees

  Okay I like them too

  Tell me if the wind

  makes a pretty sound

  I’ll close my eyes and smile

  Tell me if it’s a good morning

  or a clear morning

  Tell me what the fuck

  kind of morning it is

  and I’ll buy it

  And get the dog

  to stop whining and barking

  This isn’t China

  nobody’s going to eat it

  Okay go if you must

  I’ll create the cosmos

  by myself

  I’ll let it all stick to me

  every dismal pine cone

  every boring pine needle

  And I’ll broadcast my affection

  from this shaven dome

  360 degrees

  to all the dramatic vistas

  to all the mists and snows

  that move across

  the shining mountains

  to the women bathing

  in the stream

  and combing their hair

  on the roofs

  to the voiceless ones

  who have petitioned me

  from their surprising silence

  to the poor in heart

  though they be rich

  to all the thought-forms

  and leaking mental objects

  that you get up here

  at the end of your ghostly life

  – after a photo by Hazel Field

  TAKANAWA PRINCE HOTEL BAR

  Slipping down into the Pure Land

  into the Awakened State of Drunk

  into the furnace blue Heart of the

  one one one true Allah the Beloved

  Companion of Dangerous Moods –

  Slipping down into the 27 Hells

  of my own religion my own sweet

  dark religion of drunk religion

  my bended knee of Poetry my robes

  my bowl my scourge of Poetry

  my final circumcision after

  the circumcision of the flesh

  and the circumcision of the heart

  and the circumcision of the yearning

  to Return to be Redeemed

  to be Washed to be Forgiven Again

  the Final Circumcision the Final

  and Great Circumcision –

  Broken down awhile

  and cowarding

  in the blasting rays

  of Hideous Enlightenment

  but now finally surrendered to the Great

  Resignation of Poetry

  and not the kind of Wise Experience

  or the false kisses of Competitive

  Insight, but my own sweet dark

  religion of Poetry my booby prize

  my sandals and my shameful prayer

  my invisible Mexican candle

  my useless oils to clean the house

  and remove my rival’s spell

  on my girlfriend’s memory –

  O Poetry my Final Circumcision:

  All the pain was in fearing

  and ignoring the girl’s voice

  and the girl’s touch and the girl’s

  fragrant humbling girlishness

  which was lost three wars ago –

  And O my love I love you again

  I am your dog your cat

  your Cleopatran snake

  I am bleeding painlessly

  from the Final Formless Circumcision

  as I push up your dress a little way

  and kiss your miraculously

  lactating knee

  And may all of you who watch

  and G-d forbid!

  are in a suffering predicament

  as I go sliding down to Love –

  may you speedily be embraced by

  the girlishness of your own

  dark girlish religion

  SEISEN IS DANCING

  Seisen has a long body.

  Her shaved head

  threatens the skylight

  and her feet go down

  into the apple cellar.

  When she dances for us

  at one of our infrequent

  celebrations,

  the dining hall,

  with its cargo of weightless monks

  and nuns,

  bounces around her hips

  like a Hula Hoop.

  The venerable old pine trees

  crack out of sentry duty

  and get involved,

  as do the San Gabriel Mountains

  and the flat cities

  of Claremont, Upland

  and the Inland Empire.

  Ocean speaks to ocean

  saying, What the hell,

  let’s go with it, rouse ourselves.

  The Milky Way undoes its spokes

  and cleaves to Seisen’s haunches,

  as do the worlds beyond,

  and worlds unborn,

  not to mention darkest holes

  of brooding anti-matter,

  and random flying mental objects

  like this poem,

  fucking up the atmosphere.

  It’s all going round her hips,

  and what her hips enclose;

  it’s all lit up by her face,

  her ownerless expression.

  And then there’s this aching fool

  over here, no, over here

  who thinks that

  Seisen’s still a woman

  who’s trying to find a place to stand

  where Seisen isn’t Dancing.

  MOVING INTO A PERIOD

  We are moving into a period of bewilderment, a curious moment in which people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the summit of their hopes. It is a religious moment also, and here is the danger. People will want to obey the voice of Authority, and many strange constructs of just what Authority is will arise in every mind. The family will appear again as the Foundation, much honoured, much praised, but those of us who have been pierced by other possibilities, we will merely go through the motions, albeit the motions of love. The public yearning for Order will invite many stubborn uncompromising persons to impose it. The sadness of the zoo will fall upon society.

  You and I, who yearn for blameless intimacy, we will be unwilling to speak even the first words of inquisitive delight, for fear of reprisals. Everything desperate will live behind a joke. But I swear that I will stand within the range of your perfume.

  How severe seems the moon tonight, like the face of an Iron Maiden, instead of the usual indistinct idiot.

  If you think Freud is dishonoured now, and Einstein, and Hemingway, just wait and see what is to be done with all that white hair, by those who come after me.

  But there will be a Cross, a sign, that some will understand; a secret meeting, a warning, a Jerusalem hidden in Jerusalem. I will be wearing white clothes, as usual, and I will enter The Innermost Place as I have done generation upon generation, to entreat, to plead, to justify. I will enter the chamber of the Bride and the Bridegroom, and no one will follow me.

  Have no doubt, in the near future we will be seeing and hearing much more of this sort of thing from people like myself.

  MY CONSORT

  There is this huge woman,

  (O G-d she’s beautiful)

  this huge woman

  who, even though she is all women,

  has a very specific character;

  this huge woman

  who sometimes comes to me

  very early in the morning

  and plucks me out of my ski
n!

  We ‘roll around heaven’

  several miles above the pine trees

  and there’s no space between us,

  but we’re not One

  or anything like that.

  We’re two huge people,

  two immense bodies

  of tenderness and delight,

  with all the pleasures felt and magnified

  to match our size.

  Whenever this happens

  I am usually ready to forgive everyone

  who doesn’t love me enough

  including you, Sahara,

  especially you.

  HISTORIC CLAREMONT VILLAGE

  I don’t remember

  lighting this cigarette

  and I don’t remember

  if I’m here alone

  or waiting for someone.

  I don’t remember when

  I’ve ever seen so many

  beautiful men and women

  walking back and forth

  in Historic Claremont Village.

  I must have been working out

  because I don’t remember

  how I got these muscles;

  and this serene expression:

  I must have done my time

  reflecting on the bullshit.

  Children are pulled quickly

  past my bench

  but the young are deeply

  interested

  in the fate

  of this unusually bulky presence

  in their secret cemeteries,

  and they twist around

  to look back at me.

  The bench says,

  “You’re going to blow away.”

  The wallet says,

  “You’re sixty-two.”

  The seven-storey

  Nissan Pathfinder says,

  “Try to put your key

  in that silver place behind

  the steering wheel.

  It’s called the ignition.”

  – March 2, 1997

  DISTURBED THIS MORNING

  Ah. That.

  That’s what I was so disturbed

  about this morning:

  my desire has come back,

  and I want you again.

  I was doing so fine,

  I was above it all.

  The boys and girls were beautiful

  and I was an old man, loving everyone.

  And now I want you again,

  I want your absolute attention,

  your underwear rolled down in a hurry