Gregory Corso

Bomb

Budger of history   Brake of time   You   Bomb
     Toy of universe   Grandest of all snatched sky   I cannot hate you
       Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt   the jawbone of an ass
    The bumpy club of One Million B.C.   the mace   the flail    the axe
  Catapult Da Vinci   tomahawk Cochise   flintlock Kidd   dagger Rathbone
   Ah and the sad desparate gun of Verlaine   Pushkin   Dillinger   Bogart
And hath not St. Michael a burning sword   St. George a lance   David a sling
Bomb   you are as cruel as man makes you   and you’re no crueller than cancer
 All Man hates you   they’d rather die by car-crash   lightning   drowning
Falling off a roof   electric-chair  heart-attack   old age   old age   O Bomb
    They’d rather die by anything but you   Death’s finger is free-lance
 Not up to man whether you boom or not   Death has long since distributed its
 categorical blue   I sing thee Bomb   Death’s extravagance   Death’s jubilee
  Gem of Death’s supremest blue   The flyer will crash   his death will differ
   with the climbor who’ll fall   to die by cobra is not to die by bad pork
Some die by swamp   some by sea  and some by the bushy-haired man in the night
  O there are deaths like witches of Arc   Scarey deaths like Boris Karloff
   No-feeling deaths like birth-death   sadless deaths like old pain Bowery
 Abandoned deaths   like Capital Punishment   stately deaths like senators
  And unthinkable deaths like Harpo Marx   girls on Vogue covers   my own
    I do not know just how horrible Bombdeath is   I can only imagine
     Yet no other death I know has so laughable a preview   I scope
     a city   New York City   streaming   starkeyed   subway shelter
       Scores and scores   A fumble of humanity   High heels bend
           Hats whelming away   Youth forgetting their combs
         Ladies not knowing what to do   with their shopping bags
           Unperturbed gum machines   Yet dangerous 3rd rail
         Ritz Brothers   from the Bronx   caught in the A train
               The smiling Schenley poster will always smile
                  Impish death   Satyr Bomb   Bombdeath
                    Turtles exploding over Istanbul
                        The jaguar’s flying foot
                       soon to sink in arctic snow
                    Penguins plunged against the Sphinx
                       The top of the Empire state
                   arrowed in a broccoli field in Sicily
                Eiffel shaped like a C in Magnolia Gardens
                      St. Sophia peeling over Sudan
                    O athletic Death   Sportive Bomb
                      the temples of ancient times
                        their grand ruin ceased
                     Electrons   Protons   Neutrons
                        gathering Hersperean hair
                   walking the dolorous gulf of Arcady
                         joining marble helmsmen
                      entering the final ampitheater
                    with a hymnody feeling of all Troys
                       heralding cypressean torches
                        racing plumes and banners
                and yet knowing Homer with a step of grace
                      Lo the visiting team of Present
                          the home team of Past
                      Lyre and tube together joined
                    Hark the hotdog soda olive grape
                     gala galaxy robed and uniformed
                     commissary   O the happy stands
                     Ethereal root and cheer and boo
                    The billioned all-time attendance
                         The Zeusian pandemonium
                           Hermes racing Owens
                         The Spitball of Buddha
                           Christ striking out
                          Luther stealing third
                     Planeterium Death   Hosannah Bomb
                    Gush the final rose   O Spring Bomb
                    Come with thy gown of dynamite green
                      unmenace Nature’s inviolate eye
                        Before you the wimpled Past
                  behind you the hallooing Future   O Bomb
                       Bound in the grassy clarion air
                        like the fox of the tally-ho
                 thy field the universe thy hedge the geo
                Leap Bomb   bound Bomb   frolic zig and zag
               The stars a swarm of bees in thy binging bag
                     Stick angels on your jubilee feet
                   wheels of rainlight on your bunky seat
                    You are due and behold you are due
                      and the heavens are with you
                  hosanna incalescent glorious liaison
                BOMB O havoc antiphony molten cleft BOOM
                   Bomb mark infinity a sudden furnace
                spread thy multitudinous encompassed Sweep
                        set forth awful agenda
             Carrion stars   charnel planets   carcass elements
            Corpse the universe   tee-hee finger-in-the-mouth hop
                      over its long long dead Nor
                   From thy nimbled matted spastic eye
                   exhaust deluges of celestial ghouls
                     From thy appellational womb
                  spew birth-gusts of of great worms
                       Rip open your belly Bomb
              from your belly outflock vulturic salutations
              Battle forth your spangled hyena finger stumps
                      along the brink of Paradise
                        O Bomb   O final Pied Piper
               both sun and firefly behind your shock waltz
                         God abandoned mock-nude
                beneath His thin false-talc’s apocalypse
                       He cannot hear thy flute’s
                       happy-the-day profanations
              He is spilled deaf into the Silencer’s warty ear
                   His Kingdom an eternity of crude wax
                     Clogged clarions untrumpet Him
                       Sealed angels unsing Him
                     A thunderless God   A dead God
                      O Bomb   thy BOOM His tomb
                That I lean forward on a desk of science
                 an astrologer dabbling in dragon prose
              half-smart about wars   bombs   especially bombs
             That I am unable to hate what is necessary to love
               That I can’t exist in a world that consents
           a child in a park   a man dying in an electric-chair
                   That I am able to laugh at all things
         all that I know and do not know   thus to conceal my pain
             That I say I am a poet and therefore love all man
          knowing my words to be the acquainted prophecy of all men
               and my unwords no less an acquaintanceship
                          That I am manifold
                    a man pursuing the big lies of gold
                     or a poet roaming in bright ashes
                   or that which I imagine myself to be
               a shark-toothed sleep   a man-eater of dreams
                  I need not then be all-smart about bombs
             Happily so   for if I felt bombs were caterpillars
                  I’d doubt not they’d become butterflies
                        There is a hell for bombs
                     They’re there   I see them there
                      They sit in bits and sing songs
                     mostly German songs
                     And two very long American songs
                   and they wish there were more songs
                  especially Russian and Chinese songs
                 and some more very long American songs
                   Poor little Bomb that’ll never be
                      an Eskimo song   I love thee
                       I want to put a lollipop
                           in thy furcal mouth
                    A wig of Goldilocks on thy baldy bean
                 and have you skip with me Hansel and Gretel
                       along the Hollywoodian screen
                     O Bomb in which all lovely things
                  moral and physical anxiously participate
                 O fairylike plucked from the
                         grandest universe tree
                     O piece of heaven which gives
                    both mountain and anthill a sun
               I am standing before your fantastic lily door
               I bring you Midgardian roses   Arcadian musk
                Reputed cosmetics from the girls of heaven
                  Welcome me   fear not thy opened door
                    nor thy cold ghost’s grey memory
                  nor the pimps of indefinite weather
                      their cruel terrestial thaw
                         Oppenheimer is seated
                      in the dark pocket of Light
                   Fermi is dry in Death’s Mozambique
                        Einstein his mythmouth
                a barnacled wreath on the moon-squid’s head
            Let me in   Bomb   rise from that pregnant-rat corner
               nor fear the raised-broom nations of the world
                          O Bomb I love you
                I want to kiss your clank   eat your boom
                   You are a paean   an acme of scream
                     a lyric hat of Mister Thunder
                       O resound thy tanky knees
                    BOOM   BOOM   BOOM   BOOM   BOOM
                     BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns
                   BOOM BOOM ye moons   ye stars BOOM
                    nights ye BOOM   ye days ye BOOM
                BOOM BOOM ye winds   ye clouds ye rains
                   go BANG ye lakes   ye oceans BING
                    Barracuda BOOM and cougar BOOM
                      Ubangi BOOM   orangutang
                BING BANG BONG BOOM   bee bear baboon
                       ye BANG ye BONG ye BING
                      the tail the fin the wing
                Yes   Yes   into our midst a bomb will fall
                Flowers will leap in joy their roots aching
         Fields will kneel proud beneath the halleluyahs of the wind
           Pinkbombs will blossom   Elkbombs will perk their ears
          Ah many a bomb that day will awe the bird a gentle look
                Yet   not enough to say a bomb will fall
                 or even contend celestial fire goes out
               Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb
        that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born
           magisterial bombs wrapped in ermine   all beautiful
              and they’ll sit plunk on earth’s grumpy empires
                    fierce with moustaches of gold
Other works by Gregory Corso...



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