He has a nosebleed three

She has a nosebleed It has a nosebleed

They all bleed on me

March 24, 1997

 

Timmy made a hot milk

Better than a warm milk

Better than a cold milk shake

Hot cream warm cream oh La La!

Pretty boy straight kids, Ha ha ha

Sneakers Jeans & T-shirts, damn!

Got it made said houseboy Sam

All except the Ku Klux Klan

Wham Bam & thank you ma’m

March 25, 1997, 6:30 A.M.

 

This kind of Hepatitis can cause ya

Nosebleed skin itch bowel nausea

Swell up hanging hemorrhoid heads

Easter lilies by your hospital beds

March 24, 1997

 

Giddy-yup giddy-yup giddy-yap

I can’t take more of your crap

Giddy-yap Giddy-yap Giddy-yup

So you’re right, so you’re right, Shut up!

Giddy yup shut up, Giddy yup shut up

Giddy-yap giddy yap giddy yap shut up.

March 24, 1997

 

Turn on the heat & take a seat

& lookit junkies on the street

Forget the news from old Time-Warner

Lookit crackheads on the corner

Turn off TV 7 o’clock

They’re selling grass around the block

Minimum wage is whacha make

Narcs are mostly on the take.

Make big money from your mob

Till Old MacDonald makes a job.

March 25, 1997

Bop Sh’bam

OO Bop Sh’bam

At the poetry slam

Scream & yell

At the poetry ball

Get in a rage

On the poetry stage

Make it rhyme

In double-time

Talk real fast

till your time’s passed

Sound like a clown

& then sit down.

Listen to the next

’cause she listened to you

Tho all she says is

Peek-a-boo-boo.

March 25, 1997, 3:30 P.M.

Dream

There was a bulge in my right side, this dream recently—just now I realized I had a baby, full grown that came out of my right abdomen while I in hospital with dangerous hepatitis C.

I lay there awhile, wondering what to do, half grateful, half apprehensive. It’ll need milk, it’ll need exercise, taken out into fresh air with baby carriage.

Peter there sympathetic, he’ll help me, bent over my bed, kissed me, happy a child to care for. What compassion he has. Reassured I felt the miracle was in Peter’s reliable hands—but gee what if he began drinking again? No this’ll keep him straight. How care for a baby, what can I do?

Worried & pleased since it was true I slowly woke, still thinking it’d happened, consciousness returned slowly 2:29 AM I was awake and there’s no little mystic baby—naturally appeared, just disappeared—

A glow of happiness next morn, warm glow of pleasure half the day.

March 27, 1997, 4A.M.

Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgias)

Never go to Bulgaria, had a booklet & invitation

Same Albania, invited last year, privately by Lottery scammers or recovering alcoholics,

Or enlightened poets of the antique land of Hades Gates

Nor visit Lhasa live in Hilton or Ngawang Gelek’s household & weary ascend Potala

Nor ever return to Kashi “oldest continuously habited city in world” bathe in Ganges & sit again at Manikarnika ghat with Peter, visit Lord Jagganath again in Puri, never back to Birbhum take notes tales of Khaki Baba

Or hear music festivals in Madras with Philip

Or return to have Chai with older Sunil & the young coffeeshop poets,

Tie my head on a block in the Chinatown opium den, pass by Moslem Hotel, its rooftop Tinsmith Street Choudui Chowh Nimtallah Burning ground nor smoke ganja on the Hooghly

Nor the alleyways of Achmed’s Fez, nevermore drink mint tea at Soco Chico, visit Paul B. in Tangiers

Or see the Sphinx in Desert at Sunrise or sunset, morn & dusk in the desert

Ancient collapsed Beirut, sad bombed Babylon & Ur of old, Syria’s grim mysteries all Araby & Saudi Deserts, Yemen’s sprightly folk,

Old opium tribal Afghanistan, Tibet-Templed Beluchistan

See Shanghai again, nor caves of Dunhuang

Nor climb E. 12th Street’s stairway 3 flights again,

Nor go to literary Argentina, accompany Glass to Sao Paolo & live a month in a flat Rio’s beaches & favella boys, Bahia’s great Carnival

Nor more daydream of Bali, too far Adelaide’s festival to get new song sticks

Not see the new slums of Jakarta, mysterious Borneo forests & painted men & women

No more Sunset Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, Oz on Ocean Way

Old cousin Danny Leegant, memories of Aunt Edith in Santa Monica

No more sweet summers with lovers, teaching Blake at Naropa,

Mind Writing Slogans, new modern American Poetics, Williams Kerouac Reznikoff Rakosi Corso Creeley Orlovsky

Any visits to B’nai Israel graves of Buba, Aunt Rose, Harry Meltzer and Aunt Clara, Father Louis

Not myself except in an urn of ashes

March 30, 1997, A.M.

Afterword

On Death & Fame

This final collection of Allen Ginsberg poems completes a remarkable half century of continuous verse creation. Allen leaves nothing out and takes the readers down a final walk of sickness and decline, but still the illumination of life shines through these strophes and rhythms. In these final five years, Allen struggles through several transformations. He is placed under the ever intensifying glare of media attention as a founder of the Beat Generation. He is interviewed as a living icon/prophet to each generation from the 1940s through the 1990s and is expected to elucidate the meaning of the century’s conclusion and make new millennial predictions. The telephones ring continually for talk and advice on every subject from presidential politics to baby naming. He finally manages to place his lifelong archives into a permanent home at Stanford University. He is reviled in the New York Times on several occasions for “selling out.” For the first time in his life, he buys himself a bit of comfort. At age seventy, he leaves his fourth-floor walk-up tenement apartment and moves into an elevator loft building still within his beloved Lower East Side of Manhattan. In these years, he embraces Jewel Heart Buddhist Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he attends retreats, performs benefits, and receives profound and ultimate instructions from his teacher Gelek Rinpoche. Although struggling with illnesses continually, he does not learn of his fatal diagnosis until a week before his last breath. The poems follow these paths and illumine our own lives.