Contributing
To The One Great Poem I
want to contribute to the One Great Poem. The
One Great Poem that is made by all the participants. All the people alive at this moment. People that had lived and would live in days
ahead. You,
the One Great Poem, I want your lines to include the Dalai Lama’s
theory of National Karmas. To
include nations sane, mobs of coked nations, National deranged, generation after generation
ruled by secret police. Here
I place those who believed the enemy had no bullets. That
the enemy had no ammunition, that the enemy would not shoot
back. I want to stand alongside those of the Automatic Weapons
Plague–– shooting
without thinking, shooting without aiming. Alongside those who walk among
bodies covered with plastic sheets. Among
the Sponsors of the Strength & Beauty of All Children Act. Nobody can filibuster the whole of
experience. With more than a million million watchtower blue-dime stars, what
thief could filibuster the One Great Poem. I offer up fresh seafood, white
raincoats, Frank O’Hara’s “At
Kamin’s Dance Bookshop.” A shoe-lack knot, eyeglasses
splattered with blood. The Weddell Sea, the Beaufort Sea,
all the mosques between Gaza &
the Sunset Strip. Xian––most renowned of China’s six
ancient capitals, 100 horses, yellow
lip-rings, a green pager. Hidden assumptions of how
journalists frame public perception. Mental slavery, video game boy Data
Barons &
their Museums of On-Line Genocide Delirium Art. Those who keep scrapbooks of
abortion clinic storm troopers, White
House bombers, the Fugitive President. Dried grass heaped together &
burned on hazy afternoons. The way deaf people look at leaves. Radishes & lemons, the blink of
neon donut stands. A boy covered with butterflies
floating on green clouds enlaced in
the trembling brown ink of silence–– When I turn & look in, the One
Great Poem goes always onward at
dusk, past empty nests. Against the sides of muletail & bluestem, sometimes crouched low
like a coyote in the east. Like a rising moon that follows the
crystal lit grotto’d sweatlodge of night. Troubled planets, laid off, sitting
numb in Television Universe––you
contribute here. How many Milky Ways left on drawing
boards undone. Crumbling rings, junkyards of
galaxies compacted. Homeless
black holes with lesions purplish & cruel. Eternity unshaven, old newspapers in
his coat, mumbling in
Astral Gutter. All the Passing Through passing
through the passing through of
the One Great Poem. Not an Infomercial about the thighs
of big government, the liposuction
of the Common Good. Not about Virtual America,
Democratic Euthanasia Vistas. What purpose technologic appliance
if only to speed-fax anger, to
digitalize rage? No tumors upon humanity, frogs,
swarms of flies, murrain upon cattle,
locusts upon the barley & flax in bloom. No Oswiecium
where So Many left behind only the smell of their burning
bodies–– A wanderer among you, the One Great
Poem will never cease. How sweet the flesh that touches the
sacred, the same sacred I
also touched. You who reported of elves, of Autocrtats buried in quicksand, buried
with clay armies–– The stones in the river they are
myself, the magician with
talking severed head on a plate. The World’s Largest Office Party,
the little home for a caterpillar
in a cassette case. The music pushing itself back into a crimson piano. Gregory Corso’s
lost manuscript Who Am I––Who I Am from
Chelsea Hotel, 1974. A gnashing of states drowned, where
no one hears the sobbing. Nor
the burning of the Wheel of Fire, the One Great Poem. Nothing ever is or can be lost nor
ever die. The Great Poem joins you on
snowfield at treeline, joins you
barefoot along secluded riverbank edge. Corner of all that shows & all
that shows not––a dogwood’s shadow,
cardinal in the oaks, Paris in April. A crisis job interview, alone in
almond orchard chewing grape bubble gum
in the rain at dawn. Women
without breasts, golden cities of tomorrow. Any limited judgment of the realness
of the feeling of Self, the
Selfness of others. All that is non-existent,
joined by the One Great Poem. And what if writing suddenly appears
on the sun, would it say you
are always traveling–– You who wanted to feel the world
from outside Paradise, yet
higher than ruins & pyramids. Higher than all the Floods, all the Ys ever spoken piled on
top of one another. Higher
than all the songs of each extinct animal note for note. Than a billion World Trade Centers stacked
on end, than
Monolithic State & Monolithic Gods. Than the Doors of Night where the
prophets break in, “Truth
scored on their palms.” Great Poem, you are a raven, a name
spelled backwards, a
clock with no face. You are all that is underneath the
earth, the burning magma furnace Core that greases Time’s gears. Your year’s
like an angel flying through a steel wall heavy
with violets & antelope & rootbeer. Your stanzas weep like crickets on
lightning bolts in joy’s ruby-bone-box
painted skeleton heart. One Great Poem, when I turn &
look in I see grey wolves moving
South. Ash remains in spring ponds,
drinking fountains, lunch counters bare. Island of Stone, four chords of
thunder, Wise Neanderthal mother & father on
forced Hunger Strike. A
one-armed poolshark chalking his cue. When I turn & look in I see the
sad beautiful radios of linen rooms & mail
rooms & laundry rooms & boiler rooms. That is how I found out I was
exactly like you & everybody
else. How much longer before you attempt
the dreams of your heart? As you wait for Liberation, report
on it––surrounded by bodyguards, holding a
blown-up satellite phone. You, on Very Dangerous Road, Very
Dangerous Bridge, you on
Very Dangerous City Square. With a tag on your smooth tiny wrist
among fallen electricity wires, ruptured
pipelines spewing gas. As you Spook the public, as you veto
the peace, as you sweep up around an
automobile riddled with holes. As you detonate yourself to Kingdom
Come, as they scrape your flesh off the
boulevard. As a child fills herself with
watermelon seeds, thinking she’ll grow
watermelon vines inside her. As a small boy wonders what it’s like to be a male ladybug. Each is filled with the One Great
Poem, slim & graceful as a deer in the
nakedness of the land. In
the nakedness of Taskmasters’ mortar & straw. Naked with the story of Water, the
naked bitterness of water, bitter
water we cannot drink. The
sweet naked kiss of water against your lips. When you feel what dies within dying
& you let it die this too
is the One Great Poem. When you feel the Wind that
shattered the rocks around Elijah’s cave & Milarepa’s
cave. In your Revelation, as you lift back
the Veils, especially those who
have given up their Quest. Those who emerge with no answer at
all, defeated by storms
without end. Wondering if the Always Being Born
& Everywhere really
exists. Married to Emptiness, this too, who
you are is hiding there. Between the orange solitudes of
lineage & the jasmine solitudes of
burial––move on, take the name you give yourself. Even & upright, the Mind abides
nowhere, in a quiet series of
haiku, in future scrolls. With
them on the Ship of Cyberfools. & they
who with cybersorrow drift the cyberstreets. 23 January 1995 [Published in The Dance Of Yellow Lightning Over The
Ridge: Poems 1993-1997. © 1998 by Jim Cohn.]
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APPEARS IN The Dance Of Yellow Lightning Over The Ridge: Poems 1993-1997 |