Kill or Cure

BOOKS & PAMPHLETS BY ANNE WALDMANOn the Wing O My Life!Giant NightBaby Breakdown No Hassles West Indies PoemsLife NotesSelf-Portrait (with Joe Brainard)Fast Speaking WomanMemorial Day (with Ted Berrigan) Journals & Dreams Sun the Blonde OutShamanPolar Ode (with Eileen Myles)CountriesCabin First Baby Poems Sphinxeries (with Denyse Du Roi)Makeup on Empty SpaceInvention (with drawings by Susan Hall)Skin Meat Poems The Romance ThingDen Monde in Farbe Sehen Blue Mosque Shaman/ShamaneTell Me About It: Poems for Painters Helping the Dreamer: New & Selected PoemsHer Story (with lithographs by Elizabeth Murray)Not a Male PseudonymLokapalaFait AccompliTroubairitzIovis Suffer the MysteriumKill or Cure guardian & scribe  “Thee?” Oh, “Thee” is who cometh firstOut of my own soul-kin, For I am homesick after mine own kind And ordinary people touch me not.—EZRA POUNDA NoteThat bird—that sounded nearly human—what was it? Or who? And bend your ear, poet, to the rain forest jungle ground as well, all the rustlings, gestures, motions of life, contrasted to rough-weathered stone-hewn pyramid, elegant you could say, and noisy. Surely you hear the architecture of it, climbing to the stars? The aspiration of it? For it was important to understand the calendrical cycles, the comings and goings of Venus, yet noticing Venus was the same object, evening and morning, morning and evening. Noticing his or her (for Venus seems not male nor female in this version of influence) slaughters, discontents, eclipses, ellipses, changed & fixed mood in the ebb & flux of internal weaves, machinations, conquistador conquest, surprise. A rude awakening for those who inhabited the dream.Could I ever “let” my blood as they purportedly did? I wonder. Literally, no. Drawn from the tongue? But you pour that blood symbolically onto the virgin page, scribed with brush or turkey feathers dipped in black or red paint contained in conch-shell inkpots. And then bind those pages with a jaguar-skin cover. La Ruta Maya.This codex is never lazy. It wishes to be a mere script of and for a dreamer who dwelt in a prosperous/desperate turn of century, torqued by doubt, fear, imagination, passion. Let it be said she was a raging insomniac.“Kill or cure” is a psychological nexus of negative capability, an old Tantric notion. To hold simultaneous thoughts, often seemingly contradictory thoughts, in the mind, without “any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” It is the battle cry, the underpinning of a tragic age as well as going way back to primordial cellular reaches of how things move. It is, in the whispered oral lineage, kill and cure, which seems cruel for relative quotidian action and implies power little understood by this writer. Kill ego’s greedy grasping, its whine and agression. Ego’s self-perpetuation is the sacrificial victim, the corpse you stomp upon. As it dies, you are simultaneously cured and live on, transformed, rewired. An old shamanic trick. Isn’t that enough task for one planet’s aggressive nature? You kill or cut out like the surgeon what’s unnecessary, all those toxins, cancers, dark attitudes, shed the endometrium, then heal the rest. To survive. You get the picture. But because we live in a dark age beset with dualities and because time is precious, one makes a choice. Kill or cure. Against or for. It is ethos that beckons. Stuff of poetry? Ha! You might laugh. Words may either kill or cure as well, who hasn’t felt their deadly sting or balm? As a further note and pun, the Tibetan word for mandala is kyil khor. Kyil means center, and khor means fringe or surrounding area: gestalt. It’s a way of looking at situations in terms of relative truth. If that exists, this exists; if this exists, that exists. Center and fringe are interdependent situations. Killing or curing are interdependent situations. You can’t have one without the other.As grizzled cracked-voiced Andy Devine would say in quaint grainy celluloid Western over a tin cup of cowboy coffee laced with homemade hootch, “It’ll either kill or cure ya!” Jade eyes of the jaguar   the last thing you saw or wall of skulls & which of these out of all of these something (one?) startled awake Chac needs blood this century too Venus conjunct cat-like tongues & penises spurt (“let”) onto bark it is written it is written This book is a composite of journals, travel pieces, vignettes, political rants, credos, manifestos, love songs, dreams, meditations, visitations from male-writer-ghost ancestors, homages to the great women poets, and other states of mind and occasion. As such it is a body of both quotidian and imaginary realities. It is a cento of my mind and mind’s musical making. It’s also what’s on my mind. . . . A sampler. A patchwork of day and night. The book is organized through the basic instincts of tone and impulse and runs not always parallel to linear time. Rather moves randomly yet to great purpose from the Yucatán to Bali to Quebec City to Tehran to Managua to Germany to Toulouse to New York City to Oslo to Hawaii to Miami and Dallas and many spots in between, ending somewhere near May 1993 scattering my father’s ashes over a lake in southern New Jersey, USA, followed by another Maya meditation. The book spans a world of attention. A.W.August 11, 1993 / Cobá, Quintana RooTable of Contents  Suppose a GameSuppose language is a gamewhose rules are dreamedby an agreement of players Once broken, the speakers are tossed& know no rude tongue but their ownno (fixed) meaning in solipsism But always in a process of being strandedare spectators of solipsismstuck with themselves, empirical data Theirs is private demon languageobstruction, ownership, demandIs the door open? Rain here yet?Have their ideas entered all heads?Is this the end of the game? They quickly become the ex-modernand you, poet, enter the arenaan animating principle to a touch of words Seduce them to your pagecaress plosivenessbeat them a fine shapelessness Or sentences are for the first time stark & clearnot untrue to what flaunts style:webs of cloth, a mirror you hold The players conjure nihilism, their only wayto be curious, vain, a waste of strengthas confusion weakens the vocal art Cybernetics is the exchange of their news for yoursYours is: However abundant the nectar,the bees stop dancing as the sugar drops They tell you nothing, their lips are sealed, you keep dancingWas the agreement that words shine like sun,or glint as weapons in moonlight?A Name as ReveryAte the bare limbs of wordsto find my name: of fevers, of trees it’s made Choice out of jugular to be bornCenturies of solar flowers gone byBelle, where ya born? Moi? Moi? Verdict: tens attend todoubt all doubt asLa Self errs in revenge Then ravages in a kind of honor umbrage Although Americanto a haute parentage we swingJohn of the Hands & Waldemann’s was my fatherLeFevre, my mother, exposed in sandals & silkHer NightOut of an eye comes researchHer night: portrait & a descriptionA night of knowledge was plainly hersTwo ways of writing explain thisThere was her nightAnd then there was her night, a repetitionA night in a quarry in Helena, Montana, was not anticipatedOr at dusk before the night had started:    The Lavender Open Pit Copper Mine near Bisbee Everywhere she claims it as hers: purple, dark, starry Buffalo: spring snow Amherst: Emily Dickinson’s night, what was that? Night is anyone’s guess Naming the stars & planets: Saturn still extant after all this time So I went on with an idea of the night Djuna’s night All-American nights Recesses one has one’s program for She dreamed her clothes were like Spanish ice cream She dreamed a moth arrived to convey a scarlet secret It was a female moth The mosquitoes protested they were female too She had the desire to include a shawl & Kleenex She walked where there had never been a mountain    Can you be sure?    Can you be that sure? She would think about walking to Sanitas Mountain at night If any thought about night or place with night inside it is left out    she’s sorry For she can’t even begin to remember the rooms:    El Rito, Bellevue, La Quinta, the old man’s stuffy sitting room She was lost in the abstraction of the girl’s perfume Nights in front of a shrine prostrating to her potentially    luminous mindSleeping late Literature is being written at night The couchette rattles into Trieste A plane jets across the continent Now I am above the clouds & the moon is up with me Seeing what someone else means by night is another option There was her night, and then there was her night, a repetition She picked up the telephone while, she, the other,    walked toward a mountain There was her night and then there was her night—the other’s—a      repetition She suspends all preconceptions and forgets the concept “moon” It could be frightening if you were a prisoner Or, a relief Her night is of no importance really But there has never been another one like it Moonlight: hear the amorous cats Moonlight: the South American map lies on the hammock    exposed to the elements She did not “drop by” at 1 a.m. as supposed But made another night call A bird called Confused by jet lag, time went out of her control She shrugged & went to a party Her escort parked the car near Coit Tower In between lovers Between textures: silk, velvet, cool cotton Throw back the bedspread! Out of the eye comes the moon Out of the eye: seduction What does it really matter what anyone does There was her night And then there was her night, a repetition Minnesota is just like that She wouldn’t give out her address in Oregon Her coat was made for a night like this Her night: where was it leading?None knewDisplay her zeal hour by hourOpium would change this dreamHer nervousness was a blindTalk about something like: “We in this period    have not lived in remembering” or“My excitement is my open eyes”Her clothing is of a daily-island-life varietyA line distinguishes itShe almost traveled to Tent City out of love & honorEverything will have to be repeated in the morningListen: hum of typewriter, Jacqueline’s loud refrigerator & clockListen: a long line of thoughts bargaining to enter inOne thought: the time is 3:15 a.m.Another thought: there is only one way to phone herAnd another: night is long to her & short to usNot at allShe is ahead of herself but behind every actionConcentration was like having the night inside her all the time she saidShe said she’d go to any length to stay awake, imbibing controlled   substances as well as caffeineShe said this because she was excited about making double timeIt was her night and then it was her night a repetitionThis is an ordinary great deal to knowOf Ah OrI cannot be but fierce My tongue—is it so? & liaison of that tight pact of this to thatA bargain rises swells reigns sends darts North when it is you, iced over,I thrust in my heart to consider All the vowels sing how to melt that glare or stare into doubt like words in a bubble Can’t back out now but sing to you a fire across our divide, my tongue is forked! Flesh language! We fall into pieces of the painting to be putin motion Splash or Freeze of Ah or Whelp Tell toold Greekswho knew to stress (pounce) stretch out as you your limbs the statues tell us Move it! Move it! & the Ode got danced Tell it to poet whatshername Heliodora? who sang & shook her ankles, swallowed honey to make a sweeter sound or Ah, Macabru I tune your lyre Stomp on the page! Speech you are golden Speech you crack ope my skull Speech you lieth not down a while but even as I dream you rouse me Rock bed! Break into babe increments prick ear awake Spit juice in my face Fricative magic excites every corpuscle Implode & regroup Assail me with all yr plans to consider the length & shadow of vowels American wags listen The West is underdeveloped I want to ride you out here under Big Sky Rail ’gainst acid rain, cruelty, weird belief systems Insult those who do you no good in their squawk & bite Who serve you poorly in their bid for glory condemned ’fore they even sputter forth What goddess will abide a dull,ignorant tongue? I speak it You play methat forms itQuote CaptiveNew sleep uptorn,Wakeful suspension between dream and dream——LAURA RIDING Orbits of intertextual modern talk    now poetic, now skeptical, now written down for human hands to hold,    or sensibly dropped, or squirm and die now rise again. What do you do?    And to deserve them? Night goes down . . . What do you choose? An object for my verb . . .    Who let you in? The mysterious animal . . . Who are you rooting for? A dream . . .    Born to talk? And sing and write this down . . . Wait for the place to be abounding in decision    or shaft all strategies. Scratch them? Conversation isn’t cheap here, it’s looming,    precious, sacred, clumsy, inept Wait for them—the words or concepts is it?—to be    newly minted then strike. Terrorize the terminology Lunar, linear, arch, lingering under cover of bed    They could be my sisters, those buddy thoughts They could be addressing the new populism    or undressing old idioms Cluster round. This is the clutter    of mind I offer an argument to Singular masters take heed the goad’s unstoppable    or make your way clear to surrender her light A woman rises in Houston, sets in Michigan    and never sleeps. Oh tempt a strapping mind . . . A thought is mangled in the wrong hands    because it oversteps a sleep-boundary Necessary to speak although you might    never know the mastery of sleep Now sing and write this downJack Kerouac DreamHe’s talking speedily about the evil of the feminine but he likes it. O bitter tones of the demon feminine. He’s in a repressed New England winter room, but oddly it’s like the old whorehouse in Eldora with bats inside the walls. There’s peeling wallpaper of gold fleur-de-lys pattern on green on the far side. And his “coat of arms,” or rather “his mother’s arm coat (arm chair?)” is close by. It looks like a shrunken deer’s head, size of a rabbit’s foot with French letters crudely scrawled on a wooden plaque beneath, “est peur” (translates “is fear” but cognate to, or sounds like, “espoir”—hope). He’s shivering in an old camel’s hair coat, smoking—Chesterfields? Old Golds?—in front of a raging fire. He’s wanting to “hunt and gather,” he says, but it’s too cold. Where can we go to forage now that “all the skies are broken”? I am thinking if only I were born earlier I could love him, take care of him. Close to his face now, I see its raging corpuscles in the dancing firelight. Intricate aborigine designs tattooed on a remarkably pristine visage. “It’s a drift, flesh and bone, mortification, deadpan, life’s a raked field,” he mumbles. I’m part of a Buddhist plot to get him to be reborn to “liberate all sentient beings.” I’m inviting him to give a reading at The Academy of the Meticulous Future. But what may I offer? “I tried calling your phone was dead was why I came.” “Ummm.” He’s off somewhere else, his eyes moist and glassy.April DreamI’m with Frank O’Hara, Kenward Elmslie & Kenneth Koch visiting Donald Hall’s studio or lab (like Ivy League fraternity digs) in “Old Ann Arbor.” Lots of drink & chitchat about latest long poems & how do we all rate with Shakespeare. Don is taking himself very seriously & nervously as grand host conducting us about the place. It’s sort of class reunion atmosphere, campus history (Harvard?) & poetry business to be discussed. German mugs, wooden knickknacks, prints, postcards decorate the room, Kenward making snappy cracks to me about every little detail. Where’s John Ashbery? We notice huge panels of Frank O’Hara poems on several walls and Kenneth reads aloud: “a child means BONG” from “Biotherm.” We notice more panels with O’Hara works, white on red—very prettily shellacked, a la Chinoise—& translated by Ted Berrigan. Slogan-like lines: “THERE’S NOBODY AT THE CONTROLS!” “NO MORE DYING.” Frank is very modest about these displays and not altogether present (ghost). Then Don unveils a huge series of additional panels, also painted on wood, that he’s collecting for a huge catalogue-anthology for which Frank O’Hara is writing the introduction. They seem to be copies of Old Masters, plus Cubist, Abstract Expressionist works, plus Jasper Johns, Joe Brainard collages & George Schneeman nudes. Frank has already compiled a list or “key,” but we’re all supposed to guess what each one is or at least the source of each, like a parlor game. The panels and list are both like a scroll covered with soft copper which peels back.    I wonder what I am doing with this crowd of older men playing a guessing game. None of us are properly naming the “sources,” Kenneth the most agitated about this.Then the “key” is revealed and the first 2 on it are:I. Du BoucheronII. Jean du Jeanne Jeanne le Boucheron (wineglass)“I knew it! I knew it!” shouts Kenneth.We are abruptly distracted from the game by children chorusing “da da da du DA LA” over & over again, very guileless & sweet. We all go to a large bay window which looks over a grade-school courtyard. Frank says, “Our youth.”June DreamI am a three-dimensional map for Doctor “Sneakers” Burroughs. The Doctor is examining the map closely with a large eye glass. It’s projected above, over his head. I am pointing out the veins on the map, saying, “Look there, look there . . .” (King Lear’s dying speech) very slowly and majestically. The word “spreadeagled” appears in my head to define the map. The veins are oddly feathery, delicate, & a luminescent blue-green peacock color. Presently I notice from my position above there are others forming a mandala around the Doctor.  “Sneakers” is checking them out as they offer themselves as 3-D maps. Allen Ginsberg is “just a bundle of nerves”—like a big ball of heavy-duty-wire cable. Gregory Corso represents lymph. There’s always the subtle detail that makes these recognizable to real life: Allen’s gaping eyes from paralyzed side of face (he’s had bout with Bell’s palsy), Gregory’s Rembrandtian hair & ruddy cheek, Philip Whalen’s buddhabelly. Steven Lowe & James Grauerholz are more opaque and illusive. They are the smallest bundle, meshed together, and are summed up in the phrase “billysboys” (they are Burroughs’ secretaries in real life). I recognize my own left vein under the Doctor’s magnifying glass. He’s making sucking sounds as he walks, slightly bent, around the mandala studying each bundle laboriously, a big blue animal-like (insect) eye enlarged behind the glass. The glass turns into a full-blown miner’s mask. These bundles of people are now like boulders which make me think of “bones” and I wonder Where is, who is Bones? Burroughs himself? Words: disemboned, disemboweled, disembodied. I am attracted toward the skin bundles to protect my veins. Doc “Sneakers” is saying “Well, yes, well, hmmmmm, sure, take a broaaaaaad general view” in a withering tone, as he circles the mandala. The boulder-people-bundles are now pulsating in their respective spots, like kinetic sculptures. Allen is writhing in a most terrifying manner (turns black & blue with red sparks flying), Gregory is a sculpture of green neon, I’m a tangle of blue wires, Philip is quivering jelly, while Steven & James are fluttering like silk. My heart chakra is imploding with all this activity. There’s the pressure of blood coursing through my veins and I feel a tremendous gushing toward the whole situation, physically & emotionally. Now the “spirits” of the boulders like me are hovering above. I can feel their presences, but no longer see them. The phrase “Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love” also from Shakespeare and spoken in same King Lear dying voice as before startles the Doctor who now sucks himself away like a black hole and disappears at the exact center of the mandala—down a trapdoor! This whole scene has been taking place on a stage set for “The Magic Mountain Movie.” I think to myself: What shall I do down there, at the Remember Some Apartments? I awake with the task to go boil water, for coffee, for tea.Old Dream RitualWe did this in several dreams in our twenties I remember to find the   origin of “book.” Remember? Sister Bernadette is heckling me No, my sister, support me And my sister raises me up She plays the piano, Her music accompanies my life We’re on stage Bright spotlights on us Sister wearing the dress I gave you On the stage of our lives “Etonne-moi, sister,” I cry I have the book! I have my book! My book, this one, the one in the black binder, you remember Remember, sister? The book of our life Infuriating black binder, never binding enough Pages, texts, works, poetry, her heartbroken family lineage stories Old drama, the story of you The story of you & me, remember? We fell in love to change the world, remember? A book book book book to change the world, remember? Middle English beche from Old English bēce, akin to O Frisian bōk, OE and Old Saxon bōc, bōk, Old High German buohha (G Buche) Old Norse bōk, beech Old Slavic bŭzŭ, elm L. fāgus, beech Gr. phēgos, edible oak The OE variant bōc, bōk became ME bok, book, English book Gothic bōka, letter of alphabet pl. bōkōs documents, books Originally beech-wood sticks on which runes were carved (repeat these origins after me: beche, bēce, bōc, bōk, bouhha, etc.) On stage: A theater carved like the Entermedia Made of women bones Enter the media We are ready for them, We can make up the stories of our lives They will believe anything about wild-speaking women We were there once All the women performers carving a circle around William Burroughs: Laurie, Patti, Bernadette, Anne and then one (you are that one) become my sister and then it’s my turn Break out of the circle, go to my book It’s as big as the world“I am blinded by a fiery circle”for James Schuyler It is summer 1970 You’ve “gone mad” You’re washing dollar bills in the bathtub & hanging them out on the clothesline in Southhampton to dry You write to me “money is shit” Your handwriting is angry, stubborn Then you send another note: “I’ll support you” & “don’t worry” This is puzzling Then one point at the board game (with Kenward & Joe in Vermont) head split in my hands sore with your suffering O Jimmy Which breakdown later Payne Whitney: venetian blinds willfully shut Your fingernails are long, bent as a witch’s Tufts of blunt brow hair leap above your eyes which roll back cunningly Breath comes in clumps, “medicated” Tongue-parched demon inside you great poet, rages What’s his fear? “How is it outside?” you ask This will help I go to open the blinds thinking, this helps “No, don’t do it” (desperate) “Too bright!”A Gustonhomage to Philip Guston,1913-1980 a skeletal guardian, a hungry ghost, a mafia man, an old implant, weathered shoes, the stockmarket crash of 1929, mural eye, narrative you could say like his dream, Moses’ tablets, commandments of a lightbulb, deity of the street, the kitchen, pay dirt, hit the pavement, gone, ricochet of time, nostalgia for the-morning-after, what ring of Dante’s hell? ring of sweat, odd laboratory, desire and villainy, sainthood not about niceties, proper shoes, wanted to lie down with the setting sun, wanted to be one with the place, Samuel Beckett stopped here, this was a childhood, this was a nightmare, this was what the World War could do, a man stood up, a man stood down, a man stood up, a man stood down, a man holier than a tree, holier than a mistake, holier than food, barrenness, wantonness, the glee of the comic book, it was a movie, a motion picture show, a matinee, it was the bites in his life, it was rhapsody, it was solo jazz, reminder to sleep, it was the insomniac’s revenge, it was his own mind talking, the sun came up, the earth stood still, the paint at the tip of brushes? implants? eyeballs? a wink, a stare, a bald lie, dramaturgy, the paint was talking to you, hungry ghosts in the bardo, an eggshell light, a warm tangent, a litany of disasters, were they, the mob, responsible? who snitched? celluloid is speeding up life, someone still smoked a cigar, in the center of his life all the details showed one heart-risk.Love of His Artfor Joe Brainard I have not mastered cinematic intelligence Screen gone, Each little mannerism aspen shuddering:the storm is here! the storm is here! Keep even smoothness spread out like the eye keeps track of sun going in & out of clouds. Then 2 clouds crash. The world is going at a nomad’s pace its face you find routine & then, surprise none other than I experience finding you. This is what does happen beauty ringing the ear,vernacular I hope you see how crucial intrusions are for what I mean may be clearer more insistent because my eyes sigh in debt to yours.When the World Was SteadyNo matter how hard I tryto forget you    you always  come back to my mind,and when you hear me singing  you may know    I am weeping for you.—NOOTKA LOVE SONG  Blazing cinders Blaise Cendrars for my sake excellence as from adaughter for my sake uxorious for my sake not dogmatic henot to be confused with he a father he a gentleman Alice Aurora Alice allay my fears Alice afterbirth The Star The Victim & The Poet now there’s a theory appointed to be up all night appurtenance   the Man-Who-Instills Laughter & Tears talking forever then rolling over talking will take forever then we’ll weep behind closed doors on occasions or rather occasions such as expanding aging eating pick up & hold the babies hold them close we’ll take forever Alice Albacore we’ll take & steal for that baby we made a movie called A & B not easy azure it’s all over borealis & it’s all over aquamarine tropic so let’s call this Daylight & all vote the social line      We Went Out Laboring in times of stress—redfor tyrannous authority      & drowning floods, storm, she holdsfire glass jewel red color & blue against wars & enemies, carryingin the left hand wisdom blades and I give you green,fears of space so now you know so know you now and don’tturn it around I mean let’s use this I am not grass I can’t come to her callingthe waters rise for her I am not water to come for herwailing forever talking We Went Out Laboring & everyone & everyone should experience the ease of theBroadway Ltd    & have a friend who shares adversity distractioninsomnia dreams sigh a white woman sigh hats on hats off hats on little bright blue towels toast & butter & jam & coffee &The Inferno the world has oftimes been converted into chaos are you ready for this? love time & drowning floods, flashed out a crimson light I saw a fire which conquered a hemisphere of darkness lights & shadow on the page of you I’m reading We write I’madding this what dwelt in my dome to those domes and for my sake howl in jurisprudence Bring me my sistershe understands    Bring me my sister, my scribeshe is thesinger who understands the song