“A poem for cocksuckers”, John Wieners, from Pathetic Literature

«Trobar», No. 5, Trobar, Brooklyn, NY, 1962 [Between the Covers, Gloucester City, NJ]

Contributors: Rochelle Owens, George Economou, Charles Olson, Robert Kelly, Robert Duncan, Paul Blackburn, Jerome Rothenberg, David Antin, John Wieners, Amiri Baraka (as LeRoi Jones), Anselm Hollo, Theodore Enslin, and others

V/A

"Cold Turkey Press / Klacto presents : A Cold Turkey Press special"

(LP. Rotterdam '72. 1972) [US]

A poem for vipers // John Wieners

I sit in Lees. At 11:40 PM with Jimmy the pusher. He teaches me Ju Ju. Hot on the table before us shrimp foo yong, rice and mushroom chow yuke. Up the street under the wheels of a strange car is his stash—The ritual. We make it. And have made it. For months now together after midnight. Soon I know the fuzz will interrupt, will arrest Jimmy and I shall be placed on probation. The poem does not lie to us. We lie under its law, alive in the glamour of this hour able to enter into the sacred places of his dark people, who carry secrets glassed in their eyes and hide words under the coats of their tongue.

6.16.58

Act #2

John Wieners (1934–2002)

    For Marlene Dietrich

I took love home with me, we fixed in the night and sank into a stinging flash.

¼ grain of love           we had 2 men on a cot, a silk cover and a green cloth over the lamp.         The music was just right. I blew him like a symphony,    it floated and           he took me down the street and           left me here. 3 AM. No sign.

           only a moving van           up Van Ness Avenue.

Foster’s was never like this.

I’ll walk home, up the          same hills we              came down. He’ll never come back,           there’ll be no horse               tomorrow nor pot tonight to smoke till dawn.

He’s gone and taken my morphine with him Oh Johnny. Women in       the night moan yr. name

poem by John Wieners

John Wieners, from Time

A POEM FOR THE INSANE

The 2nd afternoon I come back to the women of Munch. Models with god over

their shoulders, vampires, the heads are down and blood is the water- color they use to turn on. The story is not done. There is one wall left to walk. Yeah

Afterwards—Nathan gone, big Eric busted, Swanson down. It is right, the Melancholy on the Beach. I do not split

I hold on to the demon tree, while shadows drift around me. Until at last there is only left the Death Chamber. Family Reunion in it. Rocking chairs and

who is the young man who sneaks out thru the black curtain, away from the bad bed.

Yeah stand now on the new road, with the huge mountain on your right out of the mist

the bridge before me, the woman waiting with no mouth, waiting for me to kiss it on.

I will. I will walk with my eyes up on you for ever. We step into the Kiss, 1897. The light streams.

Melancholy carries a red sky and our dreams are blue boats no one can bust or blow out to sea. W ride them and Tingel-Tangel in the afternoon.

Cocaine For I have seen love and his face is choice Heart of Hearts, a flesh of pure fire, fusing from the center where all Motion is one.

And I have known despair that the Face has ceased to stare at me with the Rose of the world but lies furled

in an artificial paradise it is Hell to get into. If I knew you were there I would fall upon my knees and plead to God to deliver you in my arms once again.

But it is senseless to try. One can only take means to reduce misery, confuse the sensations so that this Face, what aches in the heart and makes each new

start less close to the source of desire, fade from the flesh that fires the night, with dreams and infinite longing.

John Wieners

JOHN WIENERS "A Poem for the Old Man" from The Hotel Wentley Poems (1958)

God love you Dana my lover lost in the horde on this Friday night 500 men are moving up & down from the bath room to the bar. Remove this desire from the man I love. Who has opened the savagery of the sea to me.

See to it that his wants are filled on California street Bestow on him lan- gesse that allows him peace in his loins.

Leave him not to the moths. Make him out a lion so that all who see him hero worship his thick chest as I did moving my mouth over his back bringing our hearts to heights I never hike over anymore. Let blond hair burn on the back of his neck, let no ache screw his face up in pain, his soul is so hooked. Not heroin. Rather fix these hundred men as his lovers & lift him with the enormous bale of their desire.

6.20.58

John Wieners - A Poem for Trapped Things

This morning with a blue flame burning this thing wings its way in. Wind shakes the edges of its yellow being. Gasping for breath. Living for the instant. Climbing up the black border of the window. Why do you want out. I sit in pain. A red robe amid debris. You bend and climb, extending antennae.

I know the butterfly is my soul grown weak from battle.

A Giant fan on the back of                             a beetle. A caterpillar chrysalis that seeks a new home apart from this room.

And will disappear from sight at the pulling on invisible strings. Yet so tenuous, so fine           this thing is, I am            sitting on the hard bed, we could                     vanish from sight like the puff                      off an invisible cigarette. Furred chest, ragged silk under           wings beating against the glass

          no one will open.

The blue diamonds on your back are too beautiful to do                        away with.

I watch you           all morning                     long. With my hand over my mouth.

- A Poem for Trapped Things by John Wieners

July 27 // John Wieners

There is the flute                              that sings in the dead of the night. The word that writes itself       only in the dark. There is the woman that sleeps       now and rises in the dawn                                    the note that dances in the air                          on ten toes.    Then silence.

    And shadows on the wall             that look like snakes.

No scheme. Only acts      fragments of the act           that is my life and that of the fellows around me.

      My book is before me       why don't my fingers move over it