Michael McClure's reading at PWF2008

1)

grafting one
NOW I UNDERSTAND THE SEXUAL ADDICTION
of my young manhood
was a CRUCIFIXION—
glittering and lovely
AS
an ostrich boa and smashed mirrors seen on acid.
Now
I see that perception is a shape of the darkness S E E I
N G
itself. Naked bodies in layers
on shelves in space, and behind stalactites, alight with themselves
seduce me
with fleshly softness
of their meat.
Calves.
Forearms.
And the perfumes!
THE PERFUMES ARE LOST
AS MOTHS
IN OUR HORMONAL STORMS
but they direct us.
—They guided me.




2)

grafting
two
MY GOD
NO don't
DO THIS
to me!
MY GOD! MY GOD! MY GOD!
DON'T DO THIS TO ME!
I've looked down into it
and 1 come back
with my eyes
glazed.
My eyes glazed. That twig has a rabbit's head! The orange flesh of the apricot where the mouth bites it is a Hell/Heaven a Hell/Heaven of naked figures. The brown dimples of the Bay, as the plane lands, are a horse's back. DON'T DO THIS TO ME!



3)

OH ACCIDENT!
OH
PER
FECT
((CRUSHED))
snail —LIKE
A STAR
gone out



4)

HUM MING BIRD SHAD
OW
on the black
plum

(( No summer lightning though ))




5)

LEADBELLY BLUES GET IN MY BONES
I'm sick of old folks' tears and baby's groans.
I'm choke full of this lion-eating Rome.
I'm going where the eagle is going.
Zero, America, I'm going home.
I'll be where I hold my lover at night.
My head's a hammer and my toes are stones.
She's got a bed the color of a rose.
Rain on the roof in the morning light.
Leadbelly blues get in my bones.

Rain on the roof in the morning light.



6)

THE CHEETAH
See the face
of a beautiful
and highly
intelligent
child
in
the
profile
of the cheetah.
SHE
IS
BEYOND
ALL
GOOD
and
EVIL
and more like us
than we can ever
imagine.

The black stripes
at the tip of her tail
twitch
and she closes her eyes
as my mother used to do,
with pleasure.

Her three large kittens
nod and grin in the sun.

What is human
is so much more obvious
in beings with tails.




7)

BEGINNING   WITH   A   LINE BY   DI   PRIMA
"The only war that matters is the war against the imagination!"
The only love that shatters is the love of despondence and horror. The only honor that shines is the one that smashes the lust for duty.
ANY CRIME
THAT DIMINISHES
THE SOUL
is not credible
—such as:
the foulness of stuffing one's gut with the junk of greasy meat
and consumerist propaganda, of filling one's nose and veins with drugs, of cutting the beaks from chickens & then loading them with poisons and light and madness and eating their eggs and spirits. BODY AND SPIRIT ARE ALL
ONE THING.   IT IS JUST ONE WAR AND THE BIG BOMB HAS ALREADY EXPLODED
THERE'S TIME TO LOOK YOUR LOVE IN THE EYES AND SAY
shit!!!
In my insides I am a man or woman I am heart and lung and meat and vein and breath
going back through a deep
phylogeny. I AM A DEEP OLD HISTORY MADE NEW FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE SMILING GUISE of the universe that whispers with my breathed air
and my soft toes. WHY THEN AM I HANDED
THIS GARBAGE
THESE LIES, that are told
over and over
that grow tighter and tighter and prey on my health? Why am I diminished
and portrayed as a fool?
AND TOLD TO BUY AND CONSUME TILL I AM ONLY A FOOL??
How come I am a tool of this explosion
a tool of tools in the midst of this
SLOW MOTION BLOW UP!!!?

STAND
UP
!!!


STAND UP
Get off your back and turn off the box with the moving pictures.
Go for a walk in the woods or on the plains. Speak to a cliff!
The only war that matters is the war against the imagination.
The only honor that shines is the one that smashes the
LUST for duty.
It is your duty to absorb the social propaganda and become crazed with the need for overpopulation and to stimulate the greed to devour what has been
out there for a billion years
and to burn petroleum in endless
and countless flames in the ceremonial vehicles
and the machines that change the climate.
It is duty to torment the innocent
and the less privileged
AND
TO
FINGER
&
TORTURE
&
TEASE
right out of their homes and lives, a million species of brother and sister beings.
It is duty to dissolve any signs of an inner life that is different in any way from the outer lies of consumerist propaganda. IT IS DUTY TO BE OF ONLY
One Dimension, so that the inside soul is no different
from the commercial for tennis shoes.
The Finances
of
ROCK AND ROLL sings anthems of cheap beer
straight into your ears as you shove your green paper over the counter
to trade for burgers that are fried in the tallow of cows grazed where there were once forests in the Amazon!
The only war that matters is the war against the imagination!!!



8)

THE WHITE HANDS WITH LONG FINGERS hold an injured ego, touching its thorns, caressing the lids of its bloodshot eyes. REALMS
open and close
in a
tidepool. C L E A R
cold water
streams from a vial and every night is a new night.
The thrummm
and glitter of the hummingbird comes from nowhere
and the doe steps awkwardly
to look at the calico cat. Sunrise is N O T H I
N
G
but
pink-orange, abalone-pattemed scatterings
of clouds




MONKEY MIND BUILDS CATHEDRALS of imagination and stone and tone poems of stained glass and bubblegum. I inhabit C I
V I L I Z A T I O N like a plump cricket
or a dust mote in an empty mansion and listen for the garbageman who plays jazz with his truck
THIS IS SO EASY
and I create problems with it:
fighter bombers, mutilations, epiphanies of envy, ALL WHEN
I MIGHT
be nestling in comfort and ease.
69
EACH RAINDROP IS AN INSTANT
in birth as everything changes.
WE
ARE
IN
MIST and we
glance toward the forest.
Now your foot is
ivory
on the blue quilt by the round, black cushion; it is cool and electricity pops the lights in the storm. Perhaps N I R V A N A is
ceaseless change in muscles and voices.
As glib as a lily or a lightning bolt.




9)

I
WILL NOT
do this again. I am waves
of material and everything else. Hormones whispered to by patriarchs are moving IN THE RAIN. I am raining and loud with downpour
and
there are silences between each drop
trickle
through the walls of the basement and across the concrete floor.
THIS
IS
EITHER A PERSIMMON
OR
APINECONE. Or something else?




10)

THE NEWS NEVER CHANGES. The big picture is there and the eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue twist
to become an apple or velvet. The jelly mass in the spring pond flowers into pollywogs wriggling for tasty
algae — and the presence
of salty surf
on the ankles and calves is a statue of neurons. In the mirror streams flow to the waterfall
and Manjushri's snow lion
coughs
in a jeweled grotto as the flame sword swings.
Turtles have good dreams sleeping
in
the mud though
we
will
never
meet them.
I GO DEEPER
INTO THE FUTURE
I MAKE




11)

ACTION PHILOSOPHY
THAT GOVERNMENT IS BEST WHICH GOVERNS
[LEAST.
Let me be free of ligaments and tendencies to change myself into a shape
that's less than spirit.
LET ME BE A WOLF,
a caterpillar, a salmon,
or
an
OTTER sailing in the silver water
beneath the rosy sky. Were I a moth or condor
you'd see me fly!
I love this meat of which I'm made! I dive in it to find the simplest vital shape!
AH! HERE'S THE CHILD!!!
WHAT'S LIBERTY WHEN ONE CLASS STARVES
[ANOTHER