See notes on The New Wasteland
Last edit- Aug 1, 2007
The New Wasteland (After T.S. Eliot)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph"- Ken Kesey
Autumn is the cruelest season.
Neon martinis and FBI shoes shine
like Day-Glo mercenaries with Colt .45's
and everyone in happy ties. Heads in the streets,
soles of feet pound a new groove. That year, 1966
everyone knew for certain where Kesey was.
Oaxaca, on a steamboat to Canada, Paraguay.
No one knew the Ratlands broke him.
-They ran into Kerouac but the beat was gone-
Huaraches steal the souls of all real Mexicans.
Paranoia is a fugitive's friend, they dined
on dead fish suffocated in the red tide.
Back in the San Mateo County jail, waiting
room crowded as the back door of a rock concert.
Where is Superman now? The Prophet stands
in the shadows of the Shell station. All he wants
is to cop a urination. American flag fragments
wave on white cover-alls. The new fantasy is the
Acid Test Graduation and everyone thinks
the cops are in on it.
When Cassady misses the hatchet
it's never an accident.
The I-Ching says, "Stagnation is coming
to an end. Strengthen the mulberry trees
with bindings, beware, collapse may yet occur."
Light dances on the head of a mathematical
pin. Dust is suddenly psychedelic.
It was my destiny
to join the great experience
having had the good fortune
to belong to the League
I was permitted to be a participant
in a unique journey...
You're either on the bus or off the bus.
The love that binds us strangles me.
Who am I if I'm nothing without your
approval? Love Greed flows through my
veins like a poison, yet you wait like a saint
for me to do one genuine thing.
Our allegory fortune card, the non-thing
is what we do. Games are off the bus.
Everybody's out front, going to Edge City.
Furthur!
The Wheel, the Unreal City, the Sighs
all pass like bad trips we ignore.
Leary's dead. New York City-
dead. We grieve for the uninitiated
world, forgive their empty heads.
The war is off the bus! It's their war,
pray for those who lost it in Saigon
but don't fight it or you become it.
Reader be warned, never sleep
the sleep of sloths, Never
Trust a Prankster!
Circled chairs convene a crude fascicule
of wounds, chords and sensors wrought
with tension. McMurphy takes the ropes,
holds them fast for a season. The lab
coat can't see Plaster Man manipulate
the vinyl wall.
It's all happening now it's all happening
here it's all happening outside-
when it should be in.
Chief Broom is done with waiting.
We are all done with waiting, but we
don't know it yet. He picks up
the vending machine and tosses
it like a brick, we can't see what breaks
in us but it does.
Now the real movie begins.
Take to the road!
Beautiful People are everywhere!
'The wind is wild tonight
Stay with me'
Stay with me a little longer in the caverns
"In the caverns?'
Intrepid Traveler, aveler aveler
Straight out the curves!
'Intrepid Traveler, aveler, aveler'
Curve out the straights!
Under a bower of cathedral pines
Pointillist light careens across our eyes
Perpendicular peace, the redwoods for a back yard.
'oooooh it sparkles!'
Through black disks of eyes
We tumble
Nowhere else we'd rather be.
wwwwwhhhhhaaaappppppp!
What? What was that?
'Synchronicity'
Hits the pavement at 75 mph;
No one thinks to go back for the mic.
Stark Naked is off the bus.
The ivory man makes company between us.
The madness inside her is inside each
of us.
Fade to black.
"The man who comes back through the Door
in the Wall will never be quite the same
as the man who went out."
Millbrook collides with The Hieronymus Bus.
Harvard Doctor, heal thyself!
Bodhisattva is waiting:
Say this over the crypt:
"O now, when the Dream Bardo upon me
is dawning! Abandoning the inordinate
corpse-like sleep of stupidity,
May consciousness undistractedly
be kept in its natural state."
A red line across South Dakota traces
the thoughts of Everyman, scrub
and white ash on eyelids trade for sleep
in the dense quatrains of perception,
the all-one Mind of Man has been shut
down, open it! Look through the lens,
listen to the stereophonic reverb back
looping, total emersion. A 4th dimensional
landscape includes all we are and ever were-
To name this is to kill this.
Total Attention washes the foot
No disciples, no messiah, no earth
No water. Only fire for the un-experienced.
Paranoia runs like a volcanic river.
Whatever the cost, the cameras
Roll!
Tiresias! You are Cosmo,
the third man, you know Mexico is not
far off, yet you delay, prepare us
for the bust.
Heave your giant foot over
the pedal and push!
Straight into Hell's Angels-
heart of the American outlaw
edge city times two,
thunder in the gut
harp played on solid ribs
and the cutting
the binding
the curl, the motionless
inward wrap
testicles and a time warp
apes with brains
and knives
and dreams
and lives
I'm not sleepy and there ain't no place
I'm going to
Driving the catatonic freeze
into the dusky, dusky, haze
the rolling, the rolling
toward a death magnificent and
un-judge-able.
The interspirit storm collector runs
the route like a rat paces a pipe,
effluent of awakening feeds the source,
whirlpooling over a strategy it can't support.
Soon the dancing Dervish gathers
in his skirts whatever wont go; guitars,
The Dead, the arms of a thousand
Beatlemaniacs, all waving toward the center.
Boo-ya! Mahavira! Owsely's LSD
fuels a new notion-
It's your ass
Can you Pass THE ACID TEST?
If there was a god who listened
without talking, a god who asked
for nothing, required
nothing,
I could be like Him.
Let the rocks be still
Let the leaves wave their white
undersides
Let all the pulses in my veins
crawl like ants
each one a sliver of the whole
a crowd in a trance
weaving Brahma from elastic thread
over the loudspeakers
where the reverb echo lag time-travel now
hits a synchronized nerve
and God lives!
The fourth man in the furnace strobes
a million moments with Shadrach,
Mescach, and Abednego.
Behind the scenes a finger cymbal rings,
words flood the wire from New York
words flood the wire from New York
to San Francisco
the inner wire
the outer whole
no time for games
the man in the space-suit runs the show
and the show runs him.
FLASH
There will be no new crucifixion
boats wait on shore, boots
are in the bay, sirens in the distance
sweep an eerie eye,
another circle like our own
intersects in space
includes what it denies.
FLASH
Light attracts light, darkness, darkness
like minds will find each other.
FLASH
The law of love rules the universe
death is not a poverty
but a gift we share
it lingers like a smoke plume
one heart
Beating beating beating
-End-
The title and form for this poem comes from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. Like Eliot, who patterned his poem from a popular book of his time, Jessie L. Weston's From Ritual to Romance, I took symbolism and language from a book with a big impact on my generation, Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test and other texts considered important in the early 1960's.
Autumn is the cruelest season- The imprisonment of Kesey for
two minor drug charges began in October 1966.
Ratlands- Nickname for Mexico given by Wolfe. Kesey and several
of his group spent several months in hiding in Mexico to avoid
a trial over minor drug charges.
Kerouac- Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road, wasn't actually
in Mexico, but his movement spawned many hipsters who lived out
their lives in the relative obscurity of Mexico.
The Prophet- Title of Kahil Gibran's book experiencing
a resurge of popularity.
Cassady- Neil Cassady was also in On the Road by Jack Kerouac,
about the beat generation of the 50's. His "thing" was
to constantly flip a sledgehammer in the air.
The I Ching- A form of Chinese divination popular in this
era.
The League...It was my destiny- Quote from The Journey
East by Herman Hesse.
The Wheel- From Eliot, Tarot-the wheel of fortune; or Buddhist-
Wheel of Existence from which the soul endeavors to escape.
The Unreal city- From Eliot, Baudelaire, Swarming city full of
dreams.
The Sighs- From Eliot, Inferno, The sounds of dead who lived before
Christ.
Never Trust a Prankster!- Rally cry of the Merry Pranksters a
band of youths who traveled with Kesey in the early 60's.
Leary- Timothy Leary, Harvard professor who was also experimenting
with LSD at that time.
McMurphy- Randle McMurphy From Ken Kesey's "One Flew
Over the Cukoo's Nest"
Lab coat- Kesey volunteered for LSD experiments in the late 50's
while he was writing.
Chief Broom- a character in OFOTCN.
Beautiful People- From letters home often written to parents by
kids choosing a path other than school or work: "I met some
Beautiful People and...
Cathedral Pines- La Honda, California, Kesey's place.
Stark Naked- Nickname for one prankster who had a mental breakdown
on the bus.
"The ivory man makes company between us." A line left
out of Eliot's original version which he later put back in. This
line refers to the chess men. Eliot played chess during his hospital
stay for a mental breakdown where he wrote most of The Waste
Land.
Last Rites - From one of the seven sacraments also called The
Anointing of the Sick, from the biblical text James 5:14-15
"The man who comes...- Quoted from The Doors of Perception,
1954, Aldous Huxley, detailing his experiences when taking mescaline.
Millbrook, Conn.- The mansion where Leary and others experimented
with LSD Harvard Doctor- Dr. Timothy Leary
"O now, when the Dream Bardo...- Prayer from The Tibetan
Book of the Dead, 1927, the Invocation of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas
for assistance, when one is dying, part II
Total Attention - Practice of the Pranksters to give total attention
to anyone experiencing a bad trip.
The movie- Thousands of hours of film were gathered in the years
the group was together for a movie about their experience, financed
by Kesey to the tune of $35,000 or more.
Tiresias- From Eliot, Ovid's Metamorphosis, a character who experiences
both male and female lives, eventually is given the gift of prophecy.
Cosmo- Name Wolfe gives to the one at center of fate.
The third man- Eliot, part IV, notes, either the third man on
the road to Emmaus or the legend of the explorers in Antarctica,
who had the constant delusion hat there was one more man in the
group than they could account for.
I'm not sleepy...- Line from Bob Dylan song "Mr. Tambourine
Man."
Joachim- Joachim Wach, The Sociology of Religion, 1944, was
cited by Wolfe for his insight into the patterns of religious
discipleship, including the path taken from the initial revelations
of one person, or a small group, to organization and conformity.
The Dead- The Grateful Dead started playing music for the Merry
Pranksters parties, originating a sound that became known as Acid
Rock; long sets of free flowing music accompanied the multimedia
blitz on several screens.
Beatlemaniacs- The Beatles played the Cow Palace in1965. The Merry
Pranksters attended a concert that saw thousands of screaming
fans for the first time go wild.
Mahavira- Jain mystic, son of Siddhartha, mentioned several times
by Wolfe when discussing the ultimate connections between things.
Owsely- Augustus Owsely Stanley III, a chemistry student who began
to manufacture LSD doses in the thousands in 1965, before it was
made illegal in late 1966.
THE ACID TEST- Name for the parties hosted by Kesey and his group.
Shadrach, Mescach, and Abednego- Daniel 3:19-25, Three Chaldean
believers who would not deny their faith and walked through a
burning furnace.
Finger cymbal- Allen Ginsburg spoke poetry punctuated by finger
cymbals at the Merry Prankster parties in the mid sixties.
Man in the space-suit- Kesey reportedly wore a space-suit at one
of the last acid tests as a disguise from the police.
Sirens in the distance- I discovered the original title of The
Waste Land- "He Do the Police in Different Voices,"
so I'm pleased my ending includes the world symbol for police
action.
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