ALDEN VAN BUSKIRK ~

St. Louis Poems





God runs a gas station in

    East St. Louis, wears

big blue dungarees.



    What angels in the gold rest rooms,

what music of the organ pumps tonight? O



    Croak not Black Angel, the

truck pulls out to

flame the streets at zero.

        _______________


Gene showed essentially a square attitude

    toward the new myth of mud skinned angels, and when

confronted with the knife in a most

serious "dance of the syllables,"

subtly cooled from exclamation

mark to dash

         __________________


No Splibbins, No Smacks, No Straights.

         __________________


When yr supply is

        depleted, turn

    on w / a stick of garbage

or shoot gold dust from the sun.








After the desertion (a)




Streets empty in gray absence of light

their prints swept away by alto winds

the gods have deserted the city

their shoes hang in Good Will Stores

or writhe in incinerators

Lami's silver shoes among them — faster than

new sneakers for a

flight of thieves —

flame blue at last.

Lami was Joe Angel, Johnny the Fag,

Rimbaud, the Road Runner, myself.

The idea of the image is murdered,

debris wins at last.

Mind is free of imagination at last &

shits gaily in the streets, floods

paper buildings &

shines fresh in the garbage sun.

Citizens' bodies turn, bloat

in eddies, &

flow back to sea.





After the desertion (b)



Gray absence of light.

newspapers blow loosely in the streets like

Spanish galleys crumpling against lamp posts or

curb in tiny convulsions; no tragedy — they

billow off in the next breeze.



The gods have deserted.



Their prints erased by alto winds the

gods have deserted the city.

Their shoes hang in Good Will Stores or

writhe in incineraters — one last dance before



debris wins at last.



Mind has conquested imagination &

shits gaily in the streets,

streams from paper buildings, slime

in the ashen sun.



Bodies putrefy in doorways, only the eyes

flicker short-circuited by the

senses, their eyes convict me,

No they cannot see, they have

abstracted the sun & are lost

in me the dreamer,

only I am not dead for I dream,

my spirit-candle electrifying the

world forever.




_____________________

Alden Van Buskirk
Lami
THE LAST POEMS OF A POET
WHO DIED IN 1961 IN HIS EARLY 20s
collected from his writings by David Rattray
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALLEN GINSBERG
The Auerhahn Society,
San Francisco, 1965

EARTH ~

Alden Van Buskirk

Muted Terror



I am dreaming.

It is pleasant to dream.

I dream cars churning

corners below this porch.

They are not circus wagons

or signboards boiled

open by the sun. Dreaming

they appear as colored sores

issuing from the stop sign.

They are not water, though sun

dances on their glass backs.

Nor can I ascertain their depths

for their reflection breaks from

the limits of chrome.

To dream the motors? It is not

possible except as the sun and the

weeds pry their hoods off in future junkyards.


A blue one displays its thousand broken suns

swinely, dark head in; the window severs blacknecks,

it soars drunken above

the others, a bleeding fire.

This is a car not a bird.

It terrifies beautifully.





from Lami
The Auerhahn Society, 1965

FOR A VERY LONG TIME I HAVE BEEN DRAWN TO THE ABOVE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE POET, MAYBE THE ONLY ONE THERE IS, TIPPED IN BY A LOYAL HAND ONCE UPON A TIME INTO THE POET'S ONLY BOOK. THERE IS SOMETHING NOW AND FOREVER IN THESE POEMS AND FOR YOU IF YOU CAN FIND THIS BOOK. THE POET DIED IN HIS EARLY TWENTIES IN 1961.