GREGORY CORSO

pic by Leandro Feal





Gregory Corso
“…puedo decirte que llega inmensa con harapos
empapados de gasolina y trozos de alambre y viejos clavos torcidos, una oscura arribista de un oscuro río interior”.
(Cómo la Poesía llegó a mí)

My Hands Are a City

My hands are a city, a lyre
And my hands are afire
And my mother plays Corelli
while my hands burn


New York Man

He’s come to Cambridge
He’s standing behind my door
He’s a New York man;
has big neon eyes
and his look spills
jazz upon the floor
But is he really there?
It could be a radio,
an organ grinder
hallucinating there.

It could well be me
paying me a visit in jazz,
afraid to knock.

In the Early Morning

In the early morning
beside the runaway-in-pocket
whistling youth
I see the hopping drooling Desirer
His black legs… the corncob pipe and cane
The long greasy coat, and the bloodstained
fingernails
He is waiting
flat against the trees.

Dialogues from Children’s Observation Ward

I

-You don’t paint nice. You paint faces on window
shades and you don’t make them look nice.
-Window shades is all I got,
and faces is all I got.
II

-You mother came today. Did she say hello?
-No.
-Did she see you black eye? Did she cry?
She gave you a box. What’s in it?
-A fox.
-Is it cooked? Can we eat it?
Is silver or red?
-it’s not dead.
-Good! Yipeee! Let’s kill it.
-She didn’t even say, hello.

The Sniper’s Lament
Hear beautiful
Hear through me still
There wasn’t always this
And me with candles to sell
The Williamsburg Bridge could tell
Of the first b-b shot that missed
And accidentally hit the wax-factory
It hit the sixth floor side
And granite and wax came out and it still bleeds.


This is America

This is America and I’m fun in it
with a wealth of music and lunatics
with a mouth that cannot sing
and I love a woman
and hate the rest and I’ll make it
with anything female ten to fifty
and fitty’s best

This is America and there’s lots more
fun in it
and lunatics
lots that can’t sing woth a damn
and lots that can
but who gives a damn
I do

In California I sang
my Eastern culture into a dying Mexican’s ear
that couldn’t hear
and he died with a smile on his face
The bastard had three gold teeth
An ounce of tea
A pocketful of peyote
And a fourteen year old wife

Requiem for “Bird” Parker

Second version

This prophecy came by mail:
in the last murder of birds
a nowhere bird shall remain
and it shall not wail
and the nowhere bird shall be a slow bird
a long long bird
somewhere there is a room
in a room
in which and old horn
lies in a corner
like a handful of rice
wondering about BIRD

first voice
hey, man, BIRD is dead
they got his horn locked up somewhere
put his horn in a corner somewhere
like where’s the horn, man, where?
second voice
screw the horn
like where’s BIRD?
third voice
gone
BIRD was goner than sound
Broke the barrier with a horn’s coo
BIRD was higher than moon
BIRD hovered on a roof top, too
like in hand, high above all
lookin’ down on them people
with half-shut weirdy eyes
saying to himself: “yeah, yeah”
like nothin’ meant nothing at all
fourth voice
in early nightdrunk
solo in his pent house stand
BIRD held a black flower in his black hand
he blew his horn to the sky
made the sky fantastic! And midway
the man-tired use of things
BIRD piped a varied ephemera
a strained rhythmical rat
like the stars didn’t know what to do
then came a nowhere bird
third voice
yeah, a nowhere bird-
while BIRD was blowin’
another bird came
an unreal bird
a nowhere bird with big draggy wings
BIRD paid it no mind; just kept on blowin’
and the cornball bird came on comin’
first voice
right, like that’s what I heard
the draggy bird landed in front of BIRD
looked BIRD straight in the eye
BIRD said: “cool it”
and kept on blowin’
second voice
seems like BIRD put the square bird down
first voice
only for a while, man
the nowhere bird began to foam from the mouth
making all kinds of discords
“man, like make it somewhere else”, BIRD implored
but the nowhere bird paced back and forth
like an old miser with a nowhere scheme
third voice
yeah, but that time BIRD realized the fake
had come of goof
BIRD was about to split, when all of a sudden
the nowhere bird sunk its beady head
bugged, BIRD blew a long crazy note
first voice
it was his last, man, his last
the draggy bird ran death into BIRD’S throat
and the whole building rumbled
when BIRD let go his horn
and the sky got blacker… blacker
and the nowhere bird wrapped its muddy wings round
BIRD

brought BIRD down
all the way down
fourth voice
BIRD is dead
BIRD is dead
first and second and third voices
yeah, yeah
fourth voice
wail for BIRD
for BIRD is dead
first and second and third voices
yeah, yeah


Man Seated Outside My Window

Time on a garden’s wintry quietness
means nothing when you find
you’re watching the seasons go by alone;
means nothing when you find
your finger marking your thoughts upon a stone.


And Old Man Said He Once Saw Emily Dickinson

Unhappy face –tight rich white face
Like a beautiful dead woman’s face –She looked at me.
Her long hands were wrapped around her throat
And her silk-black hair hung like sleeping bats;
It wasn’t me she was looking at.
When I walked away I could still see her face looking there
… But nothing was there;
That is, nothing that I could see.

The Sausages

I ate sausages with you at the feast.
I ate sausages, and across the street
The butcher counted his daughter’s feet!


Cambridge, First Impressions

It is not easy to walk
these Cambridge streets
Better carpets make it difficult.

Yet in masquerade I slip unnoticed within the parade
And my walk is slightly eased.
How great it is to be heralded in walking!

But my lie makes awkward the gait.
Out of step, my identity is revealed.
The ash-foot sentinels
on every Cambridge corner
stand too severe;
Their clarion-warnings discord
The rhythms I walk to hear.

2
Yet Cambridge is not all banner and majesty,
On the side lines
I watched the rhythmic embassy-
Brattle and all its accoutrements
Give up their rigid themes
Forsake their regnant march
Roll up the carpets,
go home.
Home, and the streets are unnatural.
Walking, I catch Cambridge in a seldom jubilee:-
Vivaldi, Getz, Bach and Dizzy,
In a melody all together contained,
emerge, like twining wisp of smoke, from out parlors and cellars,
Jumping the chestnuts in Longfellow;
Sprinting down Hawthorne,
Swinging through Lowell,
And flying real-crazy over Dana.

3
Morning, and it is terrible to walk.
Once again the sentinels are stationed;
their clarions pied-pipe
the streets clean of the jubilant night-rats,
And quickly the better carpets spread.

4
The old bastard lied that told me Melville
visioned lots of times while walking
in the early morning,
separate from the carpets and parade, in Brattle.
I’ve walked Brattle lots these days,
and not once did I catch from out dark
a line of light.
He said: -Walk, man, walk that crazy Revolutionary
Road, old Brattle;
You’ll dig the greatest visions ever;
Man, like Melville visioned Moby Dick right on Brattle!
Right in the middle of the street!

5
Tired of walking,
Tired of seeing nothing,
I look out from a window
belonging to someone
nice enough to let me look.
And from a window Cambridge is not all that bad.
It is great feeling to know
that from a window
I can go to books to cans of beer to past loves,
And from these gather enough dream
to sneak out a back door.


Sun
(Automatic Poem)
Sun hypnotic! holy ball protracted long and sure! firey
goblet! day-babble!
Sun, sun-webbed heat! tropic goblet dry! spider thirst!
Sun, unwater!
Sun misery sun ire sun sick sin dead sun rot sun relic!
Sun o’er Afric sky low and tipped, spilt, almost empty,
hollow vial, sunbone, sunstone, iron sun, sundial.
Sun dinosaur of electric motion extinct and fossiled,
babble on!
Sun, season of the seasun, catching actual sunfish, on
the green shore sunbathing like a madness.
Sun eros hellish superreal conglomeration of miasmatic
ire!
Sun, sun-downed beings in desert life astounded, go
down!


No Word
It is better man a word elongate
and eat up what another spake
for no man is word enough
who complains, to boot,
the word he ate was tastless tough

It is better man give uo his diction
become mouthless
it is better
than another man, myself, head his restriction

I know no word that is mine
and I am tired of this
It is better to sew his mouth
dynamite his ears hearless
drown his vocabulary

It is better
His eyes speak and listen as well as see





Abre este libro como si fuera una caja de locos juguetes, toma en tus manos un refinamiento de belleza salido de una atmósfera destructiva. Estas combinaciones son imaginarias y puras, en conformidad con el DESEO individual (por lo tanto universal) de Corso.
¡Tanta originalidad toda suya! ¿Cuál es su conexión sino su propia belleza? Tales raras yuxtaposiciones al estilo haikú no están en el canon americano. ¡Ah! Pero la verdadera tradición clásica –desde la descripción aristotélica de la metáfora hasta la ferocidad de su Shelley- y Apollinaire, Lorca, Mayakovski.
Corso es un gran hondero de las palabras, primera señal desnuda de un poeta, un maestro científico de furiosos bocados de lenguaje. El desea una superficie bulliciosa que haga elipsis, salta desde el más extraño fraseo arrancado de las calles de su mente, como “niños furiosos de las chapas de soda”.
Este es un gran sonido: “Oh, deja caer esa bomba incendiaria de tu boca!”
Más loco aún: “Orejas Sucias me tira un navajazo, yo le lanzo una descarga de relojes perdidos”.
¡Qué desfachatez! “Tú, México, tú no tienes ningún Chicago, ninguna fulana rubia platino!” (de “H.G.Wells”, inédito).
El consigue pura poesía abstracta, el sonido interior del lenguaje solo.
Pero, ¿qué es lo que dice? ¡Qué importa! ¡Lo ha dicho!: “Al lado de una hoguera de la noche de Halloween, sabio sobre un tronco carbonizado, un viejo está dictando al heredero del Matón.”
Este heredero a veces transcribe perfectas y modernas letras de canciones que todos pueden entender: “Extravaganza italiana”, “Visita al lugar de nacimiento”, “El último gángster”, “Haarlem”, “La pasada noche conduje un coche”, “Ecce Homo”, “Hola”.
Una rara, triste y singular cognición de la realidad -también una lúcida burla de la realidad- él prefiere sus sueños. ¿Por qué no? Su Cielo es la Poesía. Lo explica extensamente en el gran poema inédito titulado “Poder”.

Yo no canto del poder dictatorial
El brazo rígido de la dictadura es simbólico del poder terrible
En mi habitación he acumulado suficiente gasolina y evidencia
Para permitir a los dictadores poder inagotable.
¿Soy el brazo rígido de Costa Rica?
¿Llevo rojo y verde en las Patrullas de Chrysler?
¿Odio a mi gente?
¿Seré fusilado en la pista de carreras?
¿Están conspirando ahora?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Gente maravillosa, también vosotros sois poder.
Yo recuerdo vuestro poder
NO he olvidado cuando en las nieves de Baviera descendíais esquiando entre bengalas carabinas
sobre la aldea dormida,
¡No he olvidado el bazooka que camuflasteis con palmas
fijado sobre la espalda de un hombre negro
apuntando a un tanque lleno de arios!
Ni he olvidado tampoco la granada, el miedo y el apuro
Que propagó a lo largo de la trinchera de tu hermano
¡Vosotros sois poder, gente maravillosa!
El poder no se arroja desde un avión
Un sombrero es poder
El mundo es poder
El tener miedo es poder
Estar en una esquina esperando a nadie es poder
El demonio no es tan poderoso como el cruzar de un lado a otro de la calle
El ángel no es tan poderoso como el mirar y luego no mirar
¡Qué solitaria dignidad! Tiene el poder angélico de hacer poemas automáticos, como dios haciendo riachuelos.

“En mí el automatismo es un momento enajenado en el que la mente acelera una hora constante de tontería mental, de genio mental, de locura mental…
Cuando Bird Parker o Miles Davis interpretan una pieza estándar de música, la rompen en pequeños sonidos totalmente personales y nada estándar –bien, así hago o con la poesía- X, Y, Z, llámalo automático- yo lo llamo un flujo estándar (porque al principio las palabras son estándar) que intencionalmente es interferido, desviado hacia mi propio sonido. Desde luego muchos dirán que un poema escrito de ese modo estará sin pulir, etc.- así es como yo quiero que sean- porque los he hecho verdaderamente míos- lo que inevitablemente es algo NUEVO –como todo buen jazz espontáneo, toda la novedad es aceptable y esperada- por las gentes enrolladas que escuchan”.
“¡No disparéis Al Jabalí!” La mente ha dado un salto en el lenguaje. El maldice como un arroyo, pura poesía. “Yo grité el nombre: ¡Belleza!” Si lo conseguimos expresar, somos los malditos mitológicos. Se trata probablemente del más grande poeta de América y está pasando hambre en Europa.
Allen Ginsberg
Amsterdam, Holanda (oct. 1957)



Esta foto, tomada en 1956 en Ciudad de México, muestra a cinco figuras representativas de la generación: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, y Peter Orlovsky (de pie, de izquierda a derecha); Gregory Corso y Lafcadio Orlovsky (delante, de izquierda a derecha).