Harold Norse

I was the tourist
el simpático
and your brother offered you
and almost himself
I forgot about your brother
and we took a flat in the Marshan
with reed mats and one water tap
about a foot from the floor
an we smoked hasheesh
and ate well and loved well
and left for the south
Essaouira, Fez, Marrakech
and got to Taroudant
thru the mountains
and bought alabaster kif bowls
for a few dirharms and watched
the dancing boys in desert cafés
kissing old Arabs and sitting on their
laps, dancing with kohl eyes
and heard the music in Jejouka
in the hills under the stars
the ancient ceremony, Pan pipes
fierce in the white moonlight
by white walls
with hooded figures
stoned on kif
for eight nights
and the goat boy in a floppy hat
scared us,beating the air
with a stick, beating whoever came close,
Father of Skins, goat god,
and the flutes maddened us
and we slept together in huts

San Francisco, 7.xi.72

The music of ancient Greece
and Rome did not come down to us
but this morning
I read Virgil’s Eclogues
struck by the prophecy
of a new era:
“A great cycle of centuries
begins. Justice returns to earth,
the Golden Age returns,” he wrote
30 years before the end
of his millennium, describing
the birth of the infant god, come down
from heaven. Jesus was 19
when Virgil died at 89.
Will the Golden Age ever come?
Same faces throw up each generation,
same races, emotions, struggles!
all those centuries, those countries!
languages, songs, discontents!
They return here in San Francisco
as I sit in the Cafe Trieste.
O recitative of years!
O Paradiso! sings the jukebox
as Virgil and Verdi combine
in this life to show
this is the only Golden Age
there’ll ever be

Let go and feel your nakedness, tits ache to be bitten and sucked
Let go with pong of armpit and crotch, let go with hole a-tingle
Let go with tongue lapping hairy cunt, lick feet, kiss ass, suck cock and
balls
Let the whole body go, let love come through, let freedom ring
Let go with moans and erogenous zones, let go with heart and soul
Let go the dead meat of convention, wake up the live meat of love

Let go with senses, pull out the stops, forget false teachings and lies
Let go of inherited belief, let go of shame and blame, in brief
Let go of forbidden energies, choked back in muscle and nerves
Let go of rigid rules and roles, let go of uptight poses
Let go of your puppet self, let go and renew yourself and be free
Let go the dead meat of convention, wake up the live meat of love

Let go this moment, the hour, this day, tomorrow will be too late
Let go of guilt and frustration, let liberation and tolerance flow
Let go of phantom worries and fears, let go of hours and days and
years
Let go of hate and rage and grief, let walls against ecstasy fall for
relief
Let go of pride and greed, let go of missiles and might and creed
Let go the dead meat of convention, wake up the live meat of love

The business of poetry

is the image of a young man

making music and love

to a girl whose interest

in love and music coincides

with an enormous despair in both

their inner selves like a plucked

guitar in the dry hot sun of

hope where savage and brutal men

are tearing life like a page

from a very ancient

and yellow

book

I was walking thru the city past umber embassies 

               & pine-lined palaces
                              fat palms beside balconies
                       the heat something
                                   you could really touch

                                     the kids with cunning
                                         delinquent faces
                                  after americano sailors

            -thinking of nerval    tends-moi le pausilippe
                  et la mer d’Italie & living
                          on the hill         posillipo          under
               a gangster’s dancefloor
                                                   among goldfinches

                                         on the bay of naples
                                                  in a stone cottage
                               over tufa caves in which the sea
                               crashed in winter     sweet gerard
                                                one hundred years
                       have made the desolation greater

     the tower is really down & the sun blackened
                     beyond despair      the loudspeaker drowns
                              finches     cliffs      caves
                                      all in the hands of racketeers
        yet i have passed my time dreaming thru this
                              fantastic wreck

walking thru incendiary alleys of crowded laundry
                              with yellow gourds in windows &
                              crumbling masonry of wars
                                    human corruption
                              so thick and hopeless that i laugh

when suddenly i saw among the oil & greasy rags
                               & wheels & axles of a garage
                                the carved nude figures of
                                        a classic frieze
                                there above the dismantled
                                parts of cars!

perfect! & how strange! garage
               swallows sarcophagus!
mechanic calmly spraying
                    paint on a
                                       fender
observed in turn by lapith and centaur!

                                                       flow
                           of unthinking flesh!
                                       frank thighs! eyes
                              of aphrodite!

the myth of the mediterranean
           was in that garage
      where the brown wiry
youths saw nothing unusual
                   at their work
    among dead heroes & gods

    but i saw hermes in the rainbow
            of the dark oil on the floor
                             reflected there
           & the wild hair of the sybil
                   as her words bubbled
mad and drowned
                               beneath  the motor’s roar  

we sailed into the harbor
all the church bells rang
the main street on the crescent shore
hung iridescent silks from windows
stucco housefronts gleamed
rose, pistachio, peach
and a procession sang
behind a surpliced priest
carrying a burnished Christ
when I set foot on shore
a youth emerged from the crowd
barefoot and olive-skinned
and we climbed up rocky slopes
till dusk fell and close to the moon
at the mouth of a cave we made love
as the sea broke wild beneath the cliff

Piccolo Paradiso

let the age hang itself!  we’ve had
four marvelous days together
       no news reports        only music
               & no serious discussions
 

plenty of wine        the best
from the islands
     white
        falerno &  ischian
            & lacrima cristi
                                   we’ve made up
                              for months
                 of loneliness
                     hard work
                       nastiness
                            of ’superiors’
 

             we may not live
         very well or long
our mistakes are perhaps too great
       to bear correction
          at this midpoint
     of our lives (you’re somewhat younger)
                         surely too great
to make up for the lengths we go
           to hide them

                                    e cosi…that’s
                                             how it goes 
   

                      but at least
                      we’re ahead of the game

                  we’ve stolen a march
                       on the dead       the herd 
   

if the return to grayness
sharp tempered weapons
of those who force life
into corners
       is more than we can bear
       remember this
           the wine
               the ladder
                    of stars that climb
                        vesuvius outside
                            my window
                         the waves
                           banging into smooth
                                tufa caves 
   

& the opera
              as we lay together
                                       remember 

we dig up ancient shards
clicking cameras
among the dying cypresses
choked by Athenian smog.

yet cats continue basking
in the hazy sun
the chained goat sways in ecstasy
the Parthenon looks down from creamy heights
lichen and rust nibble the pediments
and tourist feet break the spell
of antiquity’s vibrations

the grass hits
as I look at rusty orangeade caps
thinking Who needs nuclear Apollo?
thermonuclear Minerva?
Nike crashing to grand finale?

we need the anti-Christ
who is probably playing football around the corner
the sweet boy who used to be called Eros
and wants us to be happy.

bring back the carnivorous saint
whose mother is no virgin
she’s Our Lady of Peace Movements
to ban the bomb and clean up the air
she’ll wave her umbrella and change the world.

ah yes, when the grass hits
old worlds burn down and new worlds form
in clouds of brown monoxide morning.

Athens, Jan. 1964

I’m not a man, I can’t earn a living, buy new things for my family.
I have acne and a small peter.

I’m not a man. I don’t like football, boxing and cars.
I like to express my feeling. I even like to put an arm
around my friend’s shoulder.

I’m not a man. I won’t play the role assigned to me- the role created
by Madison Avenue, Playboy, Hollywood and Oliver Cromwell,
Television does not dictate my behavior.

I’m not a man. Once when I shot a squirrel I swore that I would
never kill again. I gave up meat. The sight of blood makes me sick.
I like flowers.

I’m not a man. I went to prison resisting the draft. I do not fight
when real men beat me up and call me queer. I dislike violence.

I’m not a man. I have never raped a woman. I don’t hate blacks.
I do not get emotional when the flag is waved. I do not think I should
love America or leave it. I think I should laugh at it.

I’m not a man. I have never had the clap.

I’m not a man. Playboy is not my favorite magazine.

I’m not a man. I cry when I’m unhappy.

I’m not a man. I do not feel superior to women

I’m not a man. I don’t wear a jockstrap.

I’m not a man. I write poetry.

I’m not a man. I meditate on peace and love.

I’m not a man. I don’t want to destroy you

San Francisco, 1972