“listen the battlefield is in the mind”
Last week we looked at:
- The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle: the Art and Poetry of d.a. levy, a new edition by Mike Golden from Seven Stories Press, a book that has a real chance to bring this shamefully neglected poet to a big new audience.
- The earlier levy collection, zen concrete & etc. edited by Ingrid Swanberg (Ghost Pony Press, 1991).
For anyone dedicated to unraveling the multifaceted mysteries of rue levy, boy/man/poet/shaman/hippie, the contrast between Doug Blazek's level-handed essay in zen concrete and Golden's hyperventilated theories in Junkmail Oracle are worth deep digging.
Golden's Investigative Essay* spends mucho time dealing with levy's suicide, even fingering a friend of levy's as possible FBI agent and -- levy's murderer. The essay flashes back the realities of CoIntelPro, the war at home that levy was waging inside his psychedelic-filled mind, and is dazzling in its depiction of the Hooverization of reality. Blazek's measured piece, using actual newspaper squibs to move the narrative inexorably along, gives a fuller sweep, the moving in of the law, levy's deterioration as he got cornered. At the conclusion, the sadness is immeasurable.
*Cf. Ed Sanders' The Z-D Generation (Station Hill, 1981) -- “This is the age of / Investigation and all citizens must investigate” -- and other forays into the Investigative by ace potective Sanders, who also figures here.The truth is, both are true.
Was it murder most foul by a trip buddy who ends up marrying levy's girlfriend? Or romantic, drug-induced, professionalism-poeticizing-on-the-horizon suicide with a major assist by government hounding, last days of levy a la Last Days of Lenny Bruce, spewing reams on his court case, megadrugs, heartbreak girlfriend departs to arms of another, friend in jail. . .
Read on, for more poems excerpted from The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle & notes on levy's poetic heirs.
page 1 2from “Kibbutz in the Sky”:
. . . to protect the police from any
further embarrassment, I have
decided to turn myself in
there was a mistake!
Now its five months later & I know
it couldn't have happened BUT at
the time, I knew the police had
illegally searched my house when I
wasn't there. try to prove it in
court, everyone knows the police
don't do things like that, and its
easier to sleep than create a new
myth closer to reality --
later when things cooled down
I was going to start a campaign
“GIVE A COP A FLOWER
& CAN A COP REFUSE A ROSE?”
to let the police know
we don't hate them.
As a friend said only today,
“Cops are people” and someone
sent the narkos a dozen
YELLOW DAISEYS and signed my
name to the card --
and I got busted again
. . .
WE DONT NEED THE POLICE AS A FATHER IMAGE
we don't want yr fucking super vision
where was the police protection when we
needed it
you expect us to express yr sexual
frustrations in vietnam -- go to hell
no that's not enuff
GO FUCK YRSELF
THE WAR IS HERE!
no that's not enuff
i dont have the words
to break thru yr
sickness
the war is here
where small store owners are framed
by christian moral laws & laws created
by the liquor industries & fascist
hoodlum politicians. . . the war
is here on the streets where individual
rights is translated as enemy of the state
by a few maniacs in control of the country
the war is here where my friends are going
to jail & no one gives a damn, where tv is
god, and money is god and to talk about
love is to guarantee you will be mis-understood
and to try to love is a sign of insanity
the battlefield
listen
the battlefield is in the
mind, listen the battlefield
is in the mind, lis
en THE INTERNAL SCREAMING
. . .
dont be afraid of death
they intend to murder you anyway
