To drop off...

Gregory Corso

BOMB by Gregory Corso

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Budger of history   Brake of time   You   Bomb

Toy of universe   Grandest of all snatched sky   I cannot hate you

Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt   the jawbone of an ass

The bumpy club of One Million B.C.   the mace   the flail    the axe

Catapult Da Vinci   tomahawk Cochise   flintlock Kidd   dagger Rathbone

Ah and the sad desparate gun of Verlaine   Pushkin   Dillinger   Bogart

And hath not St. Michael a burning sword   St. George a lance   David a sling

Bomb   you are as cruel as man makes you   and you're no crueller than cancer

All Man hates you   they'd rather die by car-crash   lightning   drowning

Falling off a roof   electric-chair  heart-attack   old age   old age   O Bomb

They'd rather die by anything but you   Death's finger is free-lance

Not up to man whether you boom or not   Death has long since distributed its

categorical blue   I sing thee Bomb   Death's extravagance   Death's jubilee

Gem of Death's supremest blue   The flyer will crash   his death will differ

with the climbor who'll fall   to die by cobra is not to die by bad pork

Some die by swamp   some by sea  and some by the bushy-haired man in the night

O there are deaths like witches of Arc   Scarey deaths like Boris Karloff

No-feeling deaths like birth-death   sadless deaths like old pain Bowery

Abandoned deaths   like Capital Punishment   stately deaths like senators

And unthinkable deaths like Harpo Marx   girls on Vogue covers   my own

I do not know just how horrible Bombdeath is   I can only imagine

Yet no other death I know has so laughable a preview   I scope

a city   New York City   streaming   starkeyed   subway shelter

Scores and scores   A fumble of humanity   High heels bend

Hats whelming away   Youth forgetting their combs

Ladies not knowing what to do   with their shopping bags

Unperturbed gum machines   Yet dangerous 3rd rail

Ritz Brothers   from the Bronx   caught in the A train

The smiling Schenley poster will always smile

Impish death   Satyr Bomb   Bombdeath

Turtles exploding over Istanbul

The jaguar's flying foot

soon to sink in arctic snow

Penguins plunged against the Sphinx

The top of the Empire state

arrowed in a broccoli field in Sicily

Eiffel shaped like a C in Magnolia Gardens

St. Sophia peeling over Sudan

O athletic Death   Sportive Bomb

the temples of ancient times

their grand ruin ceased

Electrons   Protons   Neutrons

gathering Hersperean hair

walking the dolorous gulf of Arcady

joining marble helmsmen

entering the final ampitheater

with a hymnody feeling of all Troys

heralding cypressean torches

racing plumes and banners

and yet knowing Homer with a step of grace

Lo the visiting team of Present

the home team of Past

Lyre and tube together joined

Hark the hotdog soda olive grape

gala galaxy robed and uniformed

commissary   O the happy stands

Ethereal root and cheer and boo

The billioned all-time attendance

The Zeusian pandemonium

Hermes racing Owens

The Spitball of Buddha

Christ striking out

Luther stealing third

Planeterium Death   Hosannah Bomb

Gush the final rose   O Spring Bomb

Come with thy gown of dynamite green

unmenace Nature's inviolate eye

Before you the wimpled Past

behind you the hallooing Future   O Bomb

Bound in the grassy clarion air

like the fox of the tally-ho

thy field the universe thy hedge the geo

Leap Bomb   bound Bomb   frolic zig and zag

The stars a swarm of bees in thy binging bag

Stick angels on your jubilee feet

wheels of rainlight on your bunky seat

You are due and behold you are due

and the heavens are with you

hosanna incalescent glorious liaison

BOMB O havoc antiphony molten cleft BOOM

Bomb mark infinity a sudden furnace

spread thy multitudinous encompassed Sweep

set forth awful agenda

Carrion stars   charnel planets   carcass elements

Corpse the universe   tee-hee finger-in-the-mouth hop

over its long long dead Nor

From thy nimbled matted spastic eye

exhaust deluges of celestial ghouls

From thy appellational womb

spew birth-gusts of of great worms

Rip open your belly Bomb

from your belly outflock vulturic salutations

Battle forth your spangled hyena finger stumps

along the brink of Paradise

O Bomb   O final Pied Piper

both sun and firefly behind your shock waltz

God abandoned mock-nude

beneath His thin false-talc's apocalypse

He cannot hear thy flute's

happy-the-day profanations

He is spilled deaf into the Silencer's warty ear

His Kingdom an eternity of crude wax

Clogged clarions untrumpet Him

Sealed angels unsing Him

A thunderless God   A dead God

O Bomb   thy BOOM His tomb

That I lean forward on a desk of science

an astrologer dabbling in dragon prose

half-smart about wars   bombs   especially bombs

That I am unable to hate what is necessary to love

That I can't exist in a world that consents

a child in a park   a man dying in an electric-chair

That I am able to laugh at all things

all that I know and do not know   thus to conceal my pain

That I say I am a poet and therefore love all man

knowing my words to be the acquainted prophecy of all men

and my unwords no less an acquaintanceship

That I am manifold

a man pursuing the big lies of gold

or a poet roaming in bright ashes

or that which I imagine myself to be

a shark-toothed sleep   a man-eater of dreams

I need not then be all-smart about bombs

Happily so   for if I felt bombs were caterpillars

I'd doubt not they'd become butterflies

There is a hell for bombs

They're there   I see them there

They sit in bits and sing songs

mostly German songs

And two very long American songs

and they wish there were more songs

especially Russian and Chinese songs

and some more very long American songs

Poor little Bomb that'll never be

an Eskimo song   I love thee

I want to put a lollipop

in thy furcal mouth

A wig of Goldilocks on thy baldy bean

and have you skip with me Hansel and Gretel

along the Hollywoodian screen

O Bomb in which all lovely things

moral and physical anxiously participate

O fairylike plucked from the

grandest universe tree

O piece of heaven which gives

both mountain and anthill a sun

I am standing before your fantastic lily door

I bring you Midgardian roses   Arcadian musk

Reputed cosmetics from the girls of heaven

Welcome me   fear not thy opened door

nor thy cold ghost's grey memory

nor the pimps of indefinite weather

their cruel terrestial thaw

Oppenheimer is seated

in the dark pocket of Light

Fermi is dry in Death's Mozambique

Einstein his mythmouth

a barnacled wreath on the moon-squid's head

Let me in   Bomb   rise from that pregnant-rat corner

nor fear the raised-broom nations of the world

O Bomb I love you

I want to kiss your clank   eat your boom

You are a paean   an acme of scream

a lyric hat of Mister Thunder

O resound thy tanky knees

BOOM   BOOM   BOOM   BOOM   BOOM

BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns

BOOM BOOM ye moons   ye stars BOOM

nights ye BOOM   ye days ye BOOM

BOOM BOOM ye winds   ye clouds ye rains

go BANG ye lakes   ye oceans BING

Barracuda BOOM and cougar BOOM

Ubangi BOOM   orangutang

BING BANG BONG BOOM   bee bear baboon

ye BANG ye BONG ye BING

the tail the fin the wing

Yes   Yes   into our midst a bomb will fall

Flowers will leap in joy their roots aching

Fields will kneel proud beneath the halleluyahs of the wind

Pinkbombs will blossom   Elkbombs will perk their ears

Ah many a bomb that day will awe the bird a gentle look

Yet   not enough to say a bomb will fall

or even contend celestial fire goes out

Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb

that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born

magisterial bombs wrapped in ermine   all beautiful

and they'll sit plunk on earth's grumpy empires

fierce with moustaches of gold