by James Douglas Morrison

TALES OF THE AMERICAN NIGHT

Discovery

Angels & Sailors (rich girls) Backyard fences, tents dreams watching each other narrowly Soft luxuriant cars Girls in garages stripped, out to get liquor & clothes Half-gallons of wine & six-packs of beer Tender corral. Jumped. Humped. Born to suffer. Made to undress in

the wilderness

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAN WE RESOLVE THE PAST

- Hey man you want girls Pills grass come-on I show you good time This place has everything Come-on, I show you

Burlesque Beat

Can we resolve the past -- lurking jaws joints of Time -- the base -- to come of age in a dry place -- holes & caves

The music was new black polished chrome & came over the summer like liquid night -- the D.J.'s Took pills to stay awake & play for 7 days

The General's son had a sister. They went down to see him. They went to the studio & someone knew him. Someone knew the T.V. Showman.

He came to our home room party & played records & when he left, in the hot noon sun, & walked to his car, we saw the Chooks had written F-U-C-K on his windshield. He wiped it off w/ a white rag &, smiling cooly, drove away.

"He's rich. Got a big car."

My friend drove an hour each day from the Mts. The bus gives you a hard-on w/books in your lap. We shot the bird at the black M.P.

My gang will get you. Scenes of rape in the arroyo. Seductions in cars, abandoned buildings. Fights at the food stand. The dust. The Shoes Opened shirts & raised collars. Bright sculptured hair. Spades dance best, from the hip.

Someone shot the bird on the afternoon dance show. They gave out free records to the best couple.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALWAYS A PLAYGROUND INSTRUCTOR Always a playground instructor, never a killer. Always a bridesmaid on the verge of fame, or over, he maneuvered 2 girls into his hotel room. One, a friend, and a newer stranger, vaguely Mexican or Puerto Rican.

Poor boy's thighs & buttocks, scarred by a father's belt. She's trying to rise. Story of her boyfriend & teen-age stone death games. Handsome cat, dead in a car.

Come here I love you. Peace on earth Will you die for me eat me this way the end

- I'm surprised you could get it up. He whips her lightly, sardonically w/ belt.

- Haven't I been thru enough? she asks.

The dark girl begins to bleed. It's Catholic heaven. I have an ancient Indian crucifix around my neck. My chest is hard & brown. Lying on stained & wretched sheets w/ a bleeding Virgin. We could plan a murder, or

Start a religion.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I WANT TO TELL YOU

I want to tell you about Texas Radio & the Big Beat

it comes out of the Virgin Swamps cool & slow w/ plenty of precision & a back beat narrow & hard to master some call it heavenly in its brilliance other mean & rueful of the Western dream

I love the friends I have gathered together On this thin raft we have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping This is the land where The pharaoh died --

Children

The river contains specimens The voices of singing women call us on the far shore

& they are saying "Forget the Night live w/ us in Forests of azure"

(meager food for souls forgot)

I tell you this; no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn

One morning you awoke & the strange sun & opening your door...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOW LISTEN TO THIS

"Now listen to this: I'll tell you about Texas Radio & the Big Beat Soft driven slow & mad like some new language

Reaching your head w/ the cold & sudden fury of a divine messenger Let me tell you about heartache & the loss of God

Wandering, wandering in hopeless night

The negroes in the forest brightly feathered let me show you the maiden w/ wrought-iron soul Out here on the perimeter there are no stars Out here we is stoned

immaculate"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIME WORKS LIKE ACID

Time works like acid Stained eyes You see time fly

The face changes as the heart beats & breathes

We are not constant We are an arrow in flight The sum of the angles of change

Her face changed in the car eyes & skin & hair remain the same. But a hundred similar girls succeed each other

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE SIDEWALKERS MOVED...

The sidewalkers moved faster We joined the current. Suddenly the cops, plastic shields & visors, wielding long thin truncheons like wands, in formation, clearing the street the other way. To get near or stay away. Cafes were taking in tables putting chairs on upside down, pulling teh steel playpen safety bars. Whistles as the vans arrive. Moustached soldiers. We leave the scene. Eyes of youth, wary, gleaming. The church. A pastoral scene of guitars, drums, flutes, harps, & lovers. Past Shakespeare & Co., the restaurants w/ elegant patrons, cross street, the small Jazz district (Story Ville) a miniature New Orleans. Negroes in African shirts. A street brass band. "Fare well to my web footed friends" Crowd smiles, jogs, & sings. Move past. San Michel Blvd. The Statue. The Seine. Bonfires of cardboard buzz evilly, down the blvd. Fire-tenders. Smell of smoke. Approach closer nearer. Suddenly screams long warhoops & the crowd runs back. And as we flee, they attack from behind, Pressed against cafe tables. Subway & news Kiosk -- A girl beaten, her cries. Can't hear blows. Rain. (Man w/ bottle) Join me at the demonstration

We join groups under trees & rain. Tall public buildings.

Join us at the demonstration

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dreams are at once fruit & outcry against an atrophy of the senses. Dreaming is no solution

WE AWOKE, TALKING...

We awoke, talking. Telling dreams. an explosion during the night

A new siren. Not cop, Fire, New York ambulance or european movie riot news but the strange siren predicting war. She ran to the window. The yellow thing had risen.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FEAR IS A PORCH...

Fear is a porch where winds slide thru in the North

A face at the Window that becomes a leaf

An eagle sensing its disaster But soaring gracefully above A rabbit shining in the night

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STILL WET FROM...

Still wet from a strange dream dawn burst scarring the chamber's roof where all things lie

I sat w/ her & sipped cold sherry

Airport.

(Caesura = ante-room to hell)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- START AGAIN

Start again: Should the events of those days... Dream of incest & expulsion from the tribe. Big Sister. It's called the clap. Get on over here, mother-of-pearl. I was a virgin. It lasted 10 seconds. Well don't then. "I can't relax." Roll the leather pants up tightly for the morrow

hour.

They deserted me, deserted the cause, message or word for another god. "We're kicking you out of our universe!" He ask'd for you. I'll bet he did.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MYSTERY OF THE DREAM

Mystery of the dream a woman or girl is trying to appear

The Killer -- Mexican, naked except for shoes.

People, a family not connected move at hypnotic cross lines out of still frame

2 men, detectives, following searching, sifting thru back & side lit rooms, holding muted counsel. Hats, suits. Brothers.

People in a wood, a park. The Killer lurks in his own world.

dreams of children & families return to the sub-world to assimilate & guide events

New Orleans, sleep, (death's friend, death's sister) cattle, horses faces get rubbery, clown-painted, stupid sly & wise & knowing

The mystery of flight To be inside the brain of a bird goal -- the end of a goddess to slide gracefully & knowledgeably into graveland The Big dream

vs

Violent assassination of Spirit & neck & skull wounded he arrived

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE DARK AMERICAN SUNSET

The dark American Sunset The night like a vast conspiracy to dream, hold court in the swaying sand

Tijuana -- the anus of Night a cartoon of civilization Whores are bores in the American Night

What will we see in the bowels of the night, in The frosted cave where dreams are made, right before your eyes. Prophecy w/out money.

This song must have the sad common strangeness of currency coin of the realm. Bitter embers. Scent of pine smoke Fire-Night, special breeding exercises. An excuse for crime. High School of the Night. Silence of a school at night.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- L'AMERICA

Acid dreams & Spanish Queens

L'america (another?, lone?, voice)

Asthma child, the fumidor

Lamerica

Duchess, rabbit, the woods by the road

Lamerica

Pearl Harbor -- Shot off the road

Lamerica

Conceived in a beach Town

Lamerica

Relevance of beach or Lakes

Lamerica

Sinks, snakes, caves w/ water

Florida

Homo/-sex/-uality

Lamerica

Religion & the Family

Lamerica

Plane crash in the Eastern Woods

Virginia

Bailing-out over rice-fields

Lamerica

Guerrilla band inside the town

Lamerica

Bitter tree of consciousness

Lamerica

A fast car in the night -- the road

Lamerica

Progress of The Good Disease

Lamerica

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AMERICA AS BULLRING ARENA

Those indians, dreams, & the cosmic spinal bebop in blue. The cosmic horrors. The cosmic heebeejeebies. A combo of brain tissue, blood, shit, sweat sperm & steel, mixed w/ grease & liquid fire, ovaric calendars Magnified on inner Television lust-face, mirrors into Nothing, great silence opens layers of prehistoric chinese monsters. The mouths, the mouths, the cellular MAW. A young Witch from N.Y. is laying novice hexes on my brain-pan, projecting images of embryo development on my psychology.

Her terrified wildness disturbs my generals. Baby, now I dig your nightmare visions, & your sadness & your bitchery

But, yet, thank you for These spells. It gets my pen moving.

The screaming maggot group-grope called life.

It's time for the desert wild.

Lust capital.

Time for an island, get drunk, write & sail.

"I saw the Hell of women back there."

Women are obsolete

"Little Wine -- dig that girl"

We placate women w/ food & song w/ sex, marriage, babies

You dig kids, Jim

Yeah, some of them are nice

I like your wife

Democracy of souls

THE GUIDED TOUR

The guided tour "I am a guide to the labyrinth"

city is inside of body made manifest meat organs & electrical power plants

The place where, walking down death-row ("You look like you're"), maps -- AMERICUS -- a river-vein we ride along.

give form to the passing world

Freeways are a drama, a new art form. Signs. Houses. Faces. Loud gabble of Blacks at a bus-stop.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAR CEMETERY

car cemetery The abandoned cars The color of car paint, new at night under neon The dead reside in cars -- the old man, filthy, keeper of the graveyard Children, curious, throw stones

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE LIKE ME

please like me

says the shrew

what can I do?

I love her.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WOMAN'S VOICE

Woman's Voice:

The palace of sperm seems warm tonight

Man:

Umm. gloom gloom doom ruin.

Woman:

Marble porches. The grand ball room. Silver smiles. Trumpets. Dancing

Man

I want only you

Woman

This time come in me like an astronaut Send snakes in my orbit

Man

We can accomplish miracles when we're together.

Woman

Alone

Man

w/ the night to guide us

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DON'T START THAT...

Don't start that panic Love Street parade

No one's afraid of the law

Someone escaped To the shore

Your image of me / my image of you

in

one-night scenes out on the coast

Won't work anymore

Soft parade Love Street brigade

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I BRING THESE...

I bring these few rags back home this evening & lay them at your feet Miserable witness to a day of tragic sadness & disbelief Hope you'll find me wanting Take me to bed Get me drunk (lay me out)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE WEDDING-DRESS

The bride-to-be lies in her bed listening to Festivities below He steals her -- in a dream

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STAR FISH GLUTTONY

Star fish gluttony What are the word-forms for co(s)mic encounter wedding flesh & mind in one body

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TENDER ISLAND NIGHT

Tender island Night And a promise of fever & scars that burst at blossom depths & more green silver

Us wrestling in the warm temple of summer beside the temple cool inside -- He took my hand. He spoke to me --

Black horse hooves galloping sun mad chariot race burning mad fiery chariot race mad girl & mad boy My feathered son flew

too near to the sun.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A MOVING

a moving

or movement

away from

a station

(weigh station)

Sound of lone car & low radio

a way from |

a waving |

a motion

amazement

a moment

amazing

a waving

(call radio breaks in)

Uh, we have a message

brak brak

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HE FOLLOWS A WOMAN...

He follows a woman into the firmament The solids, sonnets elaborate requisitions for the god-soul

ah my bright jewelled town a Widow's band roping sailors & hill-folk together congeal on this flat spire to partake of mineral jets "he's sick" he should be sleeping peaceful by air, a movie of dead nights in a wound, suffer to give out your red-blue lighter's flame w/ calm precision your certainty lives in a match or a mind The huts are free evening cliff-dwellers The trees, losing their variance, die sadly w/ grandeur O soft redness & palest blue

like a babie's window This is the hour you rule

& invite Ventures, quests, trips to the electric valley down

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PROMISES

"Mana Man"

He gets them into the dark hour By playing singing stories hypnosis

wilderness

the island

Led out of bondage

(back there)

Viciously peeling fruit

Disguised as "Players" command Performance

See-thru village old hot forest of cars

cruel ambience Leopard snake dance

swift lions of doubt crouch in the window & wait for her to come

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DO YOU HAVE

do you have

straight jackets

for the guests

yes we do

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HORSE LATITUDES

When the still sea conspires an armor And her sullen and aborted Currents breed tiny monsters, True sailing is dead.

Awkward instant And the first animal is jettisoned, Legs furiously pumping Their stiff green gallop, And heads bob up

Poise

Delicate

Pause

Consent

In mute nostril agony Carefully refined And sealed over

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ORIGINAL TEMPTATION...

The original temptation was to destroy. The Cliffs. The Road. The Walls. Original heroism -- to bluff the elements of fire. To call creatures into the storm. The original heroism was to fall. To ball. The All. Natural man.

To participate in the creation. To screw things up. To bring Things into being.

The Crossroads where the car hides. Lies. Resides. A meeting-place of Worlds. Where dreams are made. Where anything is possible. Demons lie.

The car is steel & chrome. The wood-pile. Top of the pile. The heap. The graveyard. Where metal is reduced to its common mute element. To be reborn. A tale of rebirth in the wilderness. To become chaos & come back.

2 spade chicks, or a king & queen, comment from the balcony.

The types of society pass on the boards. Microcosm in a thimble

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIMES CHANGE, DAMAGED

times change, damaged cat's blood rectify in haste cactus furrows, wild thrift catalog of grace

The chase bore inward raise'd wet & westward shadows To the strange trust on the south bow

Augment pure shouter's drawl & light the candle Night is comin' on & we're outnumbered

By the waves, each soldier bristling w/ his trowel To search & claim us Teach our burial

The mind works wonders for a spell, the lantern breathes enlightens, then farewell

Each shipmate oars to under- stand & eyes unoptic strains to hear:

We came from over here, to over there

Then old we wonder mindless to degree Most seldom furls in slumber, burns begins a century

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLANES ARE GROANING MOTHERS

Planes are groaning mothers In our feeble insect wars.

Nylon condoms stream behind her Trojan Warriors on their dreadful writhing flight.

Bailed out, sucked from her metal belly, one thin wire is left to prophecy return, jump freely.

Swallowing air in the brief canal. The ground leaps up like dogs to snap, the field, & rolling pain.

Swamps, rice fields, danger. Gunned down, over ten of them struggling w/ the wet placenta

While some land back in oceans. Skin-divers float, free-float, in the uterus.

The sea is a Vagina which may be penetrated at any point.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AH, THE RULE...

Ah, the rule was war, as friendship faltered. Families quarrelled, as usual, in their chambers. The race suffered. We traveled. We left home & beauty. Ah, into these ship, again, we hastened. The creation of power is slow-wasted. Borrowed fillings. Brace for the brine. Heaven kept, hour dated. Winds fermented madness & kept parlour rife & rancind.

Crews took leave of sour concubines & habits. The sea is no place for a lady. Lads larked & frolicked, pulvering waves they would seek into the deep. Ark! Ark! Cathay or Venice. Worlds beyond, & Worlds after.

This story has no moral. Trust not sleep or sorrow. The fife-man croons the lull to wake & Brings strong soldiers to a windy beach

ENSENADA

India ink, ink of India There are no more rich colors Black neon, blocks away, Escapes back smooth in the desert sea.

There's an appearance of sweat on Italian silk skin. Slap the rude face, & twist into the doorway.

Then reappear, w/ drums & glass in jewels of laughter as one called "The Gladiator," Hair claimed by flame of fire

(Insulting to be back. The dreaded, dismal day.)

Jail is a pussy coil, dry as meat, dog-faced, clever.

(Handsome dog & the shot gun eye.)

We leap the wall, dog & I, To hang choking on fence collar chain. Mate follows leap to suffer String-throat, hollow, madness cry.

(In this "hollow" we were born.)

Mexican Khaki, the green womb. Distrust all lovely words like green & womb.

(Obey the father. Run.)

Escape back into the landscape, dry as meat, dusty, narrow.

Dog licks shit Mexican girl whore sucks my prick.

(Open windows on the town. Open pores on foreign air.)

The car rasps quiet. Motor destroys itself on rotten fuel. The pump is ill. The hose has a steel nozzle.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FLESH OF HER...

Flesh of her rolls flesh away in waves, The waters part dry scalps beneath the hair nude-white & very rare

And when she exits bed, the barge To bathe in ocean's tile & under surgeon's glare, blinking I bask on the red floor of a Red Sea

Crime begins in the bed, the home, It's a low tide that talks to rocks, & leaves rust in its wake, & dry things crackling.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I FUCKED THE DREGS...

I fucked the dregs of the ruins

of an empire

I fucked the dust and the

horrible queen

I fucked the chick at the

gates of the Maya

I fucked all your women

& treated the same

w/ respect for your warriors

returned from the

Kingdom

fucked w/ the Negroes

in cabs of the drivers

Fucked little infants of North

Indo-China

Branded w/ Napalm & screaming

in pain

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PENCILLED HEAVEN

pencilled heaven my regards no when to stop

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THERE'S SOMEONE AT THE DOOR

There's someone at the door. A rapist rushes in. No pain. No death.

It's us, over & over again.

We're coming in. All right, search the place. You won't find anything.

Seeing all perspectives at once.

When everything freezes & kind of turns back in on itself.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FEAST GREEN BEAST...

feast green beast, spurred on by sex, seasoned in silence, w/held from slumber, silent in the deep pale night beast languid a cool a cunt a forest flower awoken now breathe utter a word of reproach for fair swifty flyers agon of night The dream car the outlaw star now he sits reclines in a terrible mansion made more monstrous by the dark stroke of slumber

The car is purple foil beast dead in the night. Neon is its sign his rich home soft luxuriant car death gave grace shaken to the soil He stood in a strange centre by the meeting pt. of worlds This crossroads of desert flies the corpse of sand batteries the ignition What did happen! He screams at camera Here she lie bleeding, blue wounds just to tell us in our floppy hats it's over. The cops are rubber animals w/ surgeons cold pride, w/out their glamour. The ambulance attendants are sudden amateurs, good-natured in this foreign chore. The cliffs no longer contain faces. "I know what jail is like" & "I know about time."

So we played the carnival. Car. Carne. Feast of meat. Celebration of blood.

O lucky ones who enjoy the dumb show

The reptile farm. The snake farm. Woman & Monkey. The sign. The sign.

Search for the Tree. The place. The sink Big Dismal

Goes in 2 ways. Spirit & Meat. (sex) You cannot join what can't be joined You cannot travel 2 roads

(He road off in all directions)

Hand Grenade

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VERY BRAVE

Very brave

all the rage

to tempt loneliness

upon Front page

gold head lines

w/ Ali Khan & all the rest

Onassis, Blues

BB Albert Collins

gin & tonic