new Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem (he hasn’t seen)

page 1 of Her by Lawrence Ferlinghetti – foto Smith

Here’s a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem that he has never seen.

I picked up a used copy of his surreal 1960 novel “Her” down in Mexico for almost nothing, and one of its previous owners had underlined over a hundred phrases throughout the book; I typed them into a poem in the order they appeared, then deleted over half of them because they didn’t flow.

These are all Ferlinghetti’s phrases, in Ferlinghetti’s order, underlined by a stranger.

I read the poem today at open mic and was amazed at how well it reads, how coherent it is, even though the phrases were dispersed throughout 148 pages of the book.

Like a Far Note in a Blue Bottle
(words by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, edit by chance and Smith)

I was bearing a white phallus through the wood of the world,
I was looking for a place to plunge it,
corresponding almost exactly to reality,
Like an extra in a grade B movie,
I was looking for the main character of my life,
strayed onto the stage by mistake,
I had somewhere dropped the key that explained the action,
ran off through the streets of the world,
a small eternity passed,
I returned and returned.
a scene I had already painted
the paint had now grown wet again
a melting mirror
suspended in silence
a waiting hush.
exiled me to spend the rest of my life picking
recurrent delusion
mounted on the beast of myself,
one pollywog willing to lose its tail
in a cracked shaving mirror under a bare bulb
junk
jism
fertile rain
the streets of the earth
fossil footprints
knotted rubber bands
an anonymous receptacle into which I could pour myself
classic columns holding up nothing.
made of real American pigeon feathers,
Love
Poetry Revolution
pocket watches hung from trees
crowds of black berets and herds of sandals
combing their hair with Grecian lyres.
mad poets
in and out of reality.
one huge landscape of flesh,
unbaked clay
innermost swinger beyond the self,
stationary, running.
manufacture existence,
squeezed from a tube,
sperm rain,
like the tiny tail of a swallowed goldfish,
like a far note in a blue bottle
true beat paint-poet
eternal tourist in Hell
white as the bleached skull of a cow.
made of mascara,
black flower,
the green leprosy of moss
B.O. of the soul,
a round egg in a square world,
unharm
alarm
when my pinball machine registers tilt
zow wow
who stole robin’s cock
wonderful wizard of odds

(taken from under-lined phrases in a used copy of Ferlinghetti’s 1960 novel “Her.” The word “zow” in the third to last line is not Ferlinghetti’s – it was inked in just before “wow” by whomever underlined the phrases)

Ferlinghetti’s cover drawing for Her – foto Smith