Nagasaki Days

I — A Pleasant Afternoon

               for Michael Brownstein and Dick Gallup

One day 3 poets and 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chau-

       tauqua tent in Aurora

listening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating

       words singing by in mountain winds

on a pleasant sunny day of rest — the wild wind blew thru

       blue Heavens

filled with fluffy clouds stretched from Central City to Rocky

       Flats, Plutonium sizzled in its secret bed,

hot dogs sizzled in the Lion's Club lunchwagon microwave

       mouth, orangeade bubbled over in waxen cups

Traffic moved along Colefax, meditators silent in the Diamond

       Castle shrine-room at Boulder followed the breath going

       out of their nostrils,

Nobody could remember anything, spirits flew out of mouths

       & noses, out of the sky, across Colorado plains & the

       tent flapped happily open spacious & didn't fall down.

                                                       June 18, 1978

II — Peace Protest

Cumulus clouds float across blue sky

       over the white-walled Rockwell Corporation factory

                                       — am I going to stop that?

Rocky Mountains rising behind us        Denver shining in morning light— Led away from the crowd by police and photographers                                

Middleaged Ginsberg and Ellsberg taken down the road

       to the greyhaired Sheriff's van —

But what about Einstein? What about Einstein? Hey, Einstein

                               Come back!

III — Golden Courthouse

Waiting for the Judge, breathing silent

       Prisoners, witnesses, Police —

the stenographer yawns into her palms.

                                       August 9, 1978

IV — Everybody's Fantasy

I walked outside & the bomb'd

       dropped lots of plutonium

       all over the Lower East Side

There weren't any buildings left just

       iron skeletons

groceries burned, potholes open to

       stinking sewer waters

There were people starving and crawling

       across the desert

the Martian UFOs with blue

       Light destroyer rays

passed over and dried up all the

       waters

Charred Amazon palmtrees for

       hundreds of miles on both sides

       of the river

                               August 10, 1978

V — Waiting Room at the Rocky Flats Plutonium Plant

"Give us the weapons we need to protect ourselves!"

       the bareheaded guard lifts his flyswatter above the desk

                                               — whap!

                               *

A green-letter'd shield on the pressboard wall!

       "Life is fragile.  Handle with care" —

My Goodness! here's where they make the nuclear bomb

                                 triggers.

                                       August 17, 1978

VI — Numbers in Red Notebook

2,000,000 killed in Vietnam

13,000,000 refugees in Indochina 1972

200,000,000 years for the Galaxy to revolve on its core

24,000 the Babylonian Great Year

24,000 half life of plutonium

2,000 the most I ever got for a poetry reading

80,000 dolphins killed in the dragnet

4,000,000,000 years earth been born

                                               Summer 1978