A Vow

A VOW October 11, 1966

I will haunt these States
with beard bald head
eyes staring out plane window,
hair hanging in Greyhound bus midnight

leaning over taxicab seat to admonish
an angry cursing driver
hand lifted to calm
his outraged vehicle
that I pass with the Green Light of common law

Common Sense, Common law, common tenderness & common tranquility
our means in America to control the money munching war machine, bright lit industry

everywhere digesting forests & excreting soft pyramids of newsprint, Redwood and Ponderosa patriarchs silent in Meditation murdered & regurgitated as smoke, sawdust, screaming ceilings of Soap Opera, thick dead Lifes, slick Advertisements for Gubernatorial big guns burping Napalm on palm rice tropic greenery.

Dynamite in forests, boughs fly slow motion thunder down ravine,
Helicopters roar over National Park, Mekong Swamp,
Dynamite fire blasts thru Model Villages,
Violence screams at Police, Mayors get mad over radio,
Drop the Bomb on Niggers!
drop Fire on the gook China
Frankenstein Dragon
waving its tail over Bayonne's domed Aluminum oil reservoir!

I'll haunt these States all year
gazing bleakly out train windows, blue airfield
red TV network on evening plains,
decoding radar Provincial editorial paper message.
deciphering Iron Pipe laborers' curses as
clanging hammers they raise steamshovel claws
over Puerto Rican agony lawyers' screams in
slums.