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There are beat poets besides Allen Ginsberg and Bob Kaufman is one of them - along with Ted Joans, Quincy Troupe, Frank Chin, Cal Hernton, and others (if you have poems from any one of them, do share)
BOB KAUFMAN
A Terror is More Certain . . .
A terror is more certain than all the rare desirable popular songs I
know, than even now when all of my myths have become . . . , & walk
around in black shiny galoshes & carry dirty laundry to & fro, & read
great books & don’t know criminals intimately, & publish fat books of
the month & have wifeys that are lousy in bed & never realize how
bad my writing is because i am poor & symbolize myself.
A certain desirable is more terror to me than all that’s rare. How
come they don’t give an academic award to all the movie stars that
die? they’re still acting, ain’t they? even if they are dead, it should
not be held against them, after all they still have the public on their
side, how would you like to be a dead movie star & have people sit-
ting on your grave?
A rare me is more certain than desirable, that’s all the terror, there
are too many basketball players in this world & too much progress
in the burial industry, lets have old fashioned funerals & stand
around & forgive & borrow wet handkerchiefs, & sneak out for
drinks & help load the guy into the wagon, & feel sad & make a
date with the widow & believe we don’t see all of the people sink-
ing into the subways going to basketball games & designing baby
sitters at Madison Square Garden.
A certain me is desirable, what is so rare as air in a Poem, why can’t
i write a foreign movie like all the other boys my age, I confess to all
the crimes committed during the month of April, but not to save
my own neck, which is adjustable, & telescopes into any size noose,
I’m doing it to save Gertrude Stein’s reputation, who is secretly
flying model airplanes for the underground railroad stern gang of
oz, & is the favorite in all the bouts . . . not officially opened yet
Holland tunnel is the one who writes untrue phone numbers.
A desirable poem is more rare than rare, & terror is certain, who
wants to be a poet & work a twenty four hour shift, they never ask
you first, who wants to listen to the radiator play string quartets all
night. I want to be allowed not to be, suppose a man wants to
swing on the kiddie swings, should people be allowed to stab him
with queer looks & drag him off to bed & its no fun on top of a
lady when her hair is full of shiny little machines & your ass
reflected in that television screen, who wants to be a poet if you
fuck on t.v. & all those cowboys watching.
_________
TPB's notes: Bob Kaufman, “A Terror is More Certain . . .” from Cranial Guitar. Copyright © 1996 by Eileen Kaufman.
BOB KAUFMAN
I Have Folded My Sorrows
I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its alloted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingles hippo becomes the gay unicorn.
No, my traffic is not addled keepers of yesterday's disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday's pains.
Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey.
And yes, I have searched the rooms of the moon on cold summer nights.
And yes, I have refought those unfinished encounters. Still, they remain unfinished.
And yes, I have at times wished myself something different.
The tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet;
The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity.
_________
TPB's notes: see http://www.litkicks.com/BobKaufman
BOB KAUFMAN (All Those Ships That Never Sailed).
All those ships that never sailed
The ones with their seacocks open
That were scuttled in their stalls...
Today I bring them back
Huge and transitory
And let them sail
Forever.
All those flowers that you never grew-
that you wanted to grow
The ones that were plowed under
ground in the mud-
Today I bring them back
And let you grow them
Forever.
All those wars and truces
Dancing down these years-
All in three flag swept days
Rejected meaning of God-
My body once covered with beauty
Is now a museum of betrayal.
This part remembered because of that one's touch
This part remembered for that one's kiss-
Today I bring it back
And let you live forever.
I breath a breathless I love you
And move you
Forever.
Remove the snake from Moses' arm...
And someday the Jewish queen will dance
Down the street with the dogs
And make every Jew
Her lover.
_________
TPB's notes: see https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/bob-kaufman:
"On April 18, 1925, Bob Kaufman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of thirteen children. His mother was a black Catholic from Martinique, his father a German Orthodox Jew. As a child, Kaufman took part in both Catholic and Jewish religious services; he was also exposed to the voodoo beliefs of his maternal grandmother. At the age of thirteen, he ran away and joined the Merchant Marine, surviving four shipwrecks and circumnavigating the globe nine times in the next twenty years.
When Kaufman left the Merchant Marine in the early 1940s, he went to New York City to study literature at the New School, where he met William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. The three went to San Francisco, joining Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the center of the Beat scene. Drawing inspiration from the improvisatory bebop jazz featured at the Beats’ favorite North Beach watering holes, Kaufman began reciting his spontaneous compositions in bars and coffeehouses and on the streets, earning himself the nickname of “The Original Bebop Man.” Hardly any of this early material was written down; most of his publications were transcribed from his oral performances.In 1959, Kaufman, Ginsberg, John Kelley, and William Margolis founded Beatitude magazine, which would help launch the careers of many aspiring poets. The following year, Kaufman accepted an invitation to read his poetry at Harvard. In 1961, he was nominated for Great Britain’s prestigious Guinness Award (T. S. Eliot received the prize that year). Despite his successes in the public sphere, Kaufman’s personal life was deteriorating; the next few years were marked by financial hardship, methedrine addiction, and imprisonment. John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 prompted Kaufman to take a Buddhist vow of silence. He withdrew from society and did not speak again until 1975, on the day the Vietnam War ended, when he walked into a coffee shop and recited “All Those Ships that Never Sailed.” A period of intense activity and productivity ensued, but Kaufman again withdrew into solitude in 1978, after telling editor Raymond Foye, “I want to be anonymous . . . my ambition is to be completely forgotten.”"Kaufman is credited with popularizing Beat attitudes and philosophies in Europe, and especially France, where he was known as “the American Rimbaud.” His books of poetry include The Ancient Rain: Poems, 1956-1978 (New Directions, 1981); Watch My Tracks (1971); Golden Sardine (1966), collected by Kaufman’s friend, Mary Beach, during his first period of silence; and Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness (1965), comprised of three earlier broadsides, Does the Secret Mind Whisper?, Second April, and the Abomunist Manifesto. Kaufman died of emphysema on January 12, 1986."
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