The Paris Journal

by James Douglas Morrison

---

So much forgetten already
So much forgotten
So much to forget

Once the idea of purity
born, all was lost
irrevocably

The Black Musician
in a house up the hill

Nigger in the woodpile
Skeleton in the closet

Sorry. Didn't mean you.

An old man, someone's
            daughter

Arises
& sees us still in the room
of off-key piano & bad
paintings

him off to work
&new wife arriving

     (The candle-forests of
          Notre-Dame)

beggar nuns w/ moving
smiles, small velvet sacks
& cataleptic eyes

straying to the gaudy
Mosaic calendar
Windows

I write like this
 to seize you

give me your love, your
tire eyes, sad for
delivery

A small & undiscover'd
park -- we ramble

And the posters scream
safe revolt

& the tired walls barely
fall, graffiti into
dry cement sand

an overfed vacuum
dust-clock

I remember freeways

Summer, beside you
Ocean -- brother

Storms passing

electric fires in the night

"rain, night, misery --
the back-ends of wagons"

Shake it! Wanda,
fat stranded swamp
Woman

We still need you

Shake your roly-poly
Thighs inside that
Southern tent

So what.

It was really wild
She started nude & put
on her clothes.

An old & cheap hotel
w/ bums in the lobby
genteel bums of satisfied
poverty

Across the street, a
famous pool-hall
where the actors meet

former ace -- home of
beat musicians
beat poets & beat
wanderers

in the Zen tradition
from China to the
Subway
   in 4 easy lifetimes

Weeping, he left his pad
on orders from police
& furnishings hauled
away, all records &
momentos, & reporters
calculating tears &
curses for the press:

"I hope the Chinese junkies
                get you"

& they will
for the poppy
rules the world

That handsome gentle
flower

Sweet Billy!

Do you remember
the snake
your lover

tender in the tumbled
brush-weed
sand & cactus

I do.

And I remember
Stars in the shotgun
night

eating pussy
til the mind runs
clean

Is it rolling, God

in the Persian Night?

"There's a palace
 in the canyon
 where you & I
 were born

 Now I'm a lonely Man
 Let me back into
 the Garden

 Blue Shadows
 of the Canyon
 I met you
 & now you're gone

 & now my dream is gone
 Let me back into your Garden

 A man searching
 for lost Paradise
 Can seem a fool
 to those who never
 sought the other world

 Where friends do lie & drift
 Insanely in
 Their own private gardens"

The cunt bloomed
& the paper walls
Trembled

A monster arrived
in the mirror
To mock the room
& its fool
alone

Give me songs
to sing
& emerald dreams
to dream

& I'll give you love
unfolding

Sun

underwater, it was
immediately strange
& familiar

the black boy's
from the boat, fins & mask,

Nostrils bled liquid
crystal blood
as they rose to surface

Rose & moved strong
in their wet world

Below was a Kingdom
Empire of still sand
& yes, party-colored
fishes
 -- they are the last
                 to leave

The gay sea

I eat you
avoiding your wordy
bones

& spit out pearls

The little girl gave
little cries of surprise
as the club struck
her sides

I was there
By the fire in the
Phonebooth

I saw them charge
& heard the indian
war-scream

felt the adrenalin
of flight-fear

the exhilaration of terror
sloshed drunk in
the flashy battle blood

Naked we come
& bruised we go
nude pastry
for the slow soft worms
below

This is my poem
for you
Great flowing funky flower'd beast

Great perfumed wreck of hell

Great good disease
& summer plague

Great god-damned shit-ass
Mother-fucking freak

You lie, you cheat,
you steal, you kill

you drink the Southern
Madness swill
of greed

you die utterly & alone

Mud up to your braces
Someone new in your
knickers

& who would that be?

You know

You know more
than you let on

Much more than you betray

Great slimy angel-whore
you've been good to me

You really have

been swell to me

Tell them you came & saw
& look'd into my eyes
& saw the shadow
of the guard receding
Thoughts in time
& out of season
The Hitchhiker stood
by the side of the road
& levelled his thumb
in the calm calculus
of reason.