Poetry

St. Francis (Random thoughts of a Protestant Cop)

St. Francis of Assisi
Was a sissy
Any man who’d sleep on rocks
Instead of dames
Has rocks in his head besides
St. Francis was a sissy
Sniffing all those flowers
Twittering with little birds
Walking around
Birds laying eggs
In his hair
Cracking nuts with squirrels
Hopping with rabbits
Fidgeting with foxes
Letting mice run
Pittypat over his face
Making an ass out of himself
With donkeys
For God’s sake
The sissy
Any man who’d go nuts
For little animals
Hates little people
No doubt about it
How’d he know
God wanted HIM
Messing up things
Voices they say
The sissy
Psycho too
All that
Preaching
To flowers
Bees
Birds
Etc
They would have
Spat in his face
For disturbing their peace
Were they not animals
Should have anyway
St. Francis sissy
And a pimp to boot
Middleman
Between Christ
And St. Clare
What’s her name
Know who I mean
The same
St. Francis fixed her
Oh didn’t he
For life
And she loved it
They all did
Should have had
Their
Cloistered heads examined
And St. Francis too
Yes, St. Francis was a sissy
And a pimp
I wouldn’t be surprised
If he was queer too

Originally published in Beatitude #2 (16th May 1959) by John Kelly and printed at 14 1/2 Bannam Alley, San Francisco, California.

Beatitude #2 also featured work by Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, George Hitchcock, ruth weiss, and William J. Margolis.

In 1961, St. Francis (Random thoughts of a Protestant Cop) was published in The Real Bohemia: A Sociological and Psychological Study of the "Beats" (Basic Books, 1961).

It was subsequently published as Ballad of St. Francis (Random thoughts of a Protestant Cop) in Ballads of Blood (Golden Mountain Press, 1961).

St. Francis (Random thoughts of a Protestant Cop) was written in response to Hello, St. Francis by William J. Margolis, which appeared on the cover of the first issue of Beatitude, at a time of increasing tensions between the North Beach community and the San Francisco Police Department.

Weeping of the Sun

on the weeping sun
dead leaves freeze the earth
and cry the slowly dust down
amid them;

every where poison, and a corpse
smokes the dark sky in a rising
cloud and the trees say
one dark scream.

O sing, O gone, O far
empty dream lost in the corner
of a dog’s torn ear, is
earth’s golden voice

gone with the tender grass
and limber tall stalk, and
flowers grown yellow. . .
gone?

O why, O sad, stiff child
is night’s grey tear there
With nothing to hear in
a cricket’s prayer?

Naked birds in the rising rain
down against the earth’s death
walk on strange feathers, and
all the hollow houses calling.

Published in Beatitude #4 (30th May 1959) by John Kelly and printed at 14 1/2 Bannam Alley, San Francisco, California.

Beatitude #4 also featured work by Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, ruth weiss, Richard Brautigan, Stan Persky, and William J. Margolis.

Transcribed by Nicole Savage (S.F.Heart / Beatitude Poetry).

San Francisco: Saturday Scene

It was clear and early
Sun big
in the otherwise sky —
and Saturday came on
like
the greatest day in the morning;

everything quietly fine —
a few friendly philosophers
in old greasy clothes.
sniffing
the coffee-sharp air

one dog-faced mutt
quizzically reading
canine-prohibitive signs
on the corners of
Washington Square

two nuns
taking the sun
on Grant Avenue (one
sourfaced at something
her holy husband
had left undone;
one younger one
slyly anticipating
an evening visit from
the man with all
the mystical goodies)

one dough-nosed,
bone shouldered wanderer
with pointed beard
and dark glasses

a carload of cops
with long sad faces
because there was
no one to arrest

and the statue of St. Francis
ready to take off
like
a great big bird!

Published in Beatitude #5 (6th June 1959) by John Kelly and printed at 14 1/2 Bannam Alley, San Francisco, California.

Beatitude #5 also featured work by Bob Kaufman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Kirby Doyle, David Meltzer, C.V.J Anderson, William J. Margolis and Pierre Delattre.

Transcribed by Nicole Savage (S.F.Heart / Beatitude Poetry).

There Was This House

There was this house
on top Green Street hill
San Francisco U S A
looking exactly like
a big magic box
with
the early morning fog
rolling up
all around it
and
the blue slate sky
winking
high above it
when suddenly
ABRACADABRA
sea spell
the house top lifted
slowly
and
floated away
and about a
thousand white gulls
flew up laughing
and wrote this message
on the spelling-bee blue

“Goodmorning God!”

while
all
the love-sick world
smiled
ORANGES

Originally published in Beatitude #8 (15th August 1959) and printed at Grant Ave & Greenwich St, San Francisco, California.

Beatitude #8 also featured work by Bob Kaufman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Meltzer, C.V.J Anderson, Peter Orlovsky, ruth weiss, Alan Dienstag, William J. Margolis and Pierre Delattre.

There Was This House was published the following year in Dick’s first collection of poetry, Oranges: illustrated by Victor Wong (Bread & Wine Press, 1960).

Stones

O once I had two magic stones
And they were round
And both were hard
Everyone should have
At least one hard stone

O once I had two hard stones.
And they were all I had

But they were my stones
And I carried them with me
Everywhere I went
For I was very fond
Of my two hard stones
Even when they hurt
Like two hard stones

O once there was a time
I had two hard stones
And they were very magic
All that was ever beauty
Was in my two hard stones
And one great day
I used my magic stones
And made a golden child
With two small stones
And made a little boy
With golden stones
Everyone should have
At least on hard stone

But then there came a day
When there was no sun
And the sky was made of stone
And it hurt
It hurt
But then there came a time
When there was no sun
When there were only tears
For my two lost stones

O one of my stones
Has shrivelled up and died
And the other
Has turned to mush
O one has turned to mush
The other one has died
And I am nothing without
My two hard stones
Everyone should have
At least one hard stone

Originally published in Beatitude #12 (December 1959) by Bob Kaufman and printed at the Bread & Wine Mission, 501 Greenwich (at Grant), San Francisco, California.

Beatitude #12 also featured work by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Meltzer, C.V.J Anderson, Peter Orlovsky, Alan Dienstag, William J. Margolis and Pierre Delattre.

Stones was published the following year in Dick’s first collection of poetry, Oranges: illustrated by Victor Wong (Bread & Wine Press, 1960).

In 1961, Stones was published in The Real Bohemia: A Sociological and Psychological Study of the Beats (Basic Books, 1961).

Stones was written after a conversation Dick had with Alan Dienstag on the corner of Grant Avenue and Columbus. Dienstag was a North Beach poet and one of the editors of The Underhound, a monthly magazine of commentary and humour that satirised the North Beach coffee house scene. Dienstag thought some things were too ugly to write poetry about. Dick disagreed, and Dienstag bet him $5 that he couldn't write a poem about testicles. The following morning, Dick handed Dienstag a copy of Stones.

Project: Death

Against the screaming

sky

God's furious morticians

scuttle

scratching the static air

like

the black wings

of vultures

&

descend on

the

white substance

of

the deserted bones

lying

in

all our desperate streets

cracking them in their

grinning teeth

then fly away

crying

more more more

Published in Shig’s Review #1 (Adler Press, 1960), a journal edited by his friend and colleague, Shigeyoshi Murao.

Shig's Review #1 also featured work by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (as Sadie Monsanto), William J. Margolis (as Bill Margolis), Vincent McHugh, Leonard Dritz, Marvin Friedman, Nicole Friedman, Phil Leider, Richard Sherman, Virginia Christianson and Dick's six-year-old son, Sean.

Ballad of the Dead Children

Children
Children
Children
Why do you
No longer laugh
Nor play with
Bright rosy cheeks
Why do you not
Run up hills
Bumping
Your knees on
Hopscotch walks
Children
Children
Children
Why are you
Suddenly
All born dead
Don’t you know
It spoils
The effect of
Sun
On clean white streets

Children
Children
Children
Why do you not
Bounce balls now
Why do you not skip
Nor jump rope
Why do you not
Play jacks now
Ride tricycles
Or scooters
Why do you not
Rollerskate
Up and down
The bright
Good
Morning of your
Scrubbed-face world

Children
Children
Children
Why do you
Always die now
Why let
Screaming parents
Toss your
Bloodless bodies
In
The garbage cans
Of our tourist town
Children
You should not
Let it happen
Children
People are talking
Folks are turning
Back
Busloads of visitors
From
Inland states
And proper places
Are no longer
Coming to see us

Children
Children
Children
They do not
Like the smell
Your
Garbage bodies make
They
Would rather smell
The chicken air
Of old Chinatown
Something
Children
Something is wrong
Why are you
Born dead
Why let your bodies
Litter
Our clean white streets

Children
Children
Children
You are not
Playing fair
You are not
Supposed to die
Children
They say
You are not
Supposed
To die yet
Children
Why are you
Born dead now
Why let your bodies
Litter
Our clean white streets

Children
Children
Children
Wait
Children
The trucks are coming
To get you
The trucks are coming
The trucks are coming
Children
The trucks are coming now

Children
Children
Children
The early morning boys
Are picking you
Up now
All over town
Throwing you
In grinding trucks
Tossing you
Like
Fertilizer
On the heap
Behind the town
Children
You should not
Have been
All born dead

Children
Children
Children
Our streets
Are clean again
Our streets
Are white
The sun comes up
Bright again
We’ve scrubbed away
The rumours
Children
We’ve washed down the town
Our streets
Are white
And clean again
And best of all
Children
Do you hear it
Children
Best of all
The tourists
Are coming back again

Children
Children
Children
Why were you
All born dead
Why did you let
Your bodies
Litter
Our clean white streets

Originally published in Ballads of Blood (Golden Mountain Press, 1961).

Subsequently published in Root and Branch: A Radical Quarterly #1 (1962) and Memoirs Of A Natural-Born Expatriate (Alan Swallow, 1966).

The Ballad of the Dead Children was composed after witnessing a pre-dawn flash from one of the atomic detonations at the Nevada Test Site and discovering that his young son was awake, eyes wide open, staring with fear.

Snowdrops

Dishevelled as uncombed hair
Our backyard sleeps
Like fur on the
Backs of hibernating bears
In the coffin
Of a winter cave
Wind rattles the bones
Of leafless trees
And cats go weird
With wide-eyed apprehension
Shroud-clouds
Flutter in the putrid
Breath of God
But
Under the worms
Of once-golden forsythia
The first snowdrops of Spring
Leap into the
Crowded void of re-birth
And I hear my
Love's exultation
Welcoming the arrival of
Children of
Joy embraced in arms
Of our undying
Love and I cannot
Contain
My Grief

Originally published in Jacqui (Love Poems) (Raglan House, 1994).

Subsequently published in Jacqui (Love Poems) (McBride's Books, 1997) and Critical Survey Volume 9: Issue 3 (Berghahn Journals, Dec 1997).

When Summer

When summer comes again will I see the late-blooming sunflowers smiling beside the first earlier-than-a-bird Michaelmass daisies? Will I see two white butterflies riding tandem on the sky? Will I become a feather-soft flower trembling in the garden of remaining grief or new pain arising from yet another loss, unasked for as all the others? But I will not bad-mouth eternity. It might be the only road butterflies can flutter down, searching for the elusive tree of life, under which I stand, juggling oranges in circular harvests of spectacular magic, awaiting deliverance when summer comes again.

From The Rue Bella Volume Four: Larking Gratey (Rue Bella, 2000).

September Eleventh

Unclean birds rip
Iron twins totter
And Babel falls into
Flamed tongues  Alpha-bets of hate
And greed
The jigsaw puzzles
Wisdom wands
Strange bugs
With clicking teeth
Greasy mouths spit
Innocent tears  drowning
Birth dies with
The rattle of uncoded messages
Everything is ashes
Christianity dies
Islam dies
Children scream
In the
Dreams of history
Parents still born
Ignorant knives cut the
Throat of evolution
Trees swallowed
By imploding mountains
Butterflies cry
Cycles stop turning
Like the dark night
Of the soul of God
Dreams evaporate
In a desert of oblivion

How now can angels
Safely sing
In the pastures of Heaven?

From Remembered America: Poems by Dick McBride (Rue Bella, 2004).

Grass

As grass grows
So ceases sorrow
Madness welcomes sanity
Anger burns out
Hearts open again
Like roses rising in
The ashes of memory
So ceases sorrow
As the rubber of the sun
Erases the blackboard fog
Of desperate blindness
So ceases sorrow
Iron hands
Tied in knots of
Bound joy
Released as
The grass grows again
After the noise
Of hungry blades
Swift clocks brightening
Smiles of daisies in
Recently mown lawns
Softening the claws
In soft paws
Of sleep
Wounds heal
So ceases the
Sorrow of muddy rain
Erupting like glue
On palm-tree sands
And yet the grass grows again
Still the sun shines
As tall, green blades
Surgically remove doors
Of halls and
Cupboards hiding old taboos
As the grass grows
So ceases sorrow
And the grass grows again

From Remembered America: Poems by Dick McBride (Rue Bella, 2004).