#title Allen Ginsberg’s Wichita Vortex Sutra #subtitle February 14, 1966 #author Allen Ginsberg #SORTauthors Allen Ginsberg; #date 1966 #source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/9-june-1966/allen-ginsbergs-wichita-vortex-sutra]] #lang en #pubdate 2023-02-19 #notes Fifth Estate #9, June, 1966 Face the Nation Thru Hickman’s rolling earth hills icy winter gray sky bare trees lining the road South to Wichita you’re in the Pepsi Generation Signum enroute Aiken Republican on the radio 60,000 Northvietnamese troops now infiltrated but over 250,000 South Vietnamese armed men our Enemy— Not Hanoi our enemy Not China our enemy The Viet Cong! McNamara made a “bad guess” “Bad Guess?” chorused the Reporters. Yes, no more than a Bad Guess, in 1962 “8000 American Troops handle the Situation” Bad Guess in 1954, 80% of the Vietnamese people would’ve voted for Ho Chi Minh wrote Ike years later Mandate for Change A bad guess in the Pentagon And the Hawks were guessing all along Bomb China’s 200,000,000 cried Stennis from Mississippi I guess it was 3 weeks ago Holmes Alexander in Albuquerque Journal Provincial newsman said I guess we better begin to do that Now, his typewriter clacking in his aged office on a side street under Sandia Mountain? Half the world away from China Johnson got some bad advice Republican Aiken sang to the Newsmen over the radio The General guessed they’d stop infiltrating the South if they bombed the North— So I guess they bombed! Pale Indochinese boys came thronging thru the jungle in increased numbers to the scene of TERROR! While the triangle-roofed Farmer’s Grain Elevator sat quietly by the side of the road along the railroad track American Eagle beating its wings over Asia million dollar helicopters a billion dollars worth of Marines who loved Aunt Betty Drawn from the shores and farms shaking from the high schools to the landing barge blowing the air thru their cheeks with fear in Life on Television Put it this way on the radio Put it this way in television language Use the words language, language: “A bad guess” Put it this way in headlines Omaha World Herald—Rusk Says Toughness Essential For Peace Put it this way Lincoln Nebraska morning Star— Vietnam War Brings Prosperity Put it this way Declared McNamara speaking language Asserted Maxwell Taylor General, Consultant to White House Viet Cong losses leveling up three five zero zero per month Front page testimony February ’66 Here in Nebraska same as Kansas same known in Saigon in Peking, in Moscow, same known by the youths of Liverpool three five zero zero the latest quotation in the human meat market— Father I cannot tell a lie! A black horse bends its head to the stubble beside the silver stream winding hru the woods by an antique red barn on the outskirts of Beatrice— Quietness, quietness over this countryside except for unmistakable signals on radio followed by the honkytonk tinkle of a city piano to calm the nerves of taxpaying housewives of a Sunday morn. Has anyone looked in the eyes of the dead? U.S. Army recruiting service sign Careers With A Future Is anyone living to look for future forgiveness? Water hoses frozen on the street, the Crowd gathered to see a strange happening garage— Red flames on Sunday morning in a quiet town! Has anyone looked in the eyes of the wounded? Have we seen but paper faces, Life Magazine? Are screaming faces made of dots, electric dots on Television— fuzzy decibels registering the mammal voiced howl from the outskirts of Saigon to console model picture tubes in Beatrice, in Hutchinson, in El Dorado in historic Abilene O inconsolable! Stop, and eat more flesh. “We will negotiate anywhere anytime” said the giant President Kansas City Times 2/14/66: “Word reached U.S. authorities that Thailand’s leaders feared that in Honolulu Johnson might have tried to persuade South Vietnam’s rulers to ease their stand against negotiating with the Viet Cong. American officials said these fears were groundless and Humphrey was telling the Thais so.” AP dispatch The last week’s paper is Amnesia. Three five zero zero is numerals Headline language poetry, nine decades after Democratic Vistas and the Prophecy of the Good Gray Poet Our nation “of the fabled damned” or else ... Language, language Ezra Pound the Chinese Written Character for truth defined as man standing by his word Word picture: forked creature Man standing by a box, birds flying out representing mouth speech Ham Steak please waitress, in the warm café. Different from a bad guess. The war is language, language abused for Advertisement, language used like magic for power on the planet: Black Magic language, formulas for reality— Communism is a 9 letter word used by inferior magicians with the wrong alchemical formula for transforming earth into gold —funky warlocks operating on guesswork, handmedown mandrake terminology that never worked in 1956 for gray-domed Dulles, brooding over at State, that never worked for Ike who knelt to take the magic wafer in his mouth from Dulles’ hand inside the church in Washington: Communion of bum magicians congress of failures from Kansas & Missouri working with the wrong equations Sorcerer’s Apprentices who lost control of the simplest broomstick in the world: Language O longhaired magician come home take care of your dumb helper before the radiation deluge floods your livingroom, your magic errandboy’s just made a bad guess again that’s lasted a whole decade. N B C B S U P A P I N S L I F E Time Mutual presents World’s Largest Camp Comedy: Magic In Vietnam— reality turned inside out changing its sex in the Mass Media for 30 days, TV den and bedroom farce Flashing pictures Senate Foreign Relations Committee room Generals faces flashing on and off screen mouthing language State Secretary speaking nothing but language McNamara declining to speak public language The President talking language, Senators reinterpreting language General Taylor Limited Objectives Owls from Pennsylvania Clark’s Face Open Ended Dove’s Apocalypse Morse’s hairy ears Stennis orating in Mississippi half billion chinamen crowding into the polling booth, Clean shaven Gen. Gavin’s image imagining Enclaves Tactical Bombing the magic formula for a silver haired Symington: Ancient Chinese apothegm: Old in vain. Hawks swooping thru the newspapers talons visible wings outspread in the giant updraft of hot air loosing their dry screech in the skies over the Capitol Napalm and black clouds emerging in newsprint Flesh soft as a Kansas girl’s ripped open by metal explosion— three five zero zero on the other side of the planet caught in barbed wire, fire ball bullet shock, bayonet electricity bomb blast terrific in skull & belly, shrapneled throbbing meat While this American nation argues war: conflicting language, language proliferating in airwaves filling the farmhouse ear, filling the City Manager’s head in his oaken office the professor’s head in his bed at midnight the pupil’s head at the movies blond haired, his heart throbbing with desire for the girlish image bodied on the screen: or smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo that fabled damned of nations prophecy come true— Though the highway’s straight, dipping downward through low hills, rising narrow on the far horizon black cows browse in caked fields ponds in the hollows lie frozen, quietness. Is this the land that started war on China? This be the soil that thought Cold War for decades? Are these nervous naked trees & farmhouses the vortex of oriental anxiety molecules that’ve imagined American Foreign Policy and magick’d up paranoia in Peking and curtains of living blood surrounding far Saigon? Are these the towns where the language emerged from the mouths here that makes a Hell of riots in Dominica sustains the aging tyranny of Chiang in silent Taipeh city Paid for the lost French war in Algeria overthrew the Guatemalan polis in ’54 maintaining United Fruit’s banana greed another thirteen years for the secret prestige of the Dulles family lawfirm? Here’s Marysville— a black railroad engine in the children’s park, at rest— and the Track Crossing with Cotton Belt flatcars carrying autos west from Dallas Delaware & Hudson gondolas filled with power stuff— a line of boxcars far east as the eye can see carrying battle goods to cross the Rockies into the hands of rich longshoremen loading ships on the Pacific— Oakland Army Terminal lights blue illumined all night now— Crash of couplings and the great American train moves on carrying its cushioned load of metal doom Union Pacific linked together with your Hoosier Line followed by passive Wabash rolling behind all Erie carrying cargo in the rear, Central Georgia’s rust colored truck proclaiming The Right Way, concluding the awesome poem writ by the train across northern Kansas, land which gave right of way to the massing of metal meant for explosion in Indochina— Passing thru Waterville, Electronic machinery in the bus humming prophecy— paper signs blowing in cold wind, mid-Sunday afternoon’s silence in town under frost-gray sky that covers the horizon— That the rest of earth is unseen, an outer universe invisible, Unknown except thru language airprint magic images or prophecy of the secret heart the same in Waterville as Saigon one human form: When a woman’s heart bursts in Waterville a woman screams equal in Hanoi— On to Wichita to prophesy! O frightful Bard! into the heart of the Vortex where anxiety rings the University with millionaire pressure, lonely crank telephone voices sighing in dread, and students waken trembling in their beds with dreams of a new truth warm as meat, little girls suspecting their elders of murder committed by remote control machinery, boys with sexual bellies aroused chilled in the heart by the mailman with a letter from an aging white haired General Director of selection for service in Deathwar all this black language writ by machine! O hopeless Fathers and Teachers in Hué do you know the same woe too? I’m an old man now, and a lonesome man in Kansas but not afraid to speak my lonesomeness in a car, because not only my lonesomeness it’s Ours, all over America, O tender fellows— & spoken lonesomeness is Prophecy in the moon 100 years ago or in the middle of Kansas now. It’s not the vast plains mute our mouths that fill at midnite with ecstatic language when our trembling bodies hold each other breast to breast on a mattress— Not the empty sky that hides the feeling from our faces nor our skirts and trousers that conceal the bodylove emanating in a glow of beloved skin, white smooth abdomen down to the hair between our legs, It’s not a God that bore us that forbid our Being, like a sunny rose all red with naked joy between our eyes & bellies, yes All we do is for this frightened thing we call Love, want and lack— fear that we aren’t the one whose body could be beloved of all the brides of Kansas City, kissed all over by every boy of Wichita— O but how many in their solitude weep aloud like me— On the bridge over Republican River almost in tears to know how to speak the right language— on the frosty broad road uphill between highway embankments I search for the language that is also yours— almost all our language has been taxed by war. Radio antennae high tension wires ranging from Junction City across the plains— highway cloverleaf sunk in a vast meadow lanes curving past Abilene to Denver filled with old heroes of love— to Wichita where McClure’s mind burst into animal beauty drunk, getting laid in a car in a neon misted street 15 years ago— to Independence where the old man’s still alive who loosed the bomb that’s slaved all human consciousness and made the body universe a place of fear— Now, speeding along the empty plain, no giant demon machine visible on the horizon but tiny human trees and wooden houses at the sky’s edge I claim my birthright! reborn forever as long as Man in Kansas or other universe—Joy reborn after the vast sadness of War Gods! A lone man talking to myself, no house in the brown vastness to hear, imaging the throng of Selves that make this nation one body of Prophecy languaged by Declaration as Pursuit of Happiness! I call all Powers of imagination to my side in this auto to make Prophecy, all Lords of human kingdoms to come Shambu Bharti Baba naked covered with ash Khaki Baba fat-bellied mad with the dogs Dehorahava Baba who moans Oh how wounded, How wounded Sitaram Onkar Das Thakur who commands give up your desire Satyananda who raises two thumbs in tranquillity Kali Pada Guha Roy whose yoga drops before the void Shivananda who touches the breast and says OM Srimata Krishnaji of Brindaban who says take for your guru William Blake the invisible father of English visions Sri Ramakrishna master of ecstasy eyes half closed who only cries for his mother Chaitanya arms upraised singing & dancing his own praise merciful Chango judging our bodies Durga-Ma covered with blood destroyer of battlefield illusions million-faced Tathagata gone past suffering Preserver Harekrishna returning in the age of pain Sacred Heart my Christ acceptable Allah the Compassionate One Jaweh Righteous One all Knowledge-Princes of Earth-man, all ancient Seraphim of heavenly Desire, Devas, yogis & holymen I chant to— Come to my lone presence into this Vortex named Kansas, I lift my voice aloud, make Mantra of American language now, I here declare the end of the War! Ancient days’ Illusion!— and pronounce words beginning my own millennium. Let the States tremble, let the Nation weep, let Congress legislate its own delight let the President execute his own desire— this Act done by my own voice, nameless Mystery— published to my own senses, blissfully received by my own form approved with pleasure by my sensations manifestation of my very thought accomplished in my own imagination all realms within my consciousness fulfilled 60 miles from Wichita near El Dorado, The Golden One, in chill earthly mist houseless brown farmland plains rolling heavenward in every direction one midwinter afternoon Sunday called the day of the Lord— Pure Spring Water gathered in one tower where Florence is set on a hill, stop for tea & gas Cars passing their messages along country crossroads to populaces cement-networked on flatness, giant white mist on earth and a Wichita Eagle-Beacon headlines “Kennedy Urges Cong Get Chair in Negotiations” The War is gone, Language emerging on the motel news stand, the right magic Formula, the language known in the back of the mind before, now in black print daily consciousness Eagle News Services Saigon— Headline Surrounded Vietcong Charge Into Fire Fight the suffering not yet ended for others The last spasms of the dragon of pain shoot thru the muscles a crackling around the eyeballs of a sensitive yellow boy by a muddy wall Continued from page one area after the Marines killed 256 Vietcong captured 31 ten day operation Harvest Moon last December Language language U.S. Military Spokesmen Language language Cong death toll has soared to 100 in First Air Cavalry Division’s Sector of Language language Operation White Wing near Bong Son Some of the Language language Communist Language language soldiers charged so desperately they were struck with six or seven bullets before they fell Language Language M 60 Machine Guns Language language in La Drang Valley the terrain is rougher infested with leeches and scorpions The war was over several hours ago! Oh at last again the radio opens blue Invitations! Angelic Dylan singing across the nation “When all your children start to resent you Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?” His youthful voice making glad the brown endless meadows His tenderness penetrating aether, soft prayer on the airwaves, Language language, and sweet music too even unto thee, hairy flatness! even unto thee despairing Burns! Future speeding on swift wheels straight to the heart of Wichita! Now radio voices cry population hunger world of unhappy people waiting for Man to be born O man in America! you certainly smell good the radio says passing mysterious families of winking towers grouped round a quonset-hut on a hillock— feed storage or military fear factory here? Sensitive City, Ooh! Hamburger & Skelley’s Gas lights feed man and machine, Kansas Electric Substation aluminum robot signals thru thin antennae towers above the empty football field at Sunday dusk to a solitary derrick that pumps oil from the unconscious working night & day & factory gas-flares edge a huge golf course where tired businessmen can come and play— Cloverleaf, Merging Traffic East Wichita turnoff McConnell Airforce Base nourishing the city— Lights rising in the suburbs Supermarket Texaco brilliance starred over streetlamp vertebrae on Kellogg, green jeweled traffic lights confronting the windshield, Centertown ganglion entered! Crowds of autos moving with their lightshine, signbulbs winking in the driver’s eyeball— The human nest collected, neon lit, and sunburst signed for business as usual, except on the Lord’s Day— Redeemer Lutheran’s three crosses lit on the lawn reminder of our sins and Titsworth offers insurance on Hydraulic by De Voors Guard’s Mortuary for outmoded bodies of the human vehicle which no Titsworth of insurance will customize for resale— So home, traveler, past the newspaper language factory under Union Station railroad bridge on Douglas to the center of the Vortex, calmly returned to Hotel Eaton— Carry Nation began the war on Vietnam here with an angry smashing ax attacking Wine— Here fifty years ago, by her violence began a vortex of hatred that defoliated the Mekong Delta— Proud Wichita! vain Wichita cast the first stone!— That murdered my mother who died of the communist anticommunist psychosis in the madhouse one decade long ago complaining about wires of masscommunication in her head and phantom political voices in the air besmirching her girlish character. Many another has suffered death and madness in the Vortex from Hydraulic to the end of 17th—enough! The war is over now— Except for the souls held prisoner in Niggertown still pining for love of your tender white bodies O children of Wichita! February 14, 1966