howl

iii

carl solomon! i'm with you in rockland
where you're madder than i am
i'm with you in rockland
where you must feel very strange
i'm with you in rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
i'm with you in rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
i'm with you in rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
i'm with you in rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful
typewriter
i'm with you in rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
i'm with you in rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
i'm with you in rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of utica
i'm with you in rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the bronx
i'm with you in rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the
abyss
i'm with you in rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
is innocent and immortal it should never die
ungodly in an armed madhouse
i'm with you in rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void
i'm with you in rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
plot the hebrew socialist revolution against the
fascist national golgotha
i'm with you in rockland
where you will split the heavens of long island
and resurrect your living human jesus from the
superhuman tomb
i'm with you in rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of the internationale
i'm with you in rockland
where we hug and kiss the united states under
our bedsheets the united states that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep
i'm with you in rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
lapse o skinny legions run outside o starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here o victory forget your underwear we're
free
i'm with you in rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across america in tears
to the door of my cottage in the western night