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WILLIAM

WANTLING

POEM SELECTION
Poems from The Awakening (1968)

THE AWAKENING

I found the bee as it fumbled about the ground


Its leg mangled, its wing torn, its sting
gone
I picked it up, marvelled at its insistence
to continue on, despite the dumb brute
thing that had occurred
I considered, remembered the fatal struggle
the agony on the face of wounded friends
and the same dumb drive to continue
I became angry at the unfair conflict suffered
by will and organism
I became just, I became unreasoned, I became
extravagant
I observed the bee, there, lying in my palm
I looked and I commanded in a harsh and angry shout –
STOP THAT!
Then it ceased to struggle, and somehow suddenly
became marvellously whole, and it arose
and it flew away
I stared, I was appalled, I was overwhelmed
with responsibility, and I knew not where to begin.

WITHOUT LAYING CLAIM

without laying claim


to an impossible innocence
I must tell you how
in the midst of that crowd
we calmly pulled the pins
from six grenades
mumbling an explanation
even we didn’t believe
& released the spoons
a lump in our throats.
PUSAN LIBERTY

the 6 x 6 bounces me down the


washboard roads, I see the

sun-eaten walls of Korea, my


girl-wife & child in mud &

straw hut back in Taegu & here


I am meeting the SEAL as he

sits on his roller-skate cart


minus arms & legs but beneath

his ass a million $’s worth


of heroin – I make my buy

walk through the 10,000 cam-


era market-place, jeeps for

sale, people for sale, I’m


even for sale as I find the

porch of Cutie’s suckahatchi


house and fix, sitting in the

sun on the adobe veranda, the


two Chinese agents come around

to make their buy, 2 young


boys, they’re hooked bad & I

charge them too much – we sit


there and fix, I fix again, the

so-called Enemy & I, but just


3 angry boys lost in the immense

absurdity of War and state sudden


friends who have decided that

our hatred of Government exceeds


our furthest imaginable limits
of human calculation.

INITIATION

What we doing, being


cool?
That argument Kitten, on
the freeway
I couldn’t keep up our
habits and
We cruised along sick,
seeking magic
And you said – Hit some
chump over his head
But I didn’t dig that so
you offered
To find some good tricks

I got hot, indignant like


a square with tears
And you felt pity, saying

- Don’t cry Daddy, it’s just


another way to burn a sucker.

POETRY

I’ve got to be honest. I can


make good word music and rhyme

at the right times and fit words


together to give people pleasure

and even sometimes take their


breath away – but it always

somehow turns out kind of phoney.


Consonance and assonance and inner

rhyme won’t make up for the fact


that I can’t figure out how to get

down on real paper the real or the true


which we call life. Like the other

day. The other day I was walking


on the lower exercise yard here

at San Quentin and this cat called


Turk came up to a friend of mine

and said Ernie, I hear you’re


shooting on my kid. And Ernie

told him So what, punk? And Turk


pulled out his stuff and shanked

Ernie in the gut only Ernie had a


Metal tray in his shirt. Turk’s

shank bounced right off him and


Ernie pulled his stuff out and of

course Turk didn’t have a tray and


caught it dead in the chest, a bad

one, and the blood that came to his


lips was a bright pink, lung blood,

and he just laid down in the grass


and said Shit. Fuck it. Sheeit.

Fuck it. And he laughed a long


time, softly, until he died. Now

what could consonance or assonance or


even rhyme do to something like that?.

THE DAY THE DAM BURST

& what if the dam should


suddenly burst
If suddenly I should run
headlong, frothing, haphazardly
hurling shrapnel grenades
into high-noon crowds?

if suddenly tossing aside


the dead ugly ache of it
all, I equalled the senseless
with my brute senseless act?

O My, wouldn’t I
shine? wouldn’t
I shine then?
wouldn’t it be I then who
had created God
at last?.

FOR THE PEYOTE GODDESS

This is the comic end


All the paths, all the
chances, all the choices
all the decisions, and so
I took the exact ones at
every little crossroads
actually the only ones
which would place me at
this terminal point
in order to dwell with
myself where, in the cold
light of consciousness, the
barrenness of the world extends
even to the stars
and so I forgot the dream of
earth – but the dream once
around again became the
reality – and we are living
our dreams and perhaps, Ah
dreaming our lives

You knew, didn’t you?


All the time I was on
my pale horse, my idiot
other self, you knew that
we were really one. And
if that knowledge seemed
like a poor solution to
me, you knew it was the
only possible answer. So

to help me into the merging


which is our only goal, you
destroyed the phony drama of
my life, all the narcissistic
solutions, the foolish old
lies I told myself, the pale
rationalisations, you took
them all up in your delicate
fist and dashed them to the
earth, THE EARTH, and you
left me with the words which
would only make sense after
you were irremedially gone –

‘Let a man listen to his dream


so he may hear the story of all
men and let him say as he did
when he was a child: This is
true; it does not matter what
they tell me.’

DIRGE IN SPRING

There
high on a hill
a man plows his field.
The sun warm, the day still
and the air
still also, a shield
for the earth.
And below
blind from new birth
hide the young of a hare.
Crouched in the lair
soft, without will
they dream. The doe runs
fast over the field, turns
before the plow, urging
the man to take up her dare.
He is blind to her. Without concern
or rancor, he rips the soft dream.
His plow a high scream
in her ear, the doe runs on.
It is not rare
for such to be ripped
from the lair of life.
And the man?

THE DEATH OF CARYL CHESSMAN

Little did I know, then


The price of my revenge
If someone had foretold
Those long years of quiet
terror and grey steel
I would have shrugged and
laughed, saying
‘A hard price for having my
way with a virgin.’
Then the long years began
And setting aside my hot
dreams of glory
I came to understand…

So they bathed my body with


Gas

LETTER FROM KICKAPOO (pop. 250)

I’m
hiding out
from the heat here

this time
they want me
for Living without Believing
for Working without Slavery
Playing without Misery

please don’t give me away?

FOR A NORDIC CHILD

You are a cold northern woman from a cold


northern land, a dark land, windy & wild
with mist-shrouded cliffs and constant
hunger, where the wolves howl from snow-
torn ledges. I see your ancestors, the
race of blond ones that sprang from strange
distant places. The Cro-Magnon hunches
over a small fire in the crevice of a cliff.
He rips his meat in blood chunks & searches
an early dusk with grey falcon eyes. A
stir in the cave behind him catches the
corner of his eye & he sees again the
lush virgin being prepared for the Old Man
of the tribe. Her golden hair is being
greased & braided by the old crones, but
she smiles cunningly at the fire watcher.
Her eyes are blue. She licks her lips &
it is the meat she smiles for, the antici-
pation of it, warm and blood-odored. But
the fire-watcher, young, stronger than any,
has another hunger. Power is his goad, &
lust, now that his cruder hunger is appeas-
ed. He moans in back of his throat & rises,
yellow-furred form hunched, holds the warm
juiced chunk of meat before him & approaches
the rear of the cave. The crones have seen
this happen before. They scurry away. The
girl smiles again, victoriously, reaches
out for the warm odored offering & tears it
with her small, sharp, milk-white teeth as
the fire-watcher pushes her down & takes
her there on the rock strewn ground. When
this tale has reached the Old Man & he
roars his anger down upon them, the fire-
watcher kills him in sudden crushing com-
bat and his power is born. These were your
ancestors. This is you, now, with layer
upon layer of concepts added. And it fas-
cinates me.

‘AT THE MARKET-PLACE’

at the market-place
we sell many things
including love & courage
but these you must bring
with you
& pay for as you leave

FOR A GIRL WHO DOESN’T LIKE HER NAME

You are young and slender and sitting straight


in the seat as you peer at me over the edge of
your glass
- Call me Kim, you say
- I think Camille sounds so silly

O Baby you don’t know how good Camille sounds


to this poor simple poet
Camille Camille Camille Camille

How it runs over my tongue like butter and honey


and how it calls out to the butter of your hair
and the cream and honey of your long full legs
and the cool look on your tangerine lips

(To really get crude Baby, how it goes with


drool
and
fruit

Camille Camille Camille Camille

(Cream Honey Butter Fruit Drool Camille


Hoo !
Ha !
Oboy !
I’m a dog)

But wait – even poets can be serious – it’s


permitted once in a while
Don’t you know Baby, how your legs will change
and the butter will run out of your hair and
the cream and honey will leave you

Even the cool tangerine lips will lose their


cool smile
You’ll grow old and none will remember youas
I see you now
Unless they can let Camille Camille Camille
run over their tongues and know as I know
when I hear how you once were and how
it sounds and looks and smells to me now

LEMONADE 2c

Kathy was my
first customer
naturally, I
turned her on
free
she put her
cool hand in
mine
led me to her
dark & sweaty
cellar
kissed me
Lord, how our
lips trembled
how bitter-sweet
& cool
that lemonade

TIME AND THE CITY


SOME SEVENTEEN SYLLABLE COMMENTS

On the freeway
I follow redglow taillights
to my city of glass

I was not here yesterday


also
I will not be here tomorrow

Will you please explain this


I hate you
I fear you
I return always

4
The pain of your people
tears my flesh
Still…
There is the hour before dawn

I will not be here yesterday


also
I was not here tomorrow

Poems from Sick Fly and from 10,000 r.p.m. &


digging it, yeah!

From Sick Fly (1970)


IT WAS TUESDAY MORNING

It was Tuesday morning


I was flunking out of school
The February sun was hazy
I went to bed with 2 jugs of white port
to drink myself asleep
but I kept flashing back to the day before
…I kept letting my dog off her chain
& she kept running out in the yard to
chase the gasoline tanker
& she kept clipping under the rear wheels
& she kept yelping with surprise as she
sat in the road with her guts hanging out
between her back legs & her eyes
never stopped looking at me with shamed surprise
as if she’d got caught shitting on the rug
& then the sun was bouncing off her eyes
like a handball off a blank concrete wall
flicker / flicker
death
flicker
Then Dan came over with some Neso & Acid
I dropped 2 caps & a tab & waited but it
started doing some real bad things
So I borrowed a nickel from Dan & jumped
on my bike
It took 2 months to ride the half-mile
to the liquor store & the fifth of 100-proof
vodka kept muttering under its breath
during the 100-mile ride home
things like
- We’re gonna get you Wantling, your
number is really up this time, baby…
& to stop its goddamn muttering I slammed
its neck against a bus-stop bench & chug-a-lugged
it but it kept muttering, stupidly, instead of
warm there was an icy thing in my belly muttering
& the flashbacks were coming on faster now
like some strobe-light gone mad with the prophecy
It was me in the road with my guts hanging out
& I was hung up on the pain, the shame, the
surprise in my eyes
I couldn’t see the road anymore…
Maybe my bike knew the way home all by itself
Anyway, I was there, back in the bedroom
but the muttering was louder now
nervous, ugly
& I went for all the old pills I’d stashed
when I wasn’t sure what they were
There was half a handful, all colors
& I dropped them & wished the sweat
would stop running down my back legs
& hoped I wouldn’t puke till the pills
began to work
But after a while things started coming
out of the corners
muttering
coming straight for me
& I looked down, curious, to see the
dot inside my left wrist
widen into a black rotting ring
& then the artery jumped out
& started gushing blood 2 feet into the air
Then the blood turned to pus
& the muttering steadied into a loud hum now
crackling with shrieks and static
& beneath it somewhere there was a drum
There were 10,000 steel heeled boots
stomping out a refrain
- Now now now now It’s your turn now…
& I guess some of the shrieks were mine
for 2 days later my wife found me under
the bed curled up in a ball, covered with shit
& vomit
But here I am now fairly calm
full of tranquilizers & group therapy
It evidently wasn’t my turn after all
What I wonder is, why all the hassle?
Why all the bullshit?
I never wanted to be a poet, anyway
I’d carry a lunchbox like everybody else
if only the muttering would stop

RUNE FOR THE DISENCHANTED

What if:

- In a moment of pure terror I refused the call of


beauty by stuffing banknotes in my ear?

- In a moment of pure agony I leapt into a vat of


molten gold?

- In a moment of pure vision I woke from out my


lonely dream?

- In a moment of pure compassion I refused to hate


my enemy?

- In a moment of pure decision I called our game


a draw

- In a moment of pure sophistication I refused to


play my role & pierced my ears with seashells?

- In a moment of pure understanding I howled with


laughter which never ceased, flinging roses all about me?

- In a moment of pure inspiration I began to love my


dream of life, and thus resumed my game and role?

FOR MARY ON LENT

From your belly stepped a King


soared in gold above the moon
caught again the silver ring
and we turned Him to your womb

Yet when I saw your clumsy King


who once could leap like verse
thorned to that wasted tree, hanging
thin and droning, terse, classic, veiled
and numb, dwindling beneath His
wailing, grave, and cindered sun, why
then I, who come so cold now, I
am told a warped and crimson robe
of fiery embers rose, rose in that
swift-winged mass, rose high

And the kite I fly


the clumsy kite I chose
while playing in the grass
has not yet reached the sky…

From 10,000 r.p.m. and digging it, yeah! (1973)

THE HEAD SHOP

the head shop


is getting ripped off so regular
theres hardly enuf bread
to pay salaries at the end
of the month
so I put up a blacklight sign
‘if you come in here to rip off
cause you know we wont
call the Man, yr burning yr
own Bros & Sisters – this
place supports 7 Freaks’
then we split to Rick’s &
he breaks out his Lebanese hash &
Marcie feels bad about
charging me $3 for 2 tabs of
Sunshine but cant get off her
business is business hangup, cant
just give it to me but smiles &
digs out a gram of hash & presses it
into my hand for a bonus & we
do it up too & and I’m following her
around the pad hoping for something
even sweeter but then her man
slides in the front door & I pick up
the look in her eyes & dig that
with just a little shove
in the right direction Marcie
will let her man back in, so I
hum and haw a bit, say how I’ve
got to get to class…
Rick doesn’t want me to ride my
bicycle to campus, thinks I’m too
stoned – Marcie offers to drive me
but I tell her I dropped the Sunshine
with all intentions of making this
bicycle ride the hi spot of my
trip – secretly proud that I dont
push for making it with her, then
peddle off toward campus, stop at
the liquor store, buy a pint of
white port for insurance
in case the Trip gets too far out
knowing I have no downers at home &
believing in being prepared & then
peddle off again, am only
about a mile down the black
road when the moon comes out
full, the mercury-vapour street-world
stage – God, or something, is hummng
down on me, promising and threatening
vague, wondrous things…
now, I never did dig a stage, don’t
even like to read my poetry aloud
& was Peoria Illinois’ most enthusiastic
atheist at the age of 12
but something is happening
somewhere inside I hear demands
for another, heavier
sacrifice, find a large stone, tenderly
lay the virgin pint of port on it
ceremoniously reverently
smash it with a heavy stick
& ride off again, somewhat worried
… the last time things were humming
like this
the molecules of my matter spread
too far apart &
I almost fell thru into the
Universal Dynamo of Singing Light
but then I grin, thinking of
Cleaver & Leary in Algiers fucking up
the revolution with Power Grabs, & I
glance up into the humming throbbing
unavoidable Light & laff & laff – it
takes several subjective hours to
peddle 2 more blocks but laffing
hours, laffing all the way
home

IT WAS 5 AM

it was 5 am
the only station coming thru
was this 50,000 watt clear-
channel out of Austin &

this jesus freak got on for


someplace called Ambassador
College &
for over an hour he revealed
how long hair
drugs
youthful disrespect for the
Father, for the old standards
& beliefs
& for authority
was destroying the traditional
family unit was undermining
Democracy &
threatening our survival
as a great nation

I lit a joint &


thought how grateful I was
that he was right &
thought how there was
still hope

‘THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL’


- for chas bukowski

I’d been pounding the underworld all night, sulk-


ing for the lovely whore of words the nose-flute
of words the kettledrum reverberating of them in
yr mind yr ears yr groin & belly & finally sulk-
ing for their uselessness their inadequacy…&
Bobby Frink came by & drove me to the Pizza Hut
& bought me beers beers beers and it was 12.30
closing time & while walking home slow just
staring at the maniac rose-full moon I saw this
tall chick with her Lil Abner Long Sam body &
ass length red hair… I introduced myself
as the greatest living poet of Normal Illinois &
she’d heard about me cause its always in the local papers
how I’m in jail for narcotics or
assault or for trashing telephone booths that
steal yr last dime – it gets around… we end
up in her bathtub doing something special & juicy with her
strawberry glycerine soap & it was one of the
good nights the fine nights, a night that comes
along once in a while when you can take off yr
mask & just freak all night like that some-
times or its all a drag a mask a role, a Big Rig
truckstop with lukewarm showers & bad hamburgers
… but then it was Thursday morning & I fell
asleep just as her old man came in – I told him
how Bad I was but he kicked my ass anyway –
well all I really wanted to say was how some of
us die screaming some howling with laughter some
just rotting away in the arms of that Bitch-
Death State… I want to try it all before I go
& if you think that strawberry soap wasn’t worth
a crack on the jaw then yr rotting away already

WE MAKE A DEAL…

We make a deal
I dont drink for 24 hrs
theyll get me home
Naima gives me her Mescaline
& we smoke our last 2 joints
going over the Golden Gate
bridge, then
standing on the flight deck
Jim & Irv & Naima & young John
chant OM…..
loving me off to Chicago
but
when the seatbelt sign
flashes off
I run to the washroom
bolt the door
puke & shiver
drop my last downer
sink back into my
cabinclass seat, &
somewhere over Kansas City
hit a heavy pocket of
flashbacks
step out of myself
stand there
staring down
at the heap
on my seat
the cold sweat on its face
stinking of
weeks-old wine, the
grime, the
greasy tics & temors
& I say to myself
- There’s yr body
baby, now
love it or leave it
nows yr last chance
& I do not suffer preaching gladly
but
I wish you were here too
standing beside me
miles above the twitching
earth
staring down at Kansas or
China or Chicago as
the sun chases dying shadows
across our poisoned land
& I take yr hand & point down
& preach a bit, say to you
- Theres our body
baby, now
love it or leave it
nows our last chance

OPEN LETTER TO THE UNDERGROUND

Dear Bob Head


This is not an easy time to be alive in
Poets have been saying this since hieroglyphics
It is still true
The motherfuckers are killing us and
Everybody I know, almost, & their cases are
excellent
I love the Panthers I love Burroughs I love the
Underground
They are our only hope for the Motherfuckers
have marked us
The Motherfuckers are killing us yet
My hatred my contempt for violence exceeds the
furthest
imaginable limits of human calculation
I breed mice
Can I hate the cats when they kill my mice
Can I slap Ruthie when she stomps on a cockroach
Things become intolerable in their complications
yet the
Motherfuckers continue
I know I have earned yr contempt for accepting a
Factory job that sends me home in a blue knot of
pain
Yet the rent must be paid the kids must eat & I
cannot
Repeat cannot allow myself to teach in this
system
Even to subvert it, if
I have well earned yr contempt
I would not have it any other way
You & all the other people I love have a rare
human potential
My hatred my contempt for the State
exceeds the
furthest Imaginable limits of human calculation
The motherfuckers continue to kill us
Once, on Acid, you spoke of how the Counterculture
needs
A vision of Joy & Power & I felt you were speaking
to me
That vision does not come now except in moments
after
reading Schweitzer & Camus & it is called
‘reverence for Life’
As Schwietzer so simply and at the same time so
complexly
Puts it: ‘We are life which wills to live
In the midst of life which wills to live’
Yet the Motherfuckers continue to kill us
Perhaps yr vision can be contained in this: We
Are alive here & now &
The beauty the breathless improbable joy
Of this fact cannot ever be surpassed
Love, Bill

there are a few things to note


before I leave
but not many
I haven’t learned much in 37 years
1. all governments are eventually appalling
2. pain hurts
3. to eat meat is murder
4. to be without love is inexcusable
5. to love is the most difficult of all

William Wantling (November 23, 1933 – May 2, 1974) was an American


poet, novelist, ex-Marine, ex-convict, and college professor born in East
Peoria, Illinois. After graduating high school he joined the Marine Corps
until 1955. He served in Korea during 1953. After leaving the Marines he
moved to California and eventually had a son with his then-wife Luana.
Wantling went to San Quentin State Prison in 1958 convicted of forgery
and possession of narcotics. During his imprisonment Luana divorced him
and took custody of the child. He was released in 1963, and returned to
Peoria. There he married Ruth Ann Burton, a fellow divorcee in 1964. In
1966 he enrolled at Illinois State University where he received both a BA
and MA. He taught at the university up until his death on May 2, 1974.
Wantling died of heart failure, possibly brought about by his extensive drug
use.

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