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The Poetry and Life of Al Fowler

with a Gathering of his Poetry
Edward Sanders
Aulden Jay Fowler was born January 8, 1940 in New York City in the place in
Queens called Sunnyside.
His mother, Bertha, had been born in Russia. Her parents were Jewish, and Bertha
told me, My father came to America because he had a bicycle store near Kiev. The
students warned him of an impending pogrom. He came to the US in 1905; He sent
my mother and me to her mothers family. They came to the US five years later in
1910, when Als mother was seven.
The family lived in various places, including New Haven, Connecticut where she
met her husband, Russell Fowler, in high school. Als older brother Gerald was born
in New Britain, Connecticut.
Al attended school in Sunnyside for about ten years, then around 1950 the family
moved to Albany. My husband had a job with the state. He worked for the architect
and engineering department, Bertha told me in 1983. Russell was a Civil Service
employee for the Department of Public Works, said her son Gerald.
They lived on State Street in Albany, right near Willett across from Washington
Park. I lived there 21 years. Al attended high school at Albany High, where he took
part in many regular activities common to a boy in the 1950s. She showed me a certificate for a varsity letter in football for the school year of 1956-56.
She bragged about his intellectual prowess, though regarding Albany High, she
said, He got into more silly trouble than you ever heard of. He never did his work,
but but his tests were very very high.
I asked about when he started writing verse. She said he began at age 13, 14, 15. She
showed me a bunch of his early poems. This is one he did on assignment, and they
gave him terrific marks on it. He was 14 and a half years old. It was titled, My
Temporary Room
Another she showed me, written age 13, beginning There will come soft rains.
As a proud mother Bertha typed Als high school verse in her office. She worked for
the State also.

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He was early interested in music. His mother: A man came along in school in
Sunnyside, for a dollar a week, to study recorder. He wanted a clarinet. He played in
a band for a long time. We finally got him a clarinet. (When Al was in the Fugs in
early 1965, he played the flute.)
She pointed out that she won awards, one of which was a 1957 Regents
Scholarship. She showed me a file of awards Al had received. A Certificate of Merit
from Scholastic Magazine for his writing. Plus a commendation for his poetry. She
showed a letter from his high school poetry teacher. He composed the senior class
poem in 1957, and won a National Merit scholarship for the quality of his noggin.
He had lots of friends. She listed a few of them.
He graduated in 1957, age 17 and 1/2, but not from Albany High School. He was
booted out of that, she explained, but graduated from Phillips Schuyler Academy in
Albany. It had kids who were in trouble.
I asked what Al had done to get tossed out of Albany High School. Some of the
things were so stupid. He got reprimanded, because, at that time, there was a college
right next to the high school. They had Pepsi there. He and another guy walked over
to get some Pepsi. He got into trouble because of that. They claimed that he had broken a typewriter. They made a monkey out of him. Any little thing he did was wrong
after that. Also, he smoked. They caught him, and he was tossed out of High
School.
He had so many escapades, his mother said, it wasnt even funny.
Two colleges, Tulane and Sienna offered scholarships. She showed a letter to Al at
37 Sycamore Street, April 24, 1957 from Sienna.
He briefly went to two colleges. First he attended Harpur College, till the spring
of58 and then went to Bard College. At Bard, his mother recalled, he never went
to classes, but he never did anything wrong.
Then he went to work for the State, for a while.
He joined the Army in February of 1959. signing for 3 years. They sent him to
Korea. He spent 13 months in Korea, where he worked as a medic.
His mother: He came back from the Army and stayed with us in Albany for a
while. Then he was stationed in New York, at a dispensary on Whitehall Street,
according to Gerry Fowler. He continued to commute to Whitehall Street from a
hotel on 22nd Street.

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Fowler lived in New York City for the next four years.
He came to my New Years Eve party at the end of 1961, held at my apartment at
509 East 11th, between Avenues A and B, and we became friends. I gradually grew
aware of his talents as a poet, and started publishing his work in Fuck You/ A Magazine
of the Arts. During the magazines thirteen issues I published 27 poems by Al Fowler,
including one 3-pager and one 5-pager.
I felt certain that I had discovered an American poetic genius.
By the early 60s, Fowler had joined a small sect, the Free Catholic Church, and
now and then sported a clerical collar, and a big silver cross on his chest, while wearing a round red anarchist button on the label of his frock coat. This later figured in
his marginal involvement in the brouhaha regarding Lee Harvey Oswalds reported
appearance in Greenwich Village prior to the assassination, as we shall see. He also
began hanging out at the Catholic Worker on Chrystie Street, headed by the radical
Catholic writer and activist Dorothy Day.
In early 1962, while still in the Army, Al became involved in what was called The
World Wide General Strike for Peace. The General Strike for Peace was mainly
organized by Judith Malina and Julian Beck of the Living Theater.
On January 29, 62, the first day of the World Wide General Strike for Peace, Al
picketed the Fort Jay ferry entrance at Battery Park, wearing his army uniform, carrying a General Strike for Peace poster. This created a stir, and there was at least one
article, with a photo apparently of Al picketing in uniform, in a New York newspaper.
He would not be much longer in the service.
Al Speaks at a Community Rally at the Community Church
January 29, 1962
The Village Voice wrote an article, dated February 1, 62 about activities of the
General Strike. On January 29, there was a march down Fifth Avenue to Washington
Square, beginning outside the Plaza Hotel at 59th Street. Pete Seeger and Gil Turner
sang, and there were speeches, including a kick-off by Dave McReynolds of the War
Resisters League.
The Voice: Later that day a General Strike rally was called at Community Church
on East 35th Street; Paul Goodman spoke of the philosophical basis for the strike. He
said: When the institutions of society threaten the very foundation of the social contract, namely, biological safetythen the social contract is very near to being dissolved. He continued: We have now not a political but a biological emergency. The

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government's almost total commitment to the cold war cannot be stopped by ordinary
political means.
Dorothy Day, editor of the Catholic Worker, spoke of the present need for
responsibility, sacrifice, and asceticism. Julian Beck described the act as a call to
action, our way of declaring the pollution of things as they are, of the governments'
deep involvement in war-preparing. Judith Malina said the strike is a means of satisfying our most urgent need to take some action.
The meeting also heard Specialist 4th Class Aulden Fowler, the soldier who had
picketed in mufti the Fort Jay ferry entrance on the Battery earlier in the day. Fowler
described being taken to Governor's Island for an investigation being told eventually that there was no regulation against what he was doing he was on a six-day pass
at the time and finally being released under certain orders not to participate further
in the demonstrations for peace. Fowler ended his brief talk by reflecting: There is
no civil liberty in the Army.
Al became active in the second General Strike for Peace, held November 5-11 of
1962. He was listed on the poster as a member of the Strikes Action Committee,
along with well known activists such as Judith Malina, Jackson MacLow, Bruce
Grund, Julian Beck, Karl Bissinger, Arthur Sainer, and others.

Al Fowler served on the Action Committee of the Second General

Strike for Peace, November 5-11, 1962

Fowler developed a close relationship with the artist Ann Leggett. Ann was a young
woman with a gleam of experimentation in her eye, and a talent that was undeniable.
She was 22 and studying at the Art Students League. Though not a Catholic, she was
drawn to the Catholic Worker, where she had met Al Fowler. She had spent a few
days at the House of Detention for joining with the Catholic Workers in refusing to
take shelter during New York Citys compulsory Civil Defense drill on May Day in
the early 60s. In March of 1963, she had had an exhibition of her paintings at the
Columbia University School of Architecture. She too was swept up in the ambience

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of the swashbuckling young poet from Albany, New York. She made some memorable
drawings of Fowler during those years, including this one, which showed him muscular, and defiantly shooting up:

Ink sketch and painting of Al Fowler by Ann Leggett

After we met at my New Years party, 1961-62, he began dealing amphetamine, and
doing so well at it that he said, to my surprise, Now I can afford to be a junkie.
The logic of that escaped my youthful dazzlement over his talents as a poet. I tended to romanticize the clandestine world of the junky and the a-head in those days.
Then there was a murmur of trouble amidst the defiance. It was more and more
difficult for Fowler to support his habit, and he was having to drift into robberies.
Right around the spring of 63, a customer of Als, a NYU student I used to see at Als
apartment on East 9th Street wearing a blue blazer with brass buttons and penny
loafers, died of an overdose. It was a bugle of wake-up.

The Kick Grid

By early 1963, even though his poetry sometimes reveled in the world of the junky,
it seemed obvious that Al Fowler wanted to kick heroin, so I helped organize a bunch
of our mutual friends to sit with him as he gradually reduced his heroin shots, till he
was free. I called it a Kick Grid, dividing the time-flow into 4-hour units, and years
later wrote a short story about it in Tales of Beatnik Glory.
Fowler lived in a building on East 9th, just off Avenue B. There was a group of his
friends who lived in the same building. One of them, lets call her Amber, had a weekly client, one of the Cassini brothers, famous in the fashion business, for whom she
sank to her knees, as he stood in his office, and he wanted each knee to rest on his tasseled shoes, left to right, right to left, and then a b.j. It was good money. Her hus

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band was a junkie friend of Als named Keith. I remember seeing him quite glassy
eyed during the days of the Kick Grid.
I divided up his heroin supply into smaller and smaller amounts, and kept the skag
away from him, doling out the amounts. First Al shot up a half dose, then a quarter
dose, then an eighth, then nothing. Everything went okay, until Fowler became
sweaty and junk sick, and very uncomfortable. The next twenty-four hours the ordeal
was acute. That night was the worst. Fowler lay sweating beneath a blanket. His eyes
hurt with the light so the pad was kept gloomy.
There was the contention raised in Naked Lunch that kickers experience a period of
intense sexual desire during the turkey. This seemed to have occurred Fowlers grid,
though I could not see for total surety in the demi-dark. Bucks County Lucy came
over to visit Fowler, who was in sad shape, sobbing and sweating, his eyeglasses wet
and foggy. Lucy, jean shirt tied at the stomach, put her arms around Fowler and asked
if he wanted something to drink. Fowler whispered something to her, and pulled her
down to his rumpled lair. It was hard to view exactly since Fowler pulled his Mexican
blanket over both of them. She skinnied out of her shorts and pulled aside the elastic
of her panties and steered him within her then fell forward to kiss. It was only a matter of seconds before Fowlers junk-sick spews came forth, and he moaned thanks
aplenty to his kind friend.
Later that night, I awakened to hear a beating sound. What was it? It was Fowler
beating his head against the wall in junk-sick agony. Fowler began to beg me for dope,
Just a little shot. Please! Beseeching.
I gave in to Fowler, allowing him to shoot up just a taste, man, a taste. The result
was like a change from night to day, for as soon as he shot up, Fowler stopped sweating and walked around smiling and talking.
I vowed from then on, no more skag. Finally, I caught him alone shooting up some
skag from a secret stash under the linoleum in his living room.
During the course of the Kick Grid, Id brought my Speed-O-Print mimeo and
some reams of colored Granitex paper to Fowlers pad, and I spent hours running off
a hundred copies each of the first six issues of F.Y./.
After I had discovered his secret stash of heroin under the ancient linoleum, and
admonished him, the Kick Grid worked to its conclusion. It wasnt clear that he had
actually kicked.
In the fall of 63, Al Fowler had spent some time in his home town, Albany, New
York, working on a manuscript of his poetry to give to Auerhahn Press in San
Francisco. It was a project which never quite came to fruition. Too bad, because

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Auerhahn was one of the premier publishers of the era, known for putting out such
works as Charles Olsons Maximus from Dogtown I. Then Al returned to the
Lower East Side, and I was allowing him to crash for a few days at the Secret
Location in the Lower East Side, in a back building on Avenue A where I made
underground movies, and published Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts.
I was still convinced he would become a top rank American poet. I would read his
notebooks and pull out poems to publish in Fuck You. After his visit home to Albany
to compile a manuscript of poetry, it wasnt clear whether he was shooting junk or not,
but I still could not turn him away from the Secret Location. Al would still don now
and then the priests collar and a gnarly silver cross of the small Catholic sect of which
he was an adherent. To me he was a poetic wonder.

Then Came the Assassination

I was coming out of class at New York University, just after noon. I tried to make
a call. The phone was dead. People were crowded around taxis in the street, listening to the radio. Thus came word of the assassination on a glare-y day, and immediate gratification, or ImGrat as I termed it, began to get balanced by right wing reality. I was right in the midst of publishing a new issue of my magazine, buoyed by
receiving a fresh and brilliant poem by my hero Allen Ginsberg.
How could I possibly have become involved with the peripheries of the Kennedy
assassination? Heres how.
I thought Lee Harvey Oswald at first glance was a horrid nut. Then came the
rumors that Oswald had been in the Village, disrupting civil rights meetings, and my
friend Al Fowler claimed that he had attended some of the same meetings.
Was Oswald in Village?
The first issue of the Village Voice after the assassination came out on November 28.
On the front page was an article headlined Was Oswald in Village?
The FBI was in Greenwich Village early this week in search of clues to Lee H.
Oswalds past. Their investigation here is apparently based on information that the
alleged assassin of President Kennedy had for a time associated with a youthful
Mississippi-born rightist who disrupted a number of pro-integration meetings in the
Village during 1961 and 1962. The information came from an East Villager who
claims he knew both Oswald and the rightist slightly while all three were in the same
Marine outfit. He says he saw the two men together on more than one occasion and
claims that Oswald had taken photographs for the Southerner in the course of disrupting one meeting. The informant claims that the photographs were destined for a pro-

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fascist publication. There had been no information, prior to this disclosure, that
Oswald had been in New York for more than one night since his return from Russia
in 1962.
The informant identified himself as James Rizzuto. Rizzuto also contacted popular radio host Barry Gray. A 5-page FBI memorandum dated November 25, 63 stated: Barry Gray, radio commentator, station WMCA, NYC, advised one James F.
Rizzuto had alleged he had info re one Yves Leandez, a close associate of Lee H.
Oswald. Rizzuto furnished following info to agents. Rizzuto state that he, Yves
Leandez, Lee H.Oswald and possibly one Earl Perry served together in U.S. Marine
Corps in nineteen fifty-six at Camp Le Jeune and Barstow, California. The FBI
memo types onward Mr. Rizzutos claims about Leandes: Rizzuto described Leandes
as a close personal friend of Oswald and both were professional agitators who attended meetings of the American Jewish Congress and other organizations and tried to
disrupt meetings. Rizzuto stated he though both Oswald and Leandes belonged to an
organization possibly called States Rights Party. The FBI memo recommended the
Bureau contact Rizzuto in person to check these allegations out.
Two days later, the 27th, another FBI memorandum Re Stephen Yves LEandes
AKA Frenchy. LEandes allegedly visited Russia with Lee Oswald and one Earl
Perry in 1960s. LEandes was seen active in picketing the White House, heckling the
American Jewish Congress, and other mass meetings of the integration movement.
The memo recommended that LEandes be identified post haste and interviewed.
The FBI interviewed Pat Padgett, wife of poet Ron Padgett, on November 25, at
her place of employment at 11 Waverly Place in the Village, where LEandes once
had lived.
Al Fowler himself had attended some of the meetings at which LEandes had disrupted the events. He knew LEandes. I liked him. He was amusing, Fowler later
told me. He had witnessed LEandes create a disturbance at a meeting of the Socialist
Labor Party at the Militant Labor Forum on University Place, and hed seen LEandes
hanging out around the headquarters of the General Strike for Peace in early 62,
located at the Living Theater.
Fowler later recalled the last time he had met with LEandes: The last conversation I had with LEandes prior to the big snuff took place in a diner on Sheridan
Square. He talked then about Fair Play for Cuba, etc. His whole shuck was that he
was a Cajun, and that his whole family, in the main, was around New Orleans. He
even got into a dissertation on the French Quarter. He asked me how I felt about
Cuba, and I told him just what you would expect I would tell anyone, and did. I told
him Castros noble struggles against the giant of the North was of no more consequence to me than any other replacement of any government by more government.

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So, in the heated horror of the post-assassination turmoil, prodded by his close
friend, the artist Ann Leggett, Al Fowler called the FBI, and he agreed to meet the
FBI that evening at Stanleys Bar! He did not show for the meeting, so FBI agents
stood outside Stanleys and queried those who entered the bar as to Fowler and his
whereabouts. I learned about his, and became sorely alarmed!
What if someone told the FBI that Fowler was crashing at my Secret Location?
What about all the film cans with my footage for Amphetamine Head, A Study of Power
in America? What about the footage from the Great March on D.C.? What about
the torrid footage of Szabo and Ellen B? What about the stacks of Fuck You/ A
Magazine of the Arts? plus my film equipment camera, tripod, strips and cans of film
everywhere, plus gaudy Jack Smith-esque hangings of colored cloths on the wall, plus
photofloods here and there attached to clip-ons. What would the FBI say about those,
if they raided the Secret Location?
I raced over to the Secret Location a block away on Avenue A, and left a note for
Al on the metal bathtub cover in the kitchen, next to my mimeograph machine. I was
preparing a new issue of Fuck You/, and all the poems submitted for the new issue were
in the Secret Location, including Allen Ginsbergs great poem, The Change, which
he had just sent to me from Japan. To me, it was a tableau foretelling jail time if the
FBI should raid looking for someone who claimed to have seen Lee Harvey Oswald
in the Village!
Heres the note I left:

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My dear Al as a result of the FBI scene, you are requested to REMOVE all your
stuff from here If it is not removed by Friday, I shall repadlock the door and bolt
the windows, and you will procure your stuff as my discretion. Ed. S.
Al left a note in reply, written on the reverse of my note, when he returned to the
Secret Location. He pleaded with me to let his belongings in the pad, while promising to stay away:

Then another note from poet Fowler, noting that some of his girlfriend Ann
Leggetts stuff is on trunk she especially prizes the goblets therein, so be gentle.
Next to the note on the porcelainized tub cover was a blood splotch, likely from his
shooting-up.

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Ed as you can see, Ive split. However some of Anns stuff is on trunk. She
especially prizes the goblets there in, so be gentle.
Thanks for all your help. Sympathy, & needed kick in the balls. Al
A trio of historic documents that came about through the assassination of our president.
By November 29, the FBI office in NYC sent out a notice that the investigation was
to cease. They had learned by then that Rizzuto, the original source to radio host
Barry Gray, and LEandes and Landesberg were one and the same! Steve Landesberg
later became a well-known television comedian, starring on the Barney Millersitcom, and why he claimed that Oswald had disrupted political meetings in Greenwich
Village remains a mystery. (Fowler recalled running into Landesberg some time later:
I ran into him a couple of years later. He had dropped the accent. He was wearing
a nice suit. He came up to me on the street and offered me $600 to fly to Montreal
and bring a box back with me, of unspecified contents. Fowler turned down the
offer.)
Meanwhile, once the coast seemed clear after Fowler had moved out, I went back
to work on the December 1963 issue (Number 5, Volume 5) issue of Fuck You/ A
Magazine of the Arts. The Secret Location was safe. My mimeo was safe. Ditto for
the footage for Amphetamine Head: A Study of Power in America. The studio was not to
be raided by the police for another year and a half.
He lived for a while with the painter Ann Leggett. They broke up sometime in
1964 or 65.
One night in Times Square, 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning, May 2, 1964, I met Al in
Bickfords Cafeteria on 42nd Street. It was after my 5 p.m.-2 a.m. shift at the cigar

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store at 42nd and 7th Avenue. He had grown weary of amphetamine. Amphetamine
is the worst drug, he said. There is no known drug that is more destructive. (This
note is contained in a file where I was translating Pindars First Olympian Ode. I
made a notation next to the quote, Aulden Fowler, poet & practical nurse.
Al Arrested in the Summer of 64
Al was arrested in July of 1964. He sent the following letter from jail, dated July
19, 1964, with return address, Aulden Fowler, 125 White Street, N.Y. 13. 9UD4.
Ed. Tell Gregory Corso to stick his nobility in his shorts. thanx for reading. you
no doubt are aware of most pertinent info regarding bust from Ann (Leggett).
Naught to do naught to do. Visions of pumpernickel loaves & fresh butter, cannabis
& wine. jail but sharpens ones appetite for essential (causes?). jailed for junk, am hungry for it. not no more, though really no interest in that now but oh for some
smoke & scoff .... & got mah nature back could & would for the first time in a
great while make like a rabbit gone mad & starving. Gonna kiezop me an M-1 carbine & jeep and head for the hills of Vt or NH a half ell Bee of grooviness come
back out time unless seduced by welfare to stay ($71.50 bimonthly) Give my love
to Huncke, Nelson (Barr), Harry (Fainlight), Ed M (Marshal), George (Montgomery)
&c &c. Not necessary to enumerate, oh & Ginzap of course. Communicate my
apologies to Bob LaVigne for the inopportune pop. Tell Huncke that Fat Marty from

Lexington is in with me. Also Check Calabreze, Doffy Wild (1 yr), & Jr Collins.
Chuck Bick was here, but got bailed out before i could talk to him jive-ass etc.
One Law for the Lion & the Ox is Oppression
yrs fer the rev,
Al
Around now, Al became involved with a woman named Mimi Jacobsen, who had
submitted poems to my magazine.
9 pm, Fugs at the American Theater for Poets
The Freakiest Singing Group in the History of
Western Civilization
March 8, 1965
When I organized the Fugs in late 1964 and early 65, I invited Al Fowler to perform with us. The Fugs performed at the East End Theatre in early March of 65,
located at 85 E. Fourth St, run by poets Diane di Prima and Alan Marlowe.

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Hot off the Peace Eye mimeo. Note evidence of 45 year old
masking tape to pin to Peace Eye wall

The Fugs for this concert: Ed Sanders vocals, Tuli Kupferberg vocals, Steve
Weber on guitar and vocals, Peter Stampfel on fiddle, Al Fowler on recorder, Ken
Weaver on drums and vocals.
Though Al Fowler and the poet known as Szabo were early members of the Fugs,
both were hooked on heroin, which made it difficult for either to come to rehearsals,
or keep to an exact, non-sweaty schedule. So they soon went their ways.
Around the time of the early Fugs concerts, Al and his new mate Mimi Jacobsen
moved to New Paltz, New York.
Fowler Heads for New Paltz
Poet George Montgomery lived in the Lower East Side, on East 5th Street, from
around the summer of 1962 till the end of 1964. On January 1, 1965 (which he noted
was the day T. S. Eliot passed away) Montgomery moved to New Paltz, New York.
A few weeks later Al Fowler came up from New York City for a visit. Fowler and
his then mate Mimi Jacobsen visited one snowy night, and stayed a whole year. Then
Fowler, recalled Montgomery, got a farmhouse to live in, with saluki dogs.
Al in 1965 went up to New Paltz to live with George Montgomery? George
Montgomery had settled there after a tour of poesy in the Lower East Side.
Al had a tendency to get involved in love triangles. This was the case with Ann
Leggett and Mimi Jacobsen.
According to Montgomery, Al invited both Mimi Jacobsen and also Ann Leggett to
join him in New Paltz. Each came, apparently around the same moment, with each
thinking each she would live with Al and unknowing of the invitation to the rival.

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Somehow, Mimi won the tug of eros and adoration over Al.
George Montgomery later spoke of how, when Mimi and Al lived with him for
eight months in New Paltz, Mimi fed the salukis with quality meat. Montgomery and
Fowler would be hungry and go down during the night and get fresh meat from the
salukis feeding plate.
Jacobsen wound up taking a jail sentence for a forged prescription, in place of
Fowler. This was sometime in 1965, perhaps extending to 1966.
Jacobsen traveled to Minnesota in the fall of 1966, after her father had passed away.
She had been raised there, and had attended the University of Minnesota before coming to New York City. I have a lengthy letter she wrote to Fowler during her visit to
Minnesota. She talked of her and Al moving there. Her mother had offered them a
car, and the visit brought back good memories of her youth, and she seemed to exult
in the possibility of a new life with Al.
She and Al stored furniture and boxes of possessions at our apartment on Avenue A
and 12th Street, during the early fall of 1966.
Mimi and Al moved to Minneapolis sometime in late 1966 or early 1967.
He obtained employment with a railroad.

On February 24, 1969, Al sent a note to James E. Sanders c/o Peace Eye
Bookstore, 143 Avenue A, NY 10009, using a letterhead from Burlington Route,
and with a brown mailing envelope for the Chicago Great Western Railway
Company. It somehow got to me, in spite of the mis-address.
I lost track of Fowler in the fury of the late 1960s, as I toured and recorded with the
Fugs, kept running the Peace Eye Bookstore, and became involved with the Youth
International Party, known as the Yippies.
I went on a cross-country Anti-Vietnam War reading tour with a number of poets
in the spring of 1969, and met Al Fowler and Mimi Jacobsen at a party after a reading in Minneapolis.
Als Recollections of Around 1970
I saw Allen (Ginsberg) here three-four years ago, since I saw you [during the
spring 1969 Resist poetry tour in Minneapolis]. Exchanged a few words with him,
inquiring after such & sos health & c, and he asked me the usual. I said, yeah, when

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I get time. I was working the swing shift playing choo choo and logging 250 miles (16
hours, actually 15 hours 55 minutes) every night at the time, and doodling when I
could, but anyway he gave my mind a little jog, you know. Gave me the address of
someone who was putting together an anthology. Got busted before I could. (Took a
lotta petty falls before I really got nailed.) I think it was a cracked tail lite & a bag
under the front seat, or such.) Meanwhile, Im hopeful there is a God and that I am
doing as little as possible to offend Him.
Disjointed as hell isnt it? And then I got shot through the liver, stomach, intestines and left kidney. One round from a 22 mag. (hollow point, 48 gr.) Got last rites.
I shouldnt fuck anymore? (If you receive extreme unction youre supposed to remain
celibate & abjure meat till fadeout) (no thanks.)
(the above from a letter to E.S., dated May 10, 1978, from Stillwater Penitentiary.)

Als Recollections of His Arrests in Minnesota

In 1969 I took my first fall in this state (Minnesota), for weed, then 5-20 for possession with a prior. Two cases, in fact, worth 10-40 all told. When I got to court,
when it was time to set bond, the judge said $500! The judge had asked me if I had
ever been arrested before, and I had replied, quite properly, not in this jurisdiction,
your honor. He turned to the bailiff and asked him to get my rap sheet. Court Clerk
reads it out illegal U-turn, state of Wis. $50 fine. I almost shit my stylish slacks. I
was only three weeks off paper for that dope sale case. Minnesota Parole Board had
accepted my transfer from N.Y. & I had a NY chauffeurs license still! The lawyer

nudged me and I straightened up & set my face, which was about to break into a
baboonish braying grin.
As all I had was a joint, and working regular, playing choo choo, I got a year SS
and $2,000 fine. I voluntarily set my record straight after the pleas bargain was made.
Everything from possession of H to attempted murder, so the sentence could be overturned later by the DA for new evidence, i.e., discovery of who I was.
Next time the A.M. turned into 1st degree assault, but otherwise ok. Next time it
turned into a disposition ink. Which you can image how that affected my bail.
Next time it was turned into poss dangerous weapon, a charge Id never had laid
on me at the time. D. Christian was shoveled off the sidewalk with the piece still in
his fist, and he was charged with possessing it.

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Last time I saw my sheet, thats what was on it, disposition dismissed wp,otm.
However, now my caseworker tells me Ive got five prior felonies. I know for sure
Ive got seven, might be as many as eleven, such is the state of my brain. That frigging computer in D.C. is thoroughly defective and randomized.
(The above from a letter from Al Fowler to Ed Sanders, dated May 10, 1978, from
Stillwater Penitentiary.)
According to Als good friend Mary Fitzgerald, Mimi Jacobsen and her mother purchased a farm just outside of Stillwater, and Mimi was very much into raising dogs.
Al stayed with her quite a long time on that farm, and then they just were really having difficulties... and she kicked him out, or something.
Around 1970 Al and Mimi broke up.
Al then lived in South St. Paul on Concord Street, near the railroad, for a while, in
his own apartment. For a very short time, recalls Fitzgerald, Al worked in a nursing
home.
He then lived with a woman named Barbara Randall, who owned a small farm just
outside of St. Paul, in Mendota. Al was still working for the railroad when he lived at
Randalls. Al had two of the salukis. And then, remembers Mary Fitzgerald,
Barbara Randall got interested in the dogs too, and started raising them. Even
though Barbara and Mimi were rivals in one sense, the did eventually end up being
fairly good friends. They talked dogs. But then Barbara eventually asked Al to leave
there too.
Sometime in 1970-71 Al accidentally shot himself. Also in 1971, he was hit in the
back of the head, which caused him to suffer epileptic seizures.
Now it seems Minnesota is stuck on me, at least to the extent of lavishing ten
grand or so a year on me. Makes a dude feel wanted. (I bought the drug cases to the
tune of $5,000) but I was not given that option on this fall, since the states case was
so good, & the injured parties (I hung a bunch of paper on a lot of big dept stores etc.)
so powerful & pissed off. You see, I got the paper I was using in a burglary of a construction outfit whose owner was unusually devout, and who had installed a huge private shrine to the B.V.M. at the plant. My crime partner felt constrained to shit all
over the altar, and pee all up & down Our Lady, whilst I was rummaging in the office.
Though I remonstrated with him afterward, the deed was done. And so, my case was
prejudiced considerably in the eyes of the gendarmerie. Since I would not give my
partner up, though they could not pin the burglary on me, I was still lucky to get as
little time as I did.

17
*Some guys find burglary more effective than X-Lax.
Meanwhile, through various vicissitudes, in most occasions involving the Keepers
of Order, I lost all manuscripts & most drafts of four years work, including that which
I considered Best, whatever that means, & in relation to what Im sure unable to say,
but work, drivel or who cares?
(Above from a letter to E.S. from Al in the late summer of 1974.)
He was sentenced in October of 71 to do five years in prison. From then till
around late 74 he was in Minnesota State Penitentiary in Stillwater.
He had a close friend who visited him in prison named Karen Settevig. Later they
were married.
She wrote me on September 22, 1974 from Minneapolis, c/o Avon Books (the publisher of the paperback edition of The Family.) She said that Al was up for parole that
fall.
In 1975 and through early spring of 76 he lived a free man with Karen Settevig.
On April 18, 1976, he called me. I was in Woodstock. Hed been out since, I think
late 1974, but was due to head back to prison.
His wife Karen Settevig had tossed him out. My wife just left me, a week ago, I
dont know where she went. Ive got epilepsy. A guy, some nut hit me with a pipe in
71, I dont know who, a guy hit me from behind.
ES: So, you have grand mal, or petit mal?
AF: Grand mal. Shes scared of me. I hurt her once during a seizure.
ES: Some people, such as Dostoevsky, went totally out during a seizure.
AF: Well I walked out a second story window, without opening, the last time.
ES: Have a chance to write lately?
AF: Thats what I wanted to tell you. She left Monday, its been two or three days
since she left, that I started to write again, after a long time. I went back to my boxes
of stuff here, and found some interesting Have you ever done that, come across
things that you have written?

18
ES: I did that last year.
AF: I dont know who wrote them.
Although hed been putting together his writing, he had great ambivalence about
his early writing because of his shifting attitude toward heroin. Up until 71, I was
writing quite a bit, except that this broad I was living with, she had two teenage kids,
and she used to get jealous, if I sat up and wrote, I cant sleep. She wanted to get
fucked all the time. That was all right with me, but if I got out bed she was up tight
about it. That kind of disrupted things. But when I got rapped on the bean, that really put the icing on the cake. All the time, since I came here to escape myself anyway,
I never wanted I associated all that writing with being a junky. I was trying to
escape. I hate junk with a passion. I was trying to escape being what I was. So I
wrote, because I had to. But I never did anything with it, because once it was written,
that was it.
ES: Yeah, that Lincoln Continental full of manuscripts too bad you lost them.
Hows your memory? (Al had lost a bunch of manuscripts years before when a
Lincoln he was driving was seized, apparently during an arrest.)
AF: Its got patches, you know? And after each seizure, of course, I dont even
know my name.
ES: When did you have your last seizure?
AF: March 17th, I guess. Thats when I walked out the window.
ES: Is there any kind of medication?

AF: Yeah, Im on a course of dilantin and dysoxin. Im on methadone, of course.

They wouldnt let me out of prison without it.
ES: So you stayed on methadone clear through your prison sentence?
AF: No, No, they just made it a condition of parole.
ES: You were detoxified and they made you go back on methadone?
AF: Yes.
ES: What the fuck is that all about?

19
AF: They were afraid of the relapse situation.
ES: 70% or something like that?
AF: More than that.
When Settewig departed a few days ago, she left behind her purse. The way he
described in to me in the phone conversation was that, in attempting to return the
purse, Al had broken in to the pad of a friend of Karens. The friend swore out a
charge against Al for breaking and entering.
During our conversation that April day of 76 he was scheduled to go away the next
day. I guess he was referring to the federal charge.
A year went by, and then we began writing back and forth beginning in the spring
of 1978. Al was back in the Stillwater Minnesota prison.
I prepared a letter which I sent to the parole board, stressing Als history and qualifications as a writer of distinction. He was let out of prison in late 1978, or early
1979.
I later asked his friend Mary Fitzgerald if Al published anything when he was in
prison. No, she replied. This last time, when he was at Stillwater, he became
acquainted with the Quakers. Some of the Quakers were poets here. They have one
poetry magazine going. This Mary Ellen Shaw, she was one person that had been
published; she was quite interested in his poetry. But, as far as I know, nothing was
actually (published.)
I asked, Was there anything of his stored with the Quakers?

Long time Fowler friend, Mary Fitzgerald: I was with him the day he got out of
Stillwater this last time. He had a week grace period during which he was supposed
to get his stuff together and get to New York. He wasnt even supposed to stay at all,
but the Quakers let him stay at their Quaker Meeting House. I had a lot of his stuff
stored; and the Quakers had some stuff, and so we made the rounds of every place he
had stuff stored, and we boxed it up and he took it with him to New York. So, as far
as I know, everything was with him.
He lived with his mother about a year, beginning around early 79.
He had trouble getting a job.

20
During this time, his former wife Karen Settevig reentered his life, visiting him in
New York City.
Also close to Al, and visiting him and his mother Bertha in New York City in early
1980 was his friend Mary Fitzgerald: I had become very close to his mother and
brother. I just couldnt stay here, I just had to be there, that was all. I was there about
a week and a half. I had been to New York three months before that, and things were
getting really bad. He was really on the verge of having to move out. He and his
mother were not getting along. It was very sad, because, you know, like I dont really what the offensive problem was there. I know he was very good to her, from what
I could tell. He really did his best to get along with her, and so forth.
I think that one thing that would have been better, if he had gone from here to
New York and had actually had a real job, where they say, here is your job. You go.
This is what you do, because like he told me that when he got out he absolutely
couldnt make any decisions at all. Like I was helping him get boxes, and getting
things lined up to go, going here and there, picking up things and when youre institutionalized, you totally lose all of your control over your life, and you dont know
what steps to do next. And to expect somebody to look for a job, actively to go out
and look for a job....
ES: Yeah, Bertha ran down all his various job options he had suffered through during his last few (months.)
MF: He went to a lot of them too. The very last job he supposedly was supposed
to get this was with this guy named Billie. I really didnt like him much at all. He
lived down there around 10th Street. He had a place in the basement; he was putting
a punk rock group together, and Al was going to do some repair work on his synthesizers. So, that was going to be his employment.
On January 23, 1980, Al Fowler either fell or was shoved into the path of an oncoming subway train, in Manhattan. He showed up at the ticket booth, gave his name,
then collapsed into unconsciousness. He lingered for 9 days, never recovering his
consciousness, then passed away. He had two weeks to go before he would have celebrated his 40th birthday.
I never do anything right, was his last sentence to his mother Bertha the day he
was hit. It nearly broke my heart, his sad mother told me.
Karen Settevig brought Als manuscripts back to her home, I think in Virginia,
where she was living and working, and during the winter of 1980 typed a manuscript
of 107 poems, which she turned over to Als mother Bertha.

21
I was given this typed manuscript when I visited Bertha and her son Gerald at her
apartment in Jamaica Estates on January 20, 1983 and brought it back to Albany
(where Miriam, I and our Daughter had moved, subletting our house in Woodstock
while Deirdre attended her first year at SUNY Albany).
A few days after my visit with Bertha Fowler, a fire in a nearby apartment spread to
our apartment on Madison Avenue in Albany, and firemen chopped a hole in the wall
of my writing room, which resulted in Als manuscript getting wet, but only two or
three pages were damaged, plus I had a photocopy of the manuscript which remained
intact. My file of letters from Al remained unharmed.
Over twenty five years passed, during which I wrote a bunch of books, read poetry
and lectured frequently here and there, produced some Fugs reunion albums and
CDs, all the while keeping stored in my archive Al Fowlers poetry.
I was writing a memoir of the 1960s in 2009 and 2010, and decided, at long last, to
put together a history of Al Fowler, and a collection of his verse.

About the Collection of Al Fowlers Poetry

From 1962 through 1966, when our lives most intersected, I always encouraged Al
to write, and collected a good number of both typed (and hand corrected) as well as
hand-written poems. Once I even hand-copied a few pages from one of his poetry
notebooks. This resulted in around 100 pages of poetry and drafts written by him to
wind up in my archives. In addition, there are 27 poems I published in my magazine,
1962-65.
He also included poems in letters written to me in the 1960s and 1970s. After he
passed away, his wife Karen Settevig typed a manuscript consisting of 107 poems,
using original poems and versions of poems Al had placed in a filing cabinet at his
mother Berthas house in New York City.
From this gathering of Al Fowlers poetry in my archive, I have put together a
sequence of his poetry, mostly, as best as I can determine, in chronological order.
Aulden Fowler January 8 1940-February 1, 1980 American poet.

22

The Poetry of Al Fowler

in the Archive of Edward Sanders
1. 27 poems I published in Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts, 1962-1965
2. Typed manuscripts; various batches, which are held together in my archive by
paper clips. Circa 100 + pages.
3. Handwritten manuscripts: including a couple I copied by hand from his note
books; some included in letters to me, and in a letter to Mary Mayo
4. The poem I published in 1964 in Despair Poems to Come Down By;
and in Poems for Marilyn, 1962; and in Bugger, 1964
5. The 1981-82 typescript, 107 poems, prepared from his drafts by Karen
Settewig

23
Poems by Al Fowler published in Fuck You/ A Magazine of
the Arts, 1962-1965:
Poems, Wargasms, Hymns to Young Men and Women
from Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts, June 1962, Issue # 3
River Poem
senile river
floor littered
with aeons of pointless garbage
slender frameworks of beast
granite leftovers from
a mountain eaten during the mesozoic,
in lusty banquet of your middle age.
let it be said you are less than the
least silence
of any entranced youngster
who gulps a nascent universe
with each unlikely breath.

Poem
i am evangelist of sense
luring the young from classrooms
with a hint of total vision outside reality.
revolutionary songs shouted thru amazed cellblocks
intimations of divinity
in pacifist hashish rituals
god in teaspoons!
essence of christ in
stark hallucinations
that leave the actual forever suspect
anyway irrelevant.
radiations of disembodied love
actually visible
& forever tenant
in the blurred self.

24
Hey, Uptown Girl
green eyelids & brown puff of conquered hair
absurd pubescent knees peeking under
skirt,
scared highschool eyes boreing
thru pigment.
sophistication etched on your mouth
bulbs of future breast
tense plumpness of snatch silky
you murder your intense
moment of colossal youth
bewildered newness
cowers to extinction.

Ecce Puer
Child, growing into youngness
more female than
any warmest woman
all the exact requisite
gentle qualities
eyes so fully shy
they swallow me
& the sure
spiritual motions
& the intuitive
wisdom
& flowering tenderness
of sensual question
compassionate skin of cosmos
your being pumps
triumphant
thru my buckling veins.

Schoolgirl
hair a fragrant nimbus
softness of eyes puzzled,
quivering with shy youth,

the improbable
body
twelve years from
uterus
leans over
stark algebra.

Six Poems from Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts,

Volume 5, Number 1, December 1962
Heroin
eyes taken down to see
Is takin down to sea
Ice taken down to c
Ayes talkin down the sea
insensibility
he lapsed into
unconsciousness
after the groovy
o.d.
oh & after
hed turned blue & wed
started rescue breathing
& shot him
a dropper of brine
the bastard
came to
blowing
a bad riff
so, what with the smeck
& all, we threw him out the
window
*
TAKEOFF
long probe for vein in
heroin takeoff
in the mens room of
the college in the
nerve over the scummed

25

26
tile under the barebulbs
blowing the shot when
the Burns Guard comes,
skinned & high &
strident wailing
coeds thinking
voidal tampons
bust my works, & I left jones down the commode
for the nonce brevis.
paralyzed.
LARSON O.D.S; FOWLER SCARED SHITLESS
theres the automatic
rescue drill performed
in earnest when a friend o.d.s
salt cooked & drawn up in syringe
slapping of blue face
& already counting him dead,
schemes of disposal
obsess us.
the kind of shit that
scares you halfway in.
& coming on too strong.
*
THE HIP LADY PACIFIST IN A LOWER EAST SIDE STOREFRONT
eyes big as broken thyroid
& hands swift pink devices,
the chair could hardly want more
clutching such ass.
trunk of honeyed organ
each cute gut proud,
it was little wonder then,
that just as she was born,
the clocks of the city
all frequented man
& blundered him
dully.
*

27
COCK CITY
this is Cock City
town of the snort & big yen.
bulge & shrink under the phosphors.
Fitzgerald effect of
ego
membranes get warty.
think hive
street & mechanical
wonders of the final
broken motion.
think entropy when
snow & time conspire
think sex
quickball under the stairs
on cement conveyor
belts/ swooping to gritting
come
think war
think noise
think
the yearn of the long/ horns
of angelus
groping thru the fog.

VISION
When the unrelenting morning spoke again of drugs
when the poets slept and the coke conversed
vaguely with itself, using many mouths
i saw us all laced to a crystal
smaller than an asterisk
when pulleys on our tongues
obeyed crisp dicta shaped
like strands of silk
& minisculest facets
owned our breath.
Kif lit a lantern in the brain
that clove existence,
etching archetypal
laughter in the blankness

28
of a thought & we cowered
in our bodies loathing us,
Atomizing intellect &
squirting out fact.

Seven Poems from Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts,

Volume 5, Number 2, December 1962
BABBLE
where is our excuse
when the line deepens
into murkiness
& we delete our
truths from the final
structure?
oh, i could plead nerves.
my good set of works;
busted by a frantic chick
seeking her purse like
a demolition bomb.
but thats no good.
i mean it just wont
hold
any fat solution.
why do I babble
pregnantly
now & again &
fill the gaps
with filled gaps?

I WANT YOU
i want you
under open sky
the sun in your
forehead & spread hair
the grass around your thighs
making no mistakes
of roundness

29
i want you in
water & the air
i want you
as long as there is
ocean
on the same earth
i want the
feel of under you
a planet
rhythmic as
love
giving all quarter
i want you
wherever there is room enough
to lie down.

MUSE DES BEAUX ENFANTS

Posing as sunday school
teacher on the
strength of my ordination*
here we are at the
museum, kids. Note
the locked doors & how
I am nude behind the
medieval armor.
we romped & balled
in tyrannosaurs
sagging jaws.
virgins deflowered
themselves on
foot-long fangs &
manly halberds.
took turns going
down on a stuffed
gorilla,
packed their
pouting snatches
full of roman
coins.
tableaux in class
taken from the

30
classics;
we prayed to priapus &
Ra in the old
sarcophagi &
over mounds of
precolumbian art,
jap swords,
trilobites,
the whole
pretending swarm
of child
soaked the
air with
gooey shrieks
of fuck.
*Fowler is a priest of the Free Catholic Church

CHILD
All-sexed, asexual, piebald & monochrome
heterogeneous true successor of us all.
Of one spirit blessed by
paranoia, consecrated in honey, shattered by rain drops
indomitably still, Of one body racked with
typhus and eaten by ascares, ruled by a fever of
divine gullibility. Of one mind of schizophrenia,
of murder, of fellatio, of poem, johannsen
blocks of intolerance to the nearest minus 10
Guiltless heir of all the stench and
garbage of a billion year sickroom from which
the nurse had fled, luckless creature of
bankrupt charity, exquisite maggot on the
corpse of earth.
You will approach christ to spit in his
tender eye, piss on the mona lisa,
beat your meat at funerals and
die of gluttony with your souls
blood on your soul.

31
Living Child of my idiocy and illusion of
my fanatic skull, with your intellect
infinitely innocent, your body merely
miraculous, and the dumb wonder of
your genitalia scheming Eden.
Baby of every fathers shuddering come
and each mothers skillful being.
Child, Infant,
, spotless of sin and damned
by your nature, My seed, spawn of Khrushchev,
child of calamity, Final tortured zygote in the
last blasted womb.
this that I have hinted is holy
Fruit of our passions and writhing lusts.
The essence of anarchic man,
Stupid, Ranting
Lying, Whining, Fucking, Praying, Dreaming,
Loving.
All these stupendous miracles and
mediocrities are sacred,
And my breath is forfeit to
The rotting excellence
of this innocent IS.

DEMOCRACY!
Conscripts of good will, ours will
be a ferocious philosophy,
ignorant as to science,
rabid for comfort; and
let the rest of the world
croak.
Thats the system. Lets get going!
Rimbaud
Youre depraved, im just perverted:
commuters shot from numbered cannons
at enormous dart boards
spike-wheeled babies darting into walls
of paddles held by parents as a game.
Skydiving techniques employed by the
masses

32
conspiring with ghosts on the radio.
tonites our date to go mad together.
& you can make the world do anything
in a sentence,
if youve got the intent
but the machine outside reeking
of certitude. how it must
feel. squatting. its clattering
rusty tongue
where we finally debark
o polyglot kiddies is at
the circus of your sexual souls
harlequin cocks, eyes tossing
& bloodshot & rheuming noisily
down their sere cheeks.
an orgy of comptometers
tithing us for our own ruin.
clerks & potentates
bureaucracy tolerating human error
only to conserve worshippers
meek noses in the subway rooting news
hands manipulating knees
imaginary titties gone eyebrows
machineguns
spiked knees yearning for the
swoop to your throat.
spikes of decay chains hammered
bladewise frustration
uncle-cock swollen for niece
mouth fulls of kinky cunt hair
eyes empty as
the depths beyond arcturus
nursing a billion
unseen earths.
philosophies cooking
in the glancing
of an odor-speck
from the nostrils hair.
close to hysterics at the truth
of existence
rain on their heads an
affront
motorists blind to the instant
until theyre saddled with

33

their two tons of iron

naked in the road.
*
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION
When we talk on the
telephone, we feel our
loss more heavily.
i stare at the
slits, the box that
sells her voice to
me.
i held the phone
like a live thing, like
part of her. it holds
a sound i love.
yet i hate the
upright coffin, its
pimply walls,
the printed admonitions
lining it, for being
in control
of our feeble
conversation.
there are things
unsayable in it.
as though the
wires were
jealous.
*
THE ROOM. JUNK WITHDRAWAL
Now lets line out agony
1890 furnished room bare
of schmeck, her gone
down the cataract of
abstract force that pours
around us all & makes

these leaps we dont

control
nothing but our attitude
is ours & now my
mental anchor slips
from the muck of
time

Poem copied from a lengthy notebook

of Fowlers, circa fall 1962
p. 114:
you better fuckin ay be
satisfied with what yourre
gettin, jack
youre gonna hafta
pony up
some day
soon than youd like.
for its ouch at the
ankle & pain in the
lung
if you gotta use
morphine you gonna
die young.

The Law & Mr. Real

for Ray Remser in
Hudson County Jail
poetry is the art of
setting language to
music
they quacked

34

back at
the
chiefest
inquisitor,
a senile lad
with ivory eyes
fixed quizzically.
their heads
shaped like
bags of fact;
torted dispassionately
by roving minstrels
of glum lies;
the minds
clarity drowned
in fogs of moment,
over, then, these
drab & sorry
dress of time
presides a majesty
of rubbish:
chimney pots, tin cans,
toilet seats,
prosthetic limbs,
doll heads & broken ingots
oh, the grandeur of it!
the rusting velvet-textured
eyes countersunk
in the cragged &
fatuous fenderfashioned face.
its orders clang briskly
& horrify the throngs
into swift
exhilirations of
suicide
yeah, and on the other
side of this there
smirks the Chaos,
they moaned
& smell
this rose, bud it
s laminated

35

lucite
only one ninety
eight.
so here we are.
Its distressing, to
put it blandly,
to note the total
blot of any
continuity hulking
on the fall of the next
moment.
tongues on the
sly,
the leer expectantly
at tattery gobbets
of condensing
futurity & call it
forever,
eyes have been forgotten
& vision is sublimate
in
the univaco-infantile
Now
we mistake for
everything;
when its merely the
lucidest slice of
the magical mental pie
of time.
we have not been properly
reverenced,
the metagriffin
snorts, eyes afoam
with irony & vindictiveness
(gleamings of golden, trite
organ, form & manner
accidental; brutish)
squatting
haughtily on
the immense
moonstone
of the

36

benjo
floor.
a burly hassock of a
rippled beast,
pleated like a
rollsroyce seat.
& laminated, mister,
looks bettern a real one
wont
never wilt.
one ninety eight per
warranteed,
scientific rose;
where the midline of his
naked nostrils aimed
& groped a void
for scent.
burned!!
hustled for
the pleasant stink &
the olfactory spice-cake
that suspends itself
like gaseous jello
over each nodding
blossom.
(the plea)
with our eyes cracked open
& smeared on the page
we want
just the bare dignity
of someone elses
skull to wield our decibel
of thought.
where it sleeps.
where it hunkers
on the stumps of
rationality.
where it
answers us with
pain.
where we wince:
feeling empathetic

37

38
rise of blood in
the taut bubble
of the scalp.
where we question
each symbol
in the arclights
of the rubber-hosing ear.
the word vised around
our throats
& the craven liver
giving up the ghost
barrage:
flickers of sound
the sought &
acquiescent
spin to
the spring of
intuition
our genitals &
intellects bulging
with
mightiest
surrender

n y december 1962

i must look like what i am,

sitting here; a junky poet, pushing
for his keep, in love, a bit odd,
& quite thoroughly mad.
she looks like how she looks
& there isnt any camera
capable, no known thing analogenous,
nothing quite as infinite
as her young breasts.
late 1962

39
Three poems from Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts
Number 5, Volume 4, Summer of 1963
junky II speedball
the calm grins me.
outside, on the grey street, sounds
assume reality:
grating thrum is truck
( i see its green, old, a probably
spade driving his cigar to work )
toes in my boots itch
i cant laugh anymore
at the tie on my arm
grim against me
bloody silk foul as a bandaid
on the lockerroom floor
the pipes fart i need a shave
but ah the
big FlicK
er
my chair cranked
up to
the
stars
& the long taste of altitude
eating my breath away
*
Statutory Rape (the plea)
I dont want to make excuses
but
it was my nature did it im
incredibly sorry but there
it is.
oh i know you dont havta
tell me..but after her eyes
went all down & inside trailing
bent flowers;
i couldve yes i suppose
if id only..but look;
suppose you was

in my shoes & shed

smiled at you & somehow
courts & doom & the
cops brutal hips cluttering
up the sky & her mouth
around it all
those teeth..so fucking real they
were, clicking
down against the
whole lie
& like i was saying
i dont want to make excuses
& her mouth so real
i could taste it
*
junky
cross the green track
where we often
flaked out &
counted our absences
tears, broken telegraphs:
out of bounds & over
the
what?
what?
i caught you
in your crib
doin those
all kinda
private things.
you wept, you pointed
out my lies in the
junk almanac
you puked all down
your black shirt &
fresh, caustic spew
burning out the nerves
it aint no habit, man, you said,
it aint no need
your pants heavy with sweat &
one day late for your fix

40

41

Four poems from Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts

Number 5, Volume 6, April 1964

are you going to the

perpetual unveiling
this week, mr. fowler;
or will you sit at home again &
watch yourself happen?
is there really anything outside
at all, & if so
, is it worth messin with?
my body is host to a carnival
of actors & the carnate word
shines through my brow so
i am blinding in my own sight. i am become
a hundred forms of light & waveenergy & charged
particles focussed on a point
more intricate than microscopes
can make the whole world.
tuned
in on myself, imitating myself
in a mirror, i have realized my possibilities,
schemed a means of exceeding them;
you dont exist at all!
you noxious phantom!
amphetamine horror!.. . . ..!
i murder you after youve
been ultimately kind enough to make
me strong & arrogant
in the midst
of my afflictions
i hymned thee, ate eclairs
to thee. i opened my veins
to thee, & was constipated
every day. the civilized affliction! the
subjugation of time! the annihilation

42
of matter
I fell asleep. trillions of
cells forgot I exist. i caught them
plotting against me when I woke up
& it took me hours to
get in the cockpit again
moving downward is the same
as moving
upward.
only the sequence
is reversed, & its easy to mistake ones
dying
for ones being born. i have no experience
with these primitive centralized
species, these trillions
of interdependent
entities. i have evolved to amoeba;
to euglena, standing at the apex of the
hourglass of known forms, & await
a permutation to my own universe
where i shall have preceded god.
*
SOUP POEM
How far thru the soup can any man
swim,
before he has to
mount a pea
& rest?
& if he swims all the way
then what?
how long can you tread soup,
(trying to hover in the
brothy atmosphere),
hallucinating fish erect
(ourselves) or birds;
the fish of the air
were slugs to?
but dropping, sinking,

43
down past chunks of our
own meat & sour air
youd have me reach
the same old bowl?
Ill grip
the pea with teeth & tongue
till Everything
spoons me out!

*
PHONE CALL*
19 may 62
midnight
though the mocking wire
slew the greenness of your voice
The vibrant plastic
struck my ear crying
and if only this clay machine
owned me
Next the actual mouth of you
Id have fled in your breath
frail as dandelion.

*EDITORS NOTE: on the surface this poem looks

innocent enough; however, lurking behind is an
amphetamine plot. Reverend Fowlers young
teenage gropefriend had just been menaced &
threatened in the afternoon by the notorious
entrepreneur amphetamine-head Van Krugel who
who approached her with violent sex-lust evil
dope grope freak-Eyes & she was overcome with
terror. Fowler, having given her a midnight
reassurance love call, wrote this poem.
*

MY LAST SHOT OF STUFF

44

my last shot of stuff

stiff cottons purposely left wet for this
final bang weeks later
i hoard it in my blood & my corpuscles
cherish the warmth &
almost groaning ease with which i
am
this moments like an island of sanity in time
awhile stolen to perch upon, perusing
self, past, obligations, tenderness,
i love you, ann;
this much the soothing fingers
in my brain write tho my attitude
now probably frightens you & should me
will when im down
but now... o my ineffably
golden & secure love....
to feel this rush of clarity into
my morass of weeks & dull pain is to feel
a welcome fate.
we can only teach machines what we
already know.
i love you as only a doomed,
defeated man can love... with pity, with fierce
tenacity.
i felt it was safe here to risk this
unveiling i need stuff too badly
i beg you to help me substitute your
metabolic self
my hunger, Ann, Ann; flee on your donkey
ma femme, flee.
i cannot abdicate my words.
i am choking with them.
who cares that now or someday
someone chuckles
over them; pronounces them a
a poultice, a knockwurst of the
mind?
my head is sandpapered inside &
blown thru with dust of Victorian

45
rooms shut up these eighty years.
i no longer recognize my
own memories, theres
the snag, or my visions either.

Poems by Al Fowler, from

typed manuscript circa 1964-65:

Poem for John Wieners

this is a revolt
against bodies
this is a revolt
against appearances
this is a revolt
against time.
miscellaneous fists & eyes &
genitalia strut their stuff
in manifest perversions:
games with obscure & niggling rules
for stakes of emotional erasure,
magnifications of money; the juggle
and bump
of the earth.
hardly anything matters anymore
but my voice but my hands but
my voice
possessed by visions,
i steal traditions
from the night & my light
from the energy that
created me.
i am a soldier monk set out to
quicken; to annoy;
to envelope
the earth in an essential
question no one can avoid
asking;

in swampy groves full of

rattlesnakes &
naked children
i sit & sing.

46

Comfiteer
for Fr. Edward Marshall
without sin, the virtues that are forced on us
would be unbearable.
i wont lie to You. yes
i am a burglar, yes
i use narcotics & no
i wont get married to her
though weve shared the same bed
for a year.
no i dont want
children,
the brats youve plagued
my brain with
give me labor pains
enough.
& yes
& yes
i write checks
backed by nothing but the smile
& the soft voice You gave me
& my clear green eyes.
to stop the pain of Your
birth, Lord. Your birth of which i
am not worthy. but You
entered under my roof so long ago, Lord
without ever asking if it leaked.

Alone in the House

im alone in the house with a frozen roasting chicken
but how in hell can i roast a chicken
with no oven & the light gone mad
& my cat
pissing on the floor?

47
the garbage is beginning to smell
my hands are starting to rebel. nothing
stops anymore. it all rushes by so fast i
cant tell one event from another.
lifes a cosmic soup, unloading through a hatch
on everybodys lap at once!
a tubercle bacillus
snuggling down inside your lungs & killing you
whether you love it or not.
for Christs sake, learn that at least;
life doesnt care a rats ass
who lives it.

Peyote Poem
I.
The way to God is plentiful;
anyway i walk, see, do.
i follow him to where he sneaks away
& hides whenever tmes too much
for him to buy off:
he sits and trembles,
cooks up planets for his fix,
nods out on a skinny arm
& dreams of power, potency.
(his sojourn for those lost years
balling thru Tibet and Africa)
where kif and the dust of the road
were good. Before the loaves
and lepers monopolized his time.
(lifes a chemical process so
boorishly prolonged youd think
that ornaments of meat and bone
had something to do with purpose.)
he sighs
what glop to be remembered for
& his childish face glows again
with a simpering lust.
II.
I ignored my body just so long &

forgot where it ended.

(is that sea/
that river, swamp,
my
rushing humor?)
is this machine my clumsy body?
that kiss my obscene awareness?

III.
lets get basic here!
i forget where it ends,
if it really starts anywhere:
down on the shoal of instant
like a baffled ptarmigan;
plunging my beak
into things
concerning me no longer:
beliefs, possessions,
attitudes;
grotesque indelicate surrender to
pressures of metabolism!
& the will!
i forget where i used to think it
ended and began.
its all me & emptiness again
until another mote of mumbling
sentience breathes it into form.
IV.
it is vast and made of stars
it must be & is not.

late 63-early 64
typed by Ann Leggett

realitys a chance operation;

i wonder if the groundhogs
know that.

48

if you can count at all

(if counting counts)
you can count your
Heisenberg uncertainties.

49

i dont wanna know

what i mean!
i can lurk & dance around the edges of the truth
& snicker.
i am arrogant beyond belief.

A 3-Page Poem from Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts

Number 5, Volume 8, February 1965

man is the discontented beast &

pleasure is only the rhythmic
vibration of things not
necessarily specific.
the whole shebang's no more
than a glandular puppet show.
my body doesnt any more
need me than any of a hundred
other diseases.
any rock
is as sensitive as i am, only
somewhat more resigned.
like these
lame faces with their ideals or their
fifty dollar habits
legislating gods
into being. trying to impose a vibration
on the universe that the universe
will not endure for the universe
is a restless critter also
we wept, we cried out
in a hundred languages,
we shouted every name we could conjure up
into the wind.

50
like prairie dogs,
we built our nests & prayed
& like the prairie
you came; with your gift of sand
to be baked into
our bread as we huddle together
in the raw evening, speaking
of your secret benevolence & of your
thighs that moisten our way
for us.
we hand each other ritual gifts:
burning leaves, words to ward off
the comfort,
& beg you to
return & bless us again;
O impulse!
*
im alone in the house
with a frozen roasting
chicken, & how the
hell can i roast
a chicken
with no oven &
the light gone
mad & my cat
pissing on the floor?
my hands are beginning to rebel; nothing
stops anymore. it all rushes by so fast i
cant distinguish events
from one another. lifes
a cosmic soup unloading
through a hatch on everybodys
lap
at once! all blatant
& obtrusive! a tubercle
bacillus snuggling down inside
your lungs & killing
you whether you
love it or not. for christs sake learn that
at least, already.

51
life doesnt care (a rats ass
at all) who lives it.

A 5-Page Poem from Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts

Number 5, Volume 9, Summer 1965
I.
night. in the orchards &
the hills below
zero.
black & still. not even the moon
has crept out of its cage
& only molecular motion
invisibly silently continues.
but i cant be sure of this on faith
any more that that there is a moon.
that this is really night, & not
the blank at the end of existence.
or that my glandular engine has not
finally failed.
the earth crackles and contracts!
ice expands in the concrete
joints of highway 32.
more work and
taxes for the county or the state:
if the county & the state
still exist.
if i am not made & gone
false in memory.
& if the county
& the state ever were
anything but alphabetic constructs
that pleased me in some past age
for forgotten reasons.
& surely

there is no way to verify my date.

the world is too circumscribed &
logical.
i warn you the universe is nothing
but conjecture.
i warn myself..

52

all i
can be sure of is the cold & the wonder & that
processes occur that link the two in this vile
neuronic machine i inhabit that i dont trust
anyway so what it begs for must be
denied it &
i am master now.
i am sole claimant to the void &
to the questions i will never allow to be answered;
is the sun a memory; a memory
radiating memory; & is heat lost
to my soul forever?
three a.m.
the state police drive by.
either i am
real or
they are & i care
only because i have been taught
to care.
motion without progress
time
without duration.
oh my vulturous
mind devouring God,
who should never
have dared to be alone here
with me.
i survive out of mere viciousness.
II.
the world can afford only
symptomatic
relief.
you can die.
churches &
heroin are no more than garments for essential
desires that have always

forced their way through, in

any of a trillion forms; all
instantly recognizable.
bodies duplicate bodies entering &
leaving each other no matter
what, no matter when, but
you must love without a conscience
in order to be God.

53

III.
its time, its always time
to unwind one of your
selves & monster it.
it is part of the mechanism of art to despise oneself
get it?
otherwise why live real lives?
otherwise why poison & flatter yourselves with
idiocentric tidbits
stuck to nothing more
substantial than a sigh; than a
lonely shudder in the dark when the heats
been turned off & mama-loves done payin
for your junk & no
sweethearts ever
comin back to warm you up
no more.

IV.
your body doesnt any more need you
than any of a hundred other diseases
& any rocks as sensitive as
you are, only somewhat more resigned.
you poor lame faces with your ideals
or your fifty dollar habits trying to legislate
gods into being!
trying to impose
a vibration on the universe
that the universe will not
endure!
but the universe is a

restless critter
also.
V.
you cant live without dying.
got me?
too much brightness might as
well be dark, & you never
can be absolutely
sure.
VI.
so run till youre bludgeoned by the sleep
in your veins
; over the next hill
are slow warm people of
impossible color &
mien.
trading bodies & beliefs like marbles
that clatter in the bag but
are never
seen.
dancing in celebration of the hour
that arrives, that
arrives
never letting up. images.
passions & nourishments all fled away,
as soon as you notice
theyre here.

VII.
this is the last intelligence
of a dying brain
writ in letters of steel on the horizon:
time time time it is
time.
time to shout your final No! into their
faces.

54

your

55

treason is at hand.

VIII.
to be real. to complicate the
intersecting labyrinth of human relationships
till absolutely anything
can happen to anyone any
time.
`

IX.

yes its time now to forget that youve been

frightened & empty.
to acknowledge
your debt to the earth & to the chain
of heat & chemicals connecting you
to an unknown genesis
for which i ask you
to be grateful.
we are open to the sun &
to other forms of life we cannot flee, for
we subsist on them & them on us
& the whole bubbling mass on hydrogen &
bare nuclei.
undifferentiated
particles colliding in the dark,
creating a light that itself is only
energized darkness.

X.
thou shalt not suffer junkies to live.
thou shalt not suffer pawnbrokers or politicians
to live.
sanity demands this

XI.
god is no longer necessary freedom is no longer
necessary even i am

no longer necessary.
existence is obsolete.

56

XII.
i would be alone with the galaxies
& the slow turnings
i would be built of duridium
& fire & the splash of energy
from my appendages
would make the world squirm
in mindless delight.
XIII.
i can get away with anything.
i have license to lie.
if you murder me, it will be for stealing
your souls.

Al sent a letter dated May 9, 1966, with the

return address of South Oak Hospital, Amityville, NY,
including four poems:
A Suicide Note
for james e. sanders
i wouldnt mind quitting
right now;
myself.
but the
air!
the FUCKING air!
my BODY
keeps SUCKING IT
in &
out,
IN &
OUT.......... like it was maybe
worth something.

57
because this corner of the world is damp
& cold
i take orders from my veins
thus cornered in the world
i let hunger
hold the reins
& i believe any lie the sun
tells about itself
the sun who cares
less than i do
who makes reeds & flowers
explode from the earth
& watches me
watch my reflection in the slow water
shiver
& the pyramids slide
grain by grain
into the nile & away.

a letter to a woman that was never sent

for mimi
i think of you,
the joy
of you;
where i enter; where i
leave.
i think of the men
you have known & of your quick mouth
beyond price & of the junk
i need to stop needing you or
junk either.
& i think about
not thinking
anymore.
all i want are the words i need
to say what i need to say.
what i need. to say what i need.

Weather Report
for Mimi
in wintertime,
snow floats in the air
like lost feathers
of a wet &
silent bird,
i love you.
Whether or not there is
thunder,
i love you.
Sparrows whistle & the sky gets deep
at night because i love you & if you
should hear the rain;
remember why.

goddamn it you know weve got

eyes
& cursing what they see wont
bend light into loveliness.
why should i believe in me
when noone else deigns to
see?
consequently you are
less than not at all tangible.
between the sanded
fingers of the mind.
& so also poetry arises
not from need itself,
but needs awareness
& a poem is
a cricket
fiddling its own
mind legs.
(poem 79 in Settevig typescript)

58

59

Message Intercepted on Railway Band CGW Motor 38

Pigs Eye Yard, Pigs Eye, Mississippi River
July 1968
Mayday.

Mayday.
recon
to control
on the ground with all hands.
socked in
by parasympathetic fog.
do you read, group,
do you read?
Recon one to group in clear:
Request medevac.
coordinates unknow.
sense the presence of unprogrammed computers,
disguised in any absolute form of which
out might be conscious
in crumbling tenements
where hallway crappers
are burglarized nitely
or in the rookery by the Rock Island switch
where herons squabble over tasty frogs
do you read group.
do you read?
Need time rap recognition data patterns
Need working definitions absolute
form, absolute
consciousness,
whichever applies
you
to herons:
absolute consciousness requested
in ambling disguise
senses burglarized,
in
control crumbling
unknown party celebrating
Mayday
You read one crumbly control
Senses burglarized
working in disguise
absolute consciousness requested
when part celebrating Mayday

You read recon data to control

absolute consciousness requested
Burglarized

60

(poem 107 in Settevig typescript)

Open Letter for Chickens and the Daze of War

(for Robert Bly)
The trouble (all farts are troublesome) with
all of us in that we have always just arrived
at the formulation of wisdom.
Time is never dead.
Yet nothing is really cyclical. Someone kicks a
jukebox, dead for ten years, and it plays tomorrows
tune.
This is the thrust of what I have to say to you
that for the second or thousandth time youll never
get to read.
You are one of the ones, the only ones who
see me naked though it seems you couldnt have,
Wrapped as I am so carefully, so comfortable in these
clothes of stone and dead intentions
Why am I writing this to you now?
When we met it was during our shared fever
Mimis father had just died, who had detested me,
for his own excellent reasons.
I thought you an estimable hick, for the
sake of the preservation of the comfort of my ignorance
I had ignored you.
I was a private god, and could
judge like that then, I heard you with Bob Creeley
and Ed Sanders. Afterwards, I took Bob home and
we argued for ten drunken hours over everything but
you. Bellowing poems at each other while Mimi tried to sleep
in the next room.
I wrote you a long peroration entitled something like
Apology for offense never taken. How could I have missed you?
Then I read a piece by Carol somewhere about an old lady
in a nursing home she got it all down so perfectly. I worked
nursing homes a while during my long slide, and I know.
Just as I knew when I heard you back then that you knew

61
what the was was about and what it was doing to us.
And tonight I heard you on the tube, felt you kicking open the
long delicious wound that is life again. The pain of it.
To be both the seal and the oil man, conjurer and consumer,
forced to trust anew the cancer I conceive myself. Stay alive
Mr. Bly (as though even God could kill you)
You are a man.

(poem 9 in Settevig typescript)

There is an openness
to things
that always shuts
when studied.
There is always newness
in the stopped motion
of a gull flight.
& when feet
meet water, furrows
are invented on the sea.
There is a song transcending
music in the silence of
your smile.

(poem 80 in Settevig typescript)

In a letter from Al, dated August 29, 1974,

from prison in Stillwater, Minnesota, he enclosed
a poem:

Nursing Home Blues,

annotated

Why do I sit awake all vicious nite

cursing the light I am cursed with,
or go out 4:30 a.m. in a midwestern
January sleet storm & switch boxcars
all day, grudging the time from my work?

62

Dredging my work out of Time itself;

formless as its source;
something imagined
by a (dragon?) in an abstract mood, so to speak.
Like poetry in Romany or High Slavonic
heard on a jukebox in a stockyards bar
some wild Friday nite.
Ever try getting rid
of some demented dinosaur
whose hallucinations slop over
into your personal sensorium?
Ever try to shake a works whore (?)
with a g-shot jones coming down on him
after hes seen you pick up?
or reach up a human cunt & fish out
3 bags of junk
& squirt it through your soul
like so much sacramental hogwash
down the wrong hatch?
Or diaper someones great aunt
& power her buttsy-wuttsy
& prop old uncle Elmer up on his spastic
side & *posey him down?
For a buck & a half
& no overtime, no time to take a shit,
eating gangrenous snot-paste garni
served lukewarm by
a sluggish congenital syphilitic?
Or get cornered in the freight elevator
by three hundred pounds of Norwegian tit
gone mad & get pulled off
by her prehensile puss?

Cracking your spine!

Flashing fit to daze you

63

*Posey belt a belt restraint with alock & key used

to keep lunatics & troublesome dotards where the
management prefers they should remain.
out of your immortal doze
into paralytic orgasm?
* So listen, I said, get hip to your own
lame ass.
but it was too late
Judy had already swallowed the whole set of jacks;
The cake had fallen;
Kelly caught a draw bar in the guts
I caught the clap in Yong Dong Po;
threw a fuck at the third floor charge nurse
good enough to last her a week;
last me forty seven years
while building my own edifice
of fossilized faeces;
to shore up the void.
*the author here paraphrases a twentieth century master, since
suppressed

In a letter from Al, dated December 18, 1974, from

prison in Stillwater, Minnesota, he enclosed a poem:

An Open Letter from Checkers at the Pound!

Ramsey County (Minn.) Jail, 1969

I want to lurk beneath the bedstead of every decent

American, biting his daughters & sons upon conception
& want to bribe the whole marauding nation of
sweaty jigaboos
with Chinese heroin & Soviet gold & napalm recipes
to drag blonde virgins, weeping,

64
out of convent schools
to be publicly brutalized
by bignosed sheenies with warty whangs
& cynical gook slavemasters
with black snake peckers & barb wire balls,
infecting them all with the same insidious
economic & moral disease
of which I am the typical victim.
Like a childs cocker spaniel
so enraptured hydrophobically
he dentally proselytized
his own God
this is fair warning

On December 12, 1974, Al wrote friend and fellow-poet Mary Mayo, who apparently had written to him in Stillwater Prison to send some poetry for a publication.
He replied, sending two poems. One was a version of An Open Letter to America
from Checkers at the Pound, another:
So, to cheerier topics, (or drearier, as the taste depends)
First & last installment of the autobio of a fuckup:
When I was ten I wanted to see mars,
& run a four minute mile,
never quite smiling.
Late on Id walk three thousand miles
just to get laid
by some adolescent snatch.
The point is, right now I wouldnt go two flights up
to see Jesus live & be crucified all over again
not that He wouldnt be great to swap the skinny
with,
but once youve seen it, its been seen.
Or spoken, wept, tried a dry fly,
stretched & nodded out
& why should Truth resurrected,

error confirmed in repetition,

imaginative effort unused
be so wonderful a prospect to
contemplate?

65

Is sanctity so remote & lovely a condition

to imagine I imagine I desired it
from my foggy submolecular vantage?
who could feel anything but pity for the lost?
Like Christ,
like Sade, waking up in his own dreams?
What are the recollected sufferings of Jesus
but a toothache to the nth power?
and whose life has passed without a toothache?
without charley horse or tonsillectomy?
What is the mystery of Venus
after a blowjob/
from Helena Tsaveros
in the cloakroom
in the ninth grade?

Poem for Marilyn Monroe

1962
Marilyn;
Worms feast on your koshered mammaries,
(rendered quiet by lusting goofballs)
who must have been awed
entering that flesh cathedral.
i think of all the men whove beat their meat
in rhythm to your passage on the screen.
& all the dykes whove longed to give you suck
& panty-freaks yearning to flash behind
a snort of your lingerie.
im sorry i didnt get to you
in time when you were Norma-Jean
quivering lonely pigtails
in the orphan junior high
where your pussy squeaked

like a nubile billiard-cue

66

from Poems for Marilyn

anthology, September 1962

Narration for a Home Movie Taken by the Poet

Children seated on
the stoops of a thousand houses, too
shy to call their wares.
open happy men with innocuous
faces. sensitive dark men
with places to go & secrets to keep.
young girls drive graceful
pirouetting cars surrounded by
foam rubber & perfume. chuckling
old hags smoke hashish in
the park, & eat ices flavored
with the blood of exotic
vegetables. nobody here
cares about anyone else
unless asked to. no one
interferes. everytime
one of the beautiful
children gestures
expanders of consciousness
are hawked & barterd or
given away.
bibles, beads, opera glasses,
illuminated legal writs, drugs,
sex withheld, & given, denied &
sublimated. blueprints of public buildings
destroyed in the late war.
theres worlds enough for
all and every. world senough for
few or many. the three organs & the three
hundred choristers
gathered in the square
begin to sing. every christian is
his own christ. if you want
what is happening to happen,

nothing will happen except

what you want. death
here is a condition of static mania. nothing is
depressed here but buttons,
electrical buttons
electively depressed by
depressed people who dont
want anything to
happen at all & so take their
leave of us, turning into truncated
coruscating bubbles of artificial
light & we cough on the
puff of ionized meat & sadness
in the air & we laugh.
the moon
is as accessible as the latrine,
but perhaps it would be better
not to visit.
the land is as soft as the
warm wind. toucans lead the
travelers at night with lanterns
in their claws, & croak their way
home through the fog. there is
nothing safe here, nothing
dangerous
there only is.

67

1964, from Despair, An Anthology to

Come Down by

watching the lads conjugate thru

a keyhole; grimwald
grew restless.
what shall i do
to relieve my anguished
instrument?
he cried.
& the topmost boy exuded
an erotic fart & shrieked

how arrhythmic can you get

pops?
i mean pee-you, charlie, grunted
the other boy,
thinking the first boy
meant him. put some water on that
please, i mean
no one could hump
in a funk like that
not you, aristotle
i was talkin to
this old truck whipped a pound
on me fer a peek
put some water on it anyway,
charlie, im subject
to suffocate
down here
but only grimwalds pants
got wet.
when the young ladies came,
he had went.

68

from Bugger, an Anthology, 1964

Al Fowler
Requiescat in Pace
Rest in Peace