It was the Bomb
Shoah
Khurbn

it was Void
spirit cry
crisis
disconnect
no subject but blank
unrelenting busted time
no future
suburb expands into past

present nuclear (get it) family
droids Pavlov minutiae
it was Jews w/ blues
reds nulled & jolted
Ethel & Julius brain smoke
pyres of shoes & eyeglasses
weeping black G.I.s open Belsen gates
things are going to look different when
you get outside
understand that beforehand
this book doesn't kid you
& don't forget the third effect
radioactivity the power to
shoot off invisible atomic rays
even if the all clear's sounded
don't rush to leave the safe place
Geiger counts light leaks from
ash hand reaches up for your eyes
yes
the atomic bomb is a terrible weapon
BUT
not as terrible as most of us believe

Tillich tells us "it's the destiny of historical
man to be annihilated not by a cosmic event but
by the tensions of his own being & history"¹

EIGHT SIMPLE AIR RAID RULES

ALWAYS shut the windows and doors.
ALWAYS seek shelter.
ALWAYS drop flat on your stomach.
ALWAYS follow instructions.
NEVER look up.
NEVER rush outside after a bombing.
NEVER take chances with food or water.
NEVER start rumors. ²

Furthermore, acquaintance with addicts proves
that "hypes" Like being "hypes." They enjoy
being a "hype" as hypochondriac enjoys being
a hypochondriac. They will argue that liquor
affects people worse than heroin, that drunks
are often noisy and argumentative, while all a
"hype" wants is to be left alone. They dislike
the social scorn, the inconvenience of having to
hide their addiction, but they enjoy the effect of
the drug which keeps them from facing reality.
     The juice of the poppy wrecks the body and

warps the spirit. The life the addict is a
living death

futureless clockface pie-chart
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
black out unseen Eternity permutants
Hiroshima Maidens walk through Saturday
Review

bow shuffle hide mouths to Cousins
Fantastic Brain Destroyers
"The testimony of a victim will
clinch the case against them
whey they're brought to trial!"
"The house I live in
a plot of earth a street
the grocer and the butcher
and the people that I meet
the children in the playground
the faces that I see
all races all religions
that's America to me"
sings Sinatra in RKO
backlot tenement
"A Kansas farmer
a Brooklyn sailor
an Irish policeman
a Jewish tailor"
utopic plastic lanyard
untidy thongs
khaki G.I. nation hoods
& zootsuit jitterbug gold chains
ceiling dancers starlight all night
razor & bullet flash
rationed gas & glamour snoods
riverters pitch in & chance
true romance of misaligned
diaphragm or ancient Trojan
pinhole burst in backpocket wallet
dark backwards grope to heat
beneath cashmerre silk rayon buckles
body collage shields stations of
crossing over into her nuclear
August 13th rain of ruin one
bomb 20,000 TNT tons
evaporate mouth tongue ocean fun
red prong pecker form fill ache
push back Levis we sneak around
parents seek lava silk slippery fingertips
leaks out nylon crotch smear rhythm 'n blues
Ruth Brown a humpty bumpty Louis
Jordan T-Bone Walker lindy boogie
chickery chala chala
"some of my best friends are Jews"
says Leni booted out of
von Ribbentrop's hill villa
while Dachau's commandant
shots himself in the heart &
lives to blow his brains out

"He was a nice man really"
maid Gertrude tells of ex-boss Hitler
"of course he was mad"
"Claghorn's the name
Senator Claghor that is
ah'm from Dixie
ah represent the South son"
checkkala romey in a bananika
ill at ease the little man said
some bread sir if you please
the waiter's voice roared down the hall
you gets no bread with
ONE MEAT BALL!
sour kraut SS leather movie swine
skull pinups & power pimps
smash up Dana Andrew's defiant mug
as Great Artiste dumps #2 Bomb on
second-choice Nagasaki at precisely
9:08 MacArthur steps forward
w/handful of fountainpens
V-w rocket wiz our guy on the range
Werner Von Braun
cannibals all on the Missouri
business as usual
population control & pesticides
Long Island kids grope out of
DDT low flying cloud blanket
powder turns into oil slick
evaporates into skin pores
German doctors watch
84 women react to gas
"at first I thought it was
simple lockjaw
a swelling in the back of the throat
light hemorrhages under skin
fever & high pulse rate
rapid consumption of white
blood corpuscles internal
bleeding intestinal track"
"stick-legged starved bodies of
European children never smiled"
"Census Bureau reports last week
nearly twice as many U.S. citizens
died of cancer during 1942-1944
as were killed by enemy action in
World War II" "I at present
speak less frequently
I have not been sleeping
I solemnly promise the Almighty
the hour will strike when victory comes
to the Greater German Reich"
"If it's possible to outlaw the Bomb
why not go the whole step &
outlaw war?"
"Two men who don't trust each other
face each other in a locked room
each points a loaded machine gun at the other

one gun's a later model
no difference
who shoots first wins"
Picasso admired G.I. K-rations
& Velvet tobacco rolled up &
puffed by Stuart Little at
Ernie Pyle's funeral
"Yes, they're back"
Til The End of Time
noisiest New Year's Eve
bars open to dawn
stiff white shirt front
back again for chicks to
write lipstick phone numbers
General Patton
fights for life w/ broken neck
auto accident en route to
kraut field pheasant shoot
blood & guts
are we in time on time
or just out of it
college of cardinals on parade
numero uno red hat Archbishop
Francis Joseph Spellman of NY
Ray Milland lost weekend Anglo
drunk Yank scribe marquis
fame attains Hazel Scott who
backbeats Bach into boogie woogie
"Mrs. Truman is the last lady"
snaps Adam Clayton Powell Jr
contra DAR denies Marian Anderson
as UAW Walter Reuther versus GM
"They have taken world millions
they never toiled to earn
w/out our brain & muscle
we break their haughty power
gain our freedom
when we learn
the union makes us strong"
"Kelly dances beautifully
& Sinatra sings the roof off"
Churchill Truman Stalin
gray trigger Potsdam hairs
crowd crushed Benito hangs
upside down by his boots
Hitler shoots a tunnel through his lobes
FDR's brain hemorrhages implodes
Branch The Brain Rickey
signs Jack Roosevelt Robinson
"unlike white players
he can't fford a day off"
b-25 hits Empire State
78th & 79th floors
13 killed
UN Charter ratified

Benchley's empty Algonquin chair
shoe sugar butter meat tire
rationing ends the year future end
Kilroy was here
reads the writing on walls
I, The Jury Under The Volcano
A-Bomb tests at Bikini Atoll 5
color Kodachrome National Geographic
blue sky fed aching crisp bright
nuclear white fleece spine disc clouds
upward into Amanita dome
page after page of eternity's beauty
Vive La France cries Pierre Laval
lasts only a few seconds whereas
fascism is eternal firing squad
day & night can't replace the millions
shovel squads dig extra graves for
100,000 Berliners expected to die
of hunger cold or suicide
Hirohito wipes tears w/ white gloves
Vice Admiral Onishi's memo to ghost
Kamikaze corps "souls who fell
as human bullets" Chiang Kai-shek
toasts Mao humble selves
enormous hate "one heart
one soul one mind one goal"
black caped FDR at Yalta
death's vowel point over eyebrow
how the great man's shurnk into
a cigarette holder
at first nobody believed he died
at Warm Springs it must be a mistake
shuffle ripple U.S. flag on
Iwo Jima Mt. Suribachi
"take tow" shouts Joe Rosenthal
4-F bad eyes Speed Graphic
iconographer Leo & Paul
put Monthly Review together
on kitchen table
will the world be able to recover now
that Taft-Hartley's here & A.
Philip Randolph's been everywhere
while racism slices The House I Live In
into frozen Birdseye segregated trays
pavement shadow stains remain
Cardinal Spellman's round face red hat
wire-rim bifocals pearly pink cherry skin
O Christ
your sheist shmeer
on hot Hiroshima cement
bop sck hop doo wop
hucksters concoct
unavoidable Void
ENIAC cards in
stacke steel trays in
room after room
DDT cashmere cloud walls
33 year old best-seller suicide
Ross Lockridge Jr. Raintree's brain
& gin plastered Lowry in Mexico
when T. S. gets Nobel Polaroid
in 1948 Baruch "we're in the midst of
a cold war getting warmer"
"I was well liked" Willy tells Milly
who never knew EZ who rang
38th Parallel Inchon MacArthur
62,000 called up for active duty
Diatnetics via Campbell's Astounding
minimum wage 75¢ an hour
color TV burn all Reds
kids wear dog tags on metal chains

Henry Wallace orates fractured Yiddish
to Brooklyn solidarity huzzahs
weekly rhythm & blues hit charts
tracked to SAC basement wall
Louis Jordan T-Bone Walker
ah everyone's apart together
Burn All Reds
No Mercy For Spies

Rosenberg Traitors Must Die
orthodoxy of conspicuous
fast car guy camaraderies
terrycloth seatcovers
mud flaps hot rods to hell
dragstrip baby boom
everyone's pregnant
Military-Industrial Complex
spends arms production
aircraft electronic AFL CIO
merger labor into manage-
ment's chummy nextdoor
on the way up to out
mainland Barrio mambo
great South Side migration
black America
2200 new arrivals every week
crowded slum blues clubs
storefront church sluts & dope
gangs bloods cops men fight
fire women nurse teams
gals drive cars cats & chicks on
Geiger crews street clean childcare
air-raid warden social work
Levitt ticky tacky white blue
collared workers worry about robots
racial mix TV's Jim Anderson
calm cool collected
not Molly garlic armpits Goldberg
not Reilly hairball lunchpail
not life w/ Swede immigrant Mom
not Chayevsky's ghetto pastorals
not E. C. Menace Vault of Horror
Strange Science Mysterious Adventures

not Mad in the presence of comicbooks
they behave as if drugged

dear Doc Wertham Chuck Berry
Johnny B. Goode Jim Dandy Crow
reveal to white masses Negro qualities
which go beyond mere ability to
laugh & sing & dance & make music

Langston writes to gangster nation
Montgomery 13 month boycott
there comes a time when people get tired
tones MLK
history books will have to pause & say
there live a great people
a black people
injecting new meaning & dignity

into civilizations veins
inner city junk bebop & beyond

jones go stone cold dead in the marketplace
deep sleep dreamless nihil a-go-go
I intensely believe in the common people
first of all the workers
guardians of their own destiny

creators of their own futures
Dreiser writes the CPUSA
teenage frenzy mind-less dance
survive system in white bucks
Angora sock hoop perfect silhouette
hoop crinolines tight leather belt
white sneakers princess-line dresses
black flats sometimes saddle shoes
what would Ethel or molly know
when you can't stay or have to vanish into
gaudy frozen food frieze or burn away
in Frankenstein fire of fried nerves
vegetalized wives dance lindy
lobotomy burns away an real me
reality throws fetus downstairs
or die in car crash or trash
draft terrorized guys agonize on
drugstore rubbers loose nights
of Trojan warfare while Lenny's desperate
Mr. Right begs the Little Lady
to "just touch it/touch it once"
Hubbard's Axiom:
SURVIVE!
dynamic principle of existence
whose reward of survival activity
is pleasure

ENIAC developed in `46
first digital computer
18,000 vacuum tubes
used 140,000 watts
wait for screen light
breaks apart into bodies
inside a diamond or hairline fracture
jawbone in the ring or contemplate
test-pattern being there fact
midnight snow fall
dark prevail primal amazement
durable pixel hearth
the fix is faced as fact
stare's given vanishment
isn't banished
it's immersed in forget
insecure fast forward arc
electric chair Eisenhower's
a conscious & dedicated agent

of the Communist conspiracy

.. largest single body of Reds in
America are the Protestant clergy
writes Welch to Birchers everywhere
IRS a commie plot grand design to
reduce Americans into a state
w/out slightest clue of who
or what to believe
Billy James Hargis
Christian Crusader
anti-com Minuteman
troops train in Baja
off to fight Red Chinese
Robert DePugh trumps
bivouac w. machine guns
recoil-less rifles grenades mortars
Loyal Order of Mountain Men
Rangers Illinois Security Force
teen in helmet squints through rocket
launcher scope Dan Smoot reports
The Founding Fathers knew
& Jefferson said
Democracy's the most evil
government possible

"The CP fraud its stated objectives
include improving socioeconomic lot
establish world brotherhood
fight against social injustice
racial inequality & fight Fascism"
Clarabell the clown in Hell dodges
Jerry Lee's great balls of fire
hair tendrils uprise benny manic rage
arrogant confident NRA marksman
cluck how sports were monumentally white
other than boxing's hope that black would get
smashed out of the picture Little Richard
squeals & screams have you no sense of
decency?

asks Welch & Schine shows doctored photo
Cohn murmurs threatens to wreck
the Army splat smear against windscreen
smashed summer bugs blot polka dot pus
in rush to die young at 56 Justice
Douglas rules Segregations's un-
constitutional Oppenheimer's
security clearance denied
fundamental defects in character
color TV advancing where the heart parts
out the hope thing telos zing out
fibrillated NO-Doz zonk speed through
night's grand finale inside another slick car
down conveniently empty freeway
highway into another city rest stop
25 foot neon aura chorus girl
red blue green white blink blink
Hotel Sahara sleep away day
Mau Maus Miltown martinis
& Vietnam names the 60s Chou En-Lai
flower wreathed by Nehru at Rangoon
U.K. splits from Suez topples Naguib
Ho Chi Minh Bien Phu Nasser

Jabes flees to Paris where Juif
has no home again
nation states war each border
each brother engaged in managed rage
silent or noisy violent backroom
sclerotic erotic fuck feast
jam all holes w/ worn-out pecker dildo
elite meat Jackie Gleason Loretta
Young Red Skelton Herbert Philbrick
I Led Three Lives fink inside
Richard Carlson mask Martha Raye
Arthur Godfrey fires LaRosa
for lack of humility disability
Billy Graham converts 34,586 in London
electron microscope enlarges
200,000 x deep into uncertainty
atoms smashed into energy beads
throne thorns crown Disney's four
`54 Oscars™ & it's curtains for
O'Neill as Marilyn marries
DiMaggio where to go
back from 7 convent months
Haver marries MacMurray
Shaver Mystery moves Amazing
to Fate Bixby's It's A Good Life
we work for a ghostwriting agency
on Sunset UFOs border the hills above
Orfeo Angelucci meets spacemen Lyra & Orion
at Greyhound terminal ah Orphee
really Neptune of the New
eternal youth eternal spring
eternal day

"Americans feel they are the most
insecure people on earth . .
much more than their just share of
the world's goods . .
the business of America is business"
Urantia states in `55
It's a great blunder to humanize God
except in the concept of the indwelling
Thought Aduster . .
adjutant spirits are the sevenfold mind
bestowal of a local universe of Nebadon

"Only one person in all humanity of whom
God has one picture & that is
His Own Mother . .
Most of us are a minus sign . .
Mary is an equal sign" writes Bishop
Fulton J. Sheen TV's first evangelist
Before taking Himself a human nature
he consulted with
the Woman to ask her
if she would give Him
a man
"Once god is dead & man's deified

[he] is even more alone & estranged form
himself
. . homo hominis deus" saith Vahanian
your earth would've been
a garden of joy . .of everlasting desire
to serve . . but lack of understanding
destroyed the harmony of being on Earth
. . he lives as a lost soul

saith another master to Adamski
a demoralized country
neither rebuilds nor recovers . .
social institutions disappear
skills are lost
knowledge recedes &
the pull of a dark age descends on
increasingly ignorant & suspicious people
unable to cope w/ a hostile environment
. . created by a nuclear disaster

.

1 "The Power of Self Destruction" by Paul Tillich in God and the H-Bomb, edited by Donald Keys. New York: Bernard Geiss Associates, 1961. Page 24.

2 How To Survive an Atomic Bomb by Richard Gerstell. New York: Bantam Books, 1950. Pages 138-139.

3 The Inside Story of Narcotics by Jim Vaus. Grand Rabpids. Zondenvan Publications. 2nd Printing, 1953. Page 39.