by Jack Kerouac
with Lucien & Allen
& Allied Angels
In the Vast Manhattan
Fish—
O America!
Songs!
Poems!
Altos! Tenors!
Blow!
(Poet is Dead)
THUNDER
Thunder makes a booming
noise like windows
Being hysterically quietly
closed—
So Papa fell down the stairs
of time
In spite of holy water
And all yr mixed drinks
in
Eternity
EMILY DICKINSON
Ere so sober Emily
Did New England sow
With brooms of activity
I’d the tree-rock spoken to.
But it only said to me
“This sleet’s crack
You hear cracking my hide
Is the voice of olden poets
Not far from rocks of here
Did their olden eyes
On nature bestow blue
—” I said
“Ah Oh How So Sad.”
I said—“And graves?”
And I said “Darling
Supposing it should
To nature
Suddenly occur
To make unending poets
Unendingly Blow”
Nature Said: “Mean,
I dont know what you
Mean”—
“Ah Nature, Ah Rock,”
I cried, “Nobody’s Bone
Has so suffused been,
No burden of boredom
Greater
No love colder
No love life less
No grave nearer
Always
Than Ye Bard”
ROSE
“Ah Rose,” I cried,
“Shine in the Phosphorescent
Night.”
BUG
And to the little bug which am myself
I said
“Bug, lip, tip, tit of time,
Try, take, take, flake, fly,
Love is passing yr. cheekbones
On the phosphorescent transparent
wing
Of Kafka’s cheese consuming
Metamorphosed Bug”
HORROR
So then I saw horror,
And I cried,
“Horrer, leave me er lone.”
Horrer-horror laid me bone
By bone in a bag of dirt,
I was broiled in the oven
Of heaven in the silver foil
Of Devil Jesus God
Which is Yr Holy Trinity
SMILES
Smiles pull flesh from cheek
Over pearls of bone
And make the watcher see
The quake of cream
In eyes of stone
ON TEARS
Tears is the break of my brow,
The moony tempestuous
sitting down
In dark railyards
When to see my mother’s face
Recalling from the waking vision
I wept to understand
The trap mortality
And personal blood of earth
Which saw me in—
Father father
Why hast thou forsaken me?
Mortality & unpleasure
Roam this city—
Unhappiness my middle name
I want to be saved,—
Sunk—can’t be
Won’t be
Never was made to—
So retch!
WHEN OLD
When I began to grow old
And could feel my left arm
numben
And brain resisted hope,
Will sat sleeping
Energy thubbd exhausted
in my eye
And love fled me—
When the worst news
Was brought to me
And I exulted to be alone
Go die
I had a vision of
the saint
Misunderstood & too tired
to explain why
And sweet intentioned
in another day—
Even Stanley Gould’ll
go to heaven
BOP
Sweet little dop a la pee—
Bit bit piano tip
tinkle plips
And smash prop brushes
In the little numb moment
um
I KNOW
I know that I cannot write
verse
But this is my beercan short
line
Book so bear with me
invisible
Reader and let me goof
even
When I’m sick & have no
ideas
GOD
Sitting over our meanings
Egomaniac God,
Lonely slick & rain glint
Also uses irritating us
In the Real.
HOPES
Poetry doesnt know:
The air conditioner
Not in use in winter
Is like my hopes—
Half in, half out,
Green on a whitewall,
S’only good to cast
A long shadow
In the bleak street light
TREE
But a tree has
a living suffering shape
Is spread in half
by 2 limbed fate
Rises from gray rain
pavements
To traffic in the bleak
brown air
Of cities radar television
nameless dumb &
numb mis connicumb
Throwing twigs the
color of ink
To white souled
heaven, with
A reality of its own uses
TENORMAN
Sweet sad young tenor
Horn slumped around neck
Bearded full of junk
Slouches waiting
For Apocalypse,
Listens to the new
Negro raw trumpet kid
Tell him the wooden news;
And the beat of the bass
The bass—drives in
Drummer drops a bomb
Piano tinkle tackles
Sweet tenor lifting
All American sorrows
Raises mouthpiece to mouth
And blows to finger
The iron sounds
BOWERY BLUES
For I
Prophesy
That the night
Will be bright
With the gold
Of old
In the inn
Within.
Cooper Union Cafeteria—late cold March afternoon, the street (Third Avenue) is cobbled, cold, desolate with trolley tracks—Some man on the corner is waving his hand down No-ing somebody emphatically and out of sight behind a black and white pillar, cold clowns in the moment horror of the world—A Porto Rican kid with a green stick, stooping to bat the sidewalk but changing his mind and halting on—Two new small trucks parked—The withery grey rose stone bu
ilding across the street with its rime heights in the quiet winter sky, inside are quiet workers by neon entablatures practicing fanning lessons with the murderous Marbo—A yakking blonde with awful wide smile is makking her mouth lip talk to an old Bodhisattva papa on the sidewalk, the tense quickness of her hard working words—Meanwhile a funny bum with no sense trys to panhandle them and is waved away stumbling, he doesnt care about society women embarrassed with paper bags on sidewalks—Unutterably sad the broken winter shattered face of a man passing in the bleak ripple —Followed by a Russian boxer with an expression of Baltic lostness, something grim and Slavic and so helplessly beyond my conditional ken or ability to evaluate and believe that I shudder as at the touch of cold stone to think of him, the sickened old awfulness of it like slats of wood wall in an old brewery truck
Shin Mc Ontario with
no money, no bets, no
health, pauls on by
pawing his inside coat
no hope of ever
seeing Miami again
since he lost his pickles
on Orchard Street
and his father
Stuhtelfedehred
him to hospitals
Of gray
bleak
bone
drying
in the moon
that mortifies his coat
and words sing
what mind
brings
Bleeding bloody seamen
Of Indian England
Battering in coats
Of Third Ave noo
With no sense and their brows
Streaked with wine sop
Blood of ogligit
Sad adventurers
Far from the pipe
Of Liverpool
The bean of bone
Bottle Liffey brown
Far hung unseen
Top tippers
Of o cean wave.
God bless & sing for them
As I can not
*
Cooper Union Blues,
The Musak is too Sod.
The gayety of grave
Candidates makes
My gut weep
And my brains
Are awash
Down the side of the
blue orange table
As little sneery snirfling
Porto Rican hero
Ba t ts by booming
His coat pocket
Fisting to the Vicinity
Where Mortuary
Waits for bait.
(What kind of service
Do broken barrels give?)
O have pity
Bodhisattva
Of Intellectual
Ra diance!
Save the world from her eyebrows
Of beautiful illusion
Hope, O hope,
O Nope, O pope
_____
Crowded coat ers
In a front seat
Car, gray & grim,
Push on thru
To the basketball
*
Various absurd parades—
The strict in tact
Intent man with
Broken back
Balling his suitcase
Down from Washington
Building in the night
Passing little scaggly
Childreyn with Ma’s
Of mopey hope.
—
Too sad, too sad
The well kept
Clean cut
Ferret man.
*
And the old blue Irishman
With untenable dignity
Beer bellying home
To drowsy dowdy TV
Suppers of gravy
And bile—
Wearing old new coats
Meant to be smooth on youths
Wrinkled on his barrel
Like sea wind
Infatuating sea eyes
To thinkin
Ripples & old age
Are real.
*
Poor young husbandry
With coat of tan
Digging change in palms
For bleaker coffees
Than afternoon gloom
Where work of stone
Was endowed
With tired hope.
Hope O hope
Cooper Union Hope
O Bowery of Hopes!
O absence!
O blittering real
Non staring redfaced
Wild reality!
Hiding in the night
Like my dead father
I see the crystal
Shavings shifting
Out of sight
Dropping pigeons of light
To the Turd World
Enought, sad ones—
False petals
Of pure lotus
In drugstore windows
Where cups of O
Are smoked
Paddy Mc Gilligan
Muttering in the street
Just hit town
From Calci bleak
Ole Mop Polock Pat
Angry as a cat
About to stumble
Into the movie
Of the night
Through which he sees
M oo da lands
Un seen
Like waking in the night
To transcendental Milk
In the room
—
Sad Jewish respectable
rag men with trucks
And watchers
Shaking cloth
Into the gutter
Saying I dunno, no, no,
As gray green hat
Sits on their heads
Protecting them
From Infinity above
Which shines with white
Wide & brown black clouds
As Liberty Sun
Honks over the Sea
Sending Ships
From inner sea
Free
To de rool york
Pock Town of Part
Shelf High Hawk
Man Dung Town.
Rinkidink Charley is Crazy.
*
Ugly pig
Burping
In the sidewalk
As surrealistic
Typewriters
Swim exploding by
And bigger marines
Lizard thru the side
Of the gloom
Like water
For this
is the Sea
Of
Reality.
*
The story of man
Makes me sick
Inside, outside,
I dont know why
Something so conditional
And all talk
Should hurt me so.
I am hurt
I am scared
I want to live
I want to die
I dont know
Where to turn
In the Void
And when
To cut
Out
—
For no Church told me
No Guru holds me
No advice
Just stone
Of New Yo
rk
And on the cafeteria
We hear
The saxophone
Of dead Ruby
Died of Shot
In Thirty Two,
Sounding like old times
And de bombed
Empty decapitated
Murder by the clock.
And I see Shadows
Dancing into Doom
In love, holding
Tight the lovely asses
Of the little girls
In love with sex
Showing themselves
In white undergarments
At elevated windows
Hoping for the Worst.
I cant take it
Anymore
If I cant hold
My little behind
To me in my room
Then it’s goodbye
Sangsara
For me
Besides
Girls arent as good
As they look
And Samadhi
Is better
Than you think
When it stars in
Hitting your head
In with Buzz
Of glittergold
Heaven’s Angels
Wailing
Saying
We ve been waiting for you
Since Morning, Jack
—Why were you so long
Dallying in the sooty room?
This Transcendental Brilliance
Is the better part
(Of Nothingness
I sing)
Okay.
Quit.
Mad.
Stop.
____
MACDOUGAL STREET BLUES
IN THE FORM OF 3 CANTOS
*
CANTO UNO
The goofy foolish
human parade
Passing on Sunday
art streets
Of Greenwich Village
Pitiful drawings of
images on an
iron fence
ranged there
by selfbelieving
artists
with no hair
and black berets
showing green seas
eating at rock
and Pleiades
of Time
Pestiferating at moon squid
Salt flat tip fly toe
tat sand traps
With cigar smoking interesteds
puffing at the
stroll
I mean sincerely
naive sailors buying prints
Women with red banjos
On their handbags
And arts handicrafty
Slow shuffling
art-ers of Washington Sq
Passing in what they think
Is a happy June afternoon
Good God the Sorrow
They dont even listen to me when
I try to tell them they will die
They say “Of course I know