Book of Blues

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Book of Blues Page 9

by Jack Kerouac

Looked & fooled in the mirror

  Went out, I hocked those two

  41ST CHORUS

  XI

  Next day like a damn fool

  go out to the same store

  but I got a newspaper

  instead of a suitbox

  thought I’d try

  a new routine

  Two guys kinda watchin me

  I went in wrapped myself up

  two suits

  went in the elevator

  bottom gentleman

  tapped me on the arm

  ‘Will you come with me

  please?’

  And the County Jail they ate

  breakfast and got oatmeal

  with one spoonful of molasses,

  for lunch stew, mostly bones,

  Graveyard Stew, and for supper

  dinner at night

  Beans—and you couldnt smoke

  42ND CHORUS

  Kayo Mullins is always yelling

  and stealing old men’s shoes

  Moon comes home drunk, kerplunk,

  Somebody hit him with a pisspot

  Major Hoople’s always harrumfing

  Egad kaff kaff all that

  Showing little kids fly kites right

  And breaking windows of fame

  Blemish me Lil Abner is gone

  His brother is okay, Daisy Mae

  and the Wolf-Gal

  Ah who cares?

  Subjects make me sick

  all I want is C’est Foi

  Hope one time

  bullshit in the tree

  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

  I’ve had enough of foolin me

  And making silly imagery

  Harrumph me katt

  I think I’ll take off

  For Cat and fish

  43RD CHORUS

  Well & well well, so that’s

  The ancient fainter, the painter

  Who tied up blue balloons

  —Globas azul—and threw

  Them asunder in the thunder

  Of the ul—Ur—Obi—Ob-

  Fuscate me no more travails,

  Pardy hard, this rock mine

  We’re workin’ll yield up diamond

  hard

  And then we’ll cut thru conceptions

  And come with answer pard

  And what twill it be, sorry pard,

  Aint never no mystery

  Was imparted to me

  Lessn you wanta try Roy McGoon

  Who learned it in Innisfree

  Or old Yow O Yeats, Blake,

  We havent got the diamond tho

  That freed Dipankara Buddha

  In the Palaeolithic morning

  And made him make faces

  In Samapattis at me

  Let’s free

  44TH CHORUS

  High Cascades or Mexico—

  headaches

  Travel everywhere

  Forms and costumes and noses

  All this changing literature

  Cyrano de Bergerac, King

  of the French underworld

  King for a day, Henry V,

  Falstaff his father, Henry IV,

  Warlike stools frowning in

  ‘We have no more use

  For your caisson iron,

  It’s too fat

  and the water too vile,

  I’ll vouch for the master

  but water your while

  had better be bile

  to judge from the green

  of the innocent liquid’

  Reading, naught, words, styles

  The only thing matter is otay

  45TH CHORUS

  English Literature

  a School of Writing

  French Literature

  was closed off

  How tight the lips of Zola the

  Master

  Wont tell how he grips his pen

  To consorts of learners

  English, Old Shakespeare gathered

  bout him minor figures

  like Ben Jonson

  Maurie O’Tay

  Henry Fenelon

  And Molly O’Day

  Irish Literature—that was

  where the brabac originated

  from

  Wood cracking in the sea

  46TH CHORUS

  And what is God?

  The unspeakable, the untellable,

  —

  Rejoice in the Lamb, sang

  Christopher Smart, who

  drives me crazy, because

  he’s so smart, and I’m

  so smart, and both of us

  are crazy

  No,—what is God?

  The impossible, the impeachable

  Unimpeachable Prezi-dent

  of the Pepsodent Universe

  but with no body & no brain

  no business and no tie

  no candle and no high

  no wise and no smart guy

  no nothing, no no nothing,

  no anything, no-word, yes-word,

  everything, anything, God,

  the guy that aint a guy,

  the thing that cant be

  and can

  and is

  and isnt

  47TH CHORUS

  Beverly Dickinson, wasnt it,

  the distraught perfect poetess

  who lived in New Hampshire

  and wrote about roots & roses

  Sweet old Beverly I remember her well

  and her attic was fragrant,

  her Attican divine

  her storm bird

  her fence story

  her bee inside

  her butterfly

  her broom

  her Majesty

  the Queen

  Said, “Emily Dickinson is as great

  as Shakespeare sometimes,”

  said T. S. Eliot’s editor

  Robert Giroux, swell fellow—

  Her Attic divine, her antic,

  —her

  Sang in the blue hill

  her larks and mimes

  And died all a silent

  in her prophecy tomb

  48TH CHORUS

  Dans son tombeau

  Elle a gagnée

  Toutes les lignes noires

  D’Eternité

  Que’ s’ trouve dans la terre

  Quand qu’l mouille dans l’Hiver

  Salonge!—Mompress!

  Traboune!—Partance!

  Elle a trouvée dejas

  L’ange d’Archanciel

  Couchez dans la mer

  D’été d’nuée

  Aye, oui, mes Anges toutes Francais

  Mes tours d’ircanciel

  Ma miel, mon or,

  Mes ames deshonorées,

  Mes troublages, mes lignes,

  Mon vin sur la table

  Ou sur le plancher

  49TH CHORUS

  Book of Dreams

  (Written in dream language)

  Old Hosapho we wont let up

  And hear me sing the

  hm—Ole Hosapho

  he wont let me record

  me dream language

  Ooogh! he upped & come back

  Ole Hosapho

  But now he’s down’s

  Gone down boy again

  Hay Hosapho, say sumpt
in!

  Hoy Hosapho, Roil!

  Nope Hosapho stay lead down

  —A mani a Gloria—

  Tinkle tinkle laughter

  Dingle little pretties

  everything’s happening everywhere

  50TH CHORUS

  My real choice was to go

  to Princeton—I wanted

  to be orange and black

  on the football field

  and orange Varsity letters

  on black wool jackets

  with buttons, and elm trees

  and Sunday afternoon

  the swish of the snow

  and Einstein in his yard

  and All’s Well with

  the Emily Dickinson world

  And drive to New Hope

  for a drink

  or lobster

  And take the sad train

  on the platform of night

  And ride into riot New York

  On a Saturday Night

  To go see Count Basie

  Baying at the Lincoln

  With Lester Otay Young

  On Tenor Saxophone

  51ST CHORUS

  Boy, sa den du coeur, sa, le bon

  vin—Mama, c’est’l’port

  si fort, le vin divin—

  Aye, oui, mais écoute—dans

  les milieus de les nuits,

  tu wé, sa den du coeur,

  sa den du coeur

  Ca fa du bien au beson

  Besoigne?—Di mué pas la

  besogne maudit, la bédenne,

  maudit, la bédenne,

  sa fa du bien a bédenne

  pauvr’ bédenne

  A, y parle tu aussi bien

  q’ca

  a Milan

  les Italiens a gueules

  Nous autres aussi on a une

  belle lagne qui clacke

  52ND CHORUS

  Dog with mouths, in Navajoa,

  bent down to the mud

  and slippered shining entrails

  in the morning Sinaloa sun

  of a dead rabbit

  Then the bus come and run

  it over, the rabbit, sullen

  dog skimpered off a minute,

  came back to repeat his

  refection

  Oh well, shiney priests

  eat goodies

  in every store they see

  Old Navajoa shit dog, you,

  your goodies are the goodiest

  goodies I ever did see, how

  dog you shore look mad

  when yer bayin

  Hoo Hound-dog!

  dont eat that dead rabbit

  in front of my face raw

  —cook it a lil bit

  53RD CHORUS

  I had a scrap with a doctor

  one night

  We were both drunk

  I said “Just because you’re

  a doctor you think you’re

  so smart, if you’re

  going to report me go

  ahead you prick”

  And I fell off the stool

  I was fulla goofballs

  He went to the other doctor

  “You better look this guy

  up, he must be some kind

  of a phoney”

  Pony the pony the pony

  the pra

  Pony the pony the pony

  the pra

  54TH CHORUS

  I got a grass jaw, boys,

  I say, and knock out Ray

  Robinson in the first minute

  of the first round

  Then they bring in Tiger Jones

  because I made no bones

  about how I was out to

  Kayo Robinson, moonbless him

  Tiger Jones comes on me all

  fists, hard puncher, I got

  nothing to do but retreat

  or turn into grass, so

  I dance

  right in

  to his arms

  reach

  and plow him all over

  with crazy little punches

  some of which are hard

  and we wake up

  55TH CHORUS

  Someday they’ll have monuments

  set up to reverend the mad

  people of today in madhouses

  As early pioneers in the knowing

  that when you lose your reason

  you attain highest perfect knowing

  Which is devoid of predicates

  such as: “I am, I will, I reason—”

  —devoid of saying:-“I will do it”

  —devoid

  Devoid of insanity as well by virtue

  of no contact

  But meanwhile these deterministic

  doctors really do believe that mad

  is mad—

  And have erected a billion-dollar

  religion to it, called, Psycho-medicine,

  and ah—

  Well we’ll know the sanity

  of Ard Bar

  In the morning, some time, alone

  56TH CHORUS

  Some’ll go mad with numbers

  Some’ll go mad with words

  Some’ll pretend to lose reason

  And lose reason anyway

  Some wont, some’ll be secret,

  Some’ll screw in long black

  rooms

  With the fantastic short-haired

  Beauty who lies on the bed

  listening

  To Sinatra—some’ll be candleflame

  jiggling gently in the night

  Some’ll be racetrack operators,

  some’ll have soap in their pockets

  Some’ll sing in the Bronx Jail

  and some wont sing in Riker’s

  Some’ll come out of it

  with iron heads

  Some’ll wear coats

  and hard of it

  57TH CHORUS

  The monstrous jailer, he wouldnt let me

  outa that jailhouse—

  till I had smoked all the tea

  I could smoke, ‘Finish up!’

  he said, & prodded me

  And I gotta take big long hikes

  of draw on that cigarette tree

  How’d I get outa that jail?

  By forgetting all about me

  Which was the best rasperry tree

  They ever ternevented in ole

  Donnesfree

  Cause I figure there’s no difference

  twixt me and dead dog mud

  Made of bones and take your pick,

  sulphur or Innisfree

  How’d they ever get that tap

  outa me?

  Wasnt I tired givin?

  hard tap

  Family tree.

  I wasnt sweet givin.

  58TH CHORUS

  Las ombras vengadora

  they say in little taco joints

  when the shadows are coming

  at about dusk-time, in Azteca,

  modern Fellaheena Mexico,

  Las ombras vengadora

  Lass ombras venga dora

  Most beautiful sound in the world

  hep!

  Swing up the team, bring up

  the gangs, say, didnt I yell

  at you a minute ago?

  Hoy!

  Las ombras vengadora

&n
bsp; in little taco sad joints

  on Sunday Afternoon

  and fathers are home

  honoring their sons

  59TH CHORUS

  Fantasm crazam crazam

  Joe Kennedy stops me on

  the sidewalk of the Immemorial

  University—ack hook

  You got your prick out.

  I look down, no such thing

  What are your two balls

  doing hanging on the sidewalk?

  I think I’ll squat & shit—

  We both squat facing each

  other on the campus

  If ya know what I mean,

  cream, we squat

  practice ‘mitate Aristophanes

  and sit there too laughing

  and talking, Kennedy,

  one of my first mature

  Irishmen

  Face each other with feet

  partly out, like in Esquire

  the phonies showing their shoes

  Squat n Shit!

  60TH CHORUS

  I purified language early in my

  young days, I purified & squatted

  & beshitted on pages, sophomore,

  on my typewriter, all the dirty

  words I could think of

  squrify & squat & shit

  And slit—and finally I’m

  in history class & the professor

  says ‘Kerouac—what you

  dreamin about?’

  And I shhoudda said Ack—

  Pack—Squrify and squat

  and shit, who wants to hear

  about the aniards and breast

  plates of warriors of the

  Medieval Ages

  I wanta know about the people

  on the street, what they doin?

  And what the high art

  hark squambling in his quiet

  temple moonlit gambymoon

  writing jingles & jongles

  for the pretties on the square

  61ST CHORUS

  Orizaba Rooftop blues

  Listenin to the street news

  Saturday night down there

  Pleep! went the new little bike

  horn

  As the cat pleeped it with his

  Foot zinging the bike across

  the fantastic bus-driven corners

  Barging everywhere, he just angles

  and amples

  like Stan Getz on tenor

 

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