by Jack Kerouac
Finnegans Wake & Visions of Neal
1955?
LUCIEN MIDNIGHT
Dying is ecstasy.
I’m not a teacher, not a
Sage, not a Roshi, not a
writer or master or even
a giggling dharma bum I’m
my mother’s son & my mother
is the universe—
What is this universe
but a lot of waves
And a craving desire
is a wave
Belonging to a wave
in a world of waves
So why put any down,
wave?
Come on wave, WAVE!
The heehaw’s dobbin
spring hoho
Is a sad lonely yurk
for your love
Wave lover
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
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
I’ve had enough of follin me
And making silly imagery
Harrumph me kaff
I think I’ll take off
For Cat and fish
1957
1
Someday you’ll be lying
there in a nice trance
and suddenly a hot
soapy brush will be
applied to your face
—it’ll be unwelcome
—someday the
undertaker will shave you
2
Sweet monstranot love
By momma dears
Hey
Call God the Mother
To stop this fight
3
Me that repeated & petered
The meter & lost 2 cents
Me that was fined
To be hined
And refined
Ay
Me that was
Whoo ee
The owl
On the fence
4
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!
don’t eat that dead rabbit
in front of my face raw
—Cook it a lil bit
1953-4?
1968
I
clearly
saw
the skeleton underneath
all
this
show
of personality
what
is
left
of a man and all his pride
but bones?
and all his lost snacks o’ nights …
and the bathtubs of liquor
thru his gullet
… bones—He mopes
in the grave,
facial features
changed by worms
*
*
*
*
from him
is heard
no more
*
*
*
*
Life is sick
Dogs cough
Bees sail
Birds hack
Trees saw
Woods cry
Men die
Ticks try
Books lie
Ants fly
Goodbye
1960
HYMN
And when you showed me Brooklyn Bridge
in the morning,
Ah God,
And the people slipping on ice in the street,
twice,
twice,
two different people
came over, goin to work,
so earnest and tryful,
clutching their pitiful
morning Daily News
slip on the ice & fall
both inside 5 minutes
and I cried I cried
That’s when you taught me tears, Ah
God in the morning,
Ah Thee
And me leaning on the lamppost wiping
eyes,
eyes,
nobody’s know I’d cried
or woulda cared anyway
but O I saw my father
and my grandfather’s mother
and the long lines of chairs
and tear-sitters and dead,
Ah me, I knew God You
had better plans than that
So whatever plan you have for me
Splitter of majesty
Make it short
brief
Make it snappy
bring me home to the Eternal Mother
today
At your service anyway,
(and until)
1959
POEM
I demand that the human race
ceases multiplying its kind
and bow out
I advise it
And as punishment & reward
for making this plea I know
I’ll be reborn
the last human
Everybody else dead and I’m
an old woman roaming the earth
groaning in caves
sleeping on mats
And sometimes I’ll cackle, sometimes
pray, sometimes cry, eat & cook
at my little stove
in the corner
“Always knew it anyway,”
I’ll say
And one morning won’t get up from my mat
1962
THE THRASHING DOVES
In the back of the dark Chinese store
in a wooden jailhouse bibbet box
with dust of hay on the floor, rice
where the rice bags are leaned,
beyond the doomed peekokoos in the box
cage
All the little doves’ll die.
As well as the Peekotoos—eels
—they’ll bend chickens’ necks back
oer barrels and slice at Samsara
the world of eternal suffering with silver
blades as thin as the ice in Peking
As thick & penetrable as the Wall of China
the rice darkness of that store, beans,
tea, boxes of dried fish, doodlebones,
pieces of sea-weed, dry, pieces of eight,
all the balloon of the shroud on the floor
And the lights from little tinkly Washington St.
Behung, dim, opium pipes and gong wars,
Tong, the rice and the card game—and
Tibbet de tibbet the tink tink tink
them Chinese cooks do in the kitchen
Jazz
The thrashing doves in the dark, white fear,
my eyes reflect that liquidly
and I no understand Buddha-fear?
awakener’s fear? So I give warnings
‘bout midnight round about midnight
And tell all the children the little otay
story of magic, multiple madness, maya
otay, magic trees-sitters and little girl
bitters, and littlest lil brothers
in crib made made of clay (blue in the moon).
For the doves.
1956?
1959
The Buddhist Saints are the incomparable saints
Wooing continue of lovemilk, mewling
And purling with lovely voices for love,
For perfect compassionate pity
Without making one false move
of action,
Perfectly accomodating commiserations
For all sentient belaboring things.
Passive Sweetsaints
Waiting for your Holyhood
Hoping for your eventual join
In their bright confraternity.
Perfect Divines. I can name some.
What’s in a name. They were saints
Of the Religion of the Awakening
From the Dream of Existence
And Non-Existence.
They know that life and death
The knowing of life, muteness of death,
Are mutual dual twin opposites
Conceptioning on each side of the Truth
Which is the pivot in the Center
And which says: “Neither life
nor death—neither existence
nor non-existence—but the central
lapse and absence of them both.”
1956?
HOW TO MEDITATE
—lights out—
fall, hands a-clasped, into instantaneous
ecstasy like a shot of heroin or morphine,
the gland inside of my brain discharging
the good glad fluid (Holy Fluid) as
I hap-down and hold all my body parts
down to a deadstop trance—Healing
all my sicknesses—erasing all—not
even the shred of a “I-hope-you” or a
Loony Balloon left in it, but the mind
blank, serene, thoughtless. When a thought
comes a-springing from afar with its held-
forth figure of image, you spoof it out,
you spuff it off, you fake it, and
it fades, and thought never comes—and
with joy you realize for the first time
“Thinking’s just like not thinking—
So I don’t have to think
any
more”
1967
A PUN FOR AL GELPI
Jesus got mad one day
at an apricot tree.
He said, “Peter, you
of the Holy See,
Go see if the tree is ripe.”
“The tree is not yet ripe,”
reported back Peter the Rock.
“Then let it wither!”
Jesus wanted an apricot.
In the morning, the tree
had withered,
Like the ear in the agony
of the garden,
Struck down by the sword.
Unready.
What means this parable?
Everybody
better see.
You’re really sipping
When your glass
is always empty.
1966
SEPT. 16, 1961, POEM
How awfully sad I felt thinking of my sleeping mother in her
bed
that she’ll die someday
tho she herself says “death is nothing to worry about,
from this life we start to another”
How awfully sad I felt anyway—
That have no wine to make me forget my rotting teeth is bad
enough
but that my whole body is rotting and my mother’s body is
rotting
towards death, it’s all so insanely sad.
I went outside in the pure dawn: but why should I be glad
about
a dawn
that dawns on another rumor of war,
and why should I be sad: isnt the air at least pure and fresh?
I looked at the flowers on the bush: one of them had fallen:
another was just bloomed open: neither of them were sad or
glad.
I suddenly realized all things just come and go
including any feeling of sadness: that too will go:
sad today glad tomorrow: somber today drunk tomorrow:
why fret
so much?
Everybody in the world has flaws just like me.
Why should I put myself down? Which is a feeling just
coming to go.
Everything comes and goes. How good it is!
Evil wars wont stay forever!
Pleasant forms also go.
Since everything just comes and goes O why be
sad? or glad?
Sick today healthy tomorrow. But O I’m so
sad just the same!
Just coming and going all over the place,
the place itself coming and going.
We’ll all end up in heaven anyway, together
in that golden eternal bliss I saw.
O how damned sad I cant write about it
well.
This is an attempt at the easy lightness
of Ciardian poetry.
I should really use my own way.
But that too will go, worries about
style. About sadness.
My little happy purring cat hates
doors!
And sometimes he’s sad and silent,
hot nose, sighs,
and a little heartbroken mew.
There go the birds, flying west
a moment.
Who’s going to ever know the
world before it goes?
1962
RIMBAUD
Arthur!
On t’appela pas Jean!
Born in 1854 cursing in Charle-
ville thus paving the way for
the abominable murderousnesses
of Ardennes—
No wonder your father left!
So you entered school at 8
—Proficient little Latinist you!
In October of 1869
Rimbaud is writing poetry
in Greek French—
Takes a runaway train
to Paris without a ticket,
the miraculous Mexican Brakeman
throws him off the fast
train, to Heaven, which
he no longer travels because
Heaven is everywhere—
Nevertheless the old fags
intervene—
Rimbaud nonplussed Rimbaud
trains in the green National
Guard, proud, marching
in the dust with his heroes—
hoping to be buggered,
dreaming of the ultimate Girl.
—Cities are bombarded as
he stares & stares & chews
his degenerate lip & stares
with gray eyes at
Walled France—
André Gill was forerunner
to André Gide—
Long walks reading poems
in the Genet Haystacks—
The Voyant is born,
the deranged seer makes his
first Manifesto,
gives vowels colors
& consonants carking care,
comes under the influence
of old French Fai
ries
who accuse him of constipation
of the brain & diarrhea
of the mouth—
Verlaine summons him to Paris
with less aplomb than he
did banish girls to
Abyssinia—
“Merde!” screams Rimbaud
at Verlaine salons—
Gossip in Paris—Verlaine Wife
is jealous of a boy
with no seats to his trousers
—Love sends money from Brussels
—Mother Rimbaud hates
the importunity of Madame
Veraline—Degenerate Arthur
is suspected of being a poet
by now—
Screaming in the barn
Rimbaud writes Season in Hell,
his mother trembles—
Verlaine sends money & bullets
into Rimbaud—
Rimbaud goes to the police
& presents his innocence
like the pale innocence
of his divine, feminine Jesus
—Poor Verlaine, 2 years
in the can, but could have
got a knife in the heart
—Illuminations! Stuttgart!
Study of Languages!
On foot Rimbaud walks
& looks thru the Alpine
passes into Italy, looking
for clover bells, rabbits,
Genie Kingdoms & ahead
of him nothing but the old
Canaletto death of sun
on old Venetian buildings
—Rimbaud studies language
—hears of the Alleghanies,
of Brooklyn, of last
American Plages—
His angel sister dies—
Vienne! He looks at pastries
& pets old dogs! I hope!
This mad cat joins
the Dutch Army
& sails for Java
commanding the fleet
at midnight
on the bow, alone,
no one hears his Command
but every fishy shining
in the sea—August is no
time to stay in Java—
Aiming at Egypt, he’s again
hungup in Italy so he goes
back home to deep armchair
but immediately he goes
again, to Cyprus, to
run a gang of quarry
workers,—what did he
look like now, this Later
Rimbaud?—Rock dust
& black backs & hacks
of coughers, the dream rises
in the Frenchman’s Africa
mind,—Invalids from
the tropics are always
loved—The Red Sea
in June, the coast clanks
of Arabia—Havar,
Havar, the magic trading
post—Aden, Aden,
South of Bedouin—
Ogaden, Ogaden, never
known—(Meanwhile
Verlaine sits in Paris
over cognacs wondering
what Arthur looks like
now, & how bleak their
eyebrows because they believed
in earlier eyebrow beauty—