ode to kerouac
-i-
hola
kerouac
trackless beat king headstander middleage now and sainted in
concrete jungles of reflections and critique
unanswered noiseless
seeping beneath the door of manhattan
pass the final stew
oh bye and bye and bye
oh god
kerouac
where are you going?
no! no! no!
too many deaths!
too many lost prayers!
too many hidden gillette razors in the medicine cabinet!
too many false face pig dog rodniks!
oh prophet!
what about the rockies
and the unshirted muscles of the highway?
are you an old man
old man
when i sat at your black ink on paper feet
and bent an ear to the scribblings from your pencil tongue?
-ii-
kerouac!
writer!
ring in the american literary bathtub unremoved by foamy ajax!
holy demon of life!
eating apple pie and ice cream and talking to statues
was your game
chicago brain ravaged
new york genitals lavished
san francisco right hand grasped
denver legs pegging the prairie
oh tin automobile tooling nowhere nobody anywhere
once passed out
in mexico jungle pitched night
budda of skin
passerby of the dogged green planet whirled backwards and split
hammered on a brass mountain of society
and left the original marks of his teeth
on the breasts of seventy or so women
and cried with the rest of the angry neurotic
uncorked wine bottles
breach of the peace!
help!
robber of life!
marching with madmen and poets and singers of songs and
okies and jazzmen cottonpickers peapickers green man low
-iii-
unannounced vision post war hub bub bub
the invention of death!
no reason in the reasonless rearranged human sack of bones
for your eyes
read the digging passage
sitting on travelers checks
no signature here for nothing
oh brash priest taking a leak on the pulpit
ringing jazz from vinyl saxophones
your sermon was heard far and wider less the last pew on which sat
the unborn
who came only with cameras and could not hear
through the unsoft but hollow womb of dead bellied speech
roaring rocket church sunday morn' in the mind
well good mawnin' mista pahsun
i snapped my fingers to the tune as you strangled the language
with a typewriter ribbon to catch every groan
yea to squeeze the last sound from a word
-iiii-
kerouac!
what will happen to you
in the windows of manhatten
after you cash another check
where will you go
in a footless airplane
when will the soup of pershing square ooze through your teeth
when will you wake up from your stupor on the beds of san francisco
with a can of forgotten warm beer
childless saint!
catching your breath in a wooden jar of modern danish furniture jabs
creating hallucination for esquire
making reality out of college rugs
you mad bastard you
telling the truth
and leaving your shadow nowhere
thats all over now
done man!
rest easy oh lover of life
rest easy oh holy priest of beat westward journeys
rest easy oh holy priest of beat westward journeys
take it easy oh blessed madman
give your ears to the chinese for soup
eyeball your way to new lands of american magazines
know all and drink and lay women and laugh
and write raving mouthfuls of words
what the hell is life anyway
but a burlap bag full of
highways and poetry
and who could have
forged its purity
more madly
and then taken a huge bite out of the upper crust and whispered
snip snip snip my mystical scissors
boca chica key l964
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