The Poetry of Jack Kerouac Read online

  Or tears.

  1961

  from SAN FRANCISCO BLUES

  13

  This pretty white city

  On the other side of the country

  Will no longer be

  Available to me

  I saw heaven move

  Said ‘This is the end’

  Because I was tired

  of all that portend

  And any time you need

  me

  Call

  I’ll be at the other

  end

  Waiting

  at the final wall

  14

  San Francisco Blues

  Written in a rocking chair

  In the Cameo Hotel

  San Francisco Skid row

  Nineteen Fifty Four

  1957

  BLUES

  And he sits embrowned

  in a brown chest

  Before the palish priests

  And he points delicately

  at the sky

  With palm and forefinger

  And’s got a halo

  of gate black

  And’s got a hawknosed

  watcher who loves to hate

  But has learned to meditate

  It do no good to hate

  So watches, roseate laurel

  on head

  In back of Prince Avalokitesvar

  Who moos with snow hand

  And laces with pearls

  the sea’s majesty

  1959

  BLUES

  Part of the morning stars

  The moon and the mail

  The ravenous X, the raving ache,

  —the moon Sittle La

  Pottle, teh, teh, teh,—

  The poets in owlish old rooms

  who write bent over words

  know that words were invented

  because nothing was nothing

  In use of words, use words,

  the X and the blank

  And the Emperor’s white page

  And the last of the Bulls

  Before spring operates

  Are all lotsa nothin

  which we got anyway

  So we’ll deal in the night

  in the market of words

  1959

  Hey listen you poetry audiences

  If you dont shut up

  And listen to the potry,

  See . . we’ll set a guy at the gate

  To bar all potry haters

  Foreverrnore

  Then, if you dont like the subject

  Of the poem that the poit

  Is readin, geen, why dont

  You try Marlon Brando

  Who’ll open your eyes

  With his cry

  James Dean is dead?—

  Aint we all?

  Who aint dead—

  John Barrymore is dead

  Naw San Francisco is dead

  —San Francisco is bleat

  With the fog

  1956?

  SOME WESTERN HAIKUS

  Explanatory Note By Author: The “Haiku” was invented and developed over hundreds of years in Japan to be a complete poem in seventeen syllables and to pack in a whole vision of life in three short lines. A “Western Haiku” need not concern itself with the seventeen syllables since Western languages cannot adapt themselves to the fluid syllabillic Japanese. I propose that the “Western Haiku” simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language.

  Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella. Here is a great Japanese Haiku that is simpler and prettier than any Haiku I could ever write in any language:—

  A day of quiet gladness,—

  Mount Fuji is veiled

  In misty rain.

  (Basho) (1644-1694)

  Here is another:

  Nesetsukeshi ko no

  Sentaku ya natsu

  No tsuki

  She has put the child to sleep,

  And now washes the clothes;

  The summer moon.

  (Issa) (1763-1827)

  And another, by Buson (1715-1783):

  The nightingale is singing,

  Its small mouth

  Open.

  SOME WESTERN HAIKUS

  Jack Kerouac

  * * *

  Arms folded

  to the moon,

  Among the cows.

  Birds singing

  in the dark

  —Rainy dawn.

  Elephants munching

  on grass—loving

  Heads side by side.

  Missing a kick

  at the icebox door

  It closed anyway.

  Perfect moonlit night

  marred

  By family squabbles.

  This July evening,

  a large frog

  On my door sill.

  Catfish fighting for his life,

  and winning,

  Splashing us all.

  Evening coming—

  the office girl

  Unloosing her scarf.

  The low yellow

  moon above the

  Quiet lamplit house

  Shall I say no?

  —fly rubbing

  its back legs

  Unencouraging sign

  —the fish store

  Is closed.

  Nodding against

  the wall, the flowers

  Sneeze

  Straining at the padlock,

  the garage doors

  At noon

  The taste

  of rain

  —Why kneel?

  The moon,

  the falling star

  —Look elsewhere

  The rain has filled

  the birdbath

  Again, almost

  And the quiet cat

  sitting by the post

  Perceives the moon

  Useless, useless,

  the heavy rain

  Driving into the sea.

  Juju beads on the

  Zen Manual:

  My knees are cold.

  Those birds sitting

  out there on the fence—

  They’re all going to die.

  The bottoms of my shoes

  are wet

  from walking in the rain

  In my medicine cabinet,

  the winter fly

  has died of old age.

  November—how nasal

  the drunken

  Conductor’s call

  The moon had

  a cat’s mustache

  For a second

  A big fat flake

  of snow

  Falling all alone

  The summer chair

  rocking by itself

  In the blizzard

  —from BOOK OF HAIKU

  SOURCES

  A Translation From The French (Jester of Columbia, 1945)

  Song: Fie My fum (Neurotica 1950)

  Pull My Daisy (Evergreen Books 1961)

  Pull My Daisy (Metronome April 1961)

  He is your friend (Letter to Ginsberg 1952)

  Old buddy (Ginsberg 1956?)

  Daydreams for Ginsberg (Letter to Ginsberg 1955)

  Lucien Midnight (Combustion April 1957)

  Someday you’ll be lying (Kriya Broadside 1968)

  I clearly saw (New Departures 1960)

  Hymn (Pax 1959)

  Poem: I demand (Pax 1962)

  The Thrashing Doves (White Dove Review 1959)

  The Buddhist Saints (Letter to Ginsberg 1956)

  How to Meditate (Floating Bear 1967)

  A Pun for Al Gelpi (Lowell House Printers 1966)

  Sept. 16, 1961 (The Outsider 1962)

  Rimbaud (Yugen 1960; City Lights)

  from Old Angel Midnight (Beetitood 1959)

  More Old Angel Midnight (New Directions 1961)

  Auro Boralis Shomoheen (Letter to Ginsb
erg 1955?)

  Long Dead’s Longevity (Letter to Ginsberg 1952?)

  Sitting Under Tree#2 (Yugen 1959)

  A Curse At The Devil (Red Clay Reader 1965)

  Sight is just dust (Letter to Ginsberg 1955)

  POEM (Letter to Ginsberg 1955?)

  To Edward Dahlberg (TriQuarterly 1970)

  Two Poems (Combustion 1957)

  To Allen Ginsberg (White Dove Review 1959)

  Poem: Jazz Killed Itself (White Dove Review 1959)

  To Harpo Marx (Playboy 1959)

  Hitch Hiker (Floating Bear 1967)

  4 Poems from S. F. Blues (New Directions 1961)

  from S. F. Blues (Ark 1957)

  Blues: And he sits embrowned (Yugen 1959)

  Blues: Part of the morning stars (Yugen 1959)

  Hey listen you poetry audiences (Letter to Ginsberg 1956)

  Some Western Haikus (Ginsberg, Yugen, Beetitude, Bussei, Portents (1956-1968)

  Dates following the poems indicate year of publication, not necessarily composition. Dates followed by a question mark are approximate year of composition.

  The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

  Jack Kerouac died suddenly in 1969

  at the age of 47.

  1

  Did I create that sky? Yes, for, if it was

  anything other than a conception in my mind

  I wouldnt have said “Sky”—That is why I am the

  golden eternity. There are not two of us here,

  reader and writer, but one, one golden eternity,

  One-Which-It-Is, That-Which-Everything-Is.

  2

  The awakened Buddha to show the way, the

  chosen Messiah to die in the degradation

  of sentience, is the golden eternity. One that

  is what is, the golden eternity, or God, or,

  Tathagata—the name. The Named One.

  The human God. Sentient Godhood.

  Animate Divine. The Deified One.

  The Verified One. The Free One.

  The Liberator. The Still One.

  The Settled One. The Established One.

  Golden Eternity. All is Well.

  The Empty One. The Ready One.

  The Quitter. The Sitter.

  The Justified One. The Happy One.

  3

  That sky, if it was anything other than an

  illusion of my mortal mind I wouldnt have said

  “that sky.” Thus I made that sky, I am the

  golden eternity. I am Mortal Golden Eternity.

  4

  I was awakened to show the way, chosen to

  die in the degradation of life, because I am

  Mortal Golden Eternity.

  5

  I am the golden eternity in mortal animate form.

  6

  Strictly speaking, there is no me, because all is

  emptiness. I am empty, I am non-existent.

  All is bliss.

  7

  This truth law has no more reality than the world.

  8

  You are the golden eternity because there is

  no me and no you, only one golden eternity.

  9

  The Realizer. Entertain no imaginations whatever,

  for the thing is a no-thing. Knowing this then

  is Human Godhood.

  10

  This world is the movie of what everything is,

  it is one movie, made of the same stuff

  throughout, belonging to nobody, which is what

  everything is.

  11

  If we were not all the golden eternity we

  wouldnt be here. Because we are here we

  cant help being pure. To tell man to be pure on

  account of the punishing angel that punishes the

  bad and the rewarding angel that rewards the good

  would be like telling the water “Be Wet”—Never

  the less, all things depend on supreme reality,

  which is already established as the record of

  Karma-earned fate.

  12

  God is not outside us but is just us, the

  living and the dead, the never-lived and

  never-died. That we should learn it only now, is

  supreme reality, it was written a long time ago

  in the archives of universal mind, it is already

  done, there’s no more to do.

  13

  This is the knowledge that sees the golden

  eternity in all things, which is us, you,

  me, and which is no longer us, you, me.

  14

  What name shall we give it which hath no

  name, the common eternal matter of the mind?

  If we were to call it essence, some might think it

  meant perfume, or gold, or honey. It is not even

  mind. It is not even discussable, groupable into

  words; it is not even endless, in fact it is not

  even mysterious or inscrutably inexplicable; it is

  what is; it is that; it is this. We could easily

  call the golden eternity “This.” But “what’s in

  a name?” asked Shakespeare. The golden eternity

  by another name would be as sweet. A Tathagata,

  A God, a Buddha by another name, an Allah, a Sri

  Krishna, a Coyote, a Brahma, a Mazda, a Messiah,

  an Amida, an Aremedeia, a Maitreya, a Palalakonuh,

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 would be as sweet. The golden

  eternity is X, the golden eternity is A, the

  golden eternity is , the golden eternity is ,

  the golden eternity is , the golden eternity is

  t-h-eg-o-l-d-e-ne-t-e-r-n-i-t-y. In the

  beginning was the word; before the beginning, in

  the beginningless infinite neverendingness, was

  the essence. Both the word “God” and the essence

  of the word, are emptiness. The form of emptiness

  which is emptiness having taken the form of form,

  is what you see and hear and feel right now, and

  what you taste and smell and think as you read

  this. Wait awhile, close your eyes, let your

  breathing stop three seconds or so, listen to

  the inside silence in the womb of the world, let

  your hands and nerve-ends drop, re-recognize

  the bliss you forgot, the emptiness and

  essence and ecstasy of ever having been and

  ever to be the golden eternity. This is

  the lesson you forgot.

  15

  The lesson was taught long ago in the other

  world systems that have naturally changed

  into the empty and awake, and are here

  now smiling in our smile and scowling in our

  scowl. It is only like the golden eternity

  pretending to be smiling and scowling to

  itself; like a ripple on the smooth ocean of

  knowing. The fate of humanity is to vanish

  into the golden eternity, return pouring into

  its hands which are not hands. The navel shall

  receive, invert, and take back what’d issued

  forth; the ring of flesh shall close; the personalities

  of long dead heroes are blank dirt.

  16

  The point is we’re waiting, not how comfortable

  we are while waiting. Paleolithic man waited by

  caves for the realization of why he was there,

  and hunted; modern men wait in beautified

  homes and try to forget death and birth. We’re

  waiting for the realization that this is the

  golden eternity.

  17

  It came on time.

  18

  There is a blessedness surely to be believed,

  and that is that everything abides in

  eternal ecstasy, now and forever. />
  19

  Mother Kali eats herself back. All things but

  come to go. All these holy forms, unmanifest,

  not even forms, truebodies of blank bright

  ecstasy, abiding in a trance, “in emptiness and

  silence” as it is pointed out in the Diamond-cutter,

  asked to be only what they are: Glad.

  20

  The secret God-grin in the trees and in the teapot,

  in ashes and fronds, fire and brick, flesh and

  mental human hope. All things, far from yearning

  to be re-united with God, had never left themselves

  and here they are, Dharmakaya, the body of the

  truth law, the universal Thisness.

  21

  “Beyond the reach of change and fear, beyond

  all praise and blame,” the Lankavatara Scripture

  knows to say, is he who is what he is in time and in

  time-less-ness, in ego and in ego-less-ness, in self

  and in self-less-ness.

  22

  Stare deep into the world before you as if it were

  the void: innumerable holy ghosts, buddhies,

  and savior gods there hide, smiling. All the

  atoms emitting light inside wavehood, there is

  no personal separation of any of it. A hummingbird

  can come into a house and a hawk will not: so rest

  and be assured. While looking for the light, you

  may suddenly be devoured by the darkness

  and find the true light.

  23

  Things dont tire of going and coming.

  The flies end up with the delicate viands.

  24

  The cause of the world’s woe is birth,

  the cure of the world’s woe is a bent stick.

  25

  Though it is everything, strictly speaking

  there is no golden eternity because everything

  is nothing: there are no things and no goings and

  comings: for all is emptiness, and emptiness is

  these forms, emptiness is this one formhood.