The Poetry of Jack Kerouac Read online

18San Francisco has no vaults—San Francisco has no vauty—Singalrad the sailor Sam said he saw in the so—Go—The students outside the monastery window have subsided in their chatter, light—Ran and farted to show his old rock routine & so “worn?” (Rom Tom?) (Vaii) hmf the noises (cloat) out the window, scratch, I Old Angel Midnight hear—Silent Indurm Twandee Yokle Hour when we’ll begarret Sam Ashton Tom Belligerent the Hackett Master Beckett—Or sometimes lightly known as Yarp Yarp—Cop ski kimona moodia, Ah Su, tchétché, the cop coughs, I hear the taxio fi fu—old Monster Hufu the Zen Froofroo is now going to vain his glory by be shitting himself in gruel birth—Ning—Amis Nais Thais Ming—China Tink Hongya Ming Mon the Bong—Sing, & yack dank bar poets wont Listen to old Kanuck?

  Sarry, Said Sarie

  I’ll Metemple You Mowley

  in the morning

  Betemple and me demple

  hey me that

  Tzimou m’appelle dans

  cour d’archelle

  Archangel Once Wing Swing

  Ah Sigh God

  Tu mar a ma danna

  tu dona, padrone

  Poura tu jama faire dire

  Tes grand

  ecritures?

  Ecrivida

  Old Angel Midnigh rant rock

  rail rowout mo tarn

  rong igo I kfuck

  me j akle

  be dakle

  Mc Graw

  19Stop playing you candassed tripe heart,—common, let’s have that aw story—lost your moidening rag in the angry shack, & wick warnt long enuf you poota—Sing for the general store of rain that will hail bedown the—

  20“Spit on Bosatsu!” says Gregory Corso—“Oo that’s beautiful?” I say—Dash dash dash dash mash crash wash wash mosh posh tosh tish rish rich sigh my tie thigh pie in the sky—Poo on you too, proo the blue blue, OO U Nu, hello Buddha man

  21Me—who was Old Angel Midnight that railed at the rant & eat steak at the Met & threw ballet girls out the hall & pinked with my wife in a shower bath—Beautiful blue Jean Marais, the denzing champion of Europe—rurt—Bing bing—the flames of the candle say ‘Leave us alone, we have a lil ole window of our own & we happen to know too that the whole Universe is saying’—‘Shut up you moidnees and mardeners and gardens of marden, man, silt soft silt the sound we ray—We weigh everything in the scale of time, I say, pajestically plurting in the perfect platoon—illiterate me that—but tramwise, tranways, what’d you mean, tranways, tramways?—Oi, Russia has funny scrolly drawings broodled on midnight doodle pad, we’ll never see—But Shostakovich know me, & candle fall—Burt—Was Burt was the sweet star swang in the hall and was killed in the war and nobody I know of cried—Old Angel rant shack mack Mill Valley rack shap, map, dap tag was bon tailored when I win-gee was Prez—

  No, Prez never presented no such horn like that, Prez was the bezz in the bizzness, man, mon, Prez was the end and the man on the end Prez was the champeen pole catcher in the world—the outstanding window the sound that came through

  dwerrrrr

  22Old Angel Midpike, wasnt the hike that was wedded to the fike?—the eyniard one-eyed piratical rat who ran roting thru the puderdical halls of Pwince bone yelling ‘Hay to de tree Hay to de tree’ and keppersnews the Viennese pastrymakin inkdweller pulled a party of sansi fancy sans souci dans and whammed em their spats, till Tillie the Late Tat, leaking from her holepot, organized redgangs to remnant his sin, and Jin, the magic bottle boy stolen from the Bagdhad ship shrouds routed Golgotha with a sling and arrow and had all the Queen Mother Superiors gasping in parks—Remember it quite well and well aint he coming home late? Twang in the window and see if he’ll tweak his old beard at ikonoclastical me, poor dear—Dolophine robin roved a long way to bring balm to soothe his blue bus—Well like I was sayin, and anyway atchoo, your water’s boilin, aint you?—Not much I can do about it Mrs Twandow as seeing as my Sandusky Husband comes home driving in the green light tho he’s colorblind, he traded all the sneakthieves & secret narcotic police to the Virgin on the Wall, & she et em up raw like candle wax—His old father upfaced in a tomb—His knives and forks on top his cakes—His “hands burning”—a la Gregory Corso—His use of Gleem toothpaste in canvases—No joke, son, that wall has more ears than Ebon’ll allow—How many ears that wall?—as many ears as you got lights in all space everywhere every atom’s on fire—hands—How gruesome the smoketacle of people burning in rooms—the yurn of their faces when the airoplane crashes—Ah Mrs Midnight I cant understand—You understood this afternoon when you hung out the wash—Yes I hook out the wash with a crook of my thumb, & whistled so sharp and hubby came home and kissed me too—but now’s playing cribbage at Vicious McStoo—Oi oi pearl, pearl of the sea, flow through my window, bring whiteness and money and honey to me, bring hunner to me, bring butter and knives and archives and archangels bring them all to me and Molly Magee of Dublin Bloom—bring that to me, wall-ears—Sky’s only got a fartin passage for you babe, message, what you expect from bean chamberpots and laundry in the lavenderia washing-machine, you expect roses? or worms? oi? You expect howling storms?—smath me to smithereens this aint the Bronx—if itn was the Bronnex I’d cancel it—cank—konk all you want on your juicy window, mirror-face, I’se a old lady was weaned i the bowels of the air the earth what’s the big difference between air & between earth?—Ai, pickles in the barrell, and poetry too, but what’s with your husband aint comin home early like he used to bechunes?—S Writ in the cards of my mother’s birthveil—Ojaya Ojaya the company buzzes throughout the world in a hundred thousand cities of rooms, the ha dal baddra of their midnight babble, all talkin at the same time, NOW,—Oi poor humans beings, I grieve for you—I been in steel jails but Oi, it was no worse than the best that was it of the this—When I sent cans of Accent to Greece disguised as heroina I didnt have poolhalls in my basin—I had basinettes made of lapels and bassettes (brass badinettes for strange badinage—)

  23Spat—he mat and tried & trickered on the step and oostepped and peppered it a bit with long mouth sizzle reaching for the thirsts of Azmec Parterial alk-lips to mox & bramajambi babac up the Moon Citlapol—settle la tettle la pottle, la lune—Some kind of—Bong!—the church of St. All’s blasts the Ide afternoon & all holy worshippers go confess to Father Everybody with Good Friday ears—Friday afternoon in the universe—

  Bong!—the twackle how wackle of high Berkeley parties, the twanging and walking and cops carrying guns, bong! the church bell of Ah Ide the Master Hunchback primavera Cat of the Soiled Star universe—and him with his Priam—Well I never, and late at that, and’s got cramps

  Bong! the midnight the mirror the red rust of the rosy atmosphere of the ikon the candle the babyface sleeping—

  Bong! enough of the bell dear Lord God above, enough of the eeny miney mo bell

  Bong!—alright Mr. Poe, Mrs. Twurn, Mr. Twart, rart, I’d like to indicate by moon medallion indicative half-ass magic your prophesy, & what fool will post make Lear of you, or what Twang-Bang arrow drape in your vein, or Sicilian Stiletto in the streets of Old Spain—Bong! if it’s n midnight by now, mid nigh, by now, I orta see myorta about a you know what er—horse—er—man about a farting horse—man about a Brooklyn Bridge—in brief excuse me I go shit—ugh! Ow!—dont pull at my oliver twist ear!

  24The things they say that come in thru that window—if only I could avoid what I hear—

  Wasnt it Dostopoffsy who gossipped so much, and that Balzac in Cousine Bette O my—And Tristram Shraundy Shern, marvelous book, and Elmer Payo Robinson, the author of Oogoon, and Shmarl Baudelaire, the Skid rick rant rentfence iron night holder (of Paris) over rooftops of smoking shame—Ole Hornshaw too the Gerst poetizer, with Ilium and Troy, and Inali Minoan Retreat the Great God Ur, that was mailed to Philip Whalen—the samadhis of Hanse Majesty, trop trick driver of mountains, Mt Baker and Mt Olympus, parthenonical backtracker over old trails, Schneider by name—Gossipers there’re none like Allan O Shinzberg, Levinsky my Feetsky, tweedy old Mayo Opo Waldo Meldo Elmo Poe, the junkey from Wal
l Street, and the Hawthorn person haw and sleet Melville who made subterraneans live in rooftops of shame in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge and John Holmes creamed (the aunorthist not the noet)—Hang my fryinpan cover over a nail, wont you, & I’ll bank the ikon—and turn on electric light, and see what I’m eating here, hairs of 19 0 ten—

  Poo! prat! two taxis played two little musics—then “brrrrrrrrrinsss” big gugly whatname truck came by signifying the nothing of the sound afternoon—

  25Like’s legs that goosed the underground schoolteachers & Joyce who always wanted to write blind what the sea said but grinned restoredly in the sea first, himself a gable of coral roan, hears now in my behalf the scree of old railroad iron twisting faggot cargos of ESYirt by the shiney MOsoon vessels of the Packet Bay to bring elum slippery to Gaza & the Strip of Fez where donziggerls grab boycocks—easy as pie that window Islam sea roar, that purebeacon, that Sherifian splendour, that Lustre Magno hide in the Me high hill Virgin Ma Wink—so’s on opium old Joe Black come home hammock Florida tree-hack—I heerd that HEAL pass thu—I feeled it pass that heal by thu—I seed that hole the hail made—And if in every window hovel would words sung beard prophet flip nothing mean, then hie thee New Gab Haven bring lice shit rooms to steel necktie lover of tomb, never heard a nanny bray like that—Old Angel Midnight Worldwindow bong midnight interlude Eternal Already

  26Old Angel Midnight just writes itself as it is the Hi-Is Sound—miracles of Jesus in Capernaum—so that it might be all fulfilled as twas writ in Akashia—but see the future writ in present state illumina—what does the horizon of the sea got to do with singing boy?—John Kerouac transliterator of perfect knowing, angel from heaven, messenger of the right hand of God & of the Godness of All hath no warm place to lay his head but must cover his knees with both hands & despair, the great weight of bleary time—

  27Ah but Old Angel Midnight Africanus the message in the dream block roundsquare tenement boom from the submarine Joandream ships, destroyers & escorts, putput fez & all rhythm fishermen sprayling in the bay sand—Trumpets blare by the moon sea the Arabs barge to redhat olivegreen majesty & old black scow ESPERANTO—movies about that. Vast stupid Kerouac-o——

  28Light the candle to the continuation of the hot afternoon Ah now I see she’s turning gold & workingmen are done till Monday Morn & come home on now straight with buckets to their dens, lions all balls—dash, Bach Chevrolet—Even the 2 lil Chinese hogmoyens are propping along beneath the Tall Silk Void anxious to get in ere tree twisted to rock plum blossoms—Plump haired belt dog pop O looksee where the redheaded spreaded her leglets at last in the Midden, & in Spain the Capernaum call of children Chorus boys “There’s nothing like our religion” so sew the dress & wait for the golden electricity to make you right—for you know, Big Oldie, your maw’s right & she waits for you midden plumps to ard out more polychromatic Spirochete to mix like Marble fudge in that Tchelitchev Tree of Life & bring forth busting another prime plump poy for your posy grave & they’ll say wasnt that my Ard Craven Bard Bar Pap I saw upfaced to Tomb?—No, that was the Eternal Consoler passing thru as Knife yard, his white shirt knit by Rimbaud Angels did sweep aside the river mud from this intact and classify crystal, so that so-that could soolidat smarty pine—Ah, yar—but she yawed so much & I had to be saved from drunken bumhood by these words, will excuse me if cant read my jazz right because this floorboard language’ll hide bettern nails the Emily Dickinson worse-than-ever dahlic drent bent despair of me with my raw muscles bulging in the mirror of pride, lank low face all set to prove novels as soon’s crick goes soring out the other side my arm I’ll tell you een more but now it’s comin on Friday night & GLEE yell the children of Paris running over the grass of St. Thomas d’Aquin where supplicatee hold artistic Europe oil hand out to be larded poignarded bathed powdered put away ah all the Napoleonic troubles in this pastry!—Tie it all together, Jack, the mirror doesnt show the real right

  29Eternally I accuse you of being as craven a shit as Frank ever planked on that Leo butcher board so’s mice could be crying safe in the arms of Jesus—the Little Christ! You! Why dont you mind your bexness! The less I hear of em the happier I’ll be! Do I have to come back in another lifetime or next month & let you have it where you need it so’s I can live my private label life free of libellous old you, continuous old Cronk tokay ass hole hurrying to your place to be maitled & draigled & dragged & even hipe Wop Cork knows you you scandalmonjous gossipping non Dostoevskyan shit of the ages! I’ll flow golds of venom thru your window & you receive it all like some old Universe SLUT—What kinda man are ya, Slut? Or what kind good slut can you be anyhow with no twat to tie it? You & your marble wax samsarhood burning up nothing but candles of worry hate & shame, bug wart pastyfaced bustard!—I’ll cut your head off with my machete fingernail, & yak make crack your Orienral thats what you want faces, I’ll fix you, Gossip! Old Flap of the Shrouds, sheet on the line, Twandow shit, shirker, fuckface of history, go home & blow yr wife & leave mine & mine alone!—O o o o r g ! G o o o r d ! B l o o o d !—I’ll have your pasty flesh feed for Merrimac fish another time corpse you Joan kid crack bedeviller fool & Faust fuck! Who wants your dirty Old Words?—Pray for us on Hester street, dear Lord, do you exist? Pray, for us on Arameia Street, dear sweet save-me Lord—Save me Lord is just it, you, alone, let the others boil in marsh harrico, slong as you can slomp & fall in your slop barrell—no words boy to describe it—What?—Your hate fulness! Your hatful of emptyheaded raindrops! I orter throw you off the fire escape, myorter, wouldnt do no good, you with your headstands come back the next day all healed (hear me boy, just kiddin)—you’re a good enuf old boy but my God you write too much.

  But I’m only reporting the sounds out the window?

  Well gate a fet reporter & go call charlie in the bar, turd, and find your old Peace & pink in yr own home showers & leave Fitzgerald alone & Marcus Magee or go strangle bobbies in the fog, do something butt dear God in the Arse, leave me alone & MINE!

  Ah Angel Midnightmare—

  Ah Crack Jabberwack, play piano, paint, pop your pile anum coitus semenized olium o hell what’s his biblical name, the pot that spilt in the room ere Sarad had hers, ad her share, the name, the word, for masturbators, the Neptune O YA you know the name, the Bible Keen Mexican yowl that old tree still hangs in the same moonlight—Ilium, Anum, Ard Bar, Arnum, Odium, Odious, ONAN! ONAN KERAQUACK go heal yr own toiletbowl, stop dropping shavings in mine, & leave my grave unsung, my death unlearn, my qualities you can have, but onanist no quarter given you Angel Midnight by in that holy gallows of the moon!

  Do I dream?

  You dream not, switch yr dolophine midnight bell bong on some other frequency—dont you know?

  Know what?

  That there’s a white cross marked X in the road where you will die yr dog’s death & there to burn the piffle on your pier the ship will take you straight to golden essence & you be still?

  Meanwhile?

  While mean you mean well? Switch houses, try Killiams!

  Junior Killiams, that laird Cregar’d high big muff moitang mouk moity biff jaw?

  Same, with sluggerous pall in the ach—

  In the ach & ah part tooth ache of peotly? The prime love thighs not for me but bearded shit not listen see till tee give me ernest majesgetafree? Why?

  Because foiled the poor luke bird.

  Fuke the luke fool bird foiled, I want oil!

  Take oil in other Shelves.

  Message received.

  Close your window.

  I’ll open it tonight.

  Let the stars fart their message unpolluted by human one, please hee?

  You that bonged dolefully with benign crasher on yr head in old heroic dawns—

  Ach, same, shamed, let me nightsoil be—

  United purefoy Clown.

  Besides you kill bugs with the rash of your pencil deed crashing on holy ivory love papers meant for scented notes from sweet jissom creatures clacking down the Barnard trees—Wash your drawers, draw
the river in, pull that grave dung reward over yr noble nose, blow out the Candle & if you fail is that hardest on me?

  I’ll go mad as a bush.

  And burn, please, the hardwood floors hiding me.

  30Mindscreaming blood perturbation pisspot—Mindscreaming blackjack Lanka Mountain laughter—

  You’re making it all up so why worry about being or not being? Thus rolls The Angel Midmoke

  31Put put put tiPousse all’s to go well your mew gold taken good care of you, no only roan neigh yak plan reign can slay that rose oboed flow soul I robed you say satin devil—Jesus will bring you all—Wait’ll the music starts, little flicks of millionfold billionminded fleet stars thronging all for a chance to live try sentience come swamming down your hard vale, whyfor hardvale boy?—Did I seek to bore your butter heart with mod iron skew in ogly scag iron bottomed ogroid doididoidee worlds bestrew your natural sweetness avant? No because loved you, love you now, no words of Mortal disfamous postifillication & bile pow gonna ruin my blue eyed pootuin toot where happily sanging frank lark lovely bardo.—No.—So let heaven instruct thee, earth no bug thee, go fly as free as you wish to be, sing window bedelong bidiliyoukidiligoo sweet-sweet Tu Fu bird oriol paradise Chinee garden all ya want!—Soft, you my dangle gentle playful little pip leak I bring you deliverance but you must listen to Daddy Snow arms when’s he got to say to you:—pat on the folld

  32Brrrrring back the early wave, pearl—now cometh upon us the time when diamonds shatter, all love & hope gone, all tirlish bang, all fort might be dizened underneath the snow white salt wall, all lost undersea blue lips buried in grime of guilt in this crystal clarity recall, all bugs burned in the Raid of Time and all fard heard none such scone throw yield nothing but goom & booboos—poof!—The child, the circle drawn in air, the primal matter primal substantial energy polled & lost two votes elect the last twat & tit you too, I hope the diamond shatters into a billion glittering smithysheens of Croo because now Lustrous Midsoil I been pointed out, begallowed, hung, prophesied, Karma’d, Kaught & kitkatted up the ass of God Guilt & when I turn my back on this poor world I got no back to do it with, who will forgive the scribbling devil? When Snow Dad armed me with promises not kept & blamed me & booted me seedy cold hills, urk, ouch, my hand hurt, I tell you I wont tell you no more, why should I poignard me old shoulderblade with this machete matter? And country matters decide cities full of hurt children buried in the groomus womb of Bellevue Morgue—And fly stars purporting and all p’s & pop it, blaming poor children for sighing under trees while long white trail ghosts swish in the river’s foaming mouth, like semen at the crock rotch math both Falls of Indio Doom, say, hark, promising star of home-father did you not pull sod blanket over baby’s eyes & when you’d by his crib painted pink happy images of angels disporting ogre ord holes that turned to door opening monsters—monstranot love, mama dears—I was opiumed & killed in ole Tangiers—Every hate filled Arab & American in the world shall write explanation on a bier, every priest draw his bread clanging pisspots of grime, every philosopher suck up the claimant genius for his lifehood gold, every critic shit, every fancy poet fall, every bear devour Elijah rex rot, & every publisher & scribe be Pharisee’d in Castiglione’s gloomy rager—me? my name? and I? go off father son & holy ghost of Martyr life—And I will be silent, answer you no dong, Going Smock Syrup Midfuk, shit pearl pot, whatzyername, Luke Degger, erp urp rain watt Arkansaw south foil follow-up crooks & trees, I’ve had my roody filler that nard sauce & I’m going to die now, breath no more words pain on this silver & worry hatepage, I am the moth I killed in infant desire Hemming & Waying page of teen—London Jacked & Lusted the Liver out of me, been raped by sister king & knifed by brother queen & now all’s I gotta do is appreciate the hardness & emptiness of rocks & go curfew & an old man in his hunchy death, sleek—purtier than Ava Gavovnar, more eepish than sic fop hat gargoyle Boilio the poet of the Lower West Side mural, gangster popoff racketeer evil slander murder shit kill quit cut fuck rape scream howl pump kill gate murder down imp I’se re gusted—because there never was a better opening than because—