Free Book of Blues by Jack Kerouac Page B

CHORUS
    I guess God is alright
    He’ll take care of us
    But there are perturbing roots
    in these trees,
    that claw in earth
    & outa fingernails
    as long as Malaya
    eat up thru sucktubes
    the juice of the mother
    Terra Firma
    Mona Leisure
    & these roots remind you
    of the roots in your grave
    I wish I could be cremated
    & sprung
    (to the wave),
    but Ah, hell, I donno
    I think I’ll go to
    Sapplewhile
    & idle away the
    unfinished poem

12TH CHORUS
    The evening silencius
    Poetry
    is so pretty
    When you silence it like that
    It’s nice to pop pearl pages
    the candlelight, you know,
    is dedicated to poets
    Okay—dreaming fields—Blake
    wants to hear the latest development
    in the man the way the bleat
    lambs bleakly blake it now
    and that is soft,
    Ah William,
    I guess as soft as Spanish
    dreams, what was it Trappist
    said:— “Goats
    as
    soft
    as
    sleep”
    Something like that
    Farewell

13TH CHORUS
    Jack Micheline
    â€œFeet of children playing by
    the mill”—he didnt say
    hill—When tongue gets
    caught inside the lapels
    of the mouth, that’s what
    I wanta hear—Like Fred
    Katz the cellist—or is
    it chellist?
    â€œTongue crucified, seven stitched”
    is pretty weird
    Make it down to New Orleans
    one of these days
    says Moonlight Martin
    â€œManiac massacred” on account
    of “blinded on stone”
    Wow, whatze mean?
    Like Wolfe’s Underground, mad dog
    choking in tunnels of hate
    â€œSpring has come
    yellow teeth & black hair”

14TH CHORUS
    is exactly like the magnificent
    haiku mailed to President
    Eisenhower by Manosuke
    Kambe
    â€œThey have succeeded
    in shooting up a star
    And Spring is near”
    Yeah, where down yonder
    in you now Where
    Now I’m getting to sound
    like a drearisome
    tangerine
    Folks, read Jack Micheline,
    n doubt about it
    He’s a great poeit
    And see?—read Gregory Corso
    too all about “bookies
    & chickenpluckers”
    & Read Competition Ginsberg
    the maddest brain
    in poetry

15TH CHORUS
    Ginsberg has a poet who
    has a “great precise
    practical benevolence
    & new understanding,”
    and I have Jack
    Micheline, Steve Tropp,
    Steve White, and
    many other naked heads
    What I wrote first I kept,
    because I figure
    God moves
    the body hand
    because
    the body of the truth
    is a body
    corruptible
    in graves
    though
    nourishing,
    O Schweitzer
    Africa Trumpet!

16TH CHORUS
    (And George Jones blows too!)
    â€œKneeling in the sun beside
    the bright red mad beauties
    of Street!” sings Corso
    â€œI drag him into
    myricolorous St Chapelle
    Stained Glass marvel,”
    sings Ginsberg
    Dont discourage
    the poets!
    Sings Jack Micheline:
    â€œAnd kiss the strangers
    & plant the seeds of life among the dead”
    Because it’s a distant
    hightone rail
    â€œFlower of cities”

17TH CHORUS
    And these sweet lines revive
    the open poetry of hope
    in old America
    long fish
    And this sweet moth revised
    the entelechy
    in my endebechy
    in old pardodechy
    where Croo-Ba
    made it working
    boy girls in
    He was hanged in the closet
    The King ate sliced sage
    John the Baptist had no head
    Jesus had nails in his skin
    The Neon’s nailed to me
    I wish I were dead
    Or King of Ronald Colman
    country, or Kin to Sariputra
    Shakespeare, one

18TH CHORUS
    Well, s’long as barrel womps we’ll
    womp em on in, Used to write
    poems about Princeton boy rose
    Also Baltimore bleedings
    & think rabbit plate
    shit
    I wish I had
    a way
    to make
    Tuesday Sarah
    come by
    any day
    With China throwup
    hadnt Puttered
    men with me
    but bile was free,
    & girl long blonde
    taffy pull
    I guess best thing to do
    is to write to
    Blues Bessie

19TH CHORUS
    I wonder what Emily’s thinkin
    in that groomus earth of
    coral snakes & alligators
    on the sidewalk, is she got down
    by Sunday in the Tomb, or
    does time matter no blow out
    bulbs of shame, Jesus, what
    shame in eyelid war life
    no shame at all in eyelid
    ant