Book of Blues (11 page)

“You can think by yourself”

says God from Heaven

Talking to all 70 thousand

Billion Four Thousand

Eighty Two Trillions

of Creatures in his Movie

called “Creation”

(pause)

He means that all

those sentient beings

are free to think unimpeded

—Only God is the Only One

who knows that all the thinking

going on

is what the thinking going on

is thinking

And none of it ever happened

SHTMIMK!

Shtmimk?

But like any other movie

the thinking is gray

but also big romances

like Latin Love You music

& all of it seems so golden

steada gray.

That's because it's a very strange

movie

It is strange as dulcet gray.

Hey looka me Ma

I'm writing like Yorkshire

Pudding De-Headed Gray

The proof is in the pudding

they Bray

Just like any other old Canaday

The brain is a pudding

with raisins in't

Hey looka me Ma I'm thinking

like Otay—

Okay, Mémo,

Está bien, Mémo,

Parandero.

(That's what they mean Espanish

‘Hey kiddy, dont hit

the bars too much,

chico.'

Hey Baby dont yup at me

in Azmetec!)

Yair, Pard old Hoopard

Hoomingway blew his head

over Old I-day-o

Hemingway Blues, is called.

Me too Blues—You Blues

—Thinkin Blues—Paris

Blues and Blacks—

Hurshy, move the tack!

Dont bring me no le-mon

chiffin, pie, man,

I'll break yore head in

Head already broken in

No chin

Yes chin

Soft Chin

Northport Autumn

falling leaves blues

And winter white

sailboat philosopher

blues, on sand,

Lois and Victor by name.

All kindsa fine blues

even this minute

in Vera Cruz,

Terre Haute,

Montana,

Golgotha,

Heaven Door.

All kindsa information rattlin

back & forth

Crazy old angel midnight

world talkin singin

rubbin antennaes

High on antenni

and go Mondadori'n

in Italy for to see sweep

of Gary Venice Door's

Venetian oar

Or go Atyastapafi'n

in other planets?

Goo, what a gaw!

And does wet boulders think?

I see the face of Christ

in the door

after it has been the face

of the Dog, the Owl,

the Lamb, the Lion,

Christ, the Dog again,

the Collie then suddenly

my God the Colleen!

Her soft brown eyes,

esperanza morena,

Then it's Christ again,

this time in profile

—This I just saw.

I'm now going into a deep trance

where I see visions—

Mwee hee hee ha ha.

Johnny Holmes is just about

the funniest man I know!

He laughs in cemeteries

in the woods of Connecticutt

(Connect ton cul, we used

to call

it

in little

Canada.)

Connect your arse.

Some come on John, connect

your arse to a Grave,

pal, almost lover, and

I'll bring ye sweet

daydrids

in the morning

of the 2 thieves & Me

& You

(Written before I knew about Pascal — 1965)

But John's like Pascal,

or like Frank O'hara even,

He wont let his head

Believe his heart

& all that

So he skeptically adjusts

his glasses, leans forward eagerly,

almost hugely,

& roars

Qui à poignez

ton cul dans

terre!

And 2 days later he looks it up

in a French Dictionary,

wondering what I'm thinking

about, and what I think

about him thinking.

Wow Very Strange

It's dillier than that

they daisies they pud

in puddinhead blues.

To Earl of Shockshire:

“Sire, in this my Inscribe

May't you'll fee.”

The Earl of Shrockshire

shires & showers & shh's

on back a batch

of Tanguipore

Tangled

Telegrams

Mistaken by Saint Peter

as Hair of the Gate

“SAN FRANCISCO BLUES”

In a letter to Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac referred to writing this poem in March 1954, when he “left Neal's . . . and went to live in the Cameo Hotel on Third Street Frisco Skid Row.”

“RICHMOND HILL BLUES”

Written in Richmond Hill, New York, while Kerouac was living with his mother. He began the poem on September 4, 1953, and completed it later that month.

“BOWERY BLUES”

Kerouac dated the poem March 29, 1955.

“MACDOUGAL STREET BLUES”

Kerouac dated the poem June 26, 1955.

“DESOLATION BLUES”

“Desolation Peak

Mt. Baker Nat'l Forest

Washington State

August 1956”

“ORIZABA 210 BLUES”

“Written in a tejado rooftop dobe cell

at Orizaba 210, Mexico City, Fall 1956

. . . by candlelight . . .”

“ORLANDA BLUES”

Begun in July 1957, finished February 17, 1958, this poem was written in Orlando, Florida—“Orlanda” in native parlance.

“CERRADA MEDELLIN BLUES”

“July 1961

37-A Cerrada Medellin

Mexico, D.F., Mexico”

Begun in June, finished in July.

Book of Blues
is one of the unpublished manuscripts Jack Kerouac left in his meticulously organized archive. It does not contain all of Kerouac's unpublished blues poems—he chose not to include, for instance, “Berkeley Blues,” “Brooklyn Bridge Blues,” “Tangier Blues,” “Washington DC Blues,” and “Earthquake Blues.” Comparisons with Kerouac's original handwritten notebooks indicate that in the process of editing the book he deleted and rearranged some verses, and made some small editorial changes. Readers familiar with the excerpts from “San Francisco Blues” published in
Scattered Poems
and the excerpts from “MacDougal Street Blues” published in
Heaven and Other Poems
will notice that Kerouac subsequently made changes in some of those verses. Kerouac's original typescript of
Book of Blues
is located in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

I have taken the liberty of dedicating this book on Jack's behalf to two of his close friends and correspondents, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch.

—John Sampas,

Literary Executor, Estate of Jack and Stella Kerouac

So I'm an alcoholic Catholic mother-lover

yet there is no sweetish nectar no fuzzed-peach

thing no song sing but in the word

to which I'm starlessly unreachably faithful

you, pedant & you, politically righteous & you, alive

you think you can peal my sober word apart from my drunken word

my Buddhist word apart from my white sugar Thérèse word my

word to comrade from my word to my mother

but all my words are one word my lives one

my last to first wound round in finally fiberless crystalline skein

I began as a drunkard & ended as a child

I began as an ordinary cruel lover & ended as a boy who

read radiant newsprint

I began physically embarrassing—“bloated”—&

ended as a perfect black-haired laddy

I began unnaturally subservient to my mother &

ended in the crib of her goldenness

I began in a fatal hemorrhage & ended in a

tiny love's body perfect smallest one

But I began in a word & I ended in a word &

I know that word better

Than any knows me or knows that word,

probably, but I only asked to know it—

That word is the word when I say me bloated

& when I say me manly it's

The word that word I write perfectly lovingly

one & one after the other one

But you—you can only take it when it's that one & not

some other one

Or you say “he lost it” as if I (I so nothinged) could ever

lose the word

But when there's only one word—when

you know them, the words—

The words are all only one word the perfect

word—

My body my alcohol my pain my death are only

the perfect word as I

Tell it to you, poor sweet categorizers

Listen

Every me I was & wrote

were only & all (gently)

That one perfect word

—Alice Notley