Jack Kerouac’s word world is totally different than mine. He’s all
bellhop
coat rack
campaign
buttonhole
ventriloquist
pince-nez
morphine
silhouette
& etc.
His words aren’t mine but I’d be a damn fool not to try some out. Here’s a poem I wrote on the couch on Kerouac’s birthday. Not an homage, more like a drunken text I’m sending him through time-and-space, saying, Hey, man. Next year: let’s celebrate our birthdays together. Next year: we’ll dance.
***
On Kerouac’s Birthday
When it comes to billiards I hear mathematics
is rather relevant so I better stay away.
Today on Chelsea Street the oblong “OPEN”
sign that hangs for all to see just sat
inside the storefront like a half-forgotten
letter. With weather like this even a goat
can get pants fulla ants: ready to kid,
to be ridda all this bald white stuff,
she might just sidle into an epidemic
bout of idleness. I tried to call my sis
“Swiss Miss” but she didn’t like the name.
It’s just her darn-cute ponytail & white
toothed grin I want to emulate, to raise
high above the roof beams, Seymour,
to the heights where garlic dries in summer.
Summer in the city means cleavage, cleavage,
cleavage, & the smell of sewage everywhere.
Pigs can clear the forest with their hooves
& bums I got to know out west can’t hear me
now, can’t see me now, can’t stop me now.
[photo by Allen Ginsberg]
panache, perhaps 