Selected Poems of Jack Kerouac: Shichosha Series of Contemporary American Poets

  Selected Poems from Jack Kerouac On Tears

  Tears is the break of my brow,

  The moony tempestuous

  Sitting down

  In dark railyards

  When to see my mother’s face

  Recalling from the waking vision

  I wept to understand

  The trap mortality

  And personal blood of earth

  Which saw me in—

  Father father

  Why hast thou forsaken me?

  Mortality & unpleasure

  Roam this city—

  Unhappiness my middle name

  I want to be saved,--

  Sunk—can’t be

  Won’t be

  Never was made—

  So retch!

  Tree

  But a tree has

  a long suffering shape

  Is spread in half

  by 2 limbed fate

  Rises from gray rain

  pavements

  To traffic in the bleak

  brown air

  Of cities radar television

  nameless dumb &

  numb mis connicumb

  Throwing twigs the

  color of ink

  To white souled

  heaven, with

  A reality of its own uses

  Tenorman

  Sweet sad young tenor

  Horn slumped around neck

  Bearded full of junk

  Slouches waiting

  For Apocalypse,

  Listens to the new

  Negro raw trumpet kid

  Tell him the wooden news;

  And the beat of the bass

  The bass—drives in

  Drummer drops a bomb

  Piano tinkle tackles

  Sweet tenor lifting

  All American sorrows

  Raises mouthpiece to mouth

  And blows to finger

  The iron sounds

  Selected Poems from Jim Carroll Prologue Poem Starting with little in mind Some trust the wolf the best you might do is begin it they have raised since birth over and over again. Transforming not to turn on them.

  the real earth to a texture and strength Some trust their lives beyond control. I am thinking of a wave. In the hands whose fingers Are five silent lives.

  We sit, huddled in winter coats, transfixed to the logic of stars collapsing. The fresh Some will be reminded gravity pulling at stones we grip. of nothing, or perish by that mermory.

  Locked tightly to the seams of night, the moon rears like a fenced stallion Poem and, its rage subdued, turns back.

  The people down

  Then the hour is loose as the music, The hallway who a vapor passing through. It defies Stab each other each change, As the wind outdistances Each Friday night…

  each word spoken, and replies with

  a promise already broken. Is that a ritual Our Desires Or just something terribly unresolved?

  There is a wind that seeks the crevice under my heart

  the way insects file at night

  beneath a doorway

  Its edges are rough, it slits

  the cords. It trips my steady breathing.

  When it comes there is no one

  I can trust.

  It seems, at times, I have designed too well this vision of you.

  I cannot survive your eyes

  when they are scarred with a need

  for some lesser form of love.

  I admit to this conceit.

  And though you will not accept it

  You love it nonetheless

  It is just like you. Our desires

  will always be kept sharp

  by a kind of perversity. A need

  to be each forever alone….

  Its color is violet, like lips

  that have been smashed by nights

  or robbed of blood by lack of breath.

  The wind I was speaking of does this.

  I can feel it now.

 

 

  Jack Kerouac, Selected Poems of Jack Kerouac: Shichosha Series of Contemporary American Poets

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