Book of Blues (2 page)

In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, and so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase-meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to the other, or not, in jazz, so that, in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, and by the musician's spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of the time as it waves & waves on by in measured choruses.

It's all gotta be non stop ad libbing within each chorus, or the gig is shot.

—Jack Kerouac

I see the backs

Of old Men rolling

Slowly into black

Stores.

Line faced mustached

Black men with turned back

Army weathered brownhats

Stomp on by with bags

Of burlap & rue

Talking to secret

Companions with long hair

In the sidewalk

On 3rd Street

San Francisco

With the rain of exhaust

Plicking in the mist

You see in black

Store doors—

Petting trucks farting—

Vastly city.

3rd St Market to Lease

Has a washed down tile

Tile entrance once white

Now caked with gum

Of a thousand hundred feet

Feet of passers who

Did not go straight on

Bending to flap the time

Pap page on back

With smoke emanating

From their noses

But slowly like old

Lantern jawed junkmen

Hurrying with the lump

Wondrous potato bag

To the avenues of sunshine

Came, bending to spit,

& Shuffled awhile there.

The rooftop of the beatup

tenement

On 3rd & Harrison

Has Belfast painted

Black on yellow

On the side

the old Frisco wood is

shown with weatherbeaten

rainboards & a

washed out blue bottle

once painted for wild

commercial reasons by

an excited seltzerite

as firemen came last

afternoon & raised the

ladder to a fruitless

fire that was not there,

so, is Belfast singin

in this time

when brand's forgotten

taste washed in

rain the gullies broadened

& every body gone

the acrobats of the

tenement

who dug bel fast

divers all

and the divers all dove

ah

little girls make

shadows on the

sidewalk shorter

than the shadow

of death

in this town—

Fat girls

In red coats

With flap white out shoes

Monstrous soldiers

Stalk at dawn

Looking for whores

And burning to eat up

Harried Mexican Laborers

Become respectable

In San Francisco

Carrying newspapers

Of culture burden

And packages of need

Walk sadly reluctant

To work in dawn

Stalking with not cat

In the feel of their stride

Touching to hide the sidewalk,

Blackshiny lastnight parlor

Shoes hitting the slippery

With hard slicky heels

To slide & Fall:

Breboac! Karrak!

Dumb kids with thick lips

And black skin

Carry paper bags

Meaninglessly:

“Stop bothering the cat!”

His mother yelled at him

Yesterday and now

He goes to work

Down Third Street

In the milky dawn

Piano rolling over the hill

To the tune of the English

Fifers in some whiter mine,

‘Brick a brack,

Pliers on your back;

Mick mack

Kidneys in your back;

Bald Boo!

Oranges and you!

Lick lock

The redfaced cock'

Oi yal!

She yawns to lall

La la—

Me Loom—

The weary gray hat

Peacoat ex sailor

Manning meekly

Hands a poop a pocket

Face

Lips

Oh Mo Sea!

The long fat yellow

Eternity cream

Of the Third St Bus

Roof swimming like

A monosyllable

Armored Mososaur

Swimming in my Primordial

Windowpane

Of pain

Alas! Youth is worried,

Pa's astray.

What so say

To well dressed ambassadors

From death's truth

Pimplike, rich,

In the morning slick;

Or sad white caps

Of snowy sea men

In San Francisco

Gray streets

Arm waving to walk

The Harrison cross

And earn later sunset

purple

Dig the sad old bum

No money

Presuming to hit the store

And buy his cube of oleo

For 8 cents

So in cheap rooms

At A M 3 30

He can cough & groan

In a white tile sink

By his bed

Which is used

To run water in

And stagger to

In the reel of wake up

Middle of the night

Flophouse Nightmares—

His death no blackern

Mine, his Toast's

Just as well buttered

And on the one side.

There's no telling

What's on the mind

Of the bony

Character in plaid

Workcoat & glasses

Carrying lunch

Stalking & bouncing

Slowly to his job

Or the beauteous Indian

Girl hurrying stately

Into Marathon Grocery

Run by Greeks

To buy bananas

For her love night,

What's she thinking?

Her lips are like cherries,

Her cheeks just purse them out

All the more to kiss them

And suck their juices out.

A young woman flees an old man,

Mohammedan Prophecy:

And she got avocados

Anyhow.

The furtive whore

Looks over her shoulder

While unlocking the door

Of the tenement

Of her pimp

Who with big Negro Arkansas

Or East Texas Oilfields

Harry Truman hat's

Been standin on the street

All day

Waiting for the cold girl

Bending in thincoat in the wind

And Sunday afternoon drizzle

To step on it & get some bread

For Papa's gotta sleep tonite

And the Chinaman's coming back

“No hunger & no wittles

neither deary”

Said the crone

To Edwin Drood

Okay.

There'll be an answer.

Forthcoming

When the morning wind

Ceases shaking

The man's collar

When there's no starch in't

And Acme Beer

Runs flowing

Into dry gray hats.

When

Dearie

The pennies in the

palm multiply

as you watch

When whistlers stop scowling

Smokers stop sighing

Watchers stop looking

And women stop walking

When gray beards

Grow no more

And pain dont

Take you by surprise

And bedposts creak

In rhythm not at morn

And dry men's bones

Are not pushed

By angry meaning pelvic

Propelled legs of reason

To a place you hate,

Then I'll go lay my crown

Body on the heads of 3 men

Hurrying & laughing

In the wrong direction,

my Idol

Sex is an automaton

Sounding like a machine

Thru the stopped up keyhole

—Young men go fastern

Old men

Old men are passionately breathless

Young men breathe inwardly

Young women & old women

Wait

There was a sound of slapping

When the angel stole come

And the angel that had lost

Lay back satisfied

Hungry addled red face

With tight clutch

Traditional Time

Brief case in his paw

Prowls placking the pavement

To his office girl's

Rumped skirt at 5's

Five O Clock Shadows

Angrily I must insist—

The phoney Negro

Sea captain

With the battered coat

Who looks like

Charley Chaplin in a

movie about now filmed

in the air by crews

of raving rabid

angels drooling happily

among the funny fat

Cherubim

Leading that serious

Hardjawed sincere

Negro stud

In at morn

For a round of crimes

Is Lucifer the Fraud

Little girls worry too much

For no one will hurt them

Except the beast

Whom they'd knife

In another life

In the as well East

As West of Bethlehem

And do of it much

Rhetorical Third Street

Grasping at racket

Groans & stinky

I've no time

To dally hassel

In your heart's house,

It's too gray

I'm too cold—

I wanta go to Golden,

That's my home.

I came a wearyin

From eastern hills;

Yonder Nabathacaque recessit

The eastward to Aurora rolls,

Somewhere West of Idalia

Or east of Klamath Falls,

One—Lost a blackhaired

Woman with thin feet

And red bag hangin

Who usta walk

Down Arapahoe Street

In Denver

And made all the

cabbies cry

And drugstore ponies

Eating pool in Remsac's

Sob, to See so Lovely

All the Time

And all so Tight

And young.

Pshaw! Paw's Ford

Got Lost in the Depression

He driv over the Divide

And forgot to cleave the road

Instead put atomic energy

In the ass of his machine

And flew to find

The gory clouds

Of rocky torment

Far away

And they fished him

Outa Miner's Creek

More dead n Henry

And a whole lot fonder,

Podner—

Clack of the wheel's

My freight train blues

Third Street I seed

And knowed

And under ramps I writ

The poems of the punk

Who met the Fagin

Who told him ‘Punk

When walkin with me

To roll a Sleepin drunk

Dont wish ya was back

Home in yr mother's parlor

And when the cops

Come ablastin

With loaded 45's

Dont ask for gold

Or silver from my purse,

Its milken hassel

Will be strewn

And scattered

In the sand

By an old bean can

And dried up kegs

We'd a sat & jawed on—

Roll my bones

In the Mortiary

My terms

And deeds of mortgagry

And death & taxes

All wrapt up.'

Little anger Japan

Strides holding bombs

To blow the West

To Fuyukama's

Shrouded Mountain Top

So the Lotus Bubble

Blossoms in Buddha's

Temple Dharma Eye

May unfold from

Pacific Center

Inward Out & Over

The Essence Center World

For the world's an Eye

And the universe is Seeing

Liquid

Rare

Radiant.

Eccentrics from out of town

Better not fill in

This blank

For a job on my gray boat

And Monkeysuits I furnish.

Batteries of ad men

Marching arm in arm

Thru the pages

Of Time & Life

The halls of MCA

Singing Deans

In the college morning

Preferable to dry cereal

When no corn mush

Cops & triggers

Magazine pricks

Dastardly Shadows

And Phantom Hero ines.

Swing yr umbrella

At the sidewalk

As you pass

Or tap a boy

On the shoulder

Saying “I say

Where is Threadneedle

Street?”

San Francisco is too sad

Time, I cant understand

Fog, shrouds the hills in

Makes unshod feet so cold

Fills black rooms with day

Dayblack in the white windows

And gloom in the pain of pianos:

Shadows in the jazz age

Filing by; ladders of flappers

Painters' white bucket

Funny 3 Stooge Comedies

And fuzzy headed Hero

Moofle Lip suckt it all up

And wondered why

The milk & cream of heaven

Was writ in gold leaf

On a book—big eyes

For the world

The better to see—

And big lips for the word

And Buddhahood

And death.

Touch the cup to these sad lips

Let the purple grape foam

In my gullet deep

Spread saccharine

And crimson carnadine

In my vine of veins

And shoot power

To my hand

Belly heart & head—

This Magic Carpet

Arabian World

Will take us

Easeful Zinging

Cross the Sky

Singing Madrigals

To horizons of golden

Moment emptiness

Whither whence uncaring

Dizzy ride in space

To red fires

Beyond the pale,

Rosy gory outlooks

Everywhere.

San Francisco is too old

Her chimnies lean

And look sooty

After all this time

Of waiting for something

To happen

Betwixt hill & house—

Heart & heaven.

San Francisco

San Francisco