2.3
January 7, 2009

Jack Kerouac Videos. Bonus: My favorite Kerouac pome, ever: Hymn.

I’ll watch a great writer and dark sad soul and high-balling party madman jazz-loving progressive reactionary loner make no sense for 52 seconds, any day:

Bonus, a little sense-making on the Beat Generation and what they do and don’t do:

 

I read this years ago courstey Tom at good ol’Penny Lane right after Anne Waldman had read, a mistake I won’t make again:

from Pomes All Sizes (Pearl Jam/Eddie Vedder sang this, btw).

Hymn.

And when you showed me brooklyn bridge 
in the morning, ah god... 
and the people were slippin on ice in the street 
twice, twice 
two different people came over, goin to work 
so earnest and tryful, clutching their pitiful morning daily news 
slip on the ice and fall 
both inside five minutes 
and i cried, i cried 
that's when you taught me, tears 
ah god, in the morning, ah thee 
and me leaning on the lamppost wiping eyes 
eyes, nobody's know i'd cry 
or woulda cared anyway 
but oh, i saw my father 
and my grandfather's mother 
and the long lines of chairs 
and tear sitters and dead 
ah me, i knew god 
you had better plans than that 
so whatever plan you have for me 
splitter of majesty 
make it short, brief, make it snappy 
bring me home to the eternal mother 
today, at your service anyway 
and until...

 

My close-second favorite, more in jest, that I read also that night, ably captures the painful funny happy enigma that is woman:

 

 WOMAN  by Jack Kerouac

                A woman is beautiful
                 but
                    you have to swing
                    and swing and swing
                    and swing like
                    a handkerchief in the
                                          wind

 

 

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