Once Again-The Summer Of Love, 1967-Postcards From A Lost Planet-Buddha Swings-Jack Kerouac Wings  

For Jack's month Ocotber in the sweating rains  

By Jeffrey Thorne

Beat down, beat around, beat sound, beat to the ground. Fuck it Jack just jumped into it from his beautified beatified skull, maybe thinking of youthful skull behind some bushes or out on some back road highway jumping the bones of some friend’s only, but really and truly jumped from some river of life, mill town life like a million guys before him and now in foreign lands a million guys after him, the river flowing to steam up some engine to grind the fabric that will clothe the world. Ha, like we who come naked into this holy coil can take solace from that low catholic trip it took him, and not just him but lots of others who broke the square habit at least for a time, for the youth duration. Damn beatitude in the end when all the shouting was over and Jack in some drunken grave why couldn’t he have listened to that guy out in Frisco town, the guy, a kid really, who all nervous on bennie nevertheless blew that high white note that was in his DNA, provide by grandma like everything else out to the fucking China seas. But that was at the end. At the beginning hell no said Jack.

The world wasn’t big enough to hold all his desperations, keep them in check, keep those wanting habits every poor boy has inside him talk about DNA. Even rama jamma Buddha didn’t have no cure for that except maybe some jimson and jetsam and mystical balm for a shattered world. Like I say that was at the end though. At the beginning our boy took off as fast as he could from that mill town river and never looked back (except to take the dust off his shoes and bow down before our Lady of the river when luck ran out, the booze ran out, hell, the sweet tea sticks ran out). Took it on the lam, went west east south north (I think on that last direction maybe back to the homeland, back to the stinking big river up north that some earlier Jack crossed to get to that fucking mill river, Jesus, looking for the holy grail, looking for about six ways to get out of that beat down, beat around, beat sound, beat to the ground bitch stuff. Took up with some fat fast mad monk who spouted stuff about negro streets, crazies and Moloch devouring the land, the land of milk and honey, rama rama, went to the mat (secret in more ways than one with that loose bastard who couldn’t keep his mouth shut or cock in his pants -and that was that-for a time (no, not then that street wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with the language and ladies’ pocketbooks or that highbrow junkie hanging around New Orleans looking for quick fixes although they qualified if it came to that).

For a time no question since the pull of fast fat monks could wear off fast under the sun of boze, booze, bennies and grand simon. Took his hat off and let the world slip in-thought maybe the way was the way. Startled guys like desolation angels and dharma bums into thinking they could do what had never been done like some lead pipe cinch. Ran up the mountain (no Prometheus Adonis more likely who was to know) to place incense in the fatted calf body singing, singing, singing some cross between the stations of the cross and plastic nirvana (just to be cute, cute as a nine thieves). Saw Siva run the river gauntlet and leave satiated beyond compare, saw Rama too walking down Post Street in his nightshirt. Then fame got in his way, this is poor boy wanting habits Jack we are talking about remember in case you have lost the drift. Make him surly and brazen wondering why the hell if fame was fame didn’t it jump out at him when he started on his Calvary Road road, started out in dirty sneakers and crusted blue jeans, and when he jumped out of his skull and fled that mountebank river town. Fools and jesters following his every move, hiding in bushes and make that fat monk look like some holy fool, like a goof (again remember please not that street-wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with language and ladies’ pocketbooks). Ah, sullen lost planet life.         

How was he to know, how was Jack to blessed know that his illegitimate children, not child, children would abandon their flea-etched sins and follow the pied piper. Follow the brethren saint mad man with the wooly beard and the incense announcing his arrival at the table singing, singing, singing and it wasn’t hosannas but some odd unspoken tune which ripped across the land for a while. Drew magnetic forces around themselves and expected the kingdom to last until end times. Hah, Jack could have given them the word on that little mistake. I am the light Jack thought and then he faded from the scene into utter darkness those unwashed, unloved, unspoken for illegitimate children to lay waste to the desert for forty years. Jesus