Selected Poems from Jack KerouacOn Tears

Tears is the break of my brow,The moony tempestuous

Sitting downIn dark railyardsWhen to see my mother’s faceRecalling from the waking visionI wept to understandThe trap mortalityAnd personal blood of earthWhich saw me in—

Father fatherWhy hast thou forsaken me?

Mortality & unpleasureRoam this city—Unhappiness my middle name

I want to be saved,--Sunk—can’t beWon’t beNever was made—So retch!

Tree

But a tree hasa long suffering shape

Is spread in halfby 2 limbed fate

Rises from gray rainpavements

To traffic in the bleakbrown air

Of cities radar televisionnameless dumb &numb mis connicumbThrowing twigs the

color of inkTo white souled

heaven, withA reality of its own uses

Tenorman

Sweet sad young tenorHorn slumped around neckBearded full of junkSlouches waitingFor Apocalypse,Listens to the newNegro raw trumpet kidTell him the wooden news;And the beat of the bassThe bass—drives inDrummer drops a bombPiano tinkle tacklesSweet tenor liftingAll American sorrowsRaises mouthpiece to mouthAnd blows to finger

The iron sounds

Selected Poems from Jim CarrollPrologue Poem

Starting with little in mind Some trust the wolfthe best you might do is begin it they have raised since birthover and over again. Transforming not to turn on them.

the real earth to a texture and strength Some trust their livesbeyond control. I am thinking of a wave. In the hands whose fingers Are five silent lives.We sit, huddled in winter coats, transfixedto the logic of stars collapsing. The fresh Some will be remindedgravity 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 Poemand, its rage subdued, turns back. The people downThen the hour is loose as the music, The hallway whoa vapor passing through. It defies Stab each othereach change, As the wind outdistances Each Friday night…each word spoken, and replies witha promise already broken. Is that a ritual

Our Desires Or just something terribly unresolved?

There is a wind that seeks the creviceunder my heartthe way insects file at nightbeneath a doorway

Its edges are rough, it slitsthe cords. It trips my steady breathing.When it comes there is no oneI can trust.

It seems, at times, I have designedtoo well this vision of you.I cannot survive your eyeswhen they are scarred with a needfor some lesser form of love.

I admit to this conceit.And though you will not accept itYou love it nonetheless

It is just like you. Our desireswill always be kept sharpby a kind of perversity. A needto be each forever alone….

Its color is violet, like lipsthat have been smashed by nightsor robbed of blood by lack of breath.The wind I was speaking of does this.

I can feel it now.