Read Mexico City Blues Page 5


  At Xmas they brought me a toy house

  in and out of which

  Caroline my sister

  played little valentine

  armies showing little sad

  people of the prime

  pip Vienna smalltoot

  towns, with orchestras

  of the square,

  and in the brown light

  of the kitchen I wondered

  “What is this? – mystery of little people.

  Is each one a frightening as me?

  Is each one afraid as me?

  Is each one got to sleep

  in the dark at night?

  Did any of them lil cardboard soldiers

  See the Sun of Sadness at Six

  In the windows of their snow slope?”

  93rd Chorus

  But I knew they hadnt.

  They hadnt thought such thoughts.

  No – I knew.

  I knew I knew I knew.

  It was like the Lankavatara

  Scripture

  I got to read 30 years later,

  It said: “These little cardboard

  Houses and people, may be real,

  Considered as real, if you steal

  Little reel from the wheel

  Every neel till the eel

  In the skeel keep the weal

  Of all men intact in city

  halls

  Of poop hope.

  In other words, son,

  hang on – dont tip,

  lose balance, see reality

  in images like cardboard

  – nor in the brown light

  of this very kitchen.”

  I pouted in my childhood.

  94th Chorus

  But now I will describe

  The crazy people I’ve known.

  These things.

  My mother would take us

  To a three story tenement

  on Lakeview Avenue, still

  standing there – washlines

  of Araby hung from ropes

  on the brown porch –

  spend all day in there

  talkin & gossipin –

  lockin and rossipin

  and plopperin and

  dopperin and sopperin –

  – it’s easy to go crazy

  I go crazy sometimes.

  Can’t get on with my story,

  write it in verse.

  Worse

  Aint go no story, just verse

  It was a crazy place to take us, I mean

  95th Chorus

  It was where I learned to say “door”

  Meanwhile a thousand things

  Were happening in the Maldoror wood

  Of our neighborhood, Beaulieu Street

  Up ahead, with rats of rat winery

  And pestils and poolsharks

  And pests of tenement crooners,

  Looners – the dreary population

  Of the world in 1924.

  Two years old, I sat on the sidewalk

  Contemplating time in white sand,

  That was up on Burnaby Street.

  Names of Silly Streets.

  We have a meet to keep.

  “Simplificus? Ridiculous?

  Immensicus? Marvailovous!”

  The wild a thousand and one thousand

  things

  To do & be done

  when you’re a kiddy

  of two or four

  in the bright ball

  inside your mind

  of heaven given

  joy.

  96th Chorus

  I tumbled down the street

  On a tricycle, very fast,

  I coulda kept going

  And wound up in the river,

  – Or across the trolley tracks

  And got cobble mashed

  And all smashed so that later on

  I cant have grit dreams

  Of Lakeview Avenue,

  And see my father die,

  Had I died at two –

  But I saw my father die,

  I saw my brother die,

  I saw my mother die

  my mother my mother my mother

  inside me –

  Saw the pear trees die,

  the grapes, pearls, penny trees –

  Saw little white collar girl

  with little black dress

  And spots of rose on each cheek,

  die, in her glasses

  In a coffin.

  But I raced my bicycle safely.

  97th Chorus

  Meanwhile there’s my Pa, alone in street,

  Coming for supper, under heaven bleak

  The trees of March black twigs

  Against the red & gory sundown

  That blazed across the River

  sinking in the ocean to the East

  beyond Salisbury’s latest & last

  grain of sand,

  Then all’s wet underneath, to Eclipse

  (Ivan the Heaven Sea-Ice King, Euclid,

  Bloody Be Jupiter, Nucleus,

  Nuclid, What’s-His-Name – the sea

  The sea-drang Scholar with mermaids,

  Bloody blasted dadflap thorn it

  – Neppy Tune–)

  All’s wet clear to Neptune’s Seat.

  Sensing the aura, the news

  Of that frost, my father

  Hurries in his Woe-Street

  Conscious he is a man

  Doomed to mortal destiny.

  “And my poor lil Ti Pousse,”

  he thinks of me,

  “He’ll get it too.”

  98th Chorus

  My father loves me,

  my mother too,

  I am all safe,

  and so are you.

  My father adores me

  thinks I am cute

  hates to see me

  flash sheroot

  Or bespatter bedspreads

  with mule of infant

  woodsy odors –

  blash aroot

  My old man’s only 28 years old

  And is a young insurance salesman

  And is confidently clacking down the street

  And chuckling to think of the boys

  And the poker game and gnaws

  His fingernails worried about how fat

  He’s getting, “no coal bill’s been

  Highern this 1924 coalbill

  I got to watch my dollars

  Pretty soon the poorhouse” –

  (“Wish I was God,” he adds to think)

  99th Chorus

  My father, Leo Alcide Kérouac

  Comes in the door of the porch

  On the way out to downtown red,

  (where Neons Redly-Brownly Flash

  An aura over the city center

  As seen from the river where we lived)

  – “Prap – prohock!” he’s coughing,

  Busy, “Am,” bursting to part

  the seams of his trousers with power

  of assembled intentions.

  “B-rrack – Brap?”

  (as years later GJ would imitate him,

  “your father, Zagg, he goes along,

  Bre-hack! Brop?” Raising

  his leg, bursting his face

  to rouge outpop huge mad eyes

  of “big burper balloons

  of the huge world”)

  To see if there’s any mail in the box

  My father shoots 2 quick glances

  Into all hearts of the box,

  No mail, you see the flash of his anxious

  Head looking in the void for nothing.

  100th Chorus

  That’s the porch of the Lupine house.

  Afternoons I sleep upstairs,

  In the sun, on the porch, in October,

  I remember the dry leaves

  in the blue sky.

  I remember one day being parked in the

  wickerbasket

  Baby carriage, under huge old tree,


  In family photos we’ve preserved it,

  A great elm rising from dust

  Of the little uphill road –

  By dry hedges on a late afternoon

  In November in the North, sun warm

  But air cold, I am wrapt

  And beswallered in sweet ebony

  With wraps and puffcream caps

  And chinkly pinkly pink baby,

  Gleering at the world with little

  wet lips,

  Glad, Ah John,

  – that tree is still standing

  but the road has moved over.

  Such is the might of the baby

  in the seat

  He hugens to re-double

  the image, in words.

  101st Chorus

  We strove to go to movies

  And re discover the happiness

  of the baby –

  We built up towers of prayer

  in ivory and stone –

  Roused denizens from their proper

  rat-warrens –

  “Simplificus the baby,

  what hast thou thought,

  should he be serried

  and should we be clobber

  the agent of the giant

  in the picture?

  or let him guess?

  I say, let’s

  let him guess.

  Then he’ll come crying

  & sneaking thru the tent

  looking for the showing

  of proud discontent,

  the circus of mirkus,

  pile it on thick,

  – befriend –

  it’s a show to go to movies

  but a blow the baby be”

  102nd Chorus

  “See to it that he never ends,”

  they might have added anyhow.

  One never dies,

  One’s never born

  So sing the optimists

  Of holy old religion,

  trying to assuage –

  Your shoes may look nice,

  your baby buggies neater,

  but one dies,

  one’s born.

  What the Tathagata of Buddhism

  preaches,

  The Prophet of Buddhahood

  is that

  nothing

  is really

  born nor dies

  But that Ignorance is its Prince,

  The essence never moved

  From folded magnificence.

  103rd Chorus

  My father in downtown red

  Walked around like a shadow

  Of ink black, with hat, nodding,

  In the immemorial lights of my dreams.

  For I have since dreamt of Lowell

  And the image of my father,

  Straw hat, newspaper in pocket,

  Liquor on the breath, barber shopshines,

  Is the image of Ignorant Man

  Hurrying to his destiny which is Death

  Even though he knows it.

  ’S why they call Cheer,

  a bottle, a glass, a drink,

  A Cup of Courage –

  Men know the mist is not their friend –

  They come out of fields & put coats on

  And become businessmen & die stale

  The same loathsome stale death

  They mighta died in countryside

  Hills of dung.

  My remembrance of my father

  in downtown Lowell

  walking like cardboard cut

  across the lost lights

  is the same empty material

  as my father in the grave.

  104th Chorus

  I’d rather be thin than famous,

  I dont wanta be fat,

  And a woman throws me outa bed

  Callin me Gordo, & everytime

  I bend

  to pickup

  my suspenders

  from the davenport

  floor I explode

  loud huge grunt-o

  and disgust

  every one

  in the familio

  I’d rather be thin than famous

  But I’m fat

  Paste that in yr. Broadway Show

  105th Chorus

  Essence is like absence of reality,

  Just like absence of non-reality

  Is the same essence anyhow.

  Essence is what sunlight is

  At the same time that moonlight is,

  Both have light, both have shape,

  Both have darkness, both are late:

  Both are late because empty thereof,

  Empty is light, empty is dark,

  what’s difference between emptiness

  of brightness and dark?

  What’s the difference between absence

  Of reality, joy, or meaning

  In middle of bubble, as being same

  As middle of man, non-bubble

  Man is the same as man,

  The same as no-man, the same

  As Anyman, Everyman, Asiman,

  (asinine man)

  Man is nowhere till he knows,

  The essence of emptiness

  is essence of gold

  106th Chorus

  Man is nowhere anyway

  Because nowhere is here

  And I am here, to testify.

  Nowhere is

  what nowhere was

  I know nowhere

  More anywhere

  Than this here

  Particular everywhere

  When I fell thru the eye of the needle

  And became a tumbling torso

  In the Univers-O,

  Brother, let me

  tell you,

  I thought

  I was moving

  from somewhere

  to everywhere

  but nothing moved

  so I musta been

  and still be

  (must) no

  where be

  But that’s all up to the Saints

  I aint gonna say the Saints of Innisfree

  107th Chorus

  Light is Late

  yes

  because

  it happens after you realize it

  You dont see light

  Until sensation of seeing light

  Is registered in Perception.

  Perception notifies Discrimination,

  etc., Consciousness

  Until then there was no light

  So light is late

  Darkness is late

  You dont conceive of darkness

  Till you’ve been late with light

  When you learned difference

  Between equal poles abright

  with Arbitrary ideas

  About somethin bein this

  Or that, abiding in this abode,

  Denying in that abode –

  Equal, positive, electric shock,

  coil, dacoit, tower,

  oil – it’s all late

  108th Chorus

  Neither this nor that

  means,

  no arbitrary conceptions,

  because if you say

  arbitrarily, the RAMMIS

  is the RAMMIS, ! –

  and the TSORIS is the TSORIS,

  or the FLORIST,

  or the –

  arbitrary conceptions

  have sprung into existence

  that didnt have to be there

  in the first place

  when your eyes were bright

  with seeing emptiness

  in the void of holy sea

  where creatures didnt

  abound, nor crops grow,

  and nothing happened,

  and nobody lived,

  and nobody cared –

  You didnt need

  arbitrary concepts there

  and need them now

  you say you need them now

  I say, you say,

  Why should you need them now

  Why should you now
<
br />   109th Chorus

  “Was it a bright afternoon,

  bright with seeing?”

  Asks the literary type

  sitting in a chair

  In an afternoon’s dream

  And you see his buddy comin in,

  Holding his coat to the hook

  After closing the door,

  You see it on a Thurber Cartoon,

  In New Yorker, the funny

  Fat figures V-cut and Z-cut

  In squares, spilling cartons

  of spaghetti to their orb ball

  OON LINE ANOON

  POP CLOUD - WORD - HOLE

  And people thumb thru

  Reg’ally

  And up comes the laugh, the yok,

  Funny Thurber

  Cartoon there,

  “Was it a bright afternoon,

  bright with seeing?”

  looking over his newspaper

  or poetry pad

  110th Chorus

  I know how to withstand poison

  And sickness known to man,

  In this void. I’m no apprentice

  When it comes to remembering

  The eternity of suffering

  Quietly I’ve been through,

  Without complaint, sensing inside

  Pain the gloriful um mystery.

  Afternoons as a kid I’d listen

  to radio programs for to see

  the scratch between announcements,

  Knowing the invalid is glad

  only because he’s mad

  enough to appreciate every

  little thing that blazons there

  in the swarmstorm of his eye

  Transcendental Inner Mind

  where glorious radiant Howdahs

  are being carried by elephants

  through groves of flowing milk

  past paradises of waterfall

  into the valley of bright gems

  be rubying an antique ocean

  floor of undiscovered splendor

  in the heart of unhappiness

  111th Chorus

  I didnt attain nothin

  When I attained Highest

  Perfect

  Wisdom

  Known in Sanskrit as

  Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi

  I attained absolutely nothing,

  Nothing came over me,

  nothing was realizable –

  In dropping all false conceptions

  of anything at all

  I even dropped my conception

  of highest old wisdom

  And turned to the world,

  a Buddha inside,

  And said nothing.

  People asked me questions

  about tomatos robbing the vine

  and rotting on the vine