Scattered Poems by Jack Kerouac is one of the first poetry books that I recall receiving as a gift. I must have been a young teenager and my brother gave this book to me for either a birthday or Christmas. While I didn’t wind up becoming a huge Kerouac fan, I still treasure this little collection with all of my heart.
He is your friend, let him dream;
He’s not your brother, he’s not yr. father,
He’s not St. Michael he’s a guy.
He’s married, he works, go on sleeping
On the other side of the world,
Go thinking in the Great European Night
I’m explaining him to you my way not yours,
Child, Dog — listen: go find your soul,
Go smell the wind, go far.
Life is a pity. Close the book, go on,
Write no more on the wall, on the moon,
At the Dog’s, in the sea in the snowing bottom.
Go find God in the nights, the clouds too.
When can it stop this big circle at the skull
oh Neal; there are men, things outside to do.
Great huge tombs of Activity
in the desert of Africa of the heart,
The black angels, the women in bed
with their beautiful arms open for you
in their your, some tenderness
Beginning in the same shroud.
The big clouds of new continents,
O foot tired in climes so mysterious,
Don’t go down the outside for nothing.
1952?
Some Western Haikus
Arms folded
to the moon,
Among the cows.
Elephants munching
on grass – loving
Heads side by side.
Perfect moonlit night
marred
By family squabbles.
Catfish fighting for his life,
and winning,
Splashing us all.
Nodding against
the wall, the flowers
Sneeze
Evening coming –
the office girl
Unloosing her scarf.
And the quiet cat
sitting by the post
Perceives the moon.
The rain has filled
the bird bath
Again, almost
The moon had
a cat’s mustache
For a second.
A big fat flake
of snow
Falling all alone
In my medicine cabinet,
the winter fly
has died of old age.
No Other Appetite 