Book of Sketches - Jack Kerouac [22]
with their Merlin lump —
Wild trailer cities
on D’s skirts!
Old 1952! hallo!
— Rockies? the
jigsaw fanciful cliffs
of infant scrawls
are no steeper!
they have sides that
sink like despair & rise
like hope —
with a still point
peak — Motels, Autels,
Trailerlands! — they
huddle on the Plain —
The buildings & motels
far out E Colfax are
so new you couldnt
smear shit on em,
it would fall off!
THE THING I LIKE ABOUT
Chinatowns, you look around,
you see that everybody has
a vice, beautiful vice —
whether it’s O, or wine,
or Cunt, or whiskey —
you don’t feel so isolated
from man as you do
in AngloSaxon Broadways
of Glare & Traffic where
people might be hung up
on shouting preachers, or
lynching, or baseball,
or cars — Gad I hate
America with a passionate
intensity —
I’m going to excoriate
the cocksucker & save
my heroes from its doom.
It aint no atom
bomb will blow up
America, America
itself is a bomb
bound to go off
from within — What
monster lurks there, bald
head, fat, 55, young wife,
millions, Henry J Shmeiser,
out of his pissing cancerous
life will flow (from the
belly) a juice of explosions
— dowagers
& young juicy cunts with
high mannered ways on
buses will gasp — I
stick my finger in the cunt.
America goes ‘Blast’ —
Fine people like Hinkle
will be buried under the
stucco autel ruins — ah —
Lucien will rave —
(Written when I was a railroad brakeman
covered with soot mad as hell in 1952:
I apologize now, America, in 1959, for
such filthy bitterness but that’s what
I said then, and meant it.)
DENVER
The So. Platte at the
CBQ railyards — in
Sept. flows briskly from
the hump mountains
— sand island, — one sad
sunflower — weeds —
mudsides plopping off in
tide — water ripples
fast — banks steep,
dumpy, reinforced with
rocks — pieces of tin
strip, sticks, pipe —
sewage pipes come out —
oil rainbowing the water
— many small beat
bridges — under the
RR bridge an old
concrete foundation, — oily
rocks — driftwood piled,
a-ripple — cans — dirty
pigeons — rock villages —
— on bank old dining
car, red soot, for switchmen
— little trees growing
on the reinforced bank —
but many tree stumps
where trees cut — long
islands of rocks —
fast flows at sides —
above this sad stream
flowing thru iron tragedies
are the brass clouds
of solid Autumn —
Junk: - pile of tires, a child’s
crayon book, broken glass,
coldwind, black burntout
near sewage steam pipe —
bolts, bird feathers, an
old frying pan sitting in the
crook of a bridge girder,
old wire, flat rusty cans
no longer nameable, —
is written on viaduct concrete
wall: “If anybody were
in the Army in August
1942 when I shot
gent Slensa come
ant tell the Sgt.”
(incoherent) — & drawing
in chalk of profile
with cloth cap, plaid,
top bop button, a
strange Skippy —
“All Judge
Suck Pussy”
Field of weeds, a plain
facing “The Centennial
School Supply Co.” — “The
Mine & Smelter Supply
Co.” — aluminum sooted
tanks — red tin sooted
sheds — boxcars —
concrete silos — redbrick
warehouses — chimneys —
& Denver skyline behind
not seen — in weeds is
piece of rope, piece
of car window stripping,
nameless rusty perforated
tinhunks, newspaper, old
fold of handtowel
paper, old Jewel
Salad Oil carton,
a pile of junk, — & the
girders of the viaduct have
great black bolt heads
like knobs of a
sweating steel black
city, — gray overcast
clouds, cold — pipe
of engine, steam hisses,
cars skippitybumping
overhead, clang bells,
iron wheel squeals,
rumbles, — over the
silent mtns. a bird —
Near the Lee Soap
Co. is a collection of
ruined shacks — slivered
burntout by time boards
skewered, under the
viaduct, cartons &
newspapers inside where
old boys slept — old
bottle Roma wine —
Old Purefoy Cassady
slept here — many
cans of many a
pork n beans supper —
strange festive weeds
with big cabbage
leaves & bunchy green
substance you could
roll into seeds between
palms — slivers of
wood cover ground —
old rusty nails long ago