Book of Sketches - Jack Kerouac [51]
this local Godforsaken takes
us further away from the
last restaurant — ” — he
wants to eat, be warm,
drink coffee — but
stands in great weary
America which I see now
haunted redpink in the
west & a parade of shadowy
boys handsapockets walking
along the boxcar tops
in the vast delicate dusk
traceried by trees of the
living looking like little
jigglets & little Coolie
Chinamen howling for
the Formosa, their feet
topping down the singsong
walkways along which I
used to run puttin pops
up & down — As
if this was what a
man would want to write
who has nothing left to do
in his life but keep his
joy in secret scribbled note-
books — no, I’ll have
to try again, start all over,
again — Enthusiasm
is a design that has to
be re-woven in this
bare barking heart, I
hate my life now not
love it, damn
Leaves dont respond,
sticks lie broken,
dead leaves gather dust,
the West reddens
& narrows cold
the moon mawks to
purse her still lips —
lavender over the lights
of supper home, — wind
sweet memoried of
California, I die, I die
when I am not enthused
& full of meek ragged
joy, please dear God again!
The prayer of my
mother that I need
a father, answered!
“Enthusiasm is a design
that has to be re-woven
in this bare branch heart”
says the Goddam
motherforsaken fop
who calls himself Kerouac
& cant even slurk up & slack
slop out them old jaw crack
& spit, flurp, I’m gonna be a
writer if I have to be a
goadamn bom bum mopping
up the shithouses — of —
Ah — go on with it, Jean,
Jack Kerouac, & no more
foppery, jess plain western
talk is what I say &
let me see them boxcars
in the moon of real N
Mexico — fags hanking
back their asses in Sunday
afternoon ballets, to
show they aint just
cocksuckers but know all
about art & studied —
(advertise themselves as
coming from Europe, to
impress old Queens of Ozone
Park Ladies, & have Bach
& Shakespeare to Back
their shaky spears up)
The old Chinaman of Richmond
Hill who’s been in his
little brown store for God
knows how long before we
got here & for 4 years since
& never have I seen him
unalone, with a friend,
looking sometimes out the
window with those crazy
red sploshes of paint
making a rail-off-effect
3 feet from bottom, he
has his face over there
& is contentedly puffing his
pipe not with opium somnolence
but like an
ordinary Bourgeois
tradesman at the end of day
& he’s digging that dismal
little 95th St with its
fewtrees & the redbrick
side of the bar & the few
dull lamp homes where in
the evening old walkers of
dogs mop up the last TV
news bdcast with a cup
of tea — The bare bulb
that hangs from his ceiling
is so bright it lights
to the other side of 55th
St on a dark night —
you see the red paneglass
wainscot, the washed
strokes of red Spush
— then the little
alarm clock on the back
shelf — bundles of
finished shirts in shelves —
I’m bored
— the gray brown
lace in the windows of TV
parlors & he sees the shadows
therein of a race of
nabors he does not speak
with — at night you
sense his presence anyway
in the brown backroom,
a solitary white China
teapot on a shelf —
The sadness & brown
loss of his sonless
daughterless &
exile from Fellaheen
days indicated by the
little narrow mirror to
the right which has a
Joshua Reynolds Blue Boy
in its upper half panel,
now faded into a greener
blue of mouldy time,
& the mirror surface
itself impossibly smokied
by ghosts of time — the
poor sad calendar
finally, with month
flap under a great
golden breasted woman
with gold velvet
low cut gown — I
see the piles of white
laundry bags on floor,
the sad slant boards,
the counter — & the
huge guillotine like shadow
thrown by the parcel wrapper
& string-feeder gadget
5 feet (much higher than
Won Ming) high, casting
on the wall from the
Frisco forlorn bulb a
monstrous China shadow
& prophecy of more
patience, more fires —
somewhere brown opium
lurks — & nightcapped
death
But he goes on year after
year, alone, never