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Old Angel Midnight

Jack Kerouac

Edited by Donald Allen

Dedicated to

Lucien Carr

the initial inspiration for

Old Angel Midnight

Contents

Publisher’s Note on Poetry

Old Angel Midnight

Editor’s Note

About the Author

Publisher’s Note

Long before they were ever written down, poems were organized in lines. Since the invention of the printing press, readers have become increasingly conscious of looking at poems, rather than hearing them, but the function of the poetic line remains primarily sonic. Whether a poem is written in meter or in free verse, the lines introduce some kind of pattern into the ongoing syntax of the poem’s sentences; the lines make us experience those sentences differently. Reading a prose poem, we feel the strategic absence of line.

But precisely because we’ve become so used to looking at poems, the function of line can be hard to describe. As James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, “Line has no identity except in relation to other elements in the poem, especially the syntax of the poem’s sentences. It is not an abstract concept, and its qualities cannot be described generally or schematically. It cannot be associated reliably with the way we speak or breathe. Nor can its function be understood merely from its visual appearance on the page.” Printed books altered our relationship to poetry by allowing us to see the lines more readily. What new challenges do electronic reading devices pose?

In a printed book, the width of the page and the size of the type are fixed. Usually, because the page is wide enough and the type small enough, a line of poetry fits comfortably on the page: What you see is what you’re supposed to hear as a unit of sound. Sometimes, however, a long line may exceed the width of the page; the line continues, indented just below the beginning of the line. Readers of printed books have become accustomed to this convention, even if it may on some occasions seem ambiguous—particularly when some of the lines of a poem are already indented from the left-hand margin of the page.

But unlike a printed book, which is stable, an ebook is a shape-shifter. Electronic type may be reflowed across a galaxy of applications and interfaces, across a variety of screens, from phone to tablet to computer. And because the reader of an ebook is empowered to change the size of the type, a poem’s original lineation may seem to be altered in many different ways. As the size of the type increases, the likelihood of any given line running over increases.

Our typesetting standard for poetry is designed to register that when a line of poetry exceeds the width of the screen, the resulting run-over line should be indented, as it might be in a printed book. Take a look at John Ashbery’s “Disclaimer” as it appears in two different type sizes.

Each of these versions of the poem has the same number of lines: the number that Ashbery intended. But if you look at the second, third, and fifth lines of the second stanza in the right-hand version of “Disclaimer,” you’ll see the automatic indent; in the fifth line, for instance, the word ahead drops down and is indented. The automatic indent not only makes poems easier to read electronically; it also helps to retain the rhythmic shape of the line—the unit of sound—as the poet intended it. And to preserve the integrity of the line, words are never broken or hyphenated when the line must run over. Reading “Disclaimer” on the screen, you can be sure that the phrase “you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn ahead” is a complete line, while the phrase “you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn” is not.

Open Road has adopted an electronic typesetting standard for poetry that ensures the clearest possible marking of both line breaks and stanza breaks, while at the same time handling the built-in function for resizing and reflowing text that all ereading devices possess. The first step is the appropriate semantic markup of the text, in which the formal elements distinguishing a poem, including lines, stanzas, and degrees of indentation, are tagged. Next, a style sheet that reads these tags must be designed, so that the formal elements of the poems are always displayed consistently. For instance, the style sheet reads the tags marking lines that the author himself has indented; should that indented line exceed the character capacity of a screen, the run-over part of the line will be indented further, and all such runovers will look the same. This combination of appropriate coding choices and style sheets makes it easy to display poems with complex indentations, no matter if the lines are metered or free, end-stopped or enjambed.

Ultimately, there may be no way to account for every single variation in the way in which the lines of a poem are disposed visually on an electronic reading device, just as rare variations may challenge the conventions of the printed page, but with rigorous quality assessment and scrupulous proofreading, nearly every poem can be set electronically in accordance with its author’s intention. And in some regards, electronic typesetting increases our capacity to transcribe a poem accurately: In a printed book, there may be no way to distinguish a stanza break from a page break, but with an ereader, one has only to resize the text in question to discover if a break at the bottom of a page is intentional or accidental.

Our goal in bringing out poetry in fully reflowable digital editions is to honor the sanctity of line and stanza as meticulously as possible—to allow readers to feel assured that the way the lines appear on the screen is an accurate embodiment of the way the author wants the lines to sound. Ever since poems began to be written down, the manner in which they ought to be written down has seemed equivocal; ambiguities have always resulted. By taking advantage of the technologies available in our time, our goal is to deliver the most satisfying reading experience possible.

1   Friday Afternoon In The Universe, in all directions in & out you got your men women dogs children horses pones tics perts parts pans pools palls pails parturiences and petty Thieveries that turn into heavenly Buddha—I know boy what’s I talkin about case I made the world & when I made it I no lie & had Old Angel Midnight for my name and concocted up a world so nothing you had forever thereafter make believe it’s real—but that’s alright because now everything’ll be alright & we’ll soothe the forever boys & girls & before we’re thru we’ll find a name for this Goddam Golden Eternity & tell a story too—and but d y aver read a story as vast as this that begins Friday Afternoon with workinmen on scaffolds painting white paint & ants merlying in lil black dens & microbes warring in yr kidney & mesaroolies microbing in the innards of mercery & microbe microbes dreaming of the ultimate microbe-hood which then ultimates outward to the endless vast empty atom which is this imaginary universe, ending nowhere & ne’er e’en born as Bankei well poled when he ferried his mother over the rocks to Twat You Tee and people visit his hut to enquire “What other planet features this?” & he answers “What other planet?” tho the sounds of the entire world are now swimming thru this window from Mrs McCartiola’s twandow & Ole Poke’s home dronk again & acourse you hear the cats wailing in the wailbar wildbar wartfence moonlight midnight Angel Dolophine immensity Visions of the Tathagata’s Seat of Purity & Womb so that here is all this infinite immaterial meadowlike golden ash swimswarming in our enlighten brains & the silence Shh shefallying in our endless ear & still we refuse naked & blank to hear What the Who? the Who? Too What You? will say the diamond boat & Persepine, Recipine, Mill town, Heroine, & Fack matches the silver ages everlasting swarmswallying in a simple broom—and at night ya raise the square white light from your ghost beneath a rootdrinkin tree & Coyote wont hear ya but you’ll ward off the inexistency devils just to pass the time away & meanwhile it’s timeless to the ends of the last lightyear it might as well be gettin late Friday afternoon where we start so’s old Sound can come home when worksa done & drink his beer & tweak his children’s eyes—

2   and what talents it takes to bail boats out you’d never flank till flail pipe throwed howdy who was it out the bar of the seven seas and all the Italians of 7th Street in Sausaleety slit sleet with paring knives that were used in the ream kitchens to cut the innards of gizzards out on a board, wa, twa, wow, why, shit, Ow, man, I’m tellin you—Wait—We bait the rat and forget to mark the place and soon Cita comes and eat it and puke out grit—fa yen pas d cas, fa yen pas d case, chanson d idiot, imbecile, vas malade—la sonora de madrigal—but as soon as someone wants to start then the world takes on these new propensities:

1.  Bardoush

(the way the craydon bi fa shta ma j en vack)

2.  Flaki—arrete—interrupted chain saw sting eucalyptus words inside the outside void that good God we cant believe is anything so arsaphallawy any the pranaraja of madore with his bloody arse kegs, shit—go to three.

3   Finally just about the time they put wood to the poets of France & fires broke out recapitulating the capitulation of the continent of Mu located just south of Patch, Part, with his hair askew and wearing goldring ears & Vaseline Hair Oil in his arse ass hole flaunted all the old queers and lecherous cardinals who wrote (write) pious manuals & announced that henceforth he was to be the sole provender provider this side of Kissthat.

Insteada which hey marabuda you son of a betch you cucksucker you hey hang dat board down here I’ll go cot you on the Yewneon ya bum ya—lick, lock, lick, lock, mix it for pa-tit a a lamana lacasta reda va da Poo moo koo—la—swinging Friday afternoon in eternity here comes Kee pardawac with long golden robe flowing through the Greek Islands with a Bardic (forgot) with a lard (?) with a marde manual onder his Portugee Tot Sherry Rotgut, singing “Kee ya.”

Tried to warn all of you, essence of stuff wont do—God why did you make the world?

Answer: – Because I gwt pokla renamash ta va in ming the atss are you forever with it?

I like the bliss of mind.

Awright I’ll call up all the fuckin Gods, right now! Parya! Arrive! Ya damn hogfuckin lick lip twillerin fishmonger! Kiss my purple royal ass baboon! Poota! Whore! You and yr retinues of chariots & fucks! Devadatta! Angel of Mercy! Prick! Lover! Mush! Run on ya dog eared kiss willying nilly Dexter Michigan ass-war-lerin ratpole! The rat in my cellar’s an old canuck who wasnt fooled by rebirth but b God gotta admit I was born for the same reason I bring this glass to my lip—?

Rut! Old God whore, the key to ecstasy is forever-more furthermore blind! Potanyaka! God of Mercy! Boron O Mon Boron! All of ye! Rush! Ghosts & evil spirits, if you appear I’m saved. How can you fool an old man with a stove & wine drippin down his chin? The flowers are my little sisters and I love them with a dear heart. Ashcans turn to snow and milk when I look. I know sinister alleys. I had a vision of Han Shan a darkened by sun bum in odd rags standing short in the gloom scarey to see. Poetry, all these vicious writers and bores & Scriptural Apocraphylizers fucking their own dear mothers because they want ears to sell—

And the axe haiku.

All the little fine angels amercyin and this weary prose hand handling dumb pencils like in school long ago the first redsun special. Henry Millers everywhere Fridaying the world—Rexroths. Rexroths not a bad egg. Creeley. Creeley. Real magination realizing rock roll rip snortipatin oyster stew of Onatona Scotiat Shores where six birds week the nest and part wasted his twill till I.

Mush. Wish. Wish I could sing ya songs of a perty nova spotia patonapeein pack wallower wop snot polly—but caint—cause I’ll get sick & die anyway & you too, born to die, little flowers. Fiorella. Look around. The burlap’s buried in the wood on an angle, axe haiku. La religion c’est d la marde! Pa! d la marde! J m en dor.—

God’s asleep dreaming, we’ve got to wake him up! Then all of a sudden when we’re asleep dreaming, he comes and wakes us up—how gentle! How are you Mrs Jones? Fine Mrs Smith! Tit within Tat—Eye within Tooth—Bone within Light, like—Drop some little beads of sweetness in that stew (O Phoney Poetry!)—the heart of the onion—That stew’s too good for me to eat, you!—

People, shmeople

4   Boy, says Old Angel, this amazing nonsensical rave of yours wherein I spose you’d think you’d in some lighter time find hand be-almin ya for the likes of what ya davote yaself to, pah—bum with a tail only means one thing,—They know that in sauerkraut bars, god the chew chew & the wall lips—And not only that but all them in describable paradises—aye ah—Old Angel m boy—Jack, the born with a tail bit is a deal that you never dream’d to redeem—verify—try to see as straight—you wont believe even in God but tbe devil worries you—you & Mrs Tourian—great gaz-zuz & I’d as lief be scoured with a leaf rust as hear this poetizin horseshit everyhere I want to hear the sounds thru the window you promised me when the Midnight bell on 7th St did toll bing bong & Burroughs and Ginsberg were asleep & you lay on the couch in that timeless moment in the little red bulblight bus & saw drapes of eternity parting for your hand to begin & so’s you could affect—& eeffect—the total turningabout & deep revival of world robeflowing literature till it shd be something a man’d put his eyes on & continually read for the sake of reading & for the sake of the Tongue & not just these insipid stories writ in insipid aridities & paranoias bloomin & why yet the image—let’s hear the Sound of the Universe, son, & no more part twaddle—And dont expect nothing from me, my middle name is Opprobrium, Old Angel Midnight Opprobrium, boy, O.A.M.O.—

Pirilee pirilee, tzwé tzwi tzwa,—tack tick—birds & firewood. The dream is already ended and we’re already awake in the golden eternity.

5   Then when rat tooth come ravin and fradilaboodala back-ala backed up, trip tripped himself and fell falling on top of Old Smokey because his pipe was not right, had no molasses in it, tho it looked like a morasses brarrel, but then the cunts came. She had a long cunt that sitick out of her craw a mile long like Mexican Drawings showing hungry drinkers reaching Surrealistic Thirsts with lips like Aztec—Akron Lehman the Hart Crane Hero of Drunken Records came full in her cunt spoffing & overflowing white enlightened seminal savior juice out of his canal-hole into her hungry river bed and that made the old nannies gab and kiss that.

6   0 he was quite racy—real estate queen—Europe & Niles—for pleasure—stom stomp absulute raze making noise—I can write them but I cant puctuate them—then he said comma comma comma—That skinny guy with black hair—Atlean Rage—in India in the last year he’s getting even ignoring all common publications & getting Urdu Nothing Sanskrit by Sir Yak Yak Yak forty page thing Norfolk—let’s all get drunk I wanta take pictures—dont miss with Mrs. lately in trust picture pitcher pithy lisp—that’s an artistic kit for sex—Trying to think of a rule in Sankrit Mamma Sanskrit Sounding obviously twins coming in here Milltown Equinell Miopa Parte Watacha Peemana Kowava you get sticky ring weekends & wash the tub, Bub—I’ll be gentle like a Iamb in the Bible—Beautiful color yr lipstick thanx honey—Got a match Max?—Taxi crabs & murdercycles—Let’s go to Trilling & ask him—I gotta wash my conduct—Dont worry about nothin—I love Allen Ginsberg—Let that be recorded in heaven’s unchangeable heart—Either bway—Rapples—Call up Allen Price Jones—Who is that?—They re having fun on the bed there—Soo de ya bee la—And there came the picture of Ang Bong de Beela—Fuck it or get it in or wait something for the bee slime—Then the ants’ll crawl over bee land—Ants in bands wailing neath my bloody ow pants, owler pants—Ta da ba dee—He thinlis I’m competive in a long pleasant souse of Wishing all of ye bleed stay meditation everybody martini destroy my black—Allen ye better voice the stare, this beer these room sandwiches—Where did you get these? Big greasy socialists—Are you gonna konk, Allen? Mighty tall in the saddle—Anybody got a ceegiboo?—The moon is a piece of tea—(Under the empty blue sky, vertebrate zoology.)

7   And make the most malign detractor eat from the love of the lamb—and the pot that’s for everybody not diminish when somebody comes—Tathagata, give me that—

Visions of Al

Women are so variously beautiful it’s such a pleasure

Think happy thoughts of the Buddha who abides throughout detestable phenomena like lizards and man eating ogres, with perfect compassion and blight, caring not one way or the other the outcome of our term of time because celestial birds are singing in the golden heaven. In the golden hall of the Buddha, think, I am already ensconced on a tray of gold, invisible and radiant with singing, by the side of my beloved hand, which has done its work and exists no more to tone up the troubles of this birth-and-death imaginary world—And that’s because the Old Angel Midnight is a Fike—that’s because the Old Angel Midnight never was. And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves, many heads bend beneath the light, arguments are raving avid lipt and silly in silly secular rooms silly seconsular rooms full of height agee—Swam! reacht the other shore, folded, in magnificence, shouldered the wheel of iron light, and shuddered no more, and rowed the fieldstar across her bed of ashen samsara sorrow towards in here, the bliss evermore.

So.

Saw sight saver & fixt him.—Love you all, children, happy days and happy dreams and happy thoughts forevermore—

Dont forget to put a dime in the coin box by dipping your finger in ancid inkl the holy old forevermore holy water & bleep blap bloop the sign a the cross, when facing the altar down the aisle when you’re waltzing—Ding! Up you go, smoke

8   The Mill Valley trees, the pines with green mint look and there’s a tangled eucalyptus hulk stick fallen thru the late sunlight tangle of those needles, hanging from it like a live wire connecting it to the ground—just below, the notches where little Fred sought to fell sad pine—not bleeding much—just a lot of crystal sap the ants are mining in, motionless like cows on the grass & so they must be aphyds percolatin up a steam to store provender in their bottomless bellies that for all I know are bigger than bellies of the Universe beyond—The little tragic windy cottages on the high last cityward hill and today roosting in sun hot dream above the tree head of seas and meadowpatch whilst tee-kee-kee-pearl the birdies & mommans mark & ululate moodily in this valley of peaceful firewood in stacks that make you think of Oregon in the morning in 1928 when Back was home on the range lake and his hunting knife threw away and went to sit among the Ponderosa Pines to think about love his girl’s bare bodice like a fennel seed the navel in her milk bun—Shorty McGonigle and Roger Nulty held up the Boston Bank and murdered a girl in these old woods and next you saw the steely green iron photograph in True Detective showing black blotches in the black blotch running culvert by the dirty roadside not Oregon at all, or Jim Back so happy with his mouth a blade of grass depending—

Hummingbird hums

hello—bugs

Race and swoop

Two ants hurry

to catch up

With lonely Joe

The tree above

me is like

A woman’s thigh

Smooth Eucalyptus bumps

and muscle swells

I would I were a weed

a week, would leave.

Why was the rat

mixed up

in the sun?

Because Buddhidharma came from the West with dark eyebrows, and China had a mountain wall, and mists get lost above the Yangtze Gorge and this is a mysterious yak the bird makes, yick,—wowf wow wot sings the dog blud blut blup below the Homestead Deer—red robins with saffron scarlet or orange rud breasts make a racket in the dry dead car crash tree Neal mentioned “He went off the road into a eucalyptus” and “it’s all busting out,” indicating the prune blossoms and Bodhidharma came from the India West to seek converts to his wall-gazing and ended up with Zen magic monks mopping each and one and all and other in mud koan puddles to prove the crystal void.

Wow

9   Lookin over der sports page I see assorted perms written in langosten field hand that wd make the 2 silhouetted movie champeens change their quiet dull dialog to something fog—ah, Old Angel Midnight, it will be all over in a year.

Dying is ecstasy.

I’m not a teacher, not a sage, not a Roshi, not a writer or master or even a giggling dharma bum I’m my mother’s son & my mother is the universe—

What is this universe

but a lot of waves

And a craving desire

is a wave

Belonging to a wave

in a world of waves

So why put any down,

wave?

Come on wave, WAVE!

The heehaw’s dobbin

spring hoho

Is a sad lonely yurk

for your love

Wave lover.

I would I were a little tiny Jesus examining the mystery above the lightbody-cloud of the moon on still Marin nights, the flowers are my moon goddesses, & take craps naked. Horrible delightful the old retired harridan joys that wobble on the walking stick hill with nervous Collies yarking Yowk here in Journal Town where I wobble the card crate prayer bead Juju box with swing of wordage while Chas Olson reads my prose, man of the broad mysterious smoky Mountain Morn. (And everything is non-existent), heh.—

In a universe of waves quel difference betwixt one wave & t’other? T s all the same wavehood & every little unlocatable electron is a Tathagata pouring electromagnetic gravitational light at the constant speed of light (which can be heard in the sound of silence) & so this endless radiation of mysterious radiance is merely the minutia magnificent endless Tathagata Womb manifesting itself multiply & so not at all, for, all things are no-things but if this bores you it’s because you want bricks in your soup. Empty.

The Happy One is free

It’s a mystical mystery

It’s endless light

The golden eternity

Why read Don Quixote when you can read The Diamond Sutra or the Wonderful Law Lotus Sutra? Why read Mickey Spillane when you can read Gary Snyder & Philip Whalen & the Mexico City Blues? Why hide what you mean behind natural data?

What does it mean that True Nature is incomprehensibly beyond the veil of our senses and is like empty light? It means that True Nature is incomprehensibly beyond the veil of our senses & is like empty light. If someone were to say to me, Krap, cart your daddy over here & let’s hear tarbey? I’d say Wap, how’n you can cray that way when small fot find out all Sond your Oo like Where you like me & You like Me & OO La Koo Me the onta logical philosizer fonted in the crap ding? He’d say, Froo, this Sunday Blues is too tree drunk & dead tree, & I’d say push out the cork & can it, vant more moonshine potatovodka or go to church or tet, shet, the Lord is all this.

The American Dreamer

Star of Karuna

The Moon of Pity

Ti jean

A grat big sweaty wave—You get a vision of the truth as the universe of electrical waves all of it pure ecstasy then you open the old sutras and all you see no matter how many pages you turn over is human egoism & warnings—bah—I am the new Buddha—and I shall call myself ELECTRON—Why the all this hassel over what you do when there’s no time no space no mind just illusion & mystery? It’s sheer ignorance & old-fashion’d God fear—Why shd I fear Myself?—It’s like looking at a movie high & insteada the story you see swarming electrical particles each one a bliss fwamming in the screen eternally—shit! I’m going to the other side.

I dont need precepts

I need love

I need the Vision of Love

VISIONS OF LOVE

This holy and all universe is a wonderful white wild power, why, hell, should, heaven, interfere, words, waiting, flesh, sure, I, know, write, poems, this is no way to make it into the blessedness sweetly to be perceived, believed, & acted upon. Be silent & real. I feel very displeased, I just stood on my head & my neck is sore. But I’ll jump like a gazelle at six. Good God how can I ever die standing on my head each day 5 minutes?

I feel very pleased now, 5 minutes later. The whole system is washed both ways. I’ll invent a pack-board that you haul up yourself, lashed, to a pulley, & tie to a bit, & hang upsidedown at ease, for old age. For this is the True Way. It is gravitational forces. It makes me eat & run into the yard & wash & forget all about electrical.

Dont touch me, I’m full

of snakes

(say the psychopathic flips)

Fanny fancy—

thou done

That crap

Gary (Snyder) gone

like smoke

—My lonely shoes

My rugged huge blue shoes

10  Morning sun—

the purple petals,

Four have fallen

Somavilerd, who thot that no one loved him, got himself reborn a dozen million times in various-around world systems in order to prove that the reason was his own detestableness, but his detestableness didnt belong to him because there is no ego owning going on anywhere in the universal dream only endless talk & twaddle & tales of idiots—told for nothing & waving like leaves of a sea of trees in the birdy tweeking morning when motors & valleys bourk—Fanny the Spider built a web from sill to flower stem, pot, winejug, & Donlin declined—ling ba twa laramenooki Wi the bugs interwooped like zing planes in the heatening mornlull & full sperm spof smudge re testified the empty fertilities with a new mistake—milky mistakes abounding & spoffing everywhere from crap cellars to courtesan silkbed in Minarette—& all went to prove that in the golden eternity old angel midnight never happened & in North Beach the cold hopeless fog mist on Monday Morning, after binges with Sublette & Donlin who sleep all day & only wake to drink another jug—I dont understand this suffering but there’s no ego owning in sufferunderstanding either—And all the combined sounds one hummin gnoise—Cats yawn I’d like to yawn I’d like to not like and begone bechune & bejesus if what on earth & under heck & over shit we gonna do O hopeless ghosts?—IL PICCOLO CAFFE what they do there, Vallejo!—I’d never’ve known f twasnt for Ma & Pa—As many times’ I relight the Wizard Pipe it goes out—That’s the store—nothing hidden the stash is a free treasure—God aint cached—All I take in I put out again, it’s a filthy channel designed to drive me mad—Lo Lord what did I buy, what did you sell? What kinda bamboo poles you got in that merlasses brarrel of Yours, Avalokitesvara?—Shut up & let the nose go—try not asking—spiratual ecstasy is nothing—the rhinestone in the juju is the rhinestone in the juju, & your table she’s small—and yr wife put you out & screwed a Porto Rican—the jumble of events is a thing—I’ll ask why till I fly. The potter dwelling in his humble claypot strung this rote together to while the whelom along the dry clay woman bank where children cling to their mother’s back & Father’s Falling—into Mother—bing bang the Yabyum News—bing bang the bolt in the void—Pop ping the electromagnetic in the gravitational the yang in the yin—the positive making the negative different, the negative holds the positive, & so I’m sick—& so I know—I’m sick—Sugata

11  Laurel Dell camp, boo! Cow swung my shirt around, deers hooftrompled my sleep, moon was like a streetlamp in my face, & I didnt sleep till the big cat who came down the pyramid wall in the morning where I told Ma about Mamie Eisenhour’s drunk & I got my diploma & we landed & she threw her ice cream drunk & I was glad about something ephemeral & during the night I willed to leap outa my sleep wildly but it took some dead & inert time—the Book of Dreams & all my words, hurt—I’m goin back to my cabin & write Sweet Mother & Son slowly & gladly

12  Lou Little explaining to the newsreel audience how this football player went mad & shows how on a Columbia Practice Hillside it started with father & son, the gray reaches of the Eternity Library beyond—I go visit my sweet Alene in her subterranean pad near the 3rd Avenue El & Henry St of old Mike Mike milkcan Ashcan Lower Eastside Dreams & pink murders & there she wont ope the door because I cant get the job I tried so hard to get & the woman said my form wasnt right but Neal made it but regretfully it is he’s shipping, out & I’m on the ship with him telling him “If you wash dishes dont say a word, if you’re a yeoman do yr work all well”—I can see he hates to go without me to this other Grayshore—Sitting before my stove on a cold gray Saturday morning with my coffee & my pipe, eating jello—remembering the little jello cartoon that filled me with such joy as a kid on Sarah Avenue, the little prince wouldnt take pheasant or delicate birds or celestial puddings or even Mominuan Icecream but when the little bird brought him jello inverted in a rill mold cup he went wild & saved the kingdom, red jello like mine, in the little dear lovable pages—of long ago—My form is delight delight delight

Ring, ring, ring—

Shh, the sky is empty—

Shh, the earth is empty—

Look out, look in, shh—

The essence of jello is the essence of arrangement—

Be nice to the monster crab, it’s only another arrangement of that which you are

13  Bobby Mathews of Philadelphia & Ed Crane of NY accomplished the feat before 1900 (striking out 4 men in 1 inning)—O those old ballgames, O lost Foleys of South Boston in old time Boston raw drump drunk days I love you—Geo Hooks Wiltse of the Giants did it on May 15, 1906 when my father was 17 years old in his pinksuspendered primal origin blues—when Old Jacques Kerouac raved behind the woodstove on church sunday mornings with his jug & today is May 28 1956 & me & Bob Donlin (Donnelly of Visions of Gerard) are drinking port in McCorkle’s shack & the wind roars thru the shoh trees—Alright, mothers &sons, I’ll write for ye & tell a long sweet dad tale—For all is the same happy purity! Ya, padawaddy I like to frail them broadies Peer Engeli icecream backseat redleather creamcome fuck O cone!—let me love you again, sweet baby—this will do till nextyear’s orgasm do—overhead levy assembling eastboat taxers hotson foundries bringin Alene Melville to my motherlovin arms Ah sweet indescribable verdurous parapineta post-wallowing rail ron hung on bu-bu-Angel’s Telephoto let Anita Ekberg Pali shorts & all thu—so Miss’sippi Gene could go Hmf in his trance car blues—Why dash?—Sip.

14  Because while Gore Bedavalled marvels he steps, Ole Robeflow, from isle to isle into Mrs Roocco’s windrow to innerstate the gas meek and bring photons, neutrons, pootons, borons, & oromariavalosa perstarolingish pert part pomerance poons, Topki, to flash in the mokswarm smugbug television vision intertaining trains twain by trallis—radamasanthus the watermelon bone—Higgins diddle, the redsox sunboys’ll be in 4th place June & 5th place december & that’s all, beancod—On top of Vulturesque Desolation the train orders’ll oughta be simpler than twine 4 Engineer’s an old anarchistic fud—Shoot, pot, proms were flowery purple lilac Richmond eve roadsters redlegs sweetdolls & wild palms bleeding on the reincarnated seabach father pramming oysters in a poppy corn basket with holy scowl—Robeflow disappears into the Golden Age with a falting tired didnt-make-it hand like Homer blind Demosthenes Dumb & Aristophanes may squat on the Peloponnesian Xertian defeat of our times for this is Prak, the Greek Jew, the Canuck Hindu, prolling, purned, spoot, spout, teapot, drank, drilled, dripped, dvished, pish, tish. It was just a lottawords foir nathing—noneless the railyards produced littlegirls, & up above the boyshadows the stars as Karuna as ever burned mighty rot glows that evaginated & opened holy rose hopes Oh ho for the penisenvious thunderbers & boomdockers from Hook to Hey Here & heave that caffeine down, old ladycakes & frogmurder rivers & Angelo Noon running write a bleak glare inseparably terrified the parkinglots of destiny—it’s all a lotta sand pilin up helplessly, harmlessly on itself obliterating the What Cave? If not oughta.

15  Let’s dance—I go to your shack or you come to mine. Make a date. Do.

“Spring rain;

it begins to grow dark;

Today also is over.”

Care-a-Wack

Thus the dove advises—

I am woken to you—

16  Rabeloid! I cant breathe any more Mrs Jameson so will you please whore out?—I’m drinkin with the butchers, shut up!—if that doesnt sound kind it’s because shittly aimed right at Tard & miss’t with an 8 point aim that might do little over Tokyo but Kyoto throwed it—as the later testify will show these brunettes of peanut butter & hate were made were made were built & wellmade O crying children hurt!—So, I say, but knowing there’s no me, Grub.

That’s the saint

Stump—all on a stump the stump—accord yourself with a sweet declining woman one night—I mean by declining that she lays back & declines to say no—accuerdo ud. con una merveillosa—accorde tué, Ti Pousse, avec une belle femme folle pi vas’ t’ coucher—if ya dont understand s t t and tish, that langue, it’s because the langue just bubbles & in the babbling void O Lowsy Me I’se tihed—If I’da who what? the perfect lil cloudy coroid cloud colorods colombing in the back fish tail twill twat of heaven blue—What’s the blue, fly, what the drunk, fall, the wild upbuilding reinsurgence & Golden Ultimate Effulgence you’ll find in Train No. Let’s Go—to heaven—Bob Kauffman wants to come too—all aboard—You’ll find that this train has six thousand compartments—Ring!—Hello—Rail, please—They’re calling the Who Clerk—he’ll give us the right rail we’ll go to heaven sure—the sweet golden clime when the trav’ler’s journey is done, under the hill, in a cool tomb—death was too proud so I stopt—we communed underneath nature—and so on—first level yr own mind then the earth is be level & no more mountains of hope—but just the Slavic level flat expected crandall be-all & wise-all rhodomopordso-mopholorophoshion crint

17  Saradalia wrote around the wrong rightness because he’d seen purple & gold visions swimming in consciously from the conscious ultra violet cosmic rays a the sun & fwang, twarl, tweeelll, twom, twerm I meant, Pearl, Immemorial Antequité Poil of Brooklyn Night-Bridge gray hope dreams sucking on the stairs the dead girl the new blues news of from Heaven endless radiations of magic blue salvation—Now how’d Kemp tell a fleapis when St. he’d a know’d there waint no Okie Song yander but Big Gorldpupple ringarond romp rillwash radamansus frallieng prodapiak, ratamita samantabhadra unceasing compassionate hope that with congruent bent stick as soon as he saw real deep & realized the lights were still there he understood he was a messenger, the Angel, one eye out—For Lucifer Moidner rant rag, rack, it’s okay, these purloined potato perfunctory alliterative rubouts add up to sweet Popish Purple Paradise

18  San Francisco has no vaults—San Francisco has no vauty—Singalrad the sailor Sam said he saw in the so—Go—The students outside the monastery window have subsided in their chatter, light—Ran and farted to show his old rock routine & so “worn?” (Rom Tom?) (Vaii) hmf the noises (cloat) out the window, scratch, I Old Angel Midnight hear—Silent Indurm Twandee Yokle Hour when we’ll begarret Sam Ashton Tom Belligerent the Hackett Master Beckett—Or sometimes lightly known as Yarp Yarp—Cop ski kimona moodia, Ah Su, tchétché, the cop coughs, I hear the taxio fi fu—old Monster Hufu the Zen Froofroo is now going to vain his glory by be shitting himself in gruel birth—Ning—Amis Nais Thais Ming—China Tink Hongya Ming Mon the Bong—Sing, & yack dank bar poets wont Listen to old Kanuck?

Sarry, Said Sarie

I’ll Metemple You Mowley

in the morning

Betemple and me demple

hey me that

Tzimou m’appelle dans

cour d’archelle

Archangel Once Wing Swing

Ah Sigh God

Tu mar a ma danna

tu dona, padrone

Poura tu jama faire dire

Tes grand

ecritures?

Ecrivida

Old Angel Midnigh rant rock

rail rowout mo tarn

rong igo I kfuck

me j akle

be dakle

Mc Graw

19  Stop playing you candassed tripe heart,—common, let’s have that aw story—lost your moidening rag in the angry shack, & wick warnt long enuf you poota—Sing for the general store of rain that will hail bedown the—

20  “Spit on Bosatsu!” says Gregory Corso—“Oo that’s beautiful?” I say—Dash dash dash dash mash crash wash wash mosh posh tosh tish rish rich sigh my tie thigh pie in the sky—Poo on you too, proo the blue blue, OO U Nu, hello Buddha man

21  Me—who was Old Angel Midnight that railed at the rant & eat steak at the Met & threw ballet girls out the hall & pinked with my wife in a shower bath—Beautiful blue Jean Marais, the denzing champion of Europe—rurt—Bing bing—the flames of the candle say ‘Leave us alone, we have a lil ole window of our own & we happen to know too that the whole Universe is saying’—‘Shut up you moidnees and mardeners and gardens of marden, man, silt soft silt the sound we ray—We weigh everything in the scale of time, I say, pajestically plurting in the perfect platoon—illiterate me that—but tramwise, tranways, what’d you mean, tranways, tramways?—Oi, Russia has funny scrolly drawings broodled on midnight doodle pad, we’ll never see—But Shostakovich know me, & candle fall—Burt—Was Burt was the sweet star swang in the hall and was killed in the war and nobody I know of cried—Old Angel rant shack mack Mill Valley rack shap, map, dap tag was bon tailored when I win-gee was Prez—

No, Prez never presented no such horn like that, Prez was the bezz in the bizzness, man, mon, Prez was the end and the man on the end Prez was the champeen pole catcher in the world—the outstanding window the sound that came through

dwerrrrr

22  Old Angel Midpike, wasnt the hike that was wedded to the fike?—the eyniard one-eyed piratical rat who ran roting thru the puderdical halls of Pwince bone yelling ‘Hay to de tree Hay to de tree’ and keppersnews the Viennese pastrymakin inkdweller pulled a party of sansi fancy sans souci dans and whammed em their spats, till Tillie the Late Tat, leaking from her holepot, organized redgangs to remnant his sin, and Jin, the magic bottle boy stolen from the Bagdhad ship shrouds routed Golgotha with a sling and arrow and had all the Queen Mother Superiors gasping in parks—Remember it quite well and well aint he coming home late? Twang in the window and see if he’ll tweak his old beard at ikonoclastical me, poor dear—Dolophine robin roved a long way to bring balm to soothe his blue bus—Well like I was sayin, and anyway atchoo, your water’s boilin, aint you?—Not much I can do about it Mrs Twandow as seeing as my Sandusky Husband comes home driving in the green light tho he’s colorblind, he traded all the sneakthieves & secret narcotic police to the Virgin on the Wall, & she et em up raw like candle wax—His old father upfaced in a tomb—His knives and forks on top his cakes—His “hands burning”—a la Gregory Corso—His use of Gleem toothpaste in canvases—No joke, son, that wall has more ears than Ebon’ll allow—How many ears that wall?—as many ears as you got lights in all space everywhere every atom’s on fire—hands—How gruesome the smoketacle of people burning in rooms—the yurn of their faces when the airoplane crashes—Ah Mrs Midnight I cant understand—You understood this afternoon when you hung out the wash—Yes I hook out the wash with a crook of my thumb, & whistled so sharp and hubby came home and kissed me too—but now’s playing cribbage at Vicious McStoo—Oi oi pearl, pearl of the sea, flow through my window, bring whiteness and money and honey to me, bring hunner to me, bring butter and knives and archives and archangels bring them all to me and Molly Magee of Dublin Bloom—bring that to me, wall-ears—Sky’s only got a fartin passage for you babe, message, what you expect from bean chamberpots and laundry in the lavenderia washing-machine, you expect roses? or worms? oi? You expect howling storms?—smath me to smithereens this aint the Bronx—if itn was the Bronnex I’d cancel it—cank—konk all you want on your juicy window, mirror-face, I’se a old lady was weaned i the bowels of the air the earth what’s the big difference between air & between earth?—Ai, pickles in the barrell, and poetry too, but what’s with your husband aint comin home early like he used to bechunes?—S Writ in the cards of my mother’s birthveil—Ojaya Ojaya the company buzzes throughout the world in a hundred thousand cities of rooms, the ha dal baddra of their midnight babble, all talkin at the same time, NOW,—Oi poor humans beings, I grieve for you—I been in steel jails but Oi, it was no worse than the best that was it of the this—When I sent cans of Accent to Greece disguised as heroina I didnt have poolhalls in my basin—I had basinettes made of lapels and bassettes (brass badinettes for strange badinage—)

23  Spat—he mat and tried & trickered on the step and oostepped and peppered it a bit with long mouth sizzle reaching for the thirsts of Azmec Parterial alk-lips to mox & bramajambi babac up the Moon Citlapol—settle la tettle la pottle, la lune—Some kind of—Bong!—the church of St. All’s blasts the Ide afternoon & all holy worshippers go confess to Father Everybody with Good Friday ears—Friday afternoon in the universe—

Bong!—the twackle how wackle of high Berkeley parties, the twanging and walking and cops carrying guns, bong! the church bell of Ah Ide the Master Hunchback primavera Cat of the Soiled Star universe—and him with his Priam—Well I never, and late at that, and’s got cramps

Bong! the midnight the mirror the red rust of the rosy atmosphere of the ikon the candle the babyface sleeping—

Bong! enough of the bell dear Lord God above, enough of the eeny miney mo bell

Bong!—alright Mr. Poe, Mrs. Twurn, Mr. Twart, rart, I’d like to indicate by moon medallion indicative half-ass magic your prophesy, & what fool will post make Lear of you, or what Twang-Bang arrow drape in your vein, or Sicilian Stiletto in the streets of Old Spain—Bong! if it’s n midnight by now, mid nigh, by now, I orta see myorta about a you know what er—horse—er—man about a farting horse—man about a Brooklyn Bridge—in brief excuse me I go shit—ugh! Ow!—dont pull at my oliver twist ear!

24  The things they say that come in thru that window—if only I could avoid what I hear—

Wasnt it Dostopoffsy who gossipped so much, and that Balzac in Cousine Bette O my—And Tristram Shraundy Shern, marvelous book, and Elmer Payo Robinson, the author of Oogoon, and Shmarl Baudelaire, the Skid rick rant rentfence iron night holder (of Paris) over rooftops of smoking shame—Ole Hornshaw too the Gerst poetizer, with Ilium and Troy, and Inali Minoan Retreat the Great God Ur, that was mailed to Philip Whalen—the samadhis of Hanse Majesty, trop trick driver of mountains, Mt Baker and Mt Olympus, parthenonical backtracker over old trails, Schneider by name—Gossipers there’re none like Allan O Shinzberg, Levinsky my Feetsky, tweedy old Mayo Opo Waldo Meldo Elmo Poe, the junkey from Wall Street, and the Hawthorn person haw and sleet Melville who made subterraneans live in rooftops of shame in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge and John Holmes creamed (the aunorthist not the noet)—Hang my fryinpan cover over a nail, wont you, & I’ll bank the ikon—and turn on electric light, and see what I’m eating here, hairs of 19 0 ten—

Poo! prat! two taxis played two little musics—then “brrrrrrrrrinsss” big gugly whatname truck came by signifying the nothing of the sound afternoon—

25  Like’s legs that goosed the underground schoolteachers & Joyce who always wanted to write blind what the sea said but grinned restoredly in the sea first, himself a gable of coral roan, hears now in my behalf the scree of old railroad iron twisting faggot cargos of ESYirt by the shiney MOsoon vessels of the Packet Bay to bring elum slippery to Gaza & the Strip of Fez where donziggerls grab boycocks—easy as pie that window Islam sea roar, that purebeacon, that Sherifian splendour, that Lustre Magno hide in the Me high hill Virgin Ma Wink—so’s on opium old Joe Black come home hammock Florida tree-hack—I heerd that HEAL pass thu—I feeled it pass that heal by thu—I seed that hole the hail made—And if in every window hovel would words sung beard prophet flip nothing mean, then hie thee New Gab Haven bring lice shit rooms to steel necktie lover of tomb, never heard a nanny bray like that—Old Angel Midnight Worldwindow bong midnight interlude Eternal Already

26  Old Angel Midnight just writes itself as it is the Hi-Is Sound—miracles of Jesus in Capernaum—so that it might be all fulfilled as twas writ in Akashia—but see the future writ in present state illumina—what does the horizon of the sea got to do with singing boy?—John Kerouac transliterator of perfect knowing, angel from heaven, messenger of the right hand of God & of the Godness of All hath no warm place to lay his head but must cover his knees with both hands & despair, the great weight of bleary time—

27  Ah but Old Angel Midnight Africanus the message in the dream block roundsquare tenement boom from the submarine Joandream ships, destroyers & escorts, putput fez & all rhythm fishermen sprayling in the bay sand—Trumpets blare by the moon sea the Arabs barge to redhat olivegreen majesty & old black scow ESPERANTO—movies about that. Vast stupid Kerouac-o——

28  Light the candle to the continuation of the hot afternoon Ah now I see she’s turning gold & workingmen are done till Monday Morn & come home on now straight with buckets to their dens, lions all balls—dash, Bach Chevrolet—Even the 2 lil Chinese hogmoyens are propping along beneath the Tall Silk Void anxious to get in ere tree twisted to rock plum blossoms—Plump haired belt dog pop O looksee where the redheaded spreaded her leglets at last in the Midden, & in Spain the Capernaum call of children Chorus boys “There’s nothing like our religion” so sew the dress & wait for the golden electricity to make you right—for you know, Big Oldie, your maw’s right & she waits for you midden plumps to ard out more polychromatic Spirochete to mix like Marble fudge in that Tchelitchev Tree of Life & bring forth busting another prime plump poy for your posy grave & they’ll say wasnt that my Ard Craven Bard Bar Pap I saw upfaced to Tomb?—No, that was the Eternal Consoler passing thru as Knife yard, his white shirt knit by Rimbaud Angels did sweep aside the river mud from this intact and classify crystal, so that so-that could soolidat smarty pine—Ah, yar—but she yawed so much & I had to be saved from drunken bumhood by these words, will excuse me if cant read my jazz right because this floorboard language’ll hide bettern nails the Emily Dickinson worse-than-ever dahlic drent bent despair of me with my raw muscles bulging in the mirror of pride, lank low face all set to prove novels as soon’s crick goes soring out the other side my arm I’ll tell you een more but now it’s comin on Friday night & GLEE yell the children of Paris running over the grass of St. Thomas d’Aquin where supplicatee hold artistic Europe oil hand out to be larded poignarded bathed powdered put away ah all the Napoleonic troubles in this pastry!—Tie it all together, Jack, the mirror doesnt show the real right

29  Eternally I accuse you of being as craven a shit as Frank ever planked on that Leo butcher board so’s mice could be crying safe in the arms of Jesus—the Little Christ! You! Why dont you mind your bexness! The less I hear of em the happier I’ll be! Do I have to come back in another lifetime or next month & let you have it where you need it so’s I can live my private label life free of libellous old you, continuous old Cronk tokay ass hole hurrying to your place to be maitled & draigled & dragged & even hipe Wop Cork knows you you scandalmonjous gossipping non Dostoevskyan shit of the ages! I’ll flow golds of venom thru your window & you receive it all like some old Universe SLUT—What kinda man are ya, Slut? Or what kind good slut can you be anyhow with no twat to tie it? You & your marble wax samsarhood burning up nothing but candles of worry hate & shame, bug wart pastyfaced bustard!—I’ll cut your head off with my machete fingernail, & yak make crack your Orienral thats what you want faces, I’ll fix you, Gossip! Old Flap of the Shrouds, sheet on the line, Twandow shit, shirker, fuckface of history, go home & blow yr wife & leave mine & mine alone!—O o o o r g ! G o o o r d ! B l o o o d !—I’ll have your pasty flesh feed for Merrimac fish another time corpse you Joan kid crack bedeviller fool & Faust fuck! Who wants your dirty Old Words?—Pray for us on Hester street, dear Lord, do you exist? Pray, for us on Arameia Street, dear sweet save-me Lord—Save me Lord is just it, you, alone, let the others boil in marsh harrico, slong as you can slomp & fall in your slop barrell—no words boy to describe it—What?—Your hate fulness! Your hatful of emptyheaded raindrops! I orter throw you off the fire escape, myorter, wouldnt do no good, you with your headstands come back the next day all healed (hear me boy, just kiddin)—you’re a good enuf old boy but my God you write too much.

But I’m only reporting the sounds out the window?

Well gate a fet reporter & go call charlie in the bar, turd, and find your old Peace & pink in yr own home showers & leave Fitzgerald alone & Marcus Magee or go strangle bobbies in the fog, do something butt dear God in the Arse, leave me alone & MINE!

Ah Angel Midnightmare—

Ah Crack Jabberwack, play piano, paint, pop your pile anum coitus semenized olium o hell what’s his biblical name, the pot that spilt in the room ere Sarad had hers, ad her share, the name, the word, for masturbators, the Neptune O YA you know the name, the Bible Keen Mexican yowl that old tree still hangs in the same moonlight—Ilium, Anum, Ard Bar, Arnum, Odium, Odious, ONAN! ONAN KERAQUACK go heal yr own toiletbowl, stop dropping shavings in mine, & leave my grave unsung, my death unlearn, my qualities you can have, but onanist no quarter given you Angel Midnight by in that holy gallows of the moon!

Do I dream?

You dream not, switch yr dolophine midnight bell bong on some other frequency—dont you know?

Know what?

That there’s a white cross marked X in the road where you will die yr dog’s death & there to burn the piffle on your pier the ship will take you straight to golden essence & you be still?

Meanwhile?

While mean you mean well? Switch houses, try Killiams!

Junior Killiams, that laird Cregar’d high big muff moitang mouk moity biff jaw?

Same, with sluggerous pall in the ach—

In the ach & ah part tooth ache of peotly? The prime love thighs not for me but bearded shit not listen see till tee give me ernest majesgetafree? Why?

Because foiled the poor luke bird.

Fuke the luke fool bird foiled, I want oil!

Take oil in other Shelves.

Message received.

Close your window.

I’ll open it tonight.

Let the stars fart their message unpolluted by human one, please hee?

You that bonged dolefully with benign crasher on yr head in old heroic dawns—

Ach, same, shamed, let me nightsoil be—

United purefoy Clown.

Besides you kill bugs with the rash of your pencil deed crashing on holy ivory love papers meant for scented notes from sweet jissom creatures clacking down the Barnard trees—Wash your drawers, draw the river in, pull that grave dung reward over yr noble nose, blow out the Candle & if you fail is that hardest on me?

I’ll go mad as a bush.

And burn, please, the hardwood floors hiding me.

30  Mindscreaming blood perturbation pisspot—Mindscreaming blackjack Lanka Mountain laughter—

You’re making it all up so why worry about being or not being? Thus rolls The Angel Midmoke

31  Put put put tiPousse all’s to go well your mew gold taken good care of you, no only roan neigh yak plan reign can slay that rose oboed flow soul I robed you say satin devil—Jesus will bring you all—Wait’ll the music starts, little flicks of millionfold billionminded fleet stars thronging all for a chance to live try sentience come swamming down your hard vale, whyfor hardvale boy?—Did I seek to bore your butter heart with mod iron skew in ogly scag iron bottomed ogroid doididoidee worlds bestrew your natural sweetness avant? No because loved you, love you now, no words of Mortal disfamous postifillication & bile pow gonna ruin my blue eyed pootuin toot where happily sanging frank lark lovely bardo.—No.—So let heaven instruct thee, earth no bug thee, go fly as free as you wish to be, sing window bedelong bidiliyoukidiligoo sweet-sweet Tu Fu bird oriol paradise Chinee garden all ya want!—Soft, you my dangle gentle playful little pip leak I bring you deliverance but you must listen to Daddy Snow arms when’s he got to say to you:—pat on the folld

32  Brrrrring back the early wave, pearl—now cometh upon us the time when diamonds shatter, all love & hope gone, all tirlish bang, all fort might be dizened underneath the snow white salt wall, all lost undersea blue lips buried in grime of guilt in this crystal clarity recall, all bugs burned in the Raid of Time and all fard heard none such scone throw yield nothing but goom & booboos—poof!—The child, the circle drawn in air, the primal matter primal substantial energy polled & lost two votes elect the last twat & tit you too, I hope the diamond shatters into a billion glittering smithysheens of Croo because now Lustrous Midsoil I been pointed out, begallowed, hung, prophesied, Karma’d, Kaught & kitkatted up the ass of God Guilt & when I turn my back on this poor world I got no back to do it with, who will forgive the scribbling devil? When Snow Dad armed me with promises not kept & blamed me & booted me seedy cold hills, urk, ouch, my hand hurt, I tell you I wont tell you no more, why should I poignard me old shoulderblade with this machete matter? And country matters decide cities full of hurt children buried in the groomus womb of Bellevue Morgue—And fly stars purporting and all p’s & pop it, blaming poor children for sighing under trees while long white trail ghosts swish in the river’s foaming mouth, like semen at the crock rotch math both Falls of Indio Doom, say, hark, promising star of home-father did you not pull sod blanket over baby’s eyes & when you’d by his crib painted pink happy images of angels disporting ogre ord holes that turned to door opening monsters—monstranot love, mama dears—I was opiumed & killed in ole Tangiers—Every hate filled Arab & American in the world shall write explanation on a bier, every priest draw his bread clanging pisspots of grime, every philosopher suck up the claimant genius for his lifehood gold, every critic shit, every fancy poet fall, every bear devour Elijah rex rot, & every publisher & scribe be Pharisee’d in Castiglione’s gloomy rager—me? my name? and I? go off father son & holy ghost of Martyr life—And I will be silent, answer you no dong, Going Smock Syrup Midfuk, shit pearl pot, whatzyername, Luke Degger, erp urp rain watt Arkansaw south foil follow-up crooks & trees, I’ve had my roody filler that nard sauce & I’m going to die now, breath no more words pain on this silver & worry hatepage, I am the moth I killed in infant desire Hemming & Waying page of teen—London Jacked & Lusted the Liver out of me, been raped by sister king & knifed by brother queen & now all’s I gotta do is appreciate the hardness & emptiness of rocks & go curfew & an old man in his hunchy death, sleek—purtier than Ava Gavovnar, more eepish than sic fop hat gargoyle Boilio the poet of the Lower West Side mural, gangster popoff racketeer evil slander murder shit kill quit cut fuck rape scream howl pump kill gate murder down imp I’se re gusted—because there never was a better opening than because—

Hear my song free stars, yet I can reach swelling moist, cunt of heaven admit my rod of justice, halls of Old Nirvana here comes Diamondshatter shat diamonds gave birth to Tathagata Garbha got blamed for Tranadaz & kilt in McQuentin & Mill Vallied st john hill gold huan so’s huan one world could creep satisfaction to the creeps of literature

33  Foo, you yold yang

34  Then with balls swoled up one hung low leaving the action snake no biggern at, Oi, the lone woe of Lee Lucky his basketa pittykats earthquaking peoples balls outa sight & leaving nothing but tremble-under-the-bed, the grace in Orlando turned out to be a gentle wee heatwave & a little shit (O shut up and say it!)

35  Sor god denoder pie your pinging lief bring Ida Graymeadow Wolf babe ooo brooding in the is-ness seastand grayog magog bedonigle bedart ooo the day Odin meeteth the Loup Gris, yag, ack, the day ooo dies—The day the gray wolf oatses Odin for his long slack-jaw slaver, asurp—When Ida Meadows her long gown camp the Persian disencamps & dusts—When the vision fades from the rough surfaces of Snorri & Sturla—When Eric Bloodaxe and Harold Fairhair battle for the final blonde on the last Icelandic prick rock—When Rodedodo grows Chrysanthemums by the door—When Eugene Bonedown burps—When Hair Redknife snaps the band—When Callicott Cobcorny crashes in motherlip—When Orristander boos—When Whitlip barks—The dog days of Egypt, bow wow wow—When Espinal gives the bull his final ass—When visions of the sea go 152—When Prick Neon’s nailed to me! When Carrie Methodical Divine and the nomad Patzinak steppe bedazzlers (azzle dazzle muffed my gazzle!) the Napoleon fire rings, the slavers of the lip of Richelieu, Mazarin, Colbert, Lisieux, Our-mantelle, Archanciel and Pas D’Enfant kisses my ogly roar go-down seafeet on Oregon Beachie, when trappist divine speaking whistling the window roar borovates to the endless machine hum of endless infinitesimal worldspace oogloomosanical tarpidalisaclna multivantarn go-l-ta pian par music!—grag-ashash!—when burt me-davey-grave hung mine down poles the final lot across the rivie of Buddhas and last Potilic losts flint in the Old Star, ah me Marva, a flesh carney, ah river a day, ah strikeout, that’s when I’ll bring my lesson to thee, saith window to Me—And I cried “Window, what you mean?” Said window “O listen to the spherical booding moan star music the midnight study the Faust man devil harp in hand, O hum O moan O”

36  The little tit tat tadpole honey tweak of kitty lips on my toosy two toes make me think of dwiddle tingle springs the ditties of childerhood—sang—commanded Eyrdeadan showaps to crail before my fire ping! OOlamona! call the sails, the frog croak eave drip never-rains-but-sweats Florida screenwindow with Avaloki tes var star twarping in my woondow—And did you ever say the wee that nack saw all farding blle on par ton take sick grick clap cat mat cack Mother? No that was a halting burgle—purr—eat & purr be holy kittypee pool in sand of red eyed bat bird insewecties pirking tig toont ta Ma tire free curé the school—A long unlearned heavy school noises of piano legs in the smile paradise bed? I saw lines drop like lint off kittyfur nightbed brain thought & never heaved to Atlas Shrug Toad help flashlight God but instead as written in old behooven Diamond, say, “I am grown so old & neutral I dont care”—Dont burn the cat! Second shelf for twickle cricket quiet cat held by nails go up fine smoke Burroughs in Tangiers’ll smile smile smile—Thass iss the suundt com tatl patac mo jambi va shan tu vi mara-noomavala ta ya ta ta the high ladder speech King Hank made glorp by Harfleur diners Stein bock bash Autumnal Beer Wolfe final window broken smash & cats say Krut

37  Murzner, the murzning zamming ience ouch feections possessing this itch it-globe with everybody fawlderolling around a rat satellite, paff!—spat!—kipf!—I’d rather roll kief in Ten Restaurants with bandaged athletes of Arab Sand than fwaddle fwo with Ojo Ji JoJo the Immortal Shine afternoon kidder of the India Lawn wrestlingmatch with Fatty Arduffy the goateed Bull gainin on death by inches of pot lard & him with childrees in a crib! Oi! Ugh! Oirk!

38  Tonight in Russia command the rooftops to cry up Gogol Dos-toy-evsky & Ark to lief the irk-bear buried in Freeze Sand Siberia general electrified eet-freeze come out with hank of Scythian hair in his paw, stop burlying bloody bed back and understand! Stand under sails of Callèd Ships, command whitemuff Alexander Long Island come out kill lieutenants at his baby’s funeral & if Achilles rotted in a Paird Tent so did Mercedez when he bested Oilope the Troller of Spain rag, Zorro—when Inquisitional keeners of green fields Medieval Aromoratic Armorica Eraldic Rivistica Spoign bedang the sand of rucksack tearboys dying by my mother’s thigh of gold—O dream! O Gary Snyder hero of compassion & poign! O Doll Marshall beautiful! My mind rings with a thousand iced lizard windows! I have no words for neutral! O poor bone burroughs in your yard in Tangiers, what cats seek ye to study now? The splendorossi ficuuiyus im-ling-star bangs around the landlady’s angrified lawn & still the priests whirl mind rooftop pederast poignarx!—

Command Ardemuffin fire eaters cornmuffining in splott Lee Anne Burns the girlsinger from Hill Rich who when she throws her legs back has thighs of gold snap! Wtttasher name, Lu Anne Sins! Wow! Wait! Another forest primeval angel meet Hermyorter de Gingold play with Rheingold Princeton dark Lou Grossa punt ankle cock black as hairy murder in a lump of balls! Tie onta that, Pat! I aint got no more callings at crossings enemy diesel freeze, am gone to Rocky Mount flyin up to sunny cold flagwhip Philadelphia! So sing the song of All-Vard! Raise the hems of gold! Let sleep the peaceful ancient unclouded look of Sunday afternoon antcities in my merde murdered mind of moin—these parturiating pe-caco-ma-cunabulations in a Fireplace Suicide Attempt do bespeak a deeper purse than purpose John Roi who was overflowing with “poor perdu!

thin helm!”

the vision of

Medieval Europe

in a Shakespeare inch!

Hairbrush! Det! Wrench! Tont! Hanging sleepcloset stasified pearl cat color of dark retreat & maybe sink in back, I want the diamond shatterer bring it down return us dear Lord to Golden Aeternitatis.

39  Uncovered by the uncut version cheapmovie produced SWStarkike in High Heaven Lion roar Windtunnel never made the bestseller list of Nigeria but sold Jesus’ last sad word to eager buyers & no Jesus to scat them out the temple—separate from every science fiction deaddog, go own neutral way, say nothing to airplanes on highways or obsolete stratagems of dinosaur battle ships & all ye such crap & tiresome world fawdle, I’m telling you God I sure is glad you Is—I sure is glad you got star me Quixote bed cat & Ma love babies i’ the house & Greyhound posts for buses—I sure is glad I wont have to perturb & gnaw on vulture lice erpasta-graficus mona, name? Tergiratirus Pastrofian—crewa, crow—The silent dharma arhat crow of Florida cool-night makes my cats perk ears—So all ye merry gentle

40  men may say the word

the high on t high

earliest berv

41  the who dont care

I dont care

fuck you all

word free

Zen Lunacy

Old Angel Midnight

kiss my ass word

42  Rapt wrote ditties, Ruckus did: as Wit: in my mind Bill is a feeling movie providing—providing?—snow—snow?—for mosquito.

Mosquito of integrity not another State Funds suck you integrity irregularity try Ex Lax perhaps ask ridiculous state park fool or contract curtains exciting mosquitos fool by fool good day Brown Field—refuse! These are the sounds of electricity pouring out of the soldiers pension checks cheaper than fifty sentient veterans who mailed their checks to Mr. Seriouscharge—Ho! Window! Listen Gregory, science statement is million years over owned by pens as treacherous as Aga Arnold of Good Day Biddy Father Uptown—see? I’m a fool! I love reverse! I got hidden Moo-Flutes in my horn cow. I did it dad because I dood it money—I am Governor President! Bled this state for years, Altruistic politician cheat-anyone William did, & outsiders of nothing lit trusted stolen money rotten dirty fires in alumni bowery to celebrate the Five Percent dream!

Oig!

Forget!

The Burden Pen company was quilled a’ter the name of Honest Tarnish Shakey Speary aspirer of championship virtue & threatening son Hamnet, O Dad! My conscience is all snow. In fact my conscience is coldspot. Deny no crime, avow furiously, determined accompanied company jury friends for Colonel Shoot Hog to say “Sho was a niggerlover wasnt he?” So Caroline with her wee wet spot out west wanted Bill stick his Pelican in her key twat so she could yell

“Burt & Pen!

Burt & Pen!”

And that was how Innocent was born hating the sight of me—ARtavasamagri! Famme twé! Battling the nail, loose, my brain-pan doubled and I died crying I am dead! When a boat parts water, dont look at people’s asses? Fill your glass with regal feeling beer cheer happening sun just naturally! Oranges are balls of sunshine! Shut up!

43  That Christianity you have where the big fish doesnt eat the little fish, is that the Christianity of the Cross?

Yes, and of the Bo Tree, Cannibal

44  Birdleldeedlies in our morning fresh window, O my darling sweetheart I miss you, a dum, a duma, organs & light shake twickles and erdio poralondo ogradar da the best fart test by far every swung that did it so remember what God said to St Benedict in the door of his cave at 6 AM in 892 “Live modern with tile floors and walls”—And Danny & the Juniors answered: “White Howl”—And Gregory the Great wept big tears for the fall of Rome & the desecration of Apostle Peter’s Holy Seat

45  Honeymoon couples play phallic worship, because while the bride shows her breasts in a low negligee the groom conceals hisun under pajama & bathrobes—Right?—“Let’s go get some sleep darling” means “Be long”—Everybody that ever importuned boys in Portugal, or married glamorous young blondes in wartime knows this—Everybody knows the rod of justice—Eastern delinquent boat owners despair of airplanes—Niagara Falls Violins the tower of city canadian police—Look what silver girl is doing for gray hair! Arthur Paper Mate Flow Gem Buddha adorned by hair centuries of Buddhi Toni—Lotta talent in the Manger Bethlehem. The weather is Pew.

46  My soul’s in my boots & my jockstrap holds up the stars hooray—Basie in London, O ye dreary back-fences cheated me outa Limey Love on Waterlow Bridge and ann had a way, ya dreadful stargazing heaven of roof clup miz munk end-night fryingpan blaze gold silver material, all naught smashed & made unknown by blessed no-need catholic heaven saint Avalokitesvara, O—Now whisper, filter—Caint—You aint been to North Carolina Holyland of late—Sing, heaven brought honey dovey hero stars, spermfaced, open, grant, gone, gay, sweetliest must-arc auk mock honeybird of all friggling time—O my baby eateth pone pie, stands arms kimbing porch no-clothes cunthungry baby corn!—O child in Erse Love Bigstar Holyhood hunk crib!—O my mother! O secret Friendship!

47  Forty Which? O erse friendship, mak a laking smack tongue outa Luscious Midday moik out talk, hey then I’ll pay you a hunnerd earnest children for your foy yoy candle coy-doy mingol bingle billshit pap outa me hang dont-let-em fuckoff flinging loc stare love time tak plot moy down Tangiers dreamy dreamies—See? Or bring curd yak lock lips lank hair legtledptay monshine—See? or drink less—But Old Angel Midnight I love you, you love me, let ernest sink here, I’ll snow him moon star lip kiss Out Save his breath ah vaun—

F is for

F

48  Mona Leisure

49  Tswit tswit the tsweep bird of tree in the roaring gulf day, hay blowing in the hay truck ho truck horizon roar of Orlandoar—Trazzz the truck goin by in seatree beachie roar—OAR!—take this I-see dream ferry, go ahead stare at grapefruit you forget how to smash meditate when you went richy you forget movies make you sit whittle sick stick whittlefool you’ll never make it now except golden pencil hurl eternidad outa bird tswip lost in explorer moon—O grapefruit! orange wheee waving moss-old void Saturday ecstatic there-you-go world—O I know all now, think I’ll shut up—You, folks, can hear the rest in ear

50  Old Angel Midnight the swan of heaven fell & flew cockmeek, Old Angel Midnigh the night onta twelve Year Tart with the long bing bong & the big ding dong, the boy on the sandbank blooming the moon, the sound wont let me sleep & since I found out time is silence Manjusri wont let me hear the swash of snow no mo in ole no po—O A M, Oh Om, the Old Midnacker snacker tired a twit twit twit the McTarty long true—the yentence peak peck slit slippymeek twang twall I’d heerd was flip the hand curse lead pencil in the shaky desk ah Ow HURT!—Tantapalii the silken tont retchy swan bent necky I wish I had enuf sense to swim as I hear, o lousy tired gal—One more! Choired arranged silence singers imbibing belly blum

51  Wreck the high charch chichipa & get firm juicy thebest thebest no other oil has ever heard such peanut squeeze—On top of which you yold yang midnockit-watter lying there in baid imagining casbah concepts from a highland fling moorish beach by moonlight medallion indicative spidergirls with sand legs waiting for the Non Christian cock, come O World Window Wowf & BARK! BARK! BARK for the girls of Tranatat—because by the time those two Mominuan monks with girls & boys in their matted hair pans sense wind in the flower the golden lord will turn the imbecile himself into slip paper—Or dog paper—or that pipe blend birds never peck because their bills are too hard—that window paper

52  Silence in my window now in the fullmoon of haiku which goes OO yellow continent in a birdbath, April full moon which rattles the goldroom little death chair that never will collapse even tho you sit 10 nymphet girls there on yr lap fall to the floor to cellars of lust—and in any case O poet—O’s of old world I love yr greatness & anyways tho what kinda world we’d have (Hi Missus Twazz) (O hullo Mr. Moon mock) a world all poits? geen! try Mawln Bwano? rurt—The old man is a moving plastic curtain whispering to find his girls pare soundless possle, the lovers next door hiding in back barn driveway the the the the the—Lottle ma songing starty this is no time to listen to just butpuff—shhh sez my Jetsun Yidam—Buddyo Ava Loki T—in Ole Oaxaca we’ll find the magic boatyard knifed flame O wick, burn, or fall—The gossip among the stars is that farledee who lit the moon end of dog turn Turk Town Tenneduck was Kansased halfway to tripe because the long thin Stick Men & the fat Slobs who ate too much have their mouths sewed up, writers their tongues yanked by hot irens, & Wolledockers of Old Gallows England buried with the dust of ancient decapitated horses of old dust Japan in bowed head oblivion that was meant for all things crumble & disappear including (did you hear?) Lury Marsh, Goniff Tward, Mic, Tokli Twa, Stabtalita Borotani, Parsh Tilyur, Cock, Brrrocky & Tot.

53  Even from heaven now O ladies & gentlemen of the fard world yr beloved angel dead are sighing sweet memoried perfumed thoughts into yr ears to keep you mindful that yr term on earth aint naught or for not, but—bu yo bink the wick swans both twist to balls the stasis hanging bathrobe—chairs crumble & get put out on cleanup day, I saw one today I’d like to sit on the moon on & be a turnpage comedian continent car-down, tryna Satisfy Catholic girls from Harvard aint my pot a tea or plate a beans, I’se sorry oh son, lays & gen-men, to the next Bardo (bardic?) (forgot) Tibetan (tiss top?) plot lins to find it Lama Lano lined the Turner Girl the mooma tannery where they say the bellrope sank the clank of pisspot grime the tanker that twirded for phantom Una southern Edward Papa river sod stashy slasheen girl Irish father iron Irish god’s green earth & die there—either that, My Dame or pourquoi?—Bed wrinkled dinkled from too much sleets, mosser dear? Got shot charge Rebel joyous Georgian by witchcraft. Ah, & what lunchcart? The one with 69 year old daughters & 690 pound brothers & all the stars of Alex Manhole clear to Rubber O North Carolina Oklahoma Indian pips—urgh, & what else—The moon, this Friday evening she’s already full & full & full on late afternoon board blue over trees & sandbanks—Dont mention his name! He will burn Buddha’s babies in this house! He will hasten dust! Nothing but faith like Abraham believes in hallucinated true heart of dumb uneducated glimmering self ‘cause the void is all illumined now & Milarepa had she-demons bouncing on his John because he loved red fires in his (fires in his?)—well, just red, Ned, & be sure to—to what?—bank the ikon—what Ikkon? The ikon silver cross that was almost buried with my brother—thank you brother—See you anon, my pat, my lemb, in Cielo soon’s—soon’s what?—soon’s there’s room in endless meaning to accept another meaningless liar pushing pencil for to die in happy breath so nobody could see

54

peep

peep the

bird tear the

sad bird drop heart

the dawn has slung

her aw arrow drape

to sissyfoo & made eastpink

dink the dimple solstice men

crut and so the birds go ttleep

and now bird number two three four five

sixen seven and seven million of em den

dead bens barking now the birds are yakking

& barking swinging Crack! Wow! Quiet! the

birds are making an awful racket in the Row

tweep?    tswip!    creet!    clink!    crack!

ding dong the bell rope bird of break of day

Okay birds quiet

Please

you birds

robins

black & blue birds

redbreasts & all

sisters,———

my little parents

have the morning

by the golden balls

And over there the sultan forgot

55  Ah old angel of midnight I cant hear myself think for all your scur racket the lead in yr pencil on simple asinine page so noisy what’s a man gonna think of this unless the rumble house black as snow horizon train brings back all our favored dead from furnace & somebody furnish—Ah car, a human directing his tatismatatagolre thru Holland to find the Dutch Imprimatur to his Helem, the Helm & Cross of Charlemagne Euron Irope that meant no more no less that Quebekois Canoe (Kebokoa Kano)—Kak! But rumble will the devil his will’s unspoken, God wont truck helicopters to peek-at-wisdom Vulture Queen, nor will the red dog that glitters at the fish queen of my heart reach for kite hook or Dahlenberg drent it any different for by the great God Jesus I will not rest no wont rest till Ferlinghetti’s dog his day had does piss again on hydrant hydramatic stillness electrical ectroid where for sure cats of the stripe so proud & vainty do vaunt for to bring the final jumpmonkey home to Marpa’s bird sing—Ah translate me that—Cook! Dog echo in the sandbank valley Northport rumble Mahayana the diamond Vajrayana path that was trod here long ago before those houses jewel-graced the seaside hill, & for Krissakes no sound at all comes in this window except those Wolf Hourses got tamming bringing white & gray pearl hearses thru the shoot rain to munner munner munner, O fat eater in the drape son push yr belly back, the tape worm—& worms to measure you, long tape—sod & sand over yr bluenose disdain, Mrs America, the Indian’s Ya Ya Henna, the Indian Uprising known as the Beat Generation, is going to eat rails & make tire sandwiches of every junkyard misty rust & all old heroes’ eyes in barley Soup of time—to be sopped with eye sop—So carry on, escaper, jail’s only made to flee—

The wush of trees on yonder eastern nabathaque Latin Walden axe-haiku of hill where woodsman Mahomet perceives will soon adown the morning drear to pail the bringup well suspender farmer trap moon so’s cock go Bloody yurgle in the distance where Timmy hides, flat, looking with his eyes for purr me—O Angel, now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, & ah Angel dont paperparty me, but make me honified in silken Honen honeyrubbéd Oxen tongue of Cow Kiss, Ant Mat, silk girl ran, & all the monkey-better-than secondary women of Sam Sarah the Sang of Blood this earth, this tool, this fool, look with your eyes, I’m tired of fooling O Angel bring it to me THE MAGIC SOUND OF SILENCE broken by first-bird’s teepaleep——

Good East! Hard to blow out! Sometimes! Darkness in my final kip. This shot will send the gossip mongers yarking back to Harvard frail slat, soft, full of gyzms in slit lacéd hatreds for light is light O Lord, O Lord, I pray, my Lord—Again! Once more! Ta ta ta! Om

56  Ack, who gives a ruddy fuck about all this American showoffy prose I’d like to know why Whane meant horsefly & Brane something like, & why Owe’s Born is Awe’s Dead, & all our intelligent handsome Tedsy Boys go yearning after our pink pages & never find & all the riots in Pixy Dilly & all the Traf on the Square, Elgar with his music doesn’t impertaramount the rock of Murican roll? For strings? Air? O nonce, node, these babic yoiks, these Inds, these stupidities, these gem americans

57  TWO DAYS AGO, MARCH TWIP, 2059 (AXTONO) (WOW the twip of that carry-on I’ll never fly another Yet to Souski that country wont feed me nothing but ersatz gatagatpataraze which is a kind (wow, the munsch) of farlidaltamanigalo the color of which, well, yr aunt Mary mighta told you but O the gossip in these other galaxies just too much my dear the rurn, the klen, the hoit, the noises of Flup. There was Onat Roren, Bob Torlignath the Crank, the Cranker of Hono-Machines, & the Bile Pister of the Falledern he was there be-sartifying all his meanies & the meannesses & told me I didnt have praper green in my pen gat—But he B.O. was alright, felt good, was glad because her time was late, & as for those publications up there that they turn out with all their bearded Trees extemporiating on the state of the talismanic oral pata—

I just got tired & retired but got involved in a long tat with Sinabad Talgamimargafonik Crud the interesting fool from the well located (in emerald waters) continent of Magic who told me there was a Sound recently developed by Shitteers that wd eventually require dog whistles hanging from breast teeth & bug micro bugs & long swarms of Milky Wayers vacationed over from Blue Curtain Country listening to the Country Pard say: “The tanitat of this Omakorgeklid is infested with Imagery & therefore white as moon—but O my Thinkers never let it be said the sooth—“I couldnt listen to any more besides I had a deadline to meet & new flows to fii so came back to good old Tierra del Firma & had Princess my Tabtate, (solit) go eat another bont, which meant I only had 2 days to wait till today so rested up reading ancient texts & spent all night watching the sun on the moon the sinking mountain till all vanished & even MRS Stone made no comment but slept & that is my report to you today, my Dotggergsamtiian-idarstofgiviks

58  I just cant stand these people I teel you I dont know what I’m going to do about them, start my motor or fart my passage but you the way they carried on last night, him, with that dressy little deaful foosy on his lap the boom of busting chair & all that boommusic on the juke box & I dont know I wanted to call the police & get rid of this sandbag pineneedle Bodhi neighbor who is such ugly bearded dirty” (“nothing on earth or in any terrestrial sphere or in any Buddhalands Heaven or Mockswarm of Einsteinian & non-light Light can take hold my brothers & sisters & cousins because it is only the wisdom of manifested epiphany & the compassion of goodbye”—) (as soon as I can find a bully club & bang a hole in imaginary fence I tell you this will be the last time the window’s with redlegged devils & stone blue eyes—) (Kunfii, garayen, hallo Kiyan, fitiguwi, katapatafataja, silya, kitipuwee, senlou, saint loup, coish, karan) (or vaunt the moidners the Villa Viva Pancho baby Mexico City sorefoot Juarez old hotel wino El Paso march picking up six thousand partisans to vest the peon with his land coat so that years later Rivera murals shine by army teahead trumpet in Ole Texcoco) “there’ll come a day when that yurn I’ll have to astabing the zemble the cartifacartilage I wont have another moment of—Dry up, dry up, moist earth, dry up, dust ball, dutball moon is sick of leering at your inadmissable sorrow because it has no twat to to tie onto’t—And we the fooly libs that think ah music airplane & all ye screaming birds of falsedawn let the ephemera existence wait at yr side with you for end to’t—No other teaching hear & hear tell & what of that the sound who wants to hear—Go fetch the gardles & make open the corridors of your Bright Room mind the Lord is coming he’s all white & gold, he’s a pink white angel in a black room by a blue window & a yellow candleflame with golden (hurt) wings the color of all thingness, the swarming dove, there! See it! He stands at yr non-side sides the waterbaby by the baby shroud, the honeyfall, the bliss blessed to be believed, the final pollitabimackatatanabala (fine as fine can be) (Ah Ah) (HO HO) leap & dance it’s saved! the nerve of that man! foru! mon ti kitaya! patakatafataya—perk! prick! prick ears I mean you think I let pollute window liars? Oh God, stop it—

When God snaps his Finger of Gold & suspenders too the world will wake in the well looking at the dark star—this silvery desert full of gophers rattlesnake tracks & sobbing moons of Chihuahuan splendor I’ll buy, tho, till that Babe of the Honied Fall is at my side again for nothing, nothing, nothing, absolutely powerfully lightly emptily goldenly eternally nothing ever happened & this I bring to you from grass i the sun (to tell of it, the cock in card the soft & mixup pushing bardahl Drutchen cant & dent of it I wount hav it, ht Anyway) (seurain) (sunrin) (booya) J’m’enva arretez! Fo.

59  Aw rust rust rust rust die die die pipe pipe ash ash die die ding dong ding ding ding rust cob die pipe ass rust die words—I’d as rather be permiganted in Rusty’s moonlight Rork as be perdirated in this bile arta panataler where ack the orshy rosh crowshes my tired idiot hand O Lawd I is coming to you’s soon’s you’s ready’s as can readies be Mazatlan heroes point out Mexicos & all ye rhythmic bay fishermen dont hang fiish eye soppy in my Ramadam givecigarette Sop of Arab Squat—the Berber types that hang fardels on their woman back wd as lief Erick some son with blady matter I guess as whup a mule in singsong pathetic mulejump field by quiet fluff smoke North Carolina (near Weldon) (Railroad Bridge) Roanoke Millionaire High-Ridge hi-party Hi-Fi milliondollar findriver skinfish Rod Tong Apple Finder John Sun Ford goodby Paw mule America Song—

60  Arguing about mudpies in the hot spring sun karu, myota the Japanese who wrote of was always concerned about his poison oak hut when they came bringing him early dogwood buds with a bleached rock & the trinity of rocks & yak of blackbird pearbranch jumping & the Umpteen yumping erse Norway Man of N’o’r’m’a’n’d’i’a (who repaired houses?) (who made new moons bider) (brighter) (?) (bider) of time the bider the cross in his tomb worm & the King on his epistaff stone tomb port of north—Oh—All ties in you see like fish pier respect.

Fish spear shook?—shook aimed & breton rocked—

O but just as long as sun shines like this in yellow airplane on the pebble Beach sky & pear yump yak blossoms (up north)—& as long as red hydrants & post chaises—(gossip?) (Well it’s a quiet moment but methinks the sons of the world & daughters thereof as wellus wolves & loups will be perfectly containted as long as they stay away from Ehrlich’s dyemill blue-worms which are et by OObaltory golbords & clover’ed & clobbered by mind’s no-nature essence & as soon as they ask for an explanation say “What? buds in blue new sky?”

Dream for Muggy Mojump the quiet cloud.

61  Kertion Kerdion Keryon Kerson cherson & Who else in this ugly old Russia hechavel helps me in this business recordin sounds of universe midnight? but not a single damn dull fool podium hear it attestify that the selickman was a poet who decided to say:

I am a poet

&

here is my poem

Watch how fancy I write

Skeletons of Compassion dusting

in the distant heavens’ infinity

while fat old burbles rememberem

well

here

on high hark—high hart—

world—diepork—

Over & above of which it was down in Charleston West Virginny one time my Pa in white shirt & unshaved shot a man in a poolroom fight—they chased him acrosst the Kanowa in a Kanoea (idiot) & got him down by the bayin hope dogs in that country where Old Angel Mama Midnight will lean her happy head & hungry eyes on pillows of Old in the high falutin poem of Heaven where little white house it waitin for all you black sufferers so’s dandy’ll say “Twas all writ & no more to say, the Vow of Gold is Done” & all yet young kids wanta know what a man do when he golden baby post up there he completes the vow matures the Karma returns the Kitkat Clowns the Crown Thorns the Flap and dad blasts him happiness forever, because you’ll see, in not too many years now, yr hope & grace-waves werent jivin ya, all’s taken care of behind these suffering trees & inside these suffering bees & wont nobody harsh ya but say kind star roof words & bring white cloth to your laundryboy basket (clean as dinosaur teeth) & you’ll know the—sore yah he was sore but he said Bust me one on the jaw, I got the running eyes—With or without sugar—The Cat in the Con-Cord

Lord, you presumptuous goodgiver, thanks, & go tell everybody you Vowin hardass sonsumbitchcs—(hold clasp hand TaTaTa)—Aye Bodhidharma

62  Tapistry the second writer

in the novel island bearded

scared wont use words saves

he go’s & hungerers of wood

from boom in the Spain Jail

hand on knees

To go cross cemetery America

highwire ratcroak dumpslaver

moogow silo sillwindow rat

wait moon shine on tin

all the little inner outer sin

peek at the bird

tree, remember

it again, the

hoosegow goddam cuban

Killer who moidners

turtles, traps em cock

in the nigh & never

draps a wear

All day nervous wonderin what to do shoe in my armchair innesfoo that was writ in Akashia I’m just hearin what my head said & it’s mighty repetitiousness

63  The black ants that roosted in my tree all winter long have just emerged to meet an army of enemy ants (same breed) & a big war is now taking place, I just looked with my brakemans lamp (by sunlight) (brake the day sun) warriors are biting each other’s sensitive rear humps & killing each other with more intelligence about murder than my boot knows—I squashed one wounded warrior whose poor right front armorer was missing & he just croualtad coupled there, I hated to see him suffer & he was open (ow) for attack too, bit safe a mo on a flat rock used for lady’s flagstones in the pink tea world which ignores ant Wars & doesnt know that when the first space ship lands on the planet Amtasagrak (really Katapatafaya in other galuxies) the ship will immediately be swarmed over by black ants, even the window obscured, they’ll have to turn their X-Roentgen Gun Ray on it to see & what they’ll see’ll make em wish Von Braun had stayed in brown germany: one sextillion sextillion idiot insect fiends a foot deep eating one another endlessly the top ones scuffling, the next layer dead & being nibbled, the next layer belly to belly cant move from the weight, & the bottom layer suffocated at last—& the lady ants have wings & fly to little tiny planets that hang six feet above the moiling black shiny ant sea, where they hatch, push the grownup kids off (into the Mess) & die Sighing for Paradise O ye singers of War & Glory

After seeing a thing like this who wd dare not ask for enlightenment everywhere? Who will deny ant war with me?

Meanwhile in my yard the triumphant winning warrior ant stands over his defeated dying brother & you see his little antled helmet waving in the glorious breeze like How Ta Ra the trumpets of Harfleur & (you know what I was going to say there—hm—) no compassion in these little febrile finicular skeleton—O Ant Soup!

64  O Escapade escape me never I lied I lied I lied I’ll never escape ex cape—of Spaign—God’ll ever me allow to leave this hurt of ant scene until I lissen to his words & wave & point by saucer moon & antlered antennae &

weird roofwash & weirder cross windows, the black clock by the white clock in the city’s creamy tenement while one silk stocking waves to gossip the lady’s lost leg & there’s a slip by a pair of paints waving in the moon breeze as well as a sheet which however has no blaind stain of blood, only the one silk stocking—& there’s panties, littleboy pants, handkerchiefs, towels & many cursed faint bigscrew’d oratan furykula yaink antavyazers, with black hooks, sword spaces, windows the bottoms falling out & the moon a crink in its upper neck which is really its back (Ah)

65  That grassy yocker pocking up yonder

66  Tonight the full apogee May moon will out, early with a jaundiced tint, & pop angels all over my rooftop along with Devas sprinkling flowers, pilgrims dropping turds & sweet nemanucalar nameless railroad trains from heaven with omnipotent youths bearing monkey women that will stomp through the stage waiting for the moment when by pinching myself I prove that a thought is like a touch, unless someone sicks a hot iron in my heart or heaps up Evil Karma like tit and tat the pile of that and pulls my mother out her bed to slay her before my damning dying human eyes and I break my head on heads—Everytime you throw a rock at a cat from your glass house you heap upon yourself the automatic Stanley Gould winter so dark of death after death, & growing old, because lady those ashcans’ll bite you back & be cold too, and your son will never rest in the imperturbable knowledge that what he thinks he thinks as well as what he does he thinks as well as what he feels he thinks as well as future that.

Future that my damn old sword cutter Paison Pasha Lost the Preakness again.

Tonight the moon shall witness angels trooping at the baby’s window where inside he gurgles in his pewk looking with mewling eyes for babyside waterfall lambikin hillside the day the little arab shepherd boy hugged the babylamb to heart while the mother bleeted at his bay heel—And so Joe the sillicks killit no not—Shhhhoww graaa—wing & car-start—The angels devas monsters asuras Devadattas Vedantas McLaughlins Stones will hue & hurl in hell if they don’t love the lamb the lamb the lam of hell lambchop. Why did Scott Fitzgerald keep a notebook? Such a marvelous notebook.

67  Komi denera ness pata sutyamp anda wanda vesnoki shadakiroo paryoumemga sikarem nora sarkadium baron roy kellegiam myorki ayastuna haidanseetzel ampho andiam yerka yama chelmsford alya bonneavance koroom cemada versel

(The 26th Annual concert of The Armenian Convention)

Editor’s Note:

Sections 1-49 of Old Angel Midnight were first published in Big Table, Spring 1959. Sections 50-67 were published in Evergreen Review, August/September 1964. Sections 50 and 51 appeared as “More Old Angel Midnight” in New Directions in Prose & Poetry No. 17 (1961). In 1992 John Sampas found “A Piece of Old Angel Midnight” amongst Jack Kerouac’s papers.

I am indebted to Kathleen Manwaring of the Syracuse University Library for sending a xerox copy of Jack Kerouac’s manuscript for sections 50-67 from the Grove Press Archive.

More Old Angel Midnight

Old Angel Midnight the swan of heaven fell

and flew cockmeek

Old Angel Midnigh the night onta twelve

Year Tart with the long bing bong

and the big ding dong

The boy on the sandbank blooming the moon,

The sound won’t let me sleep and since I

found out time is silence Manjusri won’t

let me hear the swash of snow no mo

in ole no po

O A M

Oh O M

Tho old Midnacker snacker tired a twit twit twit

the Me Tarty long true

The yentence peak peck slit slippymeek twang

twall I’d heerd was flip the hand curse

lead pencil in the shaky desk

Ah ow HURT!

Tantapalii the silken tont retchy swan

bent necky I wish I had enuf sense to swim

as I hear

O lousy tired gal

One more!

Choired arranged silence singers imbibing

belly blum

Wreck the high charch chichipa and get firm

juicy thebest thebest no other oil

has ever heard such peanut squeeze

On top of which you yold yang midnockitwatter

lying there in baid imagining casbah concepts

from a highland fling moorish beach

by moonlight medallion indicative spidergirls

with sand legs waiting for the non-Christian

cock, come O World window Wowf

&BARK!

BARK!

BARK for the girls of Tranatat

Because by the time those two Mominuan monks

with girls & boys in their matted hair pans

sense wind in the flower the golden lord will

turn the imbecile himself into slip paper

Or dog paper

Or that pipe blend birds never peck because

their bills are too hard

That window paper.

A Piece of Old Angel Midnight

Tool the tirlishes down, mejems seemst Ide time Saturday or Nunday, one O shot shick razor cut and meating this is the sharp blade of grass cuts the innocent ‘and when lambs bray—yay—and all the tape-boos & topatoos go cruing in Pakis Tanny the Loola Place where hides are bared, haired, & mared—or slunked with one axe head meat smap

That story you’se expectin O Brer Rabmollasoses you old Taird Tender Grant Cigared you at Appo ten thousand or more dead—daid—Eyes of Ray Charles see Me here realize O Holy

About the Author

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) was an American writer best known for his novel On the Road. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac attended Columbia University and then, during World War II, briefly served in the Merchant Marine and the US Navy. Along with his friends, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassady, Kerouac was a key figure in the counterculture movement known as the Beat Generation. He wrote his first novel, The Town and the City, about his struggle to balance the expectations of his family with his unconventional life. Kerouac took several cross-country trips with Cassady, which became the basis for On The Road. The manuscript, which was presented to his editor on a single, unbroken roll of paper—the scroll was later exhibited to record crowds in Lowell—was initially rejected. Upon its publication six years later in 1957, Kerouac was faced with challenges resulting from his newfound fame as he tried to live up to the image portrayed in his novels and faced criticism from the literary establishment for being part of what was considered a fad. He published several more novels including Doctor Sax, The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bums, and his final great work, Big Sur. He settled with his mother and his wife, Stella Sampas, in Florida, where he died in 1969 at age forty-seven.

Kerouac’s popularity has not waned since his death. On The Road remains widely read, and a new film adaptation starring Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Kerouac was named one of the most important figures of the twentieth century by Life magazine and the Times (London). Interest in Kerouac continues to grow with the publication of his letters, poetry, spiritual writings, early novels, and more from his remarkable literary archive. Countless writers and musicians, including the Doors, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith, have cited Kerouac as an influence.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright © 1959, 1961, 1964, 1993 by John Sampas Literary Representative

Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3397-8

This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

180 Maiden Lane

New York, NY 10038

www.openroadmedia.com

JACK KEROUAC

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