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CHASING KEROUAC’S     SHADOW

 

The alabaster city gleams in the sunlight

I am on a bus going to Santa Rosa

Away from the stinking hotel

They tell me I am famous, like the Jerome cookies

Streets, poems, nuthouses, jails, paintings, con men and time

My twenty years of poems and paintings

stored away in houses and cellars

relentless with anger and love

I ponder at life and the world around me

The bus speeds on the highway going sixty

I am fifty-two, live alone, considered some mad freak genius

In reality I am a fucked up poet

who will never come to terms with the world

No matter how beautiful the flowers grow

No matter how children smile

No matter who blue is the bluest sky

The harsh realities of life, that life is mostly a put up job

The genius rain avoids us

The lone solitary soul that does her beautiful dance for

    all to see

I seek the genuine leaf blowing in the wind

The real person tapping a song whose melody

flows through rivers and time

The image that dances with stars

The sun that melts anger and harassment

Years spent begging and hustling

Carrying paintings on buses

Carrying mattresses through streets

Evictions, lost loves, hangovers, rheumatism, hemorrhoids

For a muse that rarely pays off

I must be mad, bewitched like a lost gambler

Down to my last bet with no carfare or candy

I am not subtle or charming

I cannot lie for money or tell stories

I'm the gray fox some schmuck

The old pro chasing the mad dream

The crazy Jew himself

Who don't know when to quit

Who can't say die unless I die

It is all a mad dream

The race track full of maniacs

Lost gamblers living on hope and dreams

Tomorrow is never better

The same buses full of beaten and  tired faces

I only know when the cock rises and the crow howls

To eat, to drink, to take a leak

And chicken is good to eat when one is hungry

Money buys everybody, that is why the world is fucked up

That is why politicians have seventeen faces and speechwriters

And waitresses wear lipstick

Why mediocrity rules

Why poets hang out  in groups for protection

And musicians disappear faster than flies

And artists suck the rich quicker than summer watermelon

and bourgeois children

Why the communists and capitalists

Use the same deck of tricks

To hide the miraculous

The magic of life

The wonder of children and salamanders and birds

Wonder is the thunder

Wonder is the Spring rain itself

Wonder is the young girl in love

Wonder is love

The concerto

The hummingbird

The clouds moving across the night sky

It is raining again

Light against darkness

Shadows chasing the sun

The sun chasing the shadows

Man against the night

Man and woman together with the night

The day awakens

Let's sing a son

For those who chase the night

For those that dance with light

One speck of light

No matter who is light

Light the unknown

The unknown, it is all we have

Anything is possible

Like new born colors flashing across the Universe

The road

The vagabond

The dreamers

The dancers

The unsung

Fuck the Gung HO!

Byron Hunt is doing a collage at the Goodman Building

Ed Balchowsky is doing another painting

Raising his one arm to the sky

Rosalie Sorrells is singing a song in Kansas

Sam Shepard is smiling

Rare birds are coming out with new coats of color

Rainy Cass is alive and well in New Orleans

Valentine Chuzioff is sketching some blonde in Jackson Square

Bodenheim hustling another poem for wine

Franz Kline singing a sad song at the Cedar

Kerouac talking to the moon again

James T. Farrell chasing a waitress at Yankee Stadium

Charlie Mingus bopping, chucking, eating a steak

Playing bass with angels

Wilbur Ware

Gil Gaulkins

Bill Bosio

Al Delauro

Bob Bolles

Charlie Stark

Sue McGraw

Linda

Charlotte

Banana Boat

Steamboat Jones

Jeremiah

Jerusalem

The light is coming out

I'll give the sun away

It belongs to everybody

It's not mine to give away

Those with the sun

Those seeking the sun

Those on the run in the Chicago night

Those in jail

Those in the towers

Those chasing a ghost in the wilderness

Those on  the road

Those with dreams

Those who will never give up

Those who are learning to dance

Those perplexed

          agonized

          whacked

          wretched

          tattooed

          confused

We are all the sun

You are the sun

This world is one

Those with wonder, you are the sun

Shake the sun

We are one

The moon and the sun are brothers!

 

Jack Micheline

March 15, 1982

 

Written on a bus from

San Francisco to Santa Rosa

 

 

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Last modified: July 25, 2000