An epic poem by Jack Kerouac, Mexico City Blues consists of 242 choruses of spontaneous poetry. Kerouac's own explanation:
I want to be considered a jazz poet
blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam
session on Sunday. I take 242 choruses;
my ideas vary and sometimes roll from
chorus to chorus or from halfway through
a chorus to halfway into the next.
Kerouac's poetry covers many of the Beat themes that can be found in his prose: Buddhism, Zen, Karma, existence, nothingness, drugs, memory, travel, nature, life, and death. I reccomend that you read these poems out loud- sometimes the sound of the words adds so much to the meaning. I usually whisper or mouth the words under my breath while tapping my foot at a machine-gun pace.
Just a little sample:
59th Chorus
Then I always manage to get
my weekly check on Monday,
Pay my rent, get my laundry
out, always have enough
Junk to last a coupla days
Have to buy a couple needles
tomorrow, feels like
Shovin a nail in me
Just like shovin a nail in me
Goddamn - (Cough) -
For the first time in my life
I pinched the skin
And pushed the needle in
And the skin pinched together
And the needle stuck right out
And I shot in and out,
Goofed half my whole shot
On the floor -
Took another one -
Nothin a junkey likes better
Than sittin quietly with a new shot
And knows tomorrow's plenty more
132nd Chorus
Innumeral infinite songs.
Great suffering of the atomic
in verse
Which may or may not be
controlled
By a consciousness
Of which you & the
ripples of the waves
are a part.
That's Buddhism.
That's Universal Mind
Pan Cosmodicy
Einstein believed
In the God of Spinoza
(- Two Jews
- Two Frenchmen)
133rd Chorus
"Einstein probably put a lot
of people in the bughouse by
saying that
All those pseudo intellectuals
went home & read Spinoza
then they dig in
to the subtleties
of Pantheism -
After 10 years of research
they wrap it up
& sit down on a bench
& decide to forget
all about it
Because Pantheism's
Too Much for Em.
They wind up trying to
find out Plato, Aristotle,
they end up in a
vicious Morphine circle"
Jan 23 2003 — The above two choruses (132 and 133) have been on my homenode for about a year, they will now reside here. I was compelled to transcribe them because I wondered if the "pseudo intellectuals" comment had anything to do with our own P_I's distinctive moniker—I had noticed that he is fan of Ginsberg, which means that he has most certainly read some Kerouac.