In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, and so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase-meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to the other, or not, in jazz, so that, in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, and by the musician's spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of the time as it waves & waves on by in measured choruses.
It's all gotta be non stop ad libbing within each chorus, or the gig is shot.
âJack Kerouac
I see the backs
Of old Men rolling
Slowly into black
Stores.
Line faced mustached
Black men with turned back
Army weathered brownhats
Stomp on by with bags
Of burlap & rue
Talking to secret
Companions with long hair
In the sidewalk
On 3rd Street
San Francisco
With the rain of exhaust
Plicking in the mist
You see in black
Store doorsâ
Petting trucks fartingâ
Vastly city.
3rd St Market to Lease
Has a washed down tile
Tile entrance once white
Now caked with gum
Of a thousand hundred feet
Feet of passers who
Did not go straight on
Bending to flap the time
Pap page on back
With smoke emanating
From their noses
But slowly like old
Lantern jawed junkmen
Hurrying with the lump
Wondrous potato bag
To the avenues of sunshine
Came, bending to spit,
& Shuffled awhile there.
The rooftop of the beatup
tenement
On 3rd & Harrison
Has Belfast painted
Black on yellow
On the side
the old Frisco wood is
shown with weatherbeaten
rainboards & a
washed out blue bottle
once painted for wild
commercial reasons by
an excited seltzerite
as firemen came last
afternoon & raised the
ladder to a fruitless
fire that was not there,
so, is Belfast singin
in this time
when brand's forgotten
taste washed in
rain the gullies broadened
& every body gone
the acrobats of the
tenement
who dug bel fast
divers all
and the divers all dove
ah
little girls make
shadows on the
sidewalk shorter
than the shadow
of death
in this townâ
Fat girls
In red coats
With flap white out shoes
Monstrous soldiers
Stalk at dawn
Looking for whores
And burning to eat up
Harried Mexican Laborers
Become respectable
In San Francisco
Carrying newspapers
Of culture burden
And packages of need
Walk sadly reluctant
To work in dawn
Stalking with not cat
In the feel of their stride
Touching to hide the sidewalk,
Blackshiny lastnight parlor
Shoes hitting the slippery
With hard slicky heels
To slide & Fall:
Breboac! Karrak!
Dumb kids with thick lips
And black skin
Carry paper bags
Meaninglessly:
“Stop bothering the cat!”
His mother yelled at him
Yesterday and now
He goes to work
Down Third Street
In the milky dawn
Piano rolling over the hill
To the tune of the English
Fifers in some whiter mine,
âBrick a brack,
Pliers on your back;
Mick mack
Kidneys in your back;
Bald Boo!
Oranges and you!
Lick lock
The redfaced cock'
Oi yal!
She yawns to lall
La laâ
Me Loomâ
The weary gray hat
Peacoat ex sailor
Manning meekly
Hands a poop a pocket
Face
Lips
Oh Mo Sea!
The long fat yellow
Eternity cream
Of the Third St Bus
Roof swimming like
A monosyllable
Armored Mososaur
Swimming in my Primordial
Windowpane
Of pain
Alas! Youth is worried,
Pa's astray.
What so say
To well dressed ambassadors
From death's truth
Pimplike, rich,
In the morning slick;
Or sad white caps
Of snowy sea men
In San Francisco
Gray streets
Arm waving to walk
The Harrison cross
And earn later sunset
purple
Dig the sad old bum
No money
Presuming to hit the store
And buy his cube of oleo
For 8 cents
So in cheap rooms
At A M 3 30
He can cough & groan
In a white tile sink
By his bed
Which is used
To run water in
And stagger to
In the reel of wake up
Middle of the night
Flophouse Nightmaresâ
His death no blackern
Mine, his Toast's
Just as well buttered
And on the one side.
There's no telling
What's on the mind
Of the bony
Character in plaid
Workcoat & glasses
Carrying lunch
Stalking & bouncing
Slowly to his job
Or the beauteous Indian
Girl hurrying stately
Into Marathon Grocery
Run by Greeks
To buy bananas
For her love night,
What's she thinking?
Her lips are like cherries,
Her cheeks just purse them out
All the more to kiss them
And suck their juices out.
A young woman flees an old man,
Mohammedan Prophecy:
And she got avocados
Anyhow.
The furtive whore
Looks over her shoulder
While unlocking the door
Of the tenement
Of her pimp
Who with big Negro Arkansas
Or East Texas Oilfields
Harry Truman hat's
Been standin on the street
All day
Waiting for the cold girl
Bending in thincoat in the wind
And Sunday afternoon drizzle
To step on it & get some bread
For Papa's gotta sleep tonite
And the Chinaman's coming back
“No hunger & no wittles
neither deary”
Said the crone
To Edwin Drood
Okay.
There'll be an answer.
Forthcoming
When the morning wind
Ceases shaking
The man's collar
When there's no starch in't
And Acme Beer
Runs flowing
Into dry gray hats.
When
Dearie
The pennies in the
palm multiply
as you watch
When whistlers stop scowling
Smokers stop sighing
Watchers stop looking
And women stop walking
When gray beards
Grow no more
And pain dont
Take you by surprise
And bedposts creak
In rhythm not at morn
And dry men's bones
Are not pushed
By angry meaning pelvic
Propelled legs of reason
To a place you hate,
Then I'll go lay my crown
Body on the heads of 3 men
Hurrying & laughing
In the wrong direction,
my Idol
Sex is an automaton
Sounding like a machine
Thru the stopped up keyhole
âYoung men go fastern
Old men
Old men are passionately breathless
Young men breathe inwardly
Young women & old women
Wait
There was a sound of slapping
When the angel stole come
And the angel that had lost
Lay back satisfied
Hungry addled red face
With tight clutch
Traditional Time
Brief case in his paw
Prowls placking the pavement
To his office girl's
Rumped skirt at 5's
Five O Clock Shadows
Angrily I must insistâ
The phoney Negro
Sea captain
With the battered coat
Who looks like
Charley Chaplin in a
movie about now filmed
in the air by crews
of raving rabid
angels drooling happily
among the funny fat
Cherubim
Leading that serious
Hardjawed sincere
Negro stud
In at morn
For a round of crimes
Is Lucifer the Fraud
Little girls worry too much
For no one will hurt them
Except the beast
Whom they'd knife
In another life
In the as well East
As West of Bethlehem
And do of it much
Rhetorical Third Street
Grasping at racket
Groans & stinky
I've no time
To dally hassel
In your heart's house,
It's too gray
I'm too coldâ
I wanta go to Golden,
That's my home.
I came a wearyin
From eastern hills;
Yonder Nabathacaque recessit
The eastward to Aurora rolls,
Somewhere West of Idalia
Or east of Klamath Falls,
OneâLost a blackhaired
Woman with thin feet
And red bag hangin
Who usta walk
Down Arapahoe Street
In Denver
And made all the
cabbies cry
And drugstore ponies
Eating pool in Remsac's
Sob, to See so Lovely
All the Time
And all so Tight
And young.
Pshaw! Paw's Ford
Got Lost in the Depression
He driv over the Divide
And forgot to cleave the road
Instead put atomic energy
In the ass of his machine
And flew to find
The gory clouds
Of rocky torment
Far away
And they fished him
Outa Miner's Creek
More dead n Henry
And a whole lot fonder,
Podnerâ
Clack of the wheel's
My freight train blues
Third Street I seed
And knowed
And under ramps I writ
The poems of the punk
Who met the Fagin
Who told him âPunk
When walkin with me
To roll a Sleepin drunk
Dont wish ya was back
Home in yr mother's parlor
And when the cops
Come ablastin
With loaded 45's
Dont ask for gold
Or silver from my purse,
Its milken hassel
Will be strewn
And scattered
In the sand
By an old bean can
And dried up kegs
We'd a sat & jawed onâ
Roll my bones
In the Mortiary
My terms
And deeds of mortgagry
And death & taxes
All wrapt up.'
Little anger Japan
Strides holding bombs
To blow the West
To Fuyukama's
Shrouded Mountain Top
So the Lotus Bubble
Blossoms in Buddha's
Temple Dharma Eye
May unfold from
Pacific Center
Inward Out & Over
The Essence Center World
For the world's an Eye
And the universe is Seeing
Liquid
Rare
Radiant.
Eccentrics from out of town
Better not fill in
This blank
For a job on my gray boat
And Monkeysuits I furnish.
Batteries of ad men
Marching arm in arm
Thru the pages
Of Time & Life
The halls of MCA
Singing Deans
In the college morning
Preferable to dry cereal
When no corn mush
Cops & triggers
Magazine pricks
Dastardly Shadows
And Phantom Hero ines.
Swing yr umbrella
At the sidewalk
As you pass
Or tap a boy
On the shoulder
Saying “I say
Where is Threadneedle
Street?”
San Francisco is too sad
Time, I cant understand
Fog, shrouds the hills in
Makes unshod feet so cold
Fills black rooms with day
Dayblack in the white windows
And gloom in the pain of pianos:
Shadows in the jazz age
Filing by; ladders of flappers
Painters' white bucket
Funny 3 Stooge Comedies
And fuzzy headed Hero
Moofle Lip suckt it all up
And wondered why
The milk & cream of heaven
Was writ in gold leaf
On a bookâbig eyes
For the world
The better to seeâ
And big lips for the word
And Buddhahood
And death.
Touch the cup to these sad lips
Let the purple grape foam
In my gullet deep
Spread saccharine
And crimson carnadine
In my vine of veins
And shoot power
To my hand
Belly heart & headâ
This Magic Carpet
Arabian World
Will take us
Easeful Zinging
Cross the Sky
Singing Madrigals
To horizons of golden
Moment emptiness
Whither whence uncaring
Dizzy ride in space
To red fires
Beyond the pale,
Rosy gory outlooks
Everywhere.
San Francisco is too old
Her chimnies lean
And look sooty
After all this time
Of waiting for something
To happen
Betwixt hill & houseâ
Heart & heaven.
San Francisco
San Francisco