Chasing Kerouac's shadow

By: Jack Micheline

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 how 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 song
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!

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Jack Micheline
March 15, 1982
Written on a bus from
San Francisco to Santa Rosa

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You can find this poem in Micheline’s book — Sixty-Seven Poems For Downtrodden Saints. You can also complement this poem with “An Ode to the Street Poet - Jack Micheline” — a brief bio in the form of a poem I recently wrote about the great street poet.

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