I've Got to Escape or Die

By: Jack Kerouac

I realize, gone the way of the last three years
of drunken hopelessness which is a
physical and spiritual and metaphysical
hopelessness you can't learn in school
no matter how many books on existentialism
or pessimism you read, or how many jugs
of vision-producing Ayahuasca you drink,
or Mescaline you take, or Peyote goop
up with -- That feeling when you wake up
with the delirium tremens with the fear
of eerie death dripping from your ears
like those special heavy cobwebs spiders
weave in the hot countries, the feeling
of being a bent back mudman monster
groaning underground in hot steaming mud
pulling a long hot burden nowhere, the
feeling of standing ankledeep in hot boiled
pork blood, ugh, of being up to your waist
in a giant pan of greasy brown dishwater
not a trace of suds left in it--The face
of yourself you see in the mirror with its
expression of unbearable anguish so hagged
and awful with sorrow you can't even cry
for a thing so ugly, so lost, no connection
whatever with early perfection and therefore
nothing to connect with tears or anything:
it's like William Seward Burroughs' 'Stranger'
suddenly appearing in your place in the
mirror - Enough! 'One fast move or I'm gone'
so I jump up, do my headstand first to pump
blood back into the hairy brain, take a shower
in the hall, new T-shirt and socks and underwear,
pack vigorously, hoist the rucksack and run out
throwing the key on the desk and hit the cold street...
I've got to escape or die...”

This passage is from Jack Kerouac’s great book, “Big Sur.” You can pick it up here: https://amzn.to/3stOu3U