Kerouac, I Think I'd like to Believe

Kerouac, I Think I'd like to Believe

(Thoughts and notes during 242 Choruses)

"This tree just told me

            See eternity

            Is the other side

            Of the other part

            Of your mind

            That you ignore

            Because you want to"

-Kerouac, 156th Chorus

I'm running out of places to stash

These discarded crippling hearts.

Kerouac, I think, I'd like to believe

That we are all reborn,

            Over and over;

We are all scholars,

            Responsible for teaching our souls.

And we’re all Buddha and Christ

            To be aspiring saints

Lost in Limbo.

Death's equal is the womb—

            I think that's what you tried to tell me,

And that soft souls know no equal.

 “What’s been buried inside me

            for sure?

The substance of my own father’s

            empty light

Derived from time working

            on dirt

And clay bones.”

-Kerouac, 204^th Chorus

I won't be left with

The crickets forever,

But Their soulless song is soothing;

Teach me to see like you do

Into the valley heart of shades

Rounded by a black rainbow

By the moon that never sets.

That I may see passed the Jewel of Fate,

Emerge from boundaries—you and I.

Learn to not suffer the wicked;

But also tell it apart from the innocent.

Heaven, I have another side—

What's wrong with that?—

Don't send me 'way like the others.

Heaven we're all impatient,

What are you hiding?

"I'm an idealist

            who has outgrown

            my idealism

I have nothing to do

  the rest of my life

            but do it

            and the rest of my life

            to do it"

-33rd Chorus

I bear the language of the romantics.

I have a full heart and empty pockets.

I can appear awesome as a phantom.

I believe there are colors I have not seen.

I’ve spent eleven lives

            Trying to perfect the spontaneous sonnet.

I’ve Seen my silver soul; a speck on the mirror.

“Being in selfless one-ness

With the such-ness

That is Tathagatahood,

So is everybody else

Lost with you

In that bright Sea

Of non-personality.”

            -194^th Chorus

In a crystal-nothing jar

            Nirvana sits empty.

Wait, I have my own ballad;

It’s in my pocket,

            It’s a telephone number,

   It’s a name,

It’s an answer—

Yes?

Wait, my Nirvana,

Why is patience a life-long lesson?

            I’m done waiting for mine.

No, there’s nothing spontaneous

            ‘bout a sunset.

The ecstasy of nothing

Abiding, pleasing, pleasuring,

            Feeling, grieving, having

                        nothing,

            No____thing.

Pure light is always seen

            Even in the no____thing of smoldering

            dark

Even now in the Divine Secular Nothing,

            Ultra Ecstatic Reality.

                        (a pause)

A secular God has only genitals.

"Therefore", she said, "Goddess is a redundancy."

silence

"So the children rush out, saved,

            And he gives them

            the incomparable single Greatcart

            Of the white Bullock, all snow"

-126th Chorus

The dance of the little boy’s anger

            So unforgivable

Mired down in the recess of

            Frogs, flowers, Scholars

An age, and fifty thousand breaths

            later,

Still a washed out vision

            Ambient surreal emotion

And a small diamond is made

            To be a third eye’s prism.

Me and a half-dollar spider watch

            a caterpillar dance slowly on a twig

“Wow, I thought reading that,

            When I start falling

            In that inhuman pit

            Of dizzy death

            I’ll know (if

            Smart enough t’remember)

            That all the black

            Tunnels of hate

            Or love I’m falling

            Through, are

                   Really radiant

            Right eternities

            For me”

-184^th Chorus

Have all my choices been made

            Before I even know them?

Have I written this already—hundreds of times before?

            Once drunk, once high, once sober,

            Once in ecstasy, once alive, once

            Frozen stiff, once in anguish,

            Once after the Rapture, once in

            Fear of hell, once in unending

            Anticipation of heaven and light,

            Once in pursuit of Perfect Gain

And still now while pouring over

The Snake of Eternity.

“Seeing that all’s illusion

You lose your mind

In meditation

And heal yourself well

            (AND WHAT’S BEEN HEALED?)”

                        -203^rd Chorus

The Saints say:

            The universe began in a garden

            All speech was meaningless before being named

            Everything was perfect and sane

(I think

            Blessed are those without a tongue

For they have never disturbed the hymen of Universe.)

Say They:

            Without morals none were judged

            Haloed cherub beings robed only in serenity

            Governed the careless creatures

(I think

            Blessed are those without reason

            For all others shall inherit their sins)

“It is not moot to question how a dream

                                                ends”

                                    -216^th-B Chorus

When you've proven the universal redundancies.

When moved by faith to:

            Confirm all rhetorical doubt,

            Put to sleep a thousand dragons,

            Silence the sirens in the sky,

            And strangle all lonesome thoughts.

Wont you lie down with me,

have a drink, retire

            Stoic

                        nirvana

split my side once more.

Patrick Conners Jr.