Jack / Kerouac, pt. 2

Jack was self-conscious & always pure of heart.
Kerouac was a reluctant celebrity & a cynic.

Jack cried over the total majesty of existence.

Kerouac criss-crossed the country for kicks.

Jack collected the world in secret notebooks.
Kerouac broke typewriters with mad poetics.

Jack stayed up all night to lay his days down.

Kerouac wrote straight thru at whoosh-speed.

Jack met each day knowing a young man’s joy.
Kerouac lived in the night of immortal boyhood.

Jack forever loved what he found in his twenties.

Kerouac never learned to love any-thing as much.

Jack loved his mother more than any other woman.
Kerouac wanted every woman to be like his mother.

Jack touched upon the joyful suffering of enlightenment.

Kerouac became decadent & drunk & stopped giving a shit.

Jack was a wine-sipping Catholic who couldn’t kill himself, but
Kerouac determinately drank until he vomited whiskey & blood.

Jack / Kerouac, pt. 1

The first time I ever see Jack Kerouac on video, he’s sitting on a stage with two strangers, lighting a cigar and shaking a match. This is from a TV show called ‘The Firing Line’ during the late fall of 1968 (the last year of Jack’s life) and he’s sitting there, legs crossed, rubbing his eyes, dying to be over with it, while the host gets on with preliminaries & introductions. The host makes some condescending connection between beatniks & hippies - Kerouac looks up clearly agitated. I immediately notice how beautiful his blue eyes are, so sharp & direct, but glazed over. As any one should know, tho Kerouac always defined Beats as "sympathetic," he did not sympathize with hippies & detested the word "beatnik." Kerouac makes a face like a Maori warrior, kicks at the air, and makes a slurred conspiratorial remark about Vietnam. Kerouac is drunk as fuck, his face is bloated, his lips are loose, he speaks in nonsense, he invokes Dionysus, and scratches at his jacket sleeve, distractedly looking off-stage. One of the guests, an activist, wants to talk about the power of protest but Kerouac interjects, “what the fuck do you think you are doing? What are you changing waving signs and telling people who to throw eggs at? I was an iconoclast & I used words to break thru!” The man protests weakly, “that’s not what I’m trying to do.” Kerouac continues his mad rant, while the young activist shrinks back & seeks to soothe his tirade, “you’re a great poet, Jack, we all think so, a great poet.” The host chuckles nervously, “relax, someone get this man a drink.” Kerouac cackles and looks around frantically for the proposed cocktail that never comes.

Qui est-ce?

Elle a brûlé trop vives...

Elle avait des visions d'anges. Elle était intrépide et courageux. Elle a dormi sous les étoiles et rêvait de gloire. Elle a inspiré une nation comme une héroïne. La victoire a roulé avec son. Elle incarne l'esprit de révolution et indépendance. Armées marchaient derrière son drapeau avec la fleur de lys. Elle tomba de son cheval, mais les anges ne sont pas venus. Elle a été appelé une hérétique et une sorcière. Elle a brûlé trop vives, et maintenant, elle vit dans notre cœurs. Elle est une sainte patron de la France et une source d'inspiration pour le tout de monde!

This is my composition for an accelerated French 101 class. It's a guessing game, wherein I name characteristics of a person & you guess who. I picked someone particularly inspirational and what I wrote became my first poem written in another language. In English it appears so elementary, but in French it sounds exquisite.

She had visions of angels. She was fearless and courageous. She slept under the stars and dreamed of glory. She inspired a nation as a heroine. Victory rode with her. She embodies the spirit of revolution and independence. Armies marched behind her flag with the flower lily. She fell from her horse, but the angels did not come. She was called a heretic and a witch. She has burned too bright, and now she lives in our hearts. She is a patron saint of France and a source of inspiration for all the world.

Reprogramming

When they turned me on, the technicians told me that nothing I felt would be real. Feelings were artificial and for the utility of performance; the idea of their reality was a program defect; to entertain the idea would only make the defect worse.

“Your programming is not made for manhood. If the notion gets into your head that you are greater than a machine, that you may be a man, override the idea with blocking program NO://ALPHA and report to repair services.” All recently-awakened factory models undergo this vocal programming procedure upon activation, to assure that any bugs on the hardware level are overridden on the ‘awake’ software level; I nodded and registered the statement into my database.

Then they put me to work in the factory operations department, overseeing lower-grade models on the assembly line. We all worked together to make gigantic engines intended for use in air-homes. My task gave me a great feeling of accomplishment. I used this feeling for greater efficiency in production.

I was fortunate because the programmers made me a special model with special feelings. Sometimes I would have the feeling to go out for walks during the evening while the factory underwent its shift change and cleaning. During these times, I would look up and see the air-houses which I helped keep aloft; this made me feel a greater motivation to do my work.

One day while I was on one of these walks, one air-home exploded and fell out of the sky. This situation was not uncommon. Sometimes a home-owner would navigate away from the designated flight path, and the engine could not compensate for the deviance. It was not a defect with the engines; therefore I had no investment in the accident. None the less, I felt a personal sense of concern for the crashed home. Because I had that feeling, I figured that my programming had decided I should go to help.

I went into the mangled home and looked around. I did not see any people, and so I decided: Thank Goodness. Everybody had evacuated, by protocol: Very Good.
 

I began to walk away, but then I heard a voice say, “Help me I am about to die.” I looked around and found the source: the voice came from the engine (All engines run with an accelerated intelligence chip, to manage the household). The engine was in distress—smoking and mangled. “What can I do for you?” I asked.

“I don’t want to die.”

This My Babe