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 harmonically 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 musicians 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.
—Jack Kerouac
1ST CHORUS
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 doors—
Petting trucks farting—
Vastly city.
3RD CHORUS
Tile entrance once white
Now caked with gum
Did not straight on
Bending to flap the time
Pap page in 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.
4TH CHORUS
The rooftop of the beatup
tenement
Black on yellow
On the side
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
5TH CHORUS
when brand’s forgotten
& everybody gone
and acrobats of the
tenement
who dug bel fast
divers all
and the divers all dove
sidewalk shorter
than the shadow
of death
in this town—
6TH CHORUS
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 care
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!
7TH CHORUS
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,
`Brick a brack,
Pliers on your back;
Mick mack
Kidneys in your back;
Bald boo!
Oranges and you!
Lick Lock
The redfaced cock’
8TH CHORUS
Oi yal!
She yawns to lall
La la—
Me Loom—
The weary gray hat
Peacoat ex sailor
Marining 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 Monosaur
Swimming in my Priomordial
Windowpane
Of pain
9TH CHORUS
Alas! Youth is worried,
Pa’s astray.
What to say
To the well dressed ambassadors
From death’s truth
Pimplike, rich,
In the morning slick;
Or sad white caps
Of snowy sea men
In San Franciso
Gray streets
Arm waving to walk
The Harrison cross
And earn later sunset
purple
10TH CHORUS
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 and 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 Nightmares—
His death no blackern
Mine, his Toast’s
Just as well buttered
And on the one side.
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
Painter’s white bucket
Funny 3 Stooge Comedies
And fuzzy headed Hero
Moofle Lip suck’t it all up
And wondered why
The milk & cream of heaven
Was writ in gold leaf
On a book – big eyes
For the world
The better to see—
25TH CHORUS
Touch the cup to these sad lips
Spread saccharine
And crimson carnadine
In my vine of veins
And shoot power
To my hand
Belly heart & head—
This Magic Carpet
Arabian World
Will take us
Easeful Zinging
Cross the sky
Singing Madrigals
26TH CHORUS
To horizons of golden
Moment emptiness
Whither whence uncaring
Dizzy ride in space
To red fires
Beyond the pale,
Rosy gore outlooks
Everywhere.
San Francisco is too old
Her chimneys lean
And look sooty
After all this time
Of waiting for something
To happen
Betwixt hill & house—
Heart & Heaven.
27TH CHORUS
San Francisco,
San Francisco,
You’re a muttering bum
In a brown beat suit
Can’t make a woman
On a rainy corner
Your corners open out
San Francisco
Cold and bleak.
28TH CHORUS
You’re as useless
As a soda truck
Parked in the rain
With cases of pretty red
Orange green & Coca Cola
Brown receiving
Drops like the sea
Receiveth driving spikes
Welling in the navel void.
I also have loud poems:
Broken plastic coverlets
Flapping in the rain
To cover newspapers
All printed up
And plain.
29TH CHORUS
Guys with big pockets
In heavy topcoats
And slit scar
Head bands down
The middle of their hair
All Bruce Barton combed
Stand surveying Harrison
Folsom & the Ramp
And the redbrick clock
Wishin they had a woman
Or some money, honey
Westinghouse Elevators
Are full of pretty girls
With classy cans
And cute pans
And long slim legs
And eyes for the boss
At a quarter of four.
30TH CHORUS
Old Age is an Indian
With grey hair
And a cane
In an old coat
Tapping along
The rainy street
To see the pretty oranges
And the stores
On his big day
When the dog’s let out.
Eager to make a break
But the F B I
In the form of Ted
Stands waiting
Hand on gun
To come.
Falling off in wind.
Bluer than misery
I got the San Francisco blues
Bluer than Eternity
I gotta go on home
Fine me
Another
Sanity
I got the San Francisco
blues
Bluer than heaven’s gate,
mate,
I got the San Francisco blues
Bluer than blue paint,
Saint,—
I better move on home
Sleep in
My golden
Dream again
42ND CHORUS
I’d better be a poet
Or lay down dead
Little boys are angels
Crying in the street
Wear funny hats
Wait for green lights
Carry bust out tubes
Around their necks
And roam the railyards
Of the great cities
Looking for locomotive
Full of shit
Run down to the waterfront
And dream of Cathay
Hook spars with Gulls
Of athavoid thought
46TH CHORUS
Babies born screaming
in this town
Are miserable examples
of what happens
Everywhere
Bein crazy is
The least of my worries
Now the sun’s goin down
In old San Fran
The hills are in a haze
Of shroudy afternoon—
Bent withered Burroughsian
Greeks pass
In gray felt hats
Expensively pearly
On bony suffer heads
Fill the rills
And ride the ravines
And sneak on in
With Whipporwill
To-hoo— To-wa!
The Chinese call it woo
The French les brumes
The British
Fog
L A
Smog
Heaven
Cellar door
55TH CHORUS
This means
that everything
has some home
to come to
Light has windows
balconies of iron
like New Orleans
It also has all space
And I have windows
balconies of iron
like New Orleans
I also have all space
And St Louis too
Light follows rivers
I do too
Light fades, I pass
56TH CHORUS
Light illuminates
The intense cough
Of young girls in love
Hurrying to sell their
future husband
On the Market St
Parade
Light makes his face
Reddern
Her white mask
She sucks to bone him dry
And make him happy
Make him cry
Make him baby
Stay by me.
80TH CHORUS
San Francisco Skid row
Nineteen Fifty Four
Available to me
I saw heaven move
Said ‘This is the end’
Because I was tired
of all that portend
And any time you need
I’ll be at the other
end
Waiting
at the final wall.
the evening redness in the west 