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  MEXICO CITY BLUES

  Other Works by Jack Kerouac

  Published by Grove Press

  Dr. Sax

  Lonesome Traveler

  Satori in Paris and Pic (one volume)

  The Subterraneans

  MEXICO CITY BLUES

  Jack Kerouac

  Copyright © 1959 by Jack Kerouac

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969.

  Mexico City blues / Jack Kerouac.

  p. cm.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9568-5

  I. Title.

  PS3521.E735M4 1990

  813’.54—dc20 90-2748

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  MEXICO CITY BLUES

  MEXICO CITY BLUES

  NOTE

  I want to be considered a jazz poet

  blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam

  session on Sunday. I take 242 choruses;

  my ideas vary and sometimes roll from

  chorus to chorus or from halfway through

  a chorus to halfway into the next.

  1st Chorus

  Butte Magic of Ignorance

  Butte Magic

  Is the same as no-Butte

  All one light

  Old Rough Roads

  One High Iron

  Mainway

  Denver is the same

  “The guy I was with his uncle was

  the governor of Wyoming”

  “Course he paid me back”

  Ten Days

  Two Weeks

  Stock and Joint

  “Was an old crook anyway”

  The same voice on the same ship

  The Supreme Vehicle

  S. S. Excalibur

  Maynard

  Mainline

  Mountain

  Merudvhaga

  Mersion of Missy

  2nd Chorus

  Man is not worried in the middle

  Man in the Middle

  Is not Worried

  He knows his Karma

  Is not buried

  But his Karma,

  Unknown to him,

  May end –

  Which is Nirvana

  Wild men

  Who kill

  Have Karmas

  Of ill

  Good men

  Who love

  Have Karmas

  Of dove

  Snakes are Poor Denizens of Hell

  Have come surreptitioning

  Through the tall grass

  To face the pool of clear frogs

  3rd Chorus

  Describe fires in riverbottom

  sand, and the cooking;

  the cooking of hot dogs

  spitted in whittled sticks

  over flames of woodfire

  with grease dropping in smoke

  to brown and blacken

  the salty hotdogs,

  and the wine,

  and the work on the railroad.

  $275,000,000,000.00 in debt

  says the Government

  Two hundred and seventy five billion

  dollars in debt

  Like Unending

  Heaven

  And Unnumbered Sentient Beings

  Who will be admitted –

  Not-Numberable –

  To the new Pair of Shoes

  Of White Guru Fleece

  O j o!

  The Purple Paradise

  4th Chorus

  Roosevelt was worth 6, 7 million dollars

  He was Tight

  Frog waits

  Till poor fly

  Flies by

  And then they got him

  The pool of clear rocks

  Covered with vegetable scum

  Covered the rocks

  Clear the pool

  Covered the warm surface

  Covered the lotus

  Dusted the watermelon flower

  Aerial the Pad

  Clean queer the clear

  blue water

  AND THEN THEY GOT HIM

  The Oil of the Olive

  Bittersweet taffies

  Bittersweet cabbage

  Cabbage soup made right

  A hunk a grass

  Sauerkraut let work

  in a big barrel

  Stunk but Good

  5th Chorus

  I am not Gregory Corso

  The Italian Minnesinger –

  Of the Song of Corsica –

  Subioso Gregorio Corso –

  The Haunted Versemaker

  King

  Of Brattle Street.

  In streets of snow

  He wove the show

  And worried in tunnels

  And mad dog barked

  KIND KING MIND

  Allen Ginsberg called me

  William Burroughs

  Is William Lee

  Samuel Johnson

  Is Under the sea

  Rothridge Cole parter

  Of Peppers

  Is Numbro

  Elabora

  If you know what I

  p a l a b r a

  6th Chorus

  This Thinking is Stopped.

  Buddha’s Secret Moonlight: – is

  the Ancient Virtue of laying up

  and thinking happy & comfortable

  thoughts – This, which modern

  Society has branded “Loafing,” is

  made available to people now

  apparently only by junk.

  Self depends on existence of other

  self, and so no Solo Universal Self

  exists – no self, no other self,

  no innumerable selves, no

  Universal self and no ideas

  relating to existence or non-

  existence thereof –

  The Greatest, Who Has Undertaken

  to Comfort Innumberable Beings

  The Kind One

  The Art-of-Kindness Master

  The Master of Wisdom

  The Great Ferryman

  The Great Vehicle Being

  7th Chorus

  He Who is Free From Arbitrary Conceptions

  of Being or Non-Being

  The Genius of the Elephant

  The Destroyer of Elephant-Trainers

  by Death

  The Destroyer of Elephants by Death

  The Destroyer of Death

  The Destroyer and Exterminator

  of Death

  Exterminator of Being and Non-Being

  Tathagata

  The Essence Master

  The Womb

  The Manifestor

  Man’s Made Essence

  Essence’s Made Man

  The Maker of Light

  The Destroyer of Light

  8th Chorus

  Mysterious Red Rivers of the North –

  Obi Ubang African Montanas

  of the Gulchy Peary

&n
bsp; Earth –

  Lakes of Light – Old Seas –

  Mississippi River, Chicago,

  the Great Lakes –

  The Small Rivers like Indiana,

  the Big Ones

  Like Amazon.

  Joliet flew.

  Alma, the River of Snowy Love

  – Amida, of Brightest

  Perfect

  Compassion

  The Tamiyani Trail across

  the Everglades –

  Ai la ra la

  la rai la ra –

  Singing breasts of women

  of earth receiving

  Juicy Rivers – red earth

  9th Chorus

  We’re all taking short cut

  Through Death Valley

  The Volcanic Mountains

  And the Lizard Ice

  And the Lice of Sand

  – Lhasas of Weedblack

  Cock Rock Philtrite –

  Redwoods so Huge

  They climb passes by God –

  The Giant Angels

  In the Washington D C Blue Sky

  – – The Heroines of Cathedral

  Fellaheen Mexico –

  Commenting on the Great Cities

  of the World,

  The Blue Marvel of New Orleans

  (land a swamps)

  Ingers had done windows

  with penal Australia

  too – pear Attantisatasa

  the Central Essential

  Indy Portuga

  coit

  10th Chorus

  The great hanging weak teat of India

  on the map

  The Fingernail of Malaya

  The Wall of China

  The Korea Ti-Pousse Thumb

  The Salamander Japan

  the Okinawa Moon Spot

  The Pacific

  The Back of Hawaiian Mountains

  coconuts

  Kines, balconies, Ah Tarzan –

  And D W Griffith

  the great American Director

  Strolling down disgruntled

  Hollywood Lane

  – to toot Nebraska,

  Indian Village New York,

  Atlantis, Rome,

  Peleus and Melisander,

  And

  swans of Balls

  Spots of foam on the ocean

  11th Chorus

  Brown wrote a book called

  The White and the Black

  N a r c o t i c C i t y

  switchin on

  Anger Falls –

  (musician stops,

  brooding on bandstand)

  12th Chorus

  Indian songs in Mexico

  (the Folk Chanties of Children

  at dusk jumprope –

  at Saturday Night power failure –)

  are like the little French Canuckian

  songs my mother sings –

  Indian Roundelays –

  Row Canoe –

  Ma ta wacka

  Johnny Picotee

  Wish-tee

  Wish-tee

  Negwayable

  Tamayara

  Para ya

  Aztec squeaks

  (ONLY THE MOTHERS ARE HAPPY)

  13th Chorus

  I caught a cold

  From the sun

  When they tore my heart out

  At the top of the pyramid

  O the ruttle tooty blooty

  windowpoopies

  of Fellah Ack Ack

  Town that russet noon

  when priests dared

  to lick their lips

  over my thumping meat

  heart –

  the Sacrilegious beasts

  Ate me 10,000 million

  Times & I came back

  Spitting Pulque

  in Borracho

  Ork

  Saloons

  of old Sour Azteca

  Askin for more

  I popped outa Popocatapetl’s

  Hungry mouth

  14th Chorus

  And when they saw me

  Rowin my sailin canoe

  Across the lake of dreams

  In the Lotus Valley Swamp,

  And arrested me

  For the size

  Of my heart,

  T’s’ then I decided

  ‘Don’t Come Back’

  They’ll eat your heart alive

  Every time.

  But there’s more blood

  I shed

  Outa my pumpin heart

  At Teotihuacan

  And everywhere else

  Including Turban Block,

  Lookout, Ork –

  I got more water

  Pissed in the Ocean

  As a sailor of the several

  seas

  Than Sallow’s

  Aphorism

  will allow

  15th Chorus

  Meaning –

  I’m just an old calvert

  cross

  dead of die pork

  I believe in the sweetness

  of Jesus

  And Buddha –

  I believe

  In St.Francis,

  Avaloki

  Tesvara,

  the Saints

  Of First Century

  India A D

  And Scholars

  Santivedan

  And Otherwise

  Santayanan

  Everywhere

  16th Chorus

  Santayana meaning,

  holy vehicle,

  Uno –

  One Cross

  One Way

  One Cave inward

  down

  to

  moon

  Shining essences

  of universes of stars

  disseminated into powder

  and dust –

  blazing

  in the dynamo

  of our thoughts

  in the forge

  of the moon

  In the June

  of black bugs

  in your bed

  of hair earth

  17th Chorus

  Starspangled Kingdoms bedecked

  in dewy joint –

  DON’T IGNORE OTHER PARTS

  OF YOUR MIND, I think,

  And my clever brain sends

  ripples of amusement

  Through my leg nerve halls

  And I remember the Zigzag

  Original

  Mind

  of Babyhood

  when you’d let the faces

  crack & mock

  & yak & change

  & go mad utterly

  in your night

  firstmind

  reveries

  talking about the mind

  The endless Not Invisible

  Madness Rioting

  Everywhere

  18th Chorus

  The bottom of the repository

  human mind

  The Kingdom of the Mind,

  The Kingdom has come.

  It’s the only thing you got free,

  the Mind

  Per Se Williams, the critic

  and author,

  Slept in a rainbow

  When he discovered

  the perfect accommodation

  of Universal Mind

  in its active aspect

  You’ll have a Period of Golden Age

  Restitution of Loss

  I’ve had all I can Eat

  Revisiting Russet towns

  Of long ago

  On carpets of bloody sawdust

  19th Chorus

  Christ had a dove on his shoulder

  – My brother Gerard

  Had 2 Doves

  And 2 Lambs

  Pulling his Milky Chariot.

  Immersed in fragrant old

  spittoon water

  He was Baptized by Iron

  Priest Saint Jacques

  De Fournier in Lowell

  Massachusetts

  In the Gray
Rain Year,

  1919

  When Chaplin had Spats

  and Dempsey

  Drank no whisky by the track.

  My mother saw him in heaven

  Riding away, prophesying

  Everything will be alright

  Which I have learned now

  By Trial & Conviction

  In the Court of Awful Glots

  20th Chorus

  The Art of Kindness A Limping Sonnet

  How the art of kindness doth excite,

  The ressure and the intervening tear,

  What horizons have they fled,

  What old time’s blearest dream!

  But atta pressure of the Two Team,

  Finding nothing to surfeit the bloated corpse,

  Rabbed the Whole She bo be bang

  And rounded them a Team.

  Beam! Bleam! So no one cared.

  Except the High Financier.

  Ah, but wine was never Made

  That sorely tongues gave grace & aid.

  Because I cant write a sonnet

  Does that make me Shakespeare?

  There’s a sonnet of the lotus

  A rubicund rose

  Death in a rose

  Is prouder than satin

  Emerald Isles

  Blest

  In the Archipelagoan

  Shore –

  Ferry’s arrived.

  21st Chorus

  Not very musical, the Western ear

  – No lyres in the pines

  compare with the palms

  Western Sorcery is Sad Science –

  Mechanics go mad

  In Nirvanas of hair

  and black oil

  and rags of dust

  and lint of flint

  Hard iron fools raging in the gloom

  But here’s East, Cambodian

  Saloons of Air

  And Clouds Blest.

  Blakean Angel Town.

  Grove of Beardy Trees

  & Bearded Emptily –

  Expressing Patriarchal

  Authority

  To us listeners

  Of the Holy See

  Saw,

  said,

  Saved

  Saved my Bhikkucitas

  22nd Chorus

  Saved my bhikkucitos

  for the holy hair

  that was found wanting

  in merde air –

  Ninety devils jokin with me

  And I’m running on the catwalk

  At Margaritee

  Jumping from car to car

  In a 60 mile freight

  Runnin up the pass maw

  Tunnel Gore waited Ore