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I Nudged Myself Closer To The Ledge And Closed My Eyes And Thought 'oh What A Life This Is, Why Do We Have To Be Born In The First Place, And Only So We Can Have Our Poor Gentle Flesh Laid Out To Such Impossible Horrors As Huge Mountains And Rock And Empty Space,' And With Horror I Remembered The Famous Zen Saying, 'when You Get To The Top Of A Mountain, Keep Climbing.' The Saying Made My Hair Stand On End; It Had Been Such Cute Poetry Sitting On Alvah's Straw Mats.

-Jack Kerouac

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I Nudged Myself Closer

Jack Kerouac

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I Nudged Myself Closer To The Ledge And Closed My Eyes And Thought 'oh What A Life This Is, Why Do We Have To Be Born In The First Place, And Only So We Can Have Our Poor Gentle Flesh Laid Out To Such Impossible Horrors As Huge Mountains And Rock And Empty Space,' And With Horror I Remembered The Famous Zen Saying, 'when You Get To The Top Of A Mountain, Keep Climbing.' The Saying Made My Hair Stand On End; It Had Been Such Cute Poetry Sitting On Alvah's Straw Mats.

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And Before Me Was The Great Raw Bulge And Bulk Of My American Continent; Somewhat Far Across, Gloomy, Crazy New York Was Throwing Up Its Cloud Of Dust And Brown Steam. There Is Something Brown And Holy About The East; And California Is White Like Washlines And Emptyheaded - At Least That's What I Thought Then.

The Smog Was Heavy, My Eyes Were Weeping From It, The Sun Was Hot, The Air Stank, A Regular Hell Is L.a.

Because Anybody Can Write, But Not Everybody Invents New Forms Of Writing. Gertrude Stein Invented A New Form Of Writing And Her Imitators Are Just "talents."

February Dawn -- Frost On The Path Where I Paced All Winter.

Hell Man, I Know Very Well You Didn't Come To Me Only To Want To Become A Writer, And After All What Do I Really Know About It Except That You've Got To Stick To It With The Energy Of A Benny Addict.

Never Mistake Talking About Writing For Actual Writing.

Don't Touch Me, I'm Full Of Snakes.

...and Performing Our One And Noble Function Of The Time, Move.

Rocks Are Space, And Space Is Illusion.

There Is Universal Substance Which Is Divine Substance Because Where Else Can It Be?

What Does It Mean That I Am In This Endless Universe, Thinking That I'm A Man Sitting Under The Stars On The Terrace Of The Earth, But Actually Empty And Awake Throughout The Emptiness And Awakedness Of Everything? It Means That I'm Empty And Awake, That I Know I'm Empty And Awake, And That There's No Difference Between Me And Anything Else.

Houses Are Full Of Things That Gather Dust

I Took A Straight Picture That Made Me Look Like A Thirty-year-old Italian Who'd Kill Anybody Who Said Something Against His Mother.

And I Will Die, And You Will Die, And We All Will Die, And Even The Stars Will Fade Out One After Another In Time.

I Had Nothing To Offer Anybody Except My Own Confusion.

The Only Truth Is Music.

Inspirational Music

I Rather Like The Idea Of Having All My Hours To Myself: Eating A Fudge Sundae, Watching A Movie, Sleeping On My Couch, Singing In The Bathroom, Studying The Woods, Kidding Around With A Girl, Playing Cards Lazily - All Kinds Of Stuff That American Brands 'shiftless.'

Forgive Everyone For Your Own Sins And Be Sure To Tell Them You Love Them Which You Do.

It's Only Through Form That We Can Realize Emptiness

Marylou Was Watching Dean As She Had Watched Him Clear Across The Country And Back, Out Of The Corner Of Her Eye--with A Sullen, Sad Air, As Though She Wanted To Cut Off His Head And Hide It In Her Closet, An Envious And Rueful Love Of Him So Amazingly Himself, All Raging And Sniffy And Crazy-wayed, A Smile Of Tender Dotage But Also Sinister Envy That Frightened Me About Her, A Love She Knew Would Never Bear Fruit Because When She Looked At His Hangjawed Bony Face With Its Male Self-containment And Absentmindedness She Knew He Was Too Mad.

The Best Teacher Is Experience And Not Through Someone's Distorted Point Of View

I Promise I Shall Never Give Up, And That I'll Die Yelling & Laughing.

You Can't Live In This World But There's Nowhere Else To Go.

I See As Much As Doors'll Allow, Open Or Shut.

Offer Them What They Secretly Want And They Of Course Immediately Become Panic-stricken.

It Seemed Like A Matter Of Minutes When We Began Rolling In The Foothills Before Oakland And Suddenly Reached A Height And Saw Stretched Out Ahead Of Us The Fabulous White City Of San Francisco On Her Eleven Mystic Hills With The Blue Pacific And Its Advancing Wall Of Potato-patch Fog Beyond, And Smoke And Goldenness In The Late Afternoon Of Time.

I Was Surprised, As Always, Be How Easy The Act Of Leaving Was, And How Good It Felt. The World Was Suddenly Rich With Possibility.

Genius Gives Birth, Talent Delivers. What Rembrandt Or Van Gogh Saw In The Night Can Never Be Seen Again. Born Writers Of The Future Are Amazed Already At What They're Seeing Now, What We'll All See In Time For The First Time, And Then See Imitated Many Times By Made Writers.

Somewhere Along The Line I Knew There'd Be Girls, Visions, Everything; Somewhere Along The Line The Pearl Would Be Handed To Me.

I Have Fallen In Love With You, God. Take Care Of Us All, One Way Or The Other.

And I Realize The Unbearable Anguish Of Insanity: How Uninformed People Can Be Thinking Insane People Are "happy," O God, In Fact It Was Irwin Garden Once Warned Me Not To Think The Madhouses Are Full Of "happy Nuts." (p. 200)

My Whole Wretched Life Swam Before My Weary Eyes, And I Realized No Matter What You Do It's Bound To Be A Waste Of Time In The End So You Might As Well Go Mad.

Everything Is Perfect On The Street Again, The World Is Permeated With Roses Of Happiness All The Time, But None Of Us Know It. The Happiness Consists In Realizing That It Is All A Great Strange Dream.

She Spoke Of Evenings In The Country Making Popcorn On The Porch. Once This Would Have Gladdened My Heart But Because Her Heart Was Not Glad When She Said It I Knew There Was Nothing In It But The Idea Of What One Should Do.

What Is That Feeling When You're Driving Away From People And They Recede On The Plain Till You See Their Specks Dispersing? - It's The Too-huge World Vaulting Us, And It's Good-by. But We Lean Forward To The Next Crazy Venture Beneath The Skies.

I Like Too Many Things And Get All Confused And Hung-up Running From One Falling Star To Another Till I Drop. This Is The Night, What It Does To You. I Had Nothing To Offer Anybody Except My Own Confusion.

Anybody Doesn't Like These Pitchers Don't Like Potry, See? Anybody Don't Like Potry Go Home See Television Shots Of Big Hatted Cowboys Being Tolerated By Kind Horses. Robert Frank, Swiss, Unobtrusive, Nice, With That Little Camera That He Raises And Snaps With One Hand He Sucked A Sad Poem Right Out Of America Onto Film, Taking Rank Among The Poets Of The World. To Robert Frank I Now Give This Message: You Got Eyes.

When The Railroad Trains Moaned, And River-winds Blew, Bringing Echoes Through The Vale, It Was As If A Wild Hum Of Voices, The Dear Voices Of Everybody He Had Known, Were Crying: "peter, Peter! Where Are You Going, Peter?" And A Big Soft Gust Of Rain Came Down. He Put Up The Collar Of His Jacket, And Bowed His Head, And Hurried Along.

Because The Only People For Me Are The Mad Ones.

I'm Going To Marry My Novels And Have Little Short Stories For Children.

If You Tell A True Story, You Can't Be Wrong.

Everything I Wrote Was True Because I Believed What I Saw.

Equally Empty, Equally To Be Loved, Equally A Coming Buddha

The Secret Of This Kind Of Climbing, Is Like Zen. Don't Think. Just Dance Along. It's The Easiest Thing In The World, Actually Easier Than Walking On Flat Ground Which Is Monotonous. The Cute Little Problems Present Themselves At Each Step And Yet You Don't Hesitate And You Find Yourself On Some Other Boulder You Picked Out For No Special Reason At All, Just Like Zen.~ Japhy

Ah, You Always Go For The Ones Who Don't Really Want You

Believe That The World Is An Ethereal Flower, And Ye Live.

It's All Too Much And Not Enough At The Same Time.

I Don't Know, I Don't Care, And It Doesn't Make Any Difference.

But, Outside Of Being A Sweet Little Girl, She Was Awfully Dumb And Capable Of Doing Horrible Things.

And What Does The Rain Say At Night In A Small Town, What Does The Rain Have To Say? Who Walks Beneath Dripping Melancholy Branches Listening To The Rain? Who Is There In The Rain’s Million-needled Blurring Splash, Listening To The Grave Music Of The Rain At Night, September Rain, September Rain, So Dark And Soft? Who Is There Listening To Steady Level Roaring Rain All Around, Brooding And Listening And Waiting, In The Rain-washed, Rain-twinkled Dark Of Night?

The Cowboy Music Twanged In The Roadhouse And Carried Across The Fields, All Sadness. It Was All Right With Me. I Kissed My Baby And We Put Out The Lights.

Genius Gives Birth, Talent Delivers. What Rembrandt Or Van Gogh Saw In The Night Can Never Be Seen Again.

I Feel Guilty For Being A Member Of The Human Race.

I Believed In A Good Home, In Sane And Sound Living, In Good Food, Good Times, Work, Faith And Hope. I Have Always Believed In These Things. It Was With Some Amazement That I Realized I Was One Of The Few People In The World Who Really Believed In These Things Without Going Around Making A Dull Middle Class Philosophy Out Of It. I Was Suddenly Left With Nothing In My Hands But A Handful Of Crazy Stars.

Something Good Will Come Out Of All Things Yet — And It Will Be Golden And Eternal Just Like That.

Whither Goest Thou, America, In Thy Shiny Car In The Night?

I Wish The Whole World Was Dead Serious About Food Instead Of Silly Rockets And Machines And Explosives Using Everybody's Food Money To Blow Their Heads Off Anyway.

I Told Terry I Was Leaving. She Had Been Thinking About It All Night And Was Resigned To It. Emotionlessly She Kissed Me In The Vineyard And Walked Off Down The Row. We Turned At A Dozen Paces, For Love Is A Duel, And Looked At Each Other For The Last Time.

Whenever Spring Comes To New York I Can't Stand The Suggestion Of The Land That Come Blowing Over The River From New Jersey And I've Got To Go. So I Went.

And With Joy You Realize For The First Time "thinking's Just Like Not Thinking — So I Don't Have To Think Any More".

Sure Baby, Mañana. It Was Always Mañana. For The Next Few Weeks That Was All I Heard––mañana A Lovely Word And One That Probably Means Heaven.

The Four Inevitabilities: 1. Musty Books. 2. Uninteresting Nature. 3. Dull Existence. 4. Blank Nirvana, Buy That Boy.

In Those Days He Really Didn't Know What He Was Talking About; That Is To Say, He Was A Young Jailkid All Hung-up On The Wonderful Possibilities Of Becoming A Real Intellectual, And He Liked To Talk In The Tone And Using The Words, But In A Jumbled Way, That He Had Heard From 'real Intellectuals.

Remove Literary, Grammatical And Syntactical Inhibition.

When You Start Separating People From Their Rivers, What Have You Got? Bureaucracy!

No Matter How You Travel, How 'successful' Your Tour, Or Foreshortened, You Always Learn Something And Learn To Change Your Thoughts.

Are We Fallen Angels Who Didn't Want To Believe That Nothing Is Nothing And So Were Born To Lose Our Loved Ones And Dear Friends One By One And Finally Our Own Life, To See It Proved?

Happy. Just In My Swim Shorts, Barefooted, Wild-haired, In The Red Fire Dark, Singing, Swigging Wine, Spitting, Jumping, Running—that's The Way To Live. All Alone And Free In The Soft Sands Of The Beach By The Sigh Of The Sea Out There, With The Ma-wink Fallopian Virgin Warm Stars Reflecting On The Outer Channel Fluid Belly Waters. And If Your Cans Are Redhot And You Can't Hold Them In Your Hands, Just Use Good Old Railroad Gloves, That's All.

Never Dreaming, Was I, Poor Jack Duluoz, That The Soul Is Dead. That From Heaven Grace Descends . . . No Doctor Pisspot Poorpail To Tell Me; No Example Inside My First And Only Skin. That Love Is The Heritage, And Cousin To Death. That The Only Love Can Only Be The First Love, The Only Death The Last, The Only Life Within, And The Only Word . . . Choked Forever.

Down In Denver, All I Did Was Die.

In All This Welter Of Women I Still Hadn't Got One For Myself, Not That I Was Trying Too Hard, But Sometimes I Felt Lonely To See Everybody Paired Off And Having A Good Time And All I Did Was Curl Up In My Sleeping Bag In The Rosebushes And Sigh And Say Bah. For Me It Was Just Red Wine In My Mouth And A Pile Of Firewood

Life Must Be Rich And Full Of Loving--it's No Good Otherwise, No Good At All, For Anyone.

And Don't You Know That God Is Pooh Bear?

While Looking For The Light, You May Suddenly Be Devoured By The Darkness And Find The True Light

Be In Love With Your Life, Every Detail Of It.

The Empty Blue Sky Of Space Says 'all This Comes Back To Me, Then Goes Again, And Comes Back Again, Then Goes Again, And I Don't Care, It Still Belongs To Me

Suppose We Suddenly Wake Up And See That What We Thought To Be This And That, Ain't This And That At All?

Beat Generation

Be Crazy Dumbsaint Of The Mind.

Sal, We Gotta Go And Never Stop Going 'till We Get There.' 'where We Going, Man?' 'i Don't Know But We Gotta Go.

We Turned At A Dozen Paces, For Love Is A Duel, And Looked At Each Other For The Last Time.

The Closer You Get To Real Matter, Rock Air Fire And Wood, Boy, The More Spiritual The World Is.

As Early Pioneers In The Knowing, That When You Lose Your Reason, You Attain Highest Perfect Knowing.

They Were Like The Man With The Dungeon Stone And Gloom, Rising From The Underground, The Sordid Hipsters Of America, A New Beat Generation That I Was Slowly Joining.

The Only Alternative To Sleeping Out, Hopping Freights, And Doing What I Wanted, I Saw In A Vision Would Be To Just Sit With A Hundred Other Patients In Front Of A Nice Television Set In A Madhouse, Where We Could Be "supervised."

Beautiful Insane In The Rain

Let Nature Do The Freezing And Frightening And Isolating In This World. Let Men Work And Love And Fight It Off.

...we All Must Admit That Everything Is Fine And There's No Need In The World To Worry, And In Fact We Should Realize What It Would Mean To Us To Understand That We're Not Really Worried About Anything.

The Fact Was I Had The Vision... I Think Everyone Has... What We Lack Is The Method.

But On Top Of All That, The Feelings About Princess, I'd Also Gone Through An Entire Year Of Celibacy Based On My Feeling That Lust Was The Direct Cause Of Birth Which Was The Direct Cause Of Suffering And Death And I Had Really No Lie Come To A Point Where I Regarded Lust As Offensive And Even Cruel. "pretty Girls Make Graves," Was My Saying, Whenever I'd Had To Turn My Head Around Involuntarily To Stare At The Incomparable Pretties Of Indian Mexico.

The First Sip [of Tea] Is Joy, The Second Is Gladness, The Third Is Serenity, The Fourth Is Madness, The Fifth Is Ecstasy.

..and That Was The One Distinct Time In My Life, The Strangest Moment Of All, When I Didnt Know Who I Was

Desolation, Desolation, I Owe So Much To Desolation.

Life Is Life, And Kind Is Kind

I Felt Like Lying Down By The Side Of The Trail And Remembering It All

"what Do You Want Out Of Life?" I Asked, And I Used To Ask That All The Time Of Girls. "i Don't Know," She Said. "just Wait On Tables And Try To Get Along." She Yawned. I Put My Hand Over Her Mouth And Told Her Not To Yawn. I Tried To Tell Her How Excited I Was About Life And The Things We Could Do Together; Saying That, And Planning To Leave Denver In Two Days. She Turned Away Wearily. We Lay On Our Backs, Looking At The Ceiling And Wondering What God Had Wrought When He Made Life So Sad.

The Air Was So Sweet In New Orleans It Seemed To Come In Soft Bandannas; And You Could Smell The River And Really Smell The People, And Mud, And Molasses, And Every Kind Of Tropical Exhalation, With Your Nose Suddenly Removed From The Dry Ices Of A Northern Winter.

You Were My Last Chance' She's Said But Don't All Women Say That? - But Can It Be By 'last Chance' She Doesn't Mean Mere Marriage But Some Profoundly Sad Realization Of Something In Me She Really Needs To Go On Living, At Least That Impression Coming Across Anyway On The Force Of All The Gloom We've Shared -

Sweet Life Continues In The Breeze, In The Golden Fields.

The Beat Generation (coined In Playboy)

But That's Alright Because Now Everything'll Be Alright & We'll Soothe The Forever Boys & Girls & Before We're Thru We'll Find A Name For This Goddam Golden Eternity & Tell A Story Too

What Is He Aching To Do? What Are We All Aching To Do? What Do We Want?” She Didn’t Know. She Yawned. She Was Sleepy. It Was Too Much. Nobody Could Tell. Nobody Would Ever Tell. It Was All Over. She Was Eighteen And Most Lovely, And Lost.

And Never Really Thought I'd Amount To Anything. It Was Precisely What I Wanted The Whole World To Think; Then I Could Sneak In, If That's What They Wanted, And Sneak Out Again, Which I Did.

In My Madness I Was Actually In Love With Her For The Few Hours It All Lasted; It Was The Same Unmistakable Ache And Stab Across The Mind, The Same Sighs, The Same Pain, And Above All The Same Reluctance And Fear To Approach.

But Yet, But Yet, Woe, Woe Unto Those Who Think That The Beat Generation Means Crime, Delinquency, Immorality, Amorality ... Woe Unto Those Who Attack It On The Grounds That They Simply Don't Understand History And The Yearning Of Human Souls ... Woe In Fact Unto Those Who Make Evil Movies About The Beat Generation Where Innocent Housewives Are Raped By Beatniks! ... Woe Unto Those Who Spit On The Beat Generation, The Wind'll Blow It Back.

I Wished I Could Explain It To Those I Loved, My Mother, To Japhy, But There Just Weren't Any Words To Describe The Nothingness And Purity Of It. "is There A Certain And Definite Teaching To Be Given To All Living Creatures?" Was The Question Probably Asked To Beetle Browed Snowy Dipankara, And His Answer Was The Roaring Silence Of The Diamond.

A Fine Thing To Be Talking About Angels In This Day When Common Thieves Smash The Holy Rosaries Of Their Victims In The Street.

The Taste Of Rain -- Why Kneel?

Things Are So Hard To Figure Out When You Live From Day To Day In This Feverish And Silly World.

Mainly I've Been Back To My Books And Writings And Being Nice And Quiet And Lazy. As I'm Writing This, The Radio Says There's A Foot Of Snow Falling On Long Island. I Really Love Snow And Wish I Could Take A Long Walk In It Right Now.

The Sun Goes Down Long And Red. All The Magic Names Of The Valley Unrolled - Manteca, Madera, All The Rest. Soon It Got Dusk, A Grapy Dusk, A Purple Dusk Over Tangerine Groves And Long Melon Field; The Sun The Color Of Pressed Grapes, Slashed With Burgundy Red, The Fields The Color Of Love And Spanish Mysteries. I Stuck My Head Out The Window And Took Deep Breaths Of The Fragant Air. It Was The Most Beautiful Of All Moments.

I Just Won't Sleep," I Decided. There Were So Many Other Interesting Things To Do.

My Life Is A Vast Inconsequential Epic.

Inconsequential

It All Ends In Tears Anyway.

You Have Absolutely No Regard But Yourself And Your Damned Kicks. All You Think About Is What's Hanging Between Your Legs And How Much Money Or Fun You Can Get Out Of People And Then You Just Throw Them Aside. Not Only That But You're Silly About It. It Never Occurs To You That Life Is Serious And That There Are People Trying To Make Something Decent Out Of It Instead Of Just Goofing All The Time.

The World You See Is Just A Movie In Your Mind. Rocks Dont See It. Bless And Sit Down. Forgive And Forget. Practice Kindness All Day To Everybody And You Will Realize You’re Already In Heaven Now. That’s The Story. That’s The Message. Nobody Understands It, Nobody Listens, They’re All Running Around Like Chickens With Heads Cut Off. I Will Try To Teach It But It Will Be In Vain, S’why I’ll End Up In A Shack Praying And Being Cool And Singing By My Woodstove Making Pancakes.

Between Incomprehensible And Incoherent Sits The Madhouse. I Am Not In The Madhouse.

Don't Use The Phone. People Are Never Ready To Answer It. Use Poetry.

It Was The Work Of The Quiet Mountains, This Torrent Of Purity At My Feet.

He Had No Place He Could Stay In Without Getting Tired Of It And Because There Was Nowhere To Go But Everywhere, Keep Rolling Under The Stars.

Pretty Girls Make Graves

Great Things Are Not Accomplished By Those Who Yield To Trends And Fads And Popular Opinion.

I Suddenly Discovered The Delight Of Rebellion.

Swinging On Delicate Hinges The Autumn Leaf Almost Off The Stem.

I Am Young Now And Can Look Upon My Body And Soul With Pride. But It Will Be Mangled Soon, And Later It Will Begin To Disintegrate, And Then I Shall Die, And Die Conclusively. How Can We Face Such A Fact, And Not Live In Fear?

...do You Think God Made The World To Amuse Himself Because He Was Bored? Because If So He Would Have To Be Mean.

I Have The Right Ideas, But My Words Are Too... Complicated. I Need To Simplify Them, So That People Won't Get Lost In The Dark When They See And Hear Them. I Want Them To Shine Like Beacons Of Light In A World Of Overly Complicated Darkness. One Day I Will Find The Right Words, And They Will Be Simple.

What's In Store For Me In The Direction I Don't Take?

So I Rushed Past The Pretty Girls, And The Prettiest Girls In The World Live In Des Moines.

We Wandered In A Frenzy And A Dream (301).

And When The Fog's Over And The Stars And The Moon Come Out At Night It'll Be A Beautiful Sight.

We Are Nothing. - Tomorrow We May Be Die. We Are Nothing. - You And Me.

I Am Always Thinking 'what Am I Doing Here? Is This The Way I Am Supposed To Feel?'

I Felt Free And Therefore I Was Free.

Writing At Least Is A Silent Meditation Even Though You’re Going A Hundred Miles An Hour.

Boys And Girls In America Have Such A Sad Time Together; Sophistication Demands That They Submit To Sex Immediately Without Proper Preliminary Talk. Not Courting Talk - Real Straight Talk About Souls, For Life Is Holy And Every Moment Is Precious.

I'd Rather Hop Freights Around The Country And Cook My Food Out Of Tin Cans Over Wood Fires, Than Be Rich And Have A Home Or Work.

But They Need To Worry And Betray Time With Urgencies False And Otherwise, Purely Anxious And Whiny, Their Souls Really Won't Be At Peace Unless They Can Latch To An Established And Proven Worry And Having Once Found It They Assume Facial Expressions To Fit And Go With It, Which Is, You See, Unhappiness, And All The Time It All Flies By Them And They Know It And That Too Worries Them No End.

Some Of My Most Neurotically Fierce Bitterness Is The Result Of Realizing How Untrue People Have Become.

A Sociable Smile Is Nothing But A Mouth Full Of Teeth.

You Seek Identity In The Midst Of Indistinguishab Le Chaos, In Sprawling Nameless Reality.

Holding Up My Purring Cat To The Moon. I Sighed.

There's Wisdom In Wine.

And Just For A Moment I Had Reached The Point Of Ecstasy That I Always Wanted To Reach, Which Was The Complete Step Across Chronological Time Into Timeless Shadows, And Wonderment In The Bleakness Of The Mortal Realm, And The Sensation Of Death Kicking At My Heels To Move On, Wiht A Phantom Dogging Its Own Heels, And Myself Hurrying To A Plank Where All The Angels Dove Off And Flew Into The Holy Void Of Uncreated Emptiness, The Potent And Inconceivable Radiancies Shining In Bright Mind Essence, Innumerable Lotus-lands Falling Open In The Magic Mothswarm Of Heaven. - Sal Paradise

Cats Yawn Because They Realize That There's Nothing To Do.

Colleges Being Nothing But Grooming Schools For The Middle-class Non-identity Which Usually Finds Its Perfect Expression On The Outskirts Of The Campus In Rows Of Well-to-do Houses With Lawns And Television Sets In Each Living Room With Everybody Looking At The Same Thing And Thinking The Same Thing At The Same Time While The Japhies Of The World Go Prowling In The Wilderness To Hear The Voice Crying In The Wilderness, To Find The Ecstacy Of The Stars, To Find The Dark Mysterious Secret Of The Origin Of Faceless Wonderless Crapulous Civilization.

I Nudged Myself Closer To The Ledge And Closed My Eyes And Thought 'oh What A Life This Is, Why Do We Have To Be Born In The First Place, And Only So We Can Have Our Poor Gentle Flesh Laid Out To Such Impossible Horrors As Huge Mountains And Rock And Empty Space,' And With Horror I Remembered The Famous Zen Saying, 'when You Get To The Top Of A Mountain, Keep Climbing.' The Saying Made My Hair Stand On End; It Had Been Such Cute Poetry Sitting On Alvah's Straw Mats.

I Swore I'd Be In Chicago Tomorrow, And Made Sure Of That, Taking A Bus To Chicago, Spending Most Of My Money, And Didn't Give A Damn, Just As Long As I'd Be In Chicago Tomorrow.

Write What You Want Bottomless From Bottom Of The Mind.

He Seems To Me To Be Headed For His Ideal Fate, Which Is Compulsive Psychosis Dashed With A Jigger Of Psychopathic Irresponsibility And Violence

And He Had A Nice Home In Ohio With Wife, Daughter, Christmas Tree, Two Cars, Garage, Lawn, Lawnmower, But He Couldn't Enjoy Any Of It Because He Really Wasn't Free. It Was Sadly True.

Man Lowers His Head And Lunges Into Civilization, Forgetting The Days Of His Infancy When He Sought Truth In A Snowflake Or A Stick. Man Forgets The Wisdom Of The Child.

Fear Life But Don't Die, Your Alone, Everybody's Alone, Oh Cody Pomeray You Can't Win You Can't Lose All Is Ephemeral All Is Hurt

If Critics Say Your Work Stinks It's Because They Want It To Stink And They Can Make It Stink By Scaring You Into Conformity With Their Comfortable Little Standards. Standards So Low That They Can No Longer Be Considered "dangerous" But Set In Place In Their Compartmental Understandings.

At Night In This Part Of The West The Stars, As I Had Seen Them In Wyoming, Were As Big As Roman Candles And As Lonely As The Prince Who's Lost His Ancestral Home And Journeys Across The Spaces Trying To Find It Again, And Knows He Never Will.

And I Shudder Sometimes To Think Of All That Stellar Mystery Of How She Is Going To Get Me In A Future Lifetime, Wow - And I Seriously Do Believe That Will Be My Salvation, Too. A Long Way To Go.

Once There Was Louis Armstrong Blowing His Beautiful Top In The Muds Of New Orleans; Before Him The Mad Musicians Who Had Paraded On Official Days And Broke Up Their Sousa Marches Into Ragtime. Then There Was Swing, And Roy Eldridge, Vigorous And Virile, Blasting The Horn For Everything It Had In Waves Of Power And Logic And Subtlety - Leaning Into It With Glittering Eyes And A Lovely Smile And Sending It Out Broadcast To Rock The Jazz World.

To The Children And The Innocent It's All The Same.

It Made Me Think That Everything Was About To Arrive - The Moment When You Know All And Everything Is Decided Forever.

The Truth Of The Matter Is We Don't Understand Our Women; We Blame On Them And It's All Our Fault.

At Lilac Evening I Walked With Every Muscle Aching Among The Lights Of 27th And Welton In The Denver Colored Section, Wishing I Were A Negro, Feeling That The Best The White World Had Offered Was Not Enough Ecstasy For Me, Not Enough Life, Joy, Kicks, Darkness, Music, Not Enough Night.

One Day I Will Find The Right Words, And They Will Be Simple.

The Human Bones Are But Vain Lines Dawdling, The Whole Universe A Blank Mold Of Stars.

We Lay On Our Backs Looking At The Ceiling And Wondering What God Had Wrought When He Made Life So Sad And Disinclined.

We Were All Delighted, We All Realized We Were Leaving Confusion And Nonsense Behind And Performing Our One And Noble Function Of The Time, Move.

Mind Is The Maker, For No Reason At All, For All This Creation, Created To Fall.

All Our Best Men Are Laughed At In This Nightmare Land.

I Spent My Entire Youth Writing Slowly With Revisions And Endless Rehashing Speculation And Deleting And Got So I Was Writing One Sentence A Day And The Sentence Had No Feeling. Goddamn It, Feeling Is What I Like In Art, Not Craftiness And The Hiding Of Feelings.

I Was Having A Wonderful Time And The Whole World Opened Up Before Me Because I Had No Dreams.

Practice Kindness All Day To Everybody And You Will Realize You're Already In Heaven Now.

I Looked Up At The Dark Sky And Prayed To God For A Better Break In Life And A Better Chance To Do Something For The Little People I Loved.

I'm Writing This Book Because We're All Going To Die.

I'm Catholic And I Can't Commit Suicide, But I Plan To Drink Myself To Death.

There Was Nothing To Talk About Anymore. The Only Thing To Do Was Go.

The Truth Of The Matter Is, You Die, All You Do Is Die, And Yet You Live, Yes You Live, And That's No Harvard Lie.

Scribbled Secret Notebooks, And Wild Typewritten Pages, For Yr Own Joy

No Fear Or Shame In The Dignity Of Your Experience, Language, And Knowledge.

Goddamn It, Feeling Is What I Like In Art, Not Craftiness And The Hiding Of Feelings.

She Brooded And Bit Her Rich Lips: My Soul Began Its First Sink Into Her, Deep, Heady, Lost; Like Drowning In A Witches' Brew, Keltic, Sorcerous, Starlike.

An Awful Realization That I Have Been Fooling Myself All My Life Thinking There Was A Next Thing To Do To Keep The Show Going And Actually I'm Just A Sick Clown And So Is Everybody Else

We Tiptoed Around Each Other Like Heartbreaking New Friends.

The One Thing That We Yearn For In Our Living Days, That Makes Us Sigh And Groan And Undergo Sweet Nauseas Of All Kinds, Is The Remembrance Of Some Lost Bliss That Was Probably Experienced In The Womb And Can Only Be Reproduced (though We Hate To Admit It) In Death. But Who Wants To Die?

Sometimes I’d Get Mad Because Things Didn’t Work Out So Well, I’d Spoil A Flapjack, Or Slip In The Snowfield While Getting Water, Or One Time My Shovel Went Sailing Down Into The Gorge, And I’d Be So Mad I’d Want To Bite The Mountaintops And Would Come In The Shack And Kick The Cupboard And Hurt My Toe. But Let The Mind Beware, Though The Flesh Be Bugged, The Circumstances Of Existence Are Pretty Glorious.

The Road Must Eventually Lead To The Whole World.

One Man Practicing Kindness In The Wilderness Is Worth All The Temples This World Pulls.

I Have All The Time In The World From Life To Life To Do What Is To Do, To Do What Is Done, To Do The Timeless Doing.

You Don't Know What To Say To Me Because The Kingdom Is Within...flesh And Blood's Dream...so You Fly Now, Pay Later, All Of Us...i Mean Actually It's Pay Now, Fly Later

I Don't Wanta Hear All Your Word Descriptions Of Words Words Words You Made Up All Winter, Man I Wanta Be Enlightened By Actions.

And You Have Been Forever, And Will Be Forever, And All The Worrisome Smashings Of Your Foot On Innocent Cupboard Doors It Was Only The Void Pretending To Be A Man Pretending Not To Know The Void.

I Want A Blaze Of Light To Flame In Me Forever In A Timeless, Dear Love Of Everything. And Why Should I Pretend To Want Anything Else?

I Came To A Point Where I Needed Solitude And Just Stop The Machine Of ‘thinking’ And ‘enjoying’ What They Call ‘living’, I Just Wanted To Lie In The Grass And Look At The Clouds.

Isn't It True That You Start Your Life A Sweet Child Believing In Everything Under Your Father's Roof? Then Comes The Day Of The Laodiceans, When You Know You Are Wretched And Miserable And Poor And Blind And Naked, And With The Visage Of A Gruesome Grieving Ghost You Go Shuddering Through Nightmare Life.

So Therefore I Dedicate Myself, To My Art, My Sleep, My Dreams, My Labors, My Suffrances, My Loneliness, My Unique Madness, My Endless Absorption And Hunger Because I Cannot Dedicate Myself To Any Fellow Being.

I'm Not A Beatnik. I'm A Catholic.

We Fumed And Screamed In Our Mountain Nook, Mad Drunken Americans In The Mighty Land. We Were On The Roof Of America And All We Could Do Was Yell, I Guess - Across The Night.

The Happiness Consists In Realizing That It Is All A Great Strange Dream.

...[the Photographer] Can Be Considered A Kind Of Disembodied Burrowing Eye, A Conspirator Against Time And Its Hammers. His Work, Print After Print Of It, Seems To Call To Be Shown Before The Decay Which It Portrays Flattens All... Here Are The Records Of The Age Before An Imminent Collapse.

No Time For Poetry But Exactly What Is.

The Fact That Everybody In The World Dreams Every Night Ties All Mankind Together.

I Clearly Saw The Skeleton Underneath All This Show Of Personality What Is Left Of A Man And All His Pride But Bones?

Down On The Lake Rosy Reflections Of Celestial Vapor Appeared, And I Said, "god, I Love You" And Looked To The Sky And Really Meant It. "i Have Fallen In Love With You, God. Take Care Of Us All, One Way Or The Other." To The Children And The Innocent It's All The Same.

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