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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.

-Jack Kerouac

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If Critics Say Your

Jack Kerouac

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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.

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The Whole Mad Swirl Of Everything That Was To Come Began Then.

Somebody Had Tipped The American Continent Like A Pinball Machine And All The Goofballs Had Come Rolling To La In The Southwest Corner. I Cried For All Of Us. There Was No End To The American Sadness And The American Madness. Someday We'll All Start Laughing And Roll On The Ground When We Realize How Funny It's Been.

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.

Because I Cannot Write My Native Language And Have No Native Home Anymore, And Am Amazed By That Horrible Homelessness Of All French-canadian S Abroad In America.

Native Language

It Was All Completely Serious, All Completely Hallucinated, All Completely Happy.

A Scene Should Be Selected By The Writer For Haunted-ness-of-mind Interest. If You're Not Haunted By Something, As By A Dream, A Vision, Or A Memory, Which Are Involuntary, You're Not Interested Or Even Involved.

It No Longer Makes Me Cry And Die And Tear Myself To See Her Go Because Everything Goes Away From Me Like That Now — Girls, Visions, Anything, Just In The Same Way And Forever And I Accept Lostness Forever.

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

La Is The Loneliest And Most Brutal Of American Cities.

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

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.

I Promise I Shall Never Give Up, And That I'll Die Yelling And Laughing, And That Until Then I'll Rush Around This World I Insist Is Holy And Pull At Everyone's Lapel And Make Them Confess To Me And To All.

My Eyes Were Glued On Life And They Were Full Of Tears.

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

Keep It Kickwriting At All Costs Too, That Is, Write Only What Kicks You And Keeps You Overtime Awake From Sheer Mad Joy.

Last Night I Walked Clear Down To Times Square & Just As I Arrived I Suddenly Realized I Was A Ghost - It Was My Ghost Walking On The Sidewalk.

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.

Eager For Bread And Love.

Galatea Was A Serious Girl. She Was Pale And Looked Like Tears All Over. Big Ed Passed His Hand Through His Hair And Said Hello. She Looked At Him Steadily. "where Have You Been? Why Did You Do This To Me?" And She Gave Dean A Dirty Look; She Knew The Score. Dean Paid Absolutely No Attention; What He Wanted Now Was Food; He Asked Jane If There Was Anything. The Confusion Began Right There.

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

We All Agree It's Too Big To Keep Up With, That We're Surrounded By Life, That We'll Never Understand It, So We Center It All In By Swigging Scotch From The Bottle And When It's Empty I Run Out Of The Car And Buy Another One, Period.

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?

It's Only Through Form That We Can Realize Emptiness

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.

Contrary To The General Belief About Photography, You Don't Need Bright Sunlight: The Best Moodiest Pictures Are Taken In The Dim Light Of Almost Dusk, Or Of Rainy Days.

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

Stick At It Like A Benni Addict

Burroughs Is The Greatest Satirical Writer Since Jonathan Swift. . . . The Net Result Of Naked Lunch Will Be To Make People Shudder At Their Own Lies, Will Be To Make Them Open Up And Be Straight With One Another. Swift And Rabelais And Sterne Accomplished A Step In That Direction, And Burroughs Another.

Books, Shmooks, This Sickness Has Got Me Wishing If I Can Ever Get Out Of This I'll Gladly Become A Millworker And Shut My Big Mouth.

We Tiptoed Around Each Other Like Heartbreaking New Friends.

Don't Think Of Words When You Stop But To See Picture Better.

Rocks Are Space, And Space Is Illusion.

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

I Pictured Myself In A Denver Bar That Night, With All The Gang, And In Their Eyes I Would Be Strange And Ragged And Like The Prophet Who Has Walked Across The Land To Bring The Dark Word, And The Only Word I Had Was 'wow!

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 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.

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 Was Halfway Across America, At The Dividing Line Between The East Of My Youth And The West Of My Future.

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

As Far As I'm Concerned The Only Thing To Do Is Sit In A Room And Get Drunk

Mankind Will Someday Realize That We Are Actually In Contact With The Dead And With The Other World, Whatever It Is; Right Now We Could Predict, If We Only Exerted Enough Mental Will, What Is Going To Happen Within The Next Hundred Years And Be Able To Take Steps To Avoid All Kinds Of Catastrophes. When A Man Dies He Undergoes A Mutation In His Brain That We Know Nothing About Now But Which Will Be Very Clear Someday If Scientists Get On The Ball. The Bastards Right Now Are Only Interested In Seeing If They Can Blow Up The World.

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

Don't Drink To Get Drunk. Drink To Enjoy Life.

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

The Golden Eternity Is { }

My Life Is A Vast Inconsequential Epic.

Inconsequential

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.

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.

Life Is Life, And Kind Is Kind

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

The Dream Is Already Ended And We're Already Awake In The Golden Eternity.

In Our True Blissful Essence Of Mind Is Known That Everything Is Alright Forever And Forever And Forever...listen To The Silence Inside The Illusion Of The World, And You Will Remember The Lesson You Forgot, It Is All One Vast Awakened Thing. We Were Never Really Born, We Will Never Really Die. It Has Nothing To Do With The Imaginary Idea Of A Personal Self, Other Selves, Many Selves Everywhere: Self Is Only An Idea, A Mortal Idea. That Which Passes Into Everything Is One Thing. It's A Dream Already Ended.

Details Are The Life Of Prose.

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 Bus Roared Through Indiana Cornfields That Night; The Moon Illuminated The Ghostly Gathered Husks; It Was Almost Halloween. I Made The Acquaintance Of A Girl And We Necked All The Way To Indianapolis. She Was Nearsighted. When We Got Off To Eat I Had To Lead Her By The Hand To The Lunch Counter. She Bought My Meals; My Sandwiches Were All Gone. In Exchange I Told Her Long Stories.

It'll Take You Eternities To Get Rid Of Me,' She Adds Sadly, Which Makes Me Jealous, I Want Her To Say I'll Never Get Rid Of Her - I Wanta Be Chased Till Eternity Till I Catch Her.

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?

There Is A Blessedness Surely To Be Believed, And That Is That Everything Abides In Eternal Ecstasy, Now And Forever.

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

My Karma Was To Be Born In America Where Nobody Has Any Fun Or Believes In Anything, Especially Freedom.

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

And Still The Void Is Still And'll Never Move - But I Will Be The Void, Moving Without Having Moved.

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

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 Air Was Soft, The Stars So Fine, The Promise Of Every Cobbled Alley So Great, That I Thought I Was In A Dream.

Prison Is Where You Promise Yourself The Right To Live.

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.

Yeah," I Said, "but You're An Artist. You Don't Believe In Decency And Honesty And Gratitude. Where Shall We Eat?

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

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

Mankind Is Like Dogs, Not Gods - As Long As You Don't Get Mad They'll Bite You - But Stay Mad And You'll Never Be Bitten. Dogs Don't Respect Humility And Sorrow.

I Think It's All Lovely Hallucination But I Love It Sorta.

...[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.

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

All He Needed Was A Wheel In His Hand And Four On The Road.

My Fault, My Failure, Is Not In The Passions I Have, But In My Lack Of Control Of Them.

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

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

As I Grew Older I Became A Drunk. Why? Because I Like Ecstasy Of The Mind.

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

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

It's Hard To Explain And Best Thing To Do Is Not Be False.

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

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.

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

Holy Flowers Floating In The Air, Were All These Tired Faces In The Dawn Of Jazz America.

They Build Their Own Hells.

If Moderation Is A Fault, Then Indifference Is A Crime.

Man, Wow, There's So Many Things To Do, So Many Things To Write! How To Even Begin To Get It All Down And Without Modified Restraints And All Hung-up On Like Literary Inhibitions And Grammatical Fears.

Burroughs Is The Greatest Satirical Writer Since Jonathan Swift.

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.

Struggle To Sketch The Flow That Already Exists Intact In Mind.

This Is The Story Of America. Everybody's Doing What They Think They're Supposed To Do.

Soon It Got Dusk, A Grapy Dusk, A Purple Dusk Over Tangerine Groves And Long Melon Fields; The Sun The Color Of Pressed Grapes, Slashed With Burgandy Red, The Fields The Color Of Love And Spanish Mysteries.

Be Crazy Dumbsaint Of The Mind.

Your Mind Makes Out The Orange By Seeing It, Hearing It, Touching It, Smelling It, Tasting It And Thinking About It But Without This Mind, You Call It, The Orange Would Not Be Seen Or Heard Or Smelled Or Tasted Or Even Mentally Noticed, It's Actually, That Orange, Depending On Your Mind To Exist! Don't You See That? By Itself It's A No-thing, It's Really Mental, It's Seen Only Of Your Mind. In Other Words It's Empty And Awake.

All I Wanted And All Neal Wanted And All Anybody Wanted Was Some Kind Of Penetration Into The Heart Of Things Where, Like In A Womb, We Could Curl Up And Sleep The Ecstatic Sleep That Burroughs Was Experiencing With A Good Big Mainline Shot Of M. And Advertising Executives In Ny Were Experiencing With Twelve Scotch & Sodas In Stouffers Before They Made The Drunkard's Train To Westchester---but Without Hangovers.

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.

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

Walking On Water Wasn't Built In A Day.

Walking On Water

"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.

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

In My Medicine Cabinet, The Winter Fly Has Died Of Old Age.

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

Finding Nirvana Is Like Locating Silence.

If You Own A Rug You Own Too Much.

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.

John Clellon Holmes... And I Were Sitting Around Trying To Think Up The Meaning Of The Lost Generation And The Subsequent Existentialism And I Said 'you Know John, This Is Really A Beat Generation'; And He Leapt Up And Said, 'that's It, That's Right!'

When You've Understood This Scripture, Throw It Away. If You Can't Understand This Scripture, Throw It Away. I Insist On Your Freedom.

Listen Closely... The Eternal Hush Of Silence Goes On And On Throughout All This, And Has Been Going On, And Will Go On And On. This Is Because The World Is Nothing But A Dream And Is Just Thought Of And The Everlasting Eternity Pays No Attention To It.

God Was Gone; It Was The Silence Of His Departure. It Was A Rainy Night. It Was The Myth Of The Rainy Night. Dean Was Popeyed With Awe. This Madness Would Lead Nowhere. I Didn't Know What Was Happening To Me, And I Suddenly Realized It Was Only The Tea That We Were Smoking; Dean Had Bought Some In New York. It Made Me Think That Everything Was About To Arrive - The Moment When You Know All And Everything Is Decided Forever.

I Was A Man Of The Earth, Precisely As I Had Dreamed I Would Be.

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

And I Said, 'that Last Thing Is What You Can't Get, Carlo. Nobody Can Get To That Last Thing. We Keep On Living In Hopes Of Catching It Once And For All.

Nothing Ever Happened - Not Even This

It's Pretty Amazing To See A Guy, While Steering At The Wheel, Suddenly Raise His Little 300 Dollar German Camera With One Hand And Snap Something That's On The Move In Front Of Him, And Through An Unwashed Windshield At That. (on The Road With Robert Frank, 1958)

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.

We Should Be Wondering Tonight, "is There A World?" But I Could Go And Talk On 5, 10, 20 Minutes About Is There A World, Because There Is Really No World, Cause Sometimes I'm Walkin' On The Ground And I See Right Through The Ground. And There Is No World. And You'll Find Out.

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.

Houses Are Full Of Things That Gather Dust

One Night I Realized That When You Give People Understanding And Encouragement A Funny Little Meek Childish Look Abashes Their Eyes, No Matter What They've Been Doing They Weren't Sure It Was Right - Lambies All Over The World.

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.

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.

Who Knows, My God, But That The Universe Is Not One Vast Sea Of Compassion Actually, The Veritable Holy Honey, Beneath All This Show Of Personality And Cruelty?

Nothing Behind Me, Everything Ahead Of Me, As Is Ever So On The Road.

Ah, It Was A Fine Night, A Warm Night, A Wine-drinking Night, A Moony Night, And A Night To Hug Your Girl And Talk And Spit And Be Heavengoing.

Because The Only People For Me Are The Mad Ones.

Write In Recollection And Amazement For Yourself.

I Want To Marry A [guy], So I Can Rest My Soul With [him] Till We Both Get Old. This Can't Go On All The Time-- All This Franticness And Jumping Around. We've Got To Go Someplace, Find Something.

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

It Is Possible For The Human Spirit To Win After All.

What Difference Does It Make After All?--anonymity In The World Of Men Is Better Than Fame In Heaven, For What’s Heaven? What’s Earth? All In The Mind.

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

Pain Or Love Or Danger Makes You Real Again.

No Fear Or Shame In The Dignity Of Yr Experience, Language & Knowledge

I Mean, Why On Earth (outside Sickness And Hangovers) Aren't People Continually Drunk? I Want Ecstasy Of The Mind All The Time.

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.

And There In The Blue Air I Saw For The First Time, Far Off, The Great Snowy Tops Of The Rocky Mountains. I Had To Get To Denver At Once.

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

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.

I Am Writing This Book Because We're All Going To Die - In The Loneliness Of My Own Life, My Father Dead, My Brother Dead, My Mother Faraway, My Sister And My Wife Far Away, Nothing Here But My Own Tragic Hands That Once Were Guarded By A World, A Sweet Attention, That Now Are Left To Guide And Disappear Their Own Way Into The Common Dark Of All Our Deaths, Sleeping In Me Raw Bed, Alone And Stupid: With Just This One Pride And Consolation: My Broke Heart In The General Despair And Opened Up Inwards To The Lord, I Made A Supplication In This Dream

Desolation, Desolation, I Owe So Much To Desolation.

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

Her Little Shoulders Drove Me Mad; I Hugged Her And Hugged Her. And She Loved It. 'i Love Love,' She Said, Closing Her Eyes. I Promised Her Beautiful Love. I Gloated Over Her. Our Stories Were Told; We Subsided Into Silence And Sweet Anticipatory Thoughts. It Was As Simple As That. You Could Have All Your Peaches And Bettys And Marylous And Ritas And Camilles And Inezes In This World; This Was My Girl And My Kind Of Girlsoul, And I Told Her That.

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."

On Soft Spring Nights I'll Stand In The Yard Under The Stars - Something Good Will Come Out Of All Things Yet - And It Will Be Golden And Eternal Just Like That - There's No Need To Say Another Word.

...most Of The Time We Were Alone And Mixing Up Our Souls Ever More And Ever More Till It Would Be Terribly Hard To Say Good-by.

Night Is Longer Than Day For Those Who Dream & Day Is Longer Than Night For Those Who Make Their Dreams Comes True.

Oh My God, Sociability Is Just A Big Smile And A Big Smile Is Nothing But Teeth, I Wish I Could Just Stay Up Here And Rest And Be Kind." But Somebody Brought Up Some Wine And That Started Me Off.

And Then We’ll All Go Off To Sweet Life, ‘cause Now Is The Time And We All Know Time!

Dean And I Both Swayed To The Rhythm And The It Of Our Final Excited Joy In Talking And Living To The Blank Traced End Of All Innumerable Riotous Angelic Particulars That Had Been Lurking In Our Souls All Our Lives.

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.

Is Virgin You Trying To Fathom Me

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.

This Was A Manuscript Of The Night We Couldn’t Read.

I Felt Free And Therefore I Was Free.

So Long And Take It Easy, Because If You Start Taking Things Seriously, It Is The End Of You.

And The Stars Were Icicles Of Mockery

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.

Parade My Trouble In Front Of You Guys? Make You Realize That My Heart Is Broken . . . That As Long As I Live I'll Have Chains Dragging Me Down To The Oceans Of Sad Tears That My Feet Are Wet In Already.

The Cause Of The World's Woe Is Birth, The Cure Of The World's Woe Is A Bent Stick.

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

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

And Silence Is The Golden Mountain

You Can't Fight City Hall. It Keeps Changing Its Name.

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.

It’s Not That I Can’t Fall In Love. It’s Really That I Can’t Help Falling In Love With Too Many Things All At Once. So, You Must Understand Why I Can’t Distinguish Between What’s Platonic And What Isn’t, Because It’s All Too Much And Not Enough At The Same Time.

Falling In Love

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.

There's Wisdom In Wine.

...the Tale That's Told For No Other Reason But Companionship, Which Is Another (and My Favorite) Definition Of Literature, The Tale That's Told For Companionship And To Teach Something Religious, Of Religious Reverence, About Real Life, In This Real World Which Literature Should (and Here Does) Reflect.

Something That You Feel Will Find Its Own Form.

It Was A Rainy Night. It Was The Myth Of The Rainy Night.

Work From Pithy Middle Eye Out, Swimming In Language Sea.

Write What You Want Bottomless From Bottom Of The Mind.

No Time For Poetry But Exactly What Is.

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

I Felt Like Lying Down By The Side Of The Trail And Remembering It All. The Woods Do That To You, They Always Look Familiar, Long Lost, Like The Face Of A Long-dead Relative, Like An Old Dream, Like A Piece Of Forgotten Song Drifting Across The Water, Most Of All Like Golden Eternities Of Past Childhood Or Past Manhood And All The Living And The Dying And The Heartbreak That Went On A Million Years Ago And The Clouds As They Pass Overhead Seem To Testify (by Their Own Lonesome Familiarity) To This Feeling.

I Felt The Sensation Of Each Of The Directions I Mentally And Emotionally Turned Into Amazed At All The Possible Directions You Can Take With Different Motives That Come In Like It Can Make You A Different Person — I’ve Often Thought Of This Since Childhood Of Suppose Instead Of Going Up Columbus As I Usually Did I’d Turn Into Filbert Would Something Happen That At The Time Is Insignificant Enough But Would Be Like Enough To Influence My Whole Life In The End? — What’s In Store For Me In The Direction I Don’t Take?

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

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.

The Unspeakable Visions Of The Individual.

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.

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

I Wasn't Scared; I Was Just Somebody Else, Some Stranger, And My Whole Life Was A Haunted Life, The Life Of A Ghost.

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.'

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.

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.

Avoid The World, It's Just A Lot Of Dust And Drag And Means Nothing In The End.

Ah, If I Could Realize, If I Could Forget Myself And Devote My Meditations To The Freeing, The Awakening And The Blessedness Of All Living Creatures Everywhere I'd Realize What There Is, Is Ecstasy.

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

Lying Mouth To Mouth, Kiss To Kiss In The Pillow Dark, Loin To Loin In Unbelievable Surrendering Sweetness So Distant From All Our Mental Fearful Abstractions It Makes You Wonder Why Men Have Termed God Antisexual Somehow (p. 148)

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

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?

Remove Literary, Grammatical And Syntactical Inhibition.

...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.

Bee, Why Are You Staring At Me? I Am Not A Flower??

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

Because 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.

I'd Sleep And Forget It; I Had My Own Life, My Own Sad And Ragged Life Forever.

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.

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Jennifer Granholm

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