Jack Kerouac Haiku

Jack Kerouac Haiku For All Gary Snyder Arms folded to the moon, Among the cows. Ah to be alive Birds singing on a mid-September morn in the dark fording a stream - Rainy dawn. barefoot, pants rolled up, holding boots, pack on, Elephants munching sunshine, ice in the shallows, on grass - loving northern rockies. Head side by side. Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters Missing a kick stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes at the icebox door cold nose dripping It closed anyway. singing inside creek music, heart music, This July evening, smell of sun on gravel. a large frog On my door sill. I pledge allegiance

Early morning yellow flowers, I pledge allegiance to the soil thinking about of Turtle Island, the drunkards of Mexico. and to the beings who thereon dwell one ecosystem No telegram today in diversity only more leaves under the sun fell. With joyful interpenetration for all.

Holding up my purring cat to the moon I sighed.

Empty baseball field a robin hops along the bench.

All day long wearing a hat that wasn't on my head.

Crossing the football field coming home from work - the lonely businessman.

After the shower among the drenched roses the bird thrashing in the bath. Young in New Orleans it let me alone.

Charles Bukowski sitting up in my bed the lights out, starving there, sitting around the bars, hearing the outside and at night walking the streets for sounds, hours, lifting my cheap the moonlight always seemed fake bottle of wine, to me, maybe it was, letting the warmth of and in the French Quarter I watched the grape the horses and buggies going by, enter everybody sitting high in the open me carriages, the black driver, and in as I heard the rats back the man and the woman, moving about the usually young and always white. room, and I was always white. I preferred them and hardly charmed by the to world. humans. New Orleans was a place to hide. I could piss away my life, being lost, unmolested. being crazy maybe except for the rats. is not so bad the rats in my dark small room if you can be very much resented sharing it that way with me. undisturbed. they were large and fearless and stared at me with eyes New Orleans gave me that spoke that. an unblinking nobody ever called death. my name. women were beyond me. no telephone, they saw something no car, depraved. no job, there was one waitress no a little older than anything. I, she rather smiled, lingered when she me and the brought my rats coffee. and my youth, one time, that was plenty for that time me, that was I knew enough. even through the nothingness, there was something about it was a that city, though celebration it didn't let me feel guilty of something not to that I had no feeling for the do things so many others but only needed. know.