“The only truth is music”: Author of “On the Road”

Posted by: adonis49 on: March 18, 2023

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Erik Rittenberry wrote a piece on Jack Kerouac birthday. Today, dance like a demented shaman around the bonfires of the world. Go mad for the day. Go on an impromptu road trip. Go moan for man. Do it. Be whimsical and out of the ordinary. Do what may stirs your blood.

Skid Row Wine

By Jack Kerouac

I coulda done a lot worse than sit
in Skid Row drinkin wine

To know that nothing matters after all
To know there's no real difference
between the rich and the poor.

To know that eternity is neither drunk
nor sober, to know it young
and be a poet

Coulda gone into business and ranted
And believed that God was concerned

Instead I squatted in lonesome alleys
And no one saw me, just my bottle
and what they saw of it was empty 

And I did it in the cornfields & graveyards

To know that the dead don't make noise
To know that the cornstalks talk (among
one another with raspy old arms)

Sittin in alleys diggin the neons
And watching cathedral custodians
Wring out their rags neath the church steps 

Sittin and drinkin wine
And in railyards being divine

To be a millionaire & yet to prefer
Curling up with a poor boy of tokay
In a warehouse door, facing long sunsets
On railroad fields of grass

To know that the sleepers in the river
are dreaming vain dreams, to squat
in the night and know it well

To be dark solitary eye-nerve watcher
of the world's whirling diamond

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