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On a book never owned.

Submitted by vandiemenspeak on Mon, 2016-06-27 10:54

On the road.

Imagine the seconds that title was scribbled
Sal would jump from truck to bus to box car and
Somewhere down the road would be Dean
In a pool hall, smoking like a faster Paul Newman
I read it in another world, another time
I built pictures, imagined America, its vastness
Endless cornfields, small towns, fast cars Tucson nightmares
Jazz, bars, New York, debauchery, Bebop sanity
Bull Hubbard nursing a baby syringe, before his party routine would
Take jean forever

I saw a lens moving and changing and burning roman candles
At both ends from one to the other, defining a generation strange
And beaten, a thing at once romantic and necessarily dreamlike
For I knew it was a dream description and both heaven
And dystopia would both reside
Real or imagined, I carried that world with me in backpacks, on trains
In a modern facsimile back then, twenty five years ago

It built a world in a few paragraphs that I could re-enter at any time
And understand its purity, just like a road
Despite what capote said, this wasn’t just typing, it was dreaming
On a roll of newsprint,
A miracle in a couple of days, a thing thrown into the world
Like a hand grenade of narrative that would never let me go.

Times change, tastes shift, new things come, some go
Yet that battered old copy, stained by beer, and coffee tables and a thousand parties
Still holds court in a small part of the kingdom of books
Spontaneity – was their gift
Life was their art,
And it was lived.

Style / type: 
Free verse
Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Last few words: 
I only just saw the recent (well 2012) adaptation of Kerouac's On the road. I enjoyed it more than another one i watched some years ago. It's funny how a book you carry around with you - generates it's own world, essentially you build it, then something else is transplanted on top of that image - it doesn't work - yet this time it actually worked quite well. Only four years late: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337692/
Editing stage: 
Editing - rough draft

Comments

Esker

Fri, 2016-07-01 19:45

Esker's picture

i was not dean more everyones crazy dangerous fiend of express illogic
the polish came from the ruin of other hardened diamonds broken to its
amended dust....they didnt make me read books...nobody can make me
do anything I chose not too....regardless how many times that road broke
me or the fast action and aching lonliness with its rejection and neglect
and
that hopping trippy seems-too-fast moments where its all on the fly..off
the cuff...on the speed..so fast our heads would spin..laughing off the
adrenalin from some stunt or other..even of late.... fave part of the book
was their driving the drive aways west or whever..that black Cadillac..
I knew young bright daring do all's (not I..spoiled momma's boy..whom
else too torture with words) that did this on a regular basis..Odd brilliant
men and women...or the world chasers....somehow ending up in far off
exotic reaches...posting the few facebook snaps....America is set up
different then Canada..rail lines road network....hard too describe from
my small amounts of travel and speaking too rest stop peoples etc...
I read On The Road and then took too the road..all been in reverse...I never
thought I would meet the truly wild and daring....the most interesting part
was in how ordinary they lived right on that edge...chance was always
the great risk thrown out the window for that lifestyle.....Kerouac is gone
fave line is "it was dreaming on a roll of newsprint"

thank U!

vandiemenspeak

Sun, 2016-07-03 01:46

vandiemenspeak's picture
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That was as good a book, possibly even better, if you never read that one, highly recommended. He spends a season as a fire lookout over Desolation Peak, the North Cascade mountains, Washington state, apparently. In my minds eye, I had no idea, where that was, because it's never really explicitly referred to - i thought he was somewhere up near you guys, he could have been anywhere really. Fact is, there is great opening scene, where he gets left at the little lookout hut, and begins to inhabit this whole new world of lighting little stick fires for quick meals on a little stove, talking on the radio to fellow lookouts, sits on his head an contemplates the mountain upside down and achieves some sort of enlightenment. After that, it moves to more of a road/book movie like on the road, but it's all the lttle details with hime, the small human things that you do i the midst of immense events, they stay with you, they are pointers in his novels, I see them as free-range long distance travel poems, epic in scale.
I don't think anyone has replicated them in any shape.

For like minds, the people i grew up with, listed to similar vinyl, and read the resurgent beats, at the suggestion of an older, intellectual guys that we saw as a bit of a mentor, inspired us to read widely, listen to everything, write everything down. In my late teens, I would keep notebooks with me as i hitch-hiked up and down the UK, through France and Germany, camped in little copses of trees by the roadside, lit small cooking fires, stayed with crazy frenchmen, with sassy english wife in a "gites" near Lyon, while doing odd jobs, at Le Mans 24 hour race, back and forth, back to the UK via Southampton on the ferry for free with a truck driver, as you could back then (even a free bunk too) drinking guinness, and watching cabaret, heading up to Edinburgh to the festivals (camped on beaches, and the cheapest motel, the Graveyard on Calton Hill in the tomb of David Hume, possibly and endless source of humour about exhumed philosophers sustained us, along with Sherry), i used to write it all down, had a stack of notebooks, but they got lost when i migrated over here - but, you know the memories are burnt on now.

Glad you liked them too.

Take it easy,

Chris.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

judyanne

Sat, 2016-07-02 03:27

judyanne's picture
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Never saw the movie either .... hate Kristen Stewart so passed lol

But I still relate to this intensely, albeit via other well loved books...
I especially like the last stanza

Enjoyed
thank you Chris
love judy
xxx

'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)

vandiemenspeak

Sun, 2016-07-03 01:54

vandiemenspeak's picture
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They are all worthy reading if you're looking for something different, had a big effect on me. I could also recommend "Desolation Angels" "Big sur" or " Dr Sax" - all the kind of literature that you get lost in, that somehow makes an instant connection on a very basic human level. They are from a different time, and re-reading them now, obviously I see different things, and also question some of the motivations and conceptions, but nonetheless good to re-visit.

Thanks for reading.

take care,

Chris.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

Esker

Sat, 2016-07-02 05:36

Esker's picture

rethinking the casting of Kristen Stewart..
I actually know people that do not live in novels who are
similarly mad in the past few years
they were just lucky that Kerouac wrote all that down
I think knowing of my own experience
that the actress and her mythology of Hollywood
and the times and era the characters lived
could be a good projection...
but

I appreciated Norman Mailers adaptation for screen
of the book 'The Misfits' all their last movies
save the one actor..

I want to see the movie about William Burroughs
staring Courtney Love...
eating from dumpsters
and never knowing where and who
the next ride was ..was different
I was no jock..the madness more
then anything was the trick of that
gamble

been a settled cat now for the most
while others are just starting out

the restless sullen smouldering souls
with an insatiable lust for excitement
perhaps they give the dark that
intrigues in us an edge
Heathcliffe and Cathy et all

....

vandiemenspeak

Sun, 2016-07-03 02:06

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Remember that day vividly, back in the early nineties, we went - a group of four - still a bit naive, wondering how the hell it could be translated into a movie, if i recall correctly, we all went into the cinema off slab square in Nottingham, a little "acidically bent" - which really didn't help matters, when you got into talking typewriters and mugwumps, we were clinging to our chairs, came out of the movie theatre visibly shaken - it was a real eye opener in cinema, we transfixed, at the same time terrified by that film. Made haste to the "Bell Inn" to settle our nerves, and process what we just saw. I was obsess with interzone, Burroughs and all his various creations after that for a while, Ballard too.
I'ts funny how a book can find you, somewhere in the back of smoky second hand store, like when I found a copy of Henry Miller "Tropic of Capricorn" - started to read that and couldn't put it down, master of language, again the stark connection with cerebral through honesty in translating what transpires in front of your eyes, good and bad.

Interesting..as always.

Take care.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

Esker

Sun, 2016-07-03 04:53

Esker's picture

much I havent read..still...just passed up charlotte bronte for a buck at the library
much in real time is being fathomed out.....according the peak is in washington
state just below British Columbia....not much about still...I can imagine his mind
working up there....an entire season....the inversion idea translated too read
would be great. Drove through there years ago...mt rainer was beautiful in
the dusk...the beachs pleasant then...no storms. I particularly liked the moody
forest...Something from the movies of twilight epics..and the invisible or something
like this...atmospheric...Burroughs film was striking...cronenberg was doing a lot
of interesting work and others during that strange phase of filmography....we did
not go....or if anyone went I would not have gone..the radio..staying in was more
the aptitude...and cost...social settings are still not my thing. tropic of capricorn
I have read.. all distant past...I rented more the dvd from the library...but lost
the card..owed some coin..just recently got it back....and mostly everyone just
went about their own thing...save chumming in the room...all varied interests..

K was a great thinker..a strategist...lived large..a complete husk trying to explain
ahead of his time the vision when many thought he ought to have spent more
time on his career as a sport figure or other service work...and the rue of living
with his mother...I did read his autobiography or biography..

better to have given though I say much...

thank U!

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