Ode to Jack Kerouac

By Joan d’Arc

I can’t look out your ghost,

   pulling your long hot burden nowhere

wedding your tears to the stream

long dream

    of an impossible task

too much to ask

      to dharma your soft so hard

      to meaning your Gerard

One fast move or you’re gone,

  pulling your long hot burden nowhere

I can’t look out your ghost,

 to see the skid row sod you tried to become

   Bum!

He was a bum, the Lowell bookshopkeep said,

    “man’s man, momma’s boy”

One fast move or you’re gone,

  never again to belong

      Gone—the way of the railroad earth

a phantasm from the cookie dough factory,

  pulling your long hot burden nowhere

I can’t look out your ghost,

  to find one sap belongs

    in the chain gang of god-given wrongs

Oh—godman atop an Underwood,

     Go—the way of the railroad earth

  add your tears to the stream

By its burbling it shall speak

    a phantasm clear:

    Go—

  pull your long hot burden nowhere

I can’t look out your ghost,

  couch hobo hitchhiker

    fish out of water fishing

the Pisces sees

  the cause of suffering is birth, Maw

—the first law

of deadbeat Buddha despair

    Go—Your way or the Highway,

 Rise—your Virgo Moonward,

  trailing your bebop starship skywhere