Tribute to Kerouac

Dig it, man, those boys that just left the bar. They boasted about driving - travelling on the road. Their stories inspired by some television movie and listening to some soft excuse for jazz, nothing like Parker, Smith or Coltrane – just easy listening crap.

They sat there smirking, preening, and posing for the chicks who in turn posed for them. Their words passed in one ear and out the other of dimwitted arobite manikins – silly girls out to hustle free drinks and find Mr. Right.

All it was is what it was, mindless chatter between mindless people. It was easy to see from manicured images and the smell of designer colognes that they’d never been there – not really out on the road, but simply manufactured illusions to impress each other and some hapless chick they wanted to hustle out the door and into the sack.

They ain’t done it, not really done it – I mean like - 'Mad Road Driving' - Kerouac - 'Mexico City Blues'. San Francisco to Mexico City - down the Grapevine - the crushed and mangled rusting metal carcasses in the ravines on down in Mexico – symbolic of destinations never made - skinny white crosses on the side of the highway flash past and linger as afterimages like ghosts hitching a ride out of the desert night.

Last light dying, fading off into crystal quartz night driving on down and over crazy midnight highways - full moon lit - silver insanity - littered with signs - neon signs -road signs - cafe signs - Jesus Saves signs - crazy coloured signs flashing by in the night.

I often wondered – “Are these really signs, hallucinations - or - just too much benzedrine? Or, the type of hallucination you get somewhere between Cheyenne, Wyoming and Lincoln, Nebraska out there rolling across seamless infinity - Great Plains - on-coming headlights fracture and shatter early morning highway pipe dreams that vanish into some sleepy reality.”

Heading east – the first morning light’s – a hazy glow vaguely illuminates the horizon against the faint flicker of distant headlights. Sleepless night's, driving, driving - pop one more white, shift into fourth - put your foot to the floor - oblivion - madness – all in the cool morning air.

Van Morrison-circa 1967 - "Madam George" meandering across the ionosphere - fading in and out over some Tex Ridder song - I don't know - driving on across flat oblivion - between starry sky and occasional farmhouse light signaling life out there nestled in a sea of wheat - illuminated in patchy silver light piercing through cotton-ball clouds drifting westward on into the night.

GTO - roars-on towards morning without shifting gears - café coffee bound - metal-flake, baby blue. That was with Denny and Martha Lorraine. Denny got killed in a plane crash - shot down - somewhere North of Danang - black night falling - closing in on solider boy - Bangkok opium den was the last place he’d been.

Denny’s just another name inscribed on that wall.

Some time later - thought about old Den - on the train from Dublin up to Sandy Row - just like the song - cold winter night - ain't no stars dancing in the sky - just a train running on into the rain and into fog and into snow and on up to Sandy Row - watching myself watching me in a window reflection from the train station - slipping away somewhere into the lonely clickety-clack endless railroad tracks on cold winter's night - poignant neon reflections streaking - flashing lights captured on window wind smeared raindrops.

It's all a blur - sitting by a fire - Arizona mesa - 1967 - Junky Jane, Jungle Jim, Peyote Tom and me. 7+7 Is - Love - circra1966 - LA speed freak rock and roll - crackling across the airwaves - bouncing chaotically off the ionosphere down into a dying transistor radio – it was Wolfman Jack blasting across the airways from down Tijuana way - and we sat talking about driving from Bisbee via Naco on over to Brownsville and on down to the Keys - the Milky Way hanging out there a universe away.

The Summer sun dried desert night and the dried salty, sweat - sugary crystals clinging loosely to my skin, and the smell in the air - savory like sage - somewhere between Phoenix and Tucson about a mile or two down past the end of Tom Mix highway – White Mountain silhouette in sight.

Santa Monica to Chicago - Flagstaff, Santa Fe, - Highway 66 - and catch the sunrise on Lake Michigan - then down Highway 61 - those boys ain't never been there - so how can they know – really know madness? Crossroads at Clarksdale then Biloxi, heading to Mobile, and then sitting on a sailboat - Coconut Grove.

How can they understand the neon signs, road signs, seedy prostitutes lurking outside cheap roadside motels - cockroaches scurrying across the bed - then disappear at turned on light hanging on fabric covered wire - musty room - flickering neon signs stayed awake all night long. Then twilight - crepuscular, dusky amber - ambient light fading into night - driving down through Mississippi on into Louisiana watching the black kids on the side of the road - in the ditches - catching crawfish with tattered nets made from old window screens that used to keep mosquitoes out.

Then at the beginning and end was me and sweet, dark-eyed Martha Lorraine – always seemed to be somewhere down on upper Grant St. – always had a head on – always buzzing on weed, whites and wine - neon lights rippled across rain soaked streets - car splashed shattered reflections exploded into fractal universes – then seemed to tinkle and glitter atop fragmented mirror puddles – All there in the absence of white we stood talking about where we’d been and where we wanted to go.

Sometimes - that's what I'm driving at - highways littered with signs, signs, signs, and hallucinations of flashing - flickering signs – abstract reflections of signs - midnight highway madness always splashing across, burnt into my field of vision lingering on as benzedrine afterimages from there into the bar where I sat and listened and watched road pimps preening and talking mindless shit.

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