Sudden Sketch Poem
Gary’s sink has a shroud burlap
the rub brush tinware plout
leans on right side
like a red woman’s hair
the faucet leaks little lovedrops
The teacup’s upsidedown with visions
of green mountains and brown lousy
Chinese mysterious up heights
The frying pan’s still wet
The spoon’s by two petals of flower
The washrag’s hung on edge like bloomers
I don’t know what to say
about the dishpan, the soap
The sink itself inside or what
is hidden underneath the bomb burlap
Shroudflap except two onions
And an orange and old wheat germ.
Wheat meal. The hoodlatch heliograph
With the cross that makes the devil
Hiss, ah, the upper coral sensen soups
And fast condiments, curries, rices,
Roaches, reels, tin, tip, plastickets,
Toothbrushes and armies, and armies
of insulated schiller, squozen gumbrop
Peste pans, light of marin, pirshar,
Magic dancing lights of gray and white
And all for verse I wrote it.
by Jack Kerouac
April 1956, McCorkle’s Shack
from Kerouac- Poems All Sizes
City Light Books, 1992