Poem by Jack Kerouac —on his birthday
A Sudden Sketch Poem
Gary’s sink has a shroudy burlap
the rub brush tinwear plout
leans on right side
like a red womans 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 2 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 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, pirshyar,
Magic dancing lights of gray and white
And all for verse I wrote it.
by Jack Kerouac
April 1966, McCorkle’s Shack
from— Jack Kerouac Poems All Sizes
City Lights Books, 1992
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