Stephan Anstey

Generally, I think it's fair to say, I am not a man 
who gives two shits (or even one)
for Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac or his writing.

I've spent more than half my life in the city of his youth 
hearing the stories, mostly sad, mostly painful, mostly 
filthy with all of the things greatness leaves in its wake.
It only took a few decades to realize the ways i'm a little like him, 
though I admit, my French sucks,
and my father never owned a newspaper.

But I find myself sometimes over by the stations of the cross 
behind the Franco, where he and his brother Girard went, 
and i'm not a very religious man, but I know
I know who i am, and I know what this city is, and
I know the ghosts, and the bodies aching, and the bodies buried, 
and the bodies floating away down the river,
and the bodies wasting away from drugs, 
and the bodies drowning in the booze,
and bodies of all those people like that...you know, 
the sane ones

I know them, and I hate to tell you, but I love a lot of them 
because it's the only stupid thing I can do every stupid day.
It's all i can do. All i can do is love all those stupid people 
living stupid lives and loving stupid shit like me.
I love them, but they're not for me, not really.
I just spend my days trying to wake them up,
trying to tell them, hey man, stop being so fucking sane,
stop being so...damned attached to all of this.

No, they're not for me, the ones for me Kerouac's crowd,
not the ones who think they're his crowd, the ones reading his shit 
and eating it up like ambrosia—or the ones smoking a butt
in a jazz bar, thinking they're going to write just like him 
when they get home. No, that's not the crowd I'm talking about,
and I'm not talking about Burroughs or Ginsberg either, 
the dead bastards who came to Lowell and loved it (maybe).

The only people I want to share with Kerouac are the mad ones—
he was right about that—the ones who are mad to live, 
mad to talk, mad to be saved—yeah,
those are the ones, just like Kerouac said, and finally, i'm there,
						
I'm looking down Pawtucket Street past the university, 
toward the new bridge, and understanding finally
what it means to be desirous of everything at the same time.

I keep on past the stone house where the old nuns live, and yeah, 
one of them might have watched Kerouac walk here back in '68, 
after he'd already burned away,
burned away until there was nothing left 
but a ghost to go down to haunt Florida
while assholes like me try to see the burning people,

the bodies that are more than bodies,
the bodies that are just flabby fat gristly muscled vessels 
for a soul—the bodies hiding the frothing of spirit, 
the bodies holding in the mad mad mad desire
to become, to become again, to become more, to be,
and then to be greater.

Once in a while, when I'm walking around this city, 
filthy with the residue of greatness,
it's almost like i'm saved, i'm saved and alive, 
and ready to be a ghost,
ready to be more,
and more and more,
and burn away to nothing except the memory 
of Kerouac's fabulous yellow Roman candles.