The Shakes by Joe Johnston (I AM STILL WAITING Series)

The Shakes
by Joe Johnston

I am still waiting for the shakes to stop.
I am still waiting for the magic of Big Sur
     to envelop me in calm
          comfort, to
let
   me
     breathe.

I did the work; I rejected the
mythos and I rejected the
ritual and I decamped to the
valley. And I waited.

I
   wait
          ed.

I waited as the shakes continued
and I waited as the Fall rolled in and
the tide rolled out.

boom

BOOM

The beats go on as the
     Beats went on, and
I don’t have the right map so I’m
lost, off the road, a city light
     my only beacon, waiting for
          the. shakes. to. stop.

PAINTING: Big Sur Coastline by Eyvind Earle.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: A popular book many young people read to broaden their boundaries is Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel On the Road. But I don’t feel that enough people bookend the experience by reading his tragic Big Sur (1962).  I didn’t come to it myself until much later in life, which is may be a good thing. When I think of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, I can’t help but picture him as this calming grandfather, protector, and champion of a wild bunch of maniacs, unable to save some of them from themselves. This poem is part homage to that calming grandfather.

PHOTO: Jack Kerouac (left) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in front of Ferlinghetti’s house at 706 Wisconsin St., San Francisco, California (early 1959). Photo by Kirby Ferlinghetti. (Online Archives of California)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Writer and filmmaker Joe Johnston made his first movie at the age of 11, an industrial espionage thriller that continues to play to excited crowds in his parents’ living room every Christmas. His prose, poetry, and video literature have appeared in Atticus Review, Matador Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review. His recent film How to Make a No-Sew Coronavirus Face Mask from a Poem was featured in Michigan State University’s 2021 Filmetry Festival, viewable here.  He currently resides in Michigan with his loving family of fellow artists and is working on a feature-length play about a dystopic suburban road rally.

Jack Kerouac on San Francisco

“It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.” JACK KEROUAC, On the Road

Photo: Sunset Magazine, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Kerouac dreams, art by TatiDuarte

“All human beings are also dream beings.”

JACK KEROUAC

ART: “Dreaming ties all mankind together” by TatiDuarte. Prints available at redbubble.com

Christmas essay by Jack Kerouac

NOT LONG AGO JOY ABOUNDED AT CHRISTMAS (Excerpt)

by Jack Kerouac

…Christmas was observed all-out in my Catholic French-Canadian environment in the 1930s much as it is today in Mexico…When we were old enough it was thrilling to be allowed to stay up late on Christmas Eve and put on best suits and dresses and overshoes and earmuffs and walk with adults through crunching dried snow to the bell-ringing church. Parties of people laughing down the street, bright throbbing stars of New England winter bending over rooftops sometimes causing long rows of icicles to shimmer. As we passed near the church you could hear the opening choruses of Bach being sung by child choirs mingled with the grownup choirs usually led by a tenor who inspired laughter more than anything else. But from the wide-open door of the church poured golden light, and inside the little girls were lined up for their trumpet choruses caroling Handel…

Note: “Not long ago joy abounded at Christmas” was first published in the New York World Telegram on Dec. 5, 1957. Read a longer excerpt at richardhowe.com.

Photo: Jack Kerouac as a boy during the 1930s.

Christmas with Jack Kerouac

THE TOWN AND THE CITY (Excerpt)
by Jack Kerouac

George Martin, almost as drunk as a lord, was singing loudest of them all, while the mother sat at the piano playing with a radiant and happy flush on her face. It made Mickey happy, yet also somehow sad to see his mother laughing and playing the piano like that. At Christmas, he always liked to just sit beside her on the couch. She let him have red port wine to drink with the walnuts, and watch the warm soft lights of the tree, red and blue and green, and listen to Scrooge on the radio. He liked to listen to Scrooge every year. He liked to have the house all quiet and Scrooge and Christmas songs on the radio, and everybody opening the Christmas presents after midnight Mass….

They all went in the house. The singing went on around the piano; big Mr. Cariter was doing a crazy dance with his wife’s hat on backwards. It was too much for Mickey who had to sit down in a corner and giggle. For a moment he was worried when the Christmas tree shook a little from side to side, but it had been well secured to the floor—Joe had done the job himself—and he guessed it wouldn’t fall over. He went and threw more tinsel on the branches.

Ruthey was whispering to Mrs. Mulligan: “That’s Mickey’s blue star up there on top of the tree. Every year we’ve got to get up on a chair and put it up or else! You know, or else!”

Mickey heard, but he paid no attention. He just stood before the tree with his hands clasped behind him. Then his mother came running over and threw her arms around him saying: “Oh, my little Mickey! He loves his tree so much!”

###

Issued by Harcourt Brace in 1950, The Town and the City was Jack Kerouac‘s first published novel.

At Christmas, Beat Erasure Poem by Barbara Eknoian

AT CHRISTMAS
by Barbara Eknoian

I see innocent fall of snow
from roofs
bedangled icicles
tracks of people
and a great pall of wind
The grief of birch
bent and wintering in woods
Our baseball field is lost
The blizzard oversweeping all
I reach the top of the hill
view the pond at the bottom
ice skaters thronging by
I circle the pond, the houses
the French Canadian paisans
are stomping their feet on porches
Christmas trees on their backs
Dusk’s about to come
I’ve got to hurry,
the first heartbreaking light
comes on red and blue
in a little farm window
across the pond

“At Christmas” is based on Jack Kerouac‘s story “Home at Christmas,” found on page 5 of the Beat Collection edited by Barry Miles, available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barbara Eknoian’s work has appeared in Pearl, Chiron Review, Silver Birch Press anthologies, Re)Verb,  New Verse News, and Your Daily Poem. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her recent releases include her first novel, Chances Are: A Jersey Girl Comes of Age (available at Amazon.com) and her poetry book, Why I Miss New Jersey (Everhart Press, available at Amazon.com). Her new mantra is Carpe Diem.

Orchestra, Beat Erasure by Ricki Hunsinger

ORCHESTRA
by Ricki Hunsinger

I wept in the muffled orchestra;
tones and rhythms
calling, trampled words
made thin.
The orchestra would resume
a void, filling up private lessons
with string quartets.

“Orchestra” is based on page 95 of Minor Characters, a memoir by Joyce Johnson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ricki Hunsinger holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Chatham College.  Her writing has been published by small independent presses.  She is currently a Baltimore-based freelance writer and assistant librarian.

$$ Abomunus Craxioms $$, Beat Erasure Poem by Catfish McDaris

$$ Abomunus Craxioms $$

by Catfish McDaris

Mummies are dancers

alcoholics make root beer

jazz down the river

licking stamps

fat automobiles laugh

 

Men die become seagulls and fly

roaches are not happy

people are not very happy

 

People get sicker quicker

the sky is the way out

laughter sounds orange

reality xists

“$$ Abomunus Craxioms $$” is based on the poem of the same name by Bob Kaufman, found on page 306 of  The Beat Book: Writings from the Beat Generation. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Catfish McDaris has been active in the small press world for 250 years. He lives in a cave at a nudist colony. His biggest seller is Prying: with Jack Micheline & Charles Bukowski. His latest book is a hardcover called Jupiter Orgasma from Lulu.com.

Rembrandt–Self Portrait, Beat Erasure Poem by Catfish McDaris

REMBRANDT—SELF PORTRAIT
by Catfish McDaris

Magnificent girl
peachwolf browngold
shepherd foxglove an angel
 
I believe in God
sorrow of men
death of a friend
life sadness
 
Each brush stroke
feeding the void
 
Paint the human
face the inhuman
gold jewels let
lightdrench the
saddest.

“Rembrandt Self-Portrait” is based on Gregory Corso‘s poem of the same name, found on page 15 of The Beat Book: Writings from the Beat Generation. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Catfish McDaris has been active in the small press world for 250 years. He lives in a cave at a nudist colony. His biggest seller is Prying: with Jack Micheline & Charles Bukowski. His latest book is a hardcover called Jupiter Orgasma from Lulu.com.

Fire, Beat Erasure Poem by Brinda Buljore

FIRE
by Brinda Buljore

Those who have burned

in the so-white fire

on the beach

now

small clowns

held to the flame

“FIire” is based on Lawrence Ferlinghetti‘s poem “Oh You Gatherer.” Read the original at poemhunter.com.