neal cassady.

In his later years
he seemed to carry
an indescribable air of sadness
in his eyes
as if that
“whole mad swirl”
had finally taken its’ toll
and his words
moved slower
than they had before
and sentences collapsed

neal, man
the whole world was caught up
in the flames that consumed you
at times it seemed you’d burn forever
that white heat that only
messiahs and
maniacs survive

your words
spoken
and written
bitter sweet trumpets blaring
those ragged restless conversations
snippets streaming out car windows
and crazed gatherings where
angel hipsters gather to blast

bop.bop.bop.

a work in progress

“Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish — a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow — to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested…
Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.”

Hunter S. Thompson

Confession

waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed

I am so very sorry for
my wife

she will see this
stiff
white
body
shake it once, then
maybe
again

“Hank!”
Hank won’t
answer.

it’s not my death that
worries me, it’s my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.

I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.

Charles Bukowski

“Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets’ towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you — beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”

Edward Abbey

“What’s your road, man?–holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It’s an anywhere road for anybody anyhow.”
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 4, Ch. 1

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now.

Abraham Lincoln – December 23, 1862

Iluq – 2000-2007