The Subterraneans

The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac Page A

Book: The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac Read Free Book Online
Authors: Jack Kerouac
Ads: Link
beauty, not that I’m hung-up on the earth and Indians and all that and wanta harp all the time about you and us, but I see in your eyes such warm—but when you make the madwoman I don’t see madness but glee glee—it’s like the ragamuffin dusts in the little kid’s corner and he’s asleep in his crib now and I love you, rain’ll fall on our eaves some day sweetheart”—and we have just candlelight so the mad acts are funnier and the ghost stories more chilling—the one about the—but a lack, a lark, I go larking in the good things and don’t and do forget my pain—
    Extending the eye business, the time we closed our eyes (again not drinking because of broke, poverty would have saved this romance) and I sent her messages, “Are you ready,” and I see the first thing in my black eye world and ask her to describe it, amazing how we came to the same thing, it was some rapport, I saw crystal chandeliers and she saw white petals in a black bog just after some melding of images as amazing as the accurate images I’d exchange with Carmody in Mexico—Mardouand I both seeing the same thing, some madness shape, some fountain, now by me forgotten and really not important yet, come together in mutual descriptions of it and joy and glee in this telepathic triumph of ours, ending where our thoughts meet at the crystal white and petals, the mystery—I see the gleeful hunger of her face devouring the sight of mine, I could die, don’t break my heart radio with beautiful music, 0 world—-the candlelight again, flickering, I’d bought a slue of candles in the store, the corners of our room in darkness, her shadow naked brown as she hurries to the sink—our use of the sink—my fear of communicating WHITE images to her in our telepathies for fear she’ll be (in her fun) reminded of our racial difference, at that time making me feel guilty, now I realize it was one love’s gentility on my part—Lord.
    The good ones—going up on the top of Nob Hill at night with a fifth of Royal Chalice Tokay, sweet, rich, potent, the lights of the city and of the bay beneath us, the sad mystery—sitting on a bench there, lovers, loners pass, we pass the bottle, talk—she tells all her little girlhood in Oakland.—It’s like Paris—it’s soft, the breeze blows, the city may swelter but the hillers do fly—and over the bay is Oakland (ah me Hart Crane Melville and all ye assorted brother poets of the American night that once I thought would be my sacrificial altar and now it is but who’s to care, know, and I lost love because of it—drunkard, dullard, poet)—returning via Van Ness to Aquatic Park beach, sitting in the sand, as I pass Mexicans I feel that great hepness I’d been having all summer on the street with Mardou my old dream of wanting to be vital, alive like a Negro or an Indian or a Denver Jap or a New York Puerto Rican come true, with her by my side so young, sexy; slender, strange, hip, myself in jeans and casual and both of us as if young (I say as if, to my 31)—the cops telling us to leave the beach, a lonely Negro passing us twice and staring—we walk along the waterslap, she laughs to see the crazy figures of reflected light of the moon dancing so bug-likein the ululating cool smooth water of the night—we smell harbors, we dance—
    The time I walked her in broad sweet dry Mexico plateau-like or Arizona-like morning to her appointment with therapist at the hospital, along the Embarcadero, denying the bus, hand in hand—I proud, thinking, “In Mexico she’ll look just like this and not a soul’ll know I’m not an Indian by God and we’ll go along”—and I point out the purity and clarity of the clouds, “Just like Mexico honey, O you’ll love it” and we go up the busy street to the big grimbrick hospital and I’m supposed to be going home from there but she lingers, sad smile, love smile, when I give in and agree to wait for her 20-minute interview and her coming out she radiantly breaks out

Similar Books

A Cast of Vultures

Judith Flanders

Can't Shake You

Molly McLain

Wings of Lomay

Devri Walls

Charmed by His Love

Janet Chapman

Angel Stations

Gary Gibson

Cheri Red (sWet)

Charisma Knight