Mexico City Blues

An epic poem by Jack Kerouac, Mexico City Blues consists of 242 choruses of spontaneous poetry. Kerouac's own explanation:

I want to be considered a jazz poet
blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam
session on Sunday. I take 242 choruses;
my ideas vary and sometimes roll from
chorus to chorus or from halfway through
a chorus to halfway into the next.

Kerouac's poetry covers many of the Beat themes that can be found in his prose: Buddhism, Zen, Karma, existence, nothingness, drugs, memory, travel, nature, life, and death. I reccomend that you read these poems out loud- sometimes the sound of the words adds so much to the meaning. I usually whisper or mouth the words under my breath while tapping my foot at a machine-gun pace.

Just a little sample:

59th Chorus

Then I always manage to get
	my weekly check on Monday,
Pay my rent, get my laundry
	out, always have enough
Junk to last a coupla days

Have to buy a couple needles
	tomorrow, feels like
Shovin a nail in me

	Just like shovin a nail in me
Goddamn - (Cough) -

For the first time in my life
I pinched the skin
And pushed the needle in
And the skin pinched together
And the needle stuck right out
And I shot in and out,
Goofed half my whole shot
On the floor -
	Took another one -
	Nothin a junkey likes better
	Than sittin quietly with a new shot
	And knows tomorrow's plenty more

Innumeral infinite songs.
Great suffering of the atomic
	in verse
Which may or may not be
	controlled
   By a consciousness
   Of which you & the
ripples of the waves
   are a part.
	That's Buddhism.
	That's Universal Mind

	Pan Cosmodicy

	Einstein believed
	In the God of Spinoza

(- Two Jews
 - Two Frenchmen)

"Einstein probably put a lot
of people in the bughouse by
saying that

All those pseudo intellectuals
went home & read Spinoza
then they dig in
to the subtleties
of Pantheism -
   After 10 years of research
   they wrap it up
   & sit down on a bench
   & decide to forget
   all about it

Because Pantheism's
Too Much for Em.

   They wind up trying to
find out Plato, Aristotle,
   they end up in a
   vicious Morphine circle"

Jan 23 2003 — The above two choruses (132 and 133) have been on my homenode for about a year, they will now reside here. I was compelled to transcribe them because I wondered if the "pseudo intellectuals" comment had anything to do with our own P_I's distinctive moniker—I had noticed that he is fan of Ginsberg, which means that he has most certainly read some Kerouac.