Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

I think the poetic landscape changed
when Kerouac roared into infinity
in his beatnik clunker with pot
postcards taped all over the interior
of that imaginary vehicle with hip flames
it wasn't just that this all was about gas
gas is not a metaphor for on the road
here we saw the American car
at some kind of peak fueled on whiskey
and bennies and beer and bohemian too
all pushing against a fragmenting future
and a fracturing past that can't last
all that jazz shooting through the bird
coming down the groovy street poem
all that jazz going up against history
poetry was let out of the bag man
not that wino poet on the canary corner
whose slow word hidden in brown paper
all that standing around the world
living in neon signs preaching the boogie
but I mean the real jazz talking to the word
I mean that jack isn't just about jack man
it's about what you heard under the bridge
you heard the thing that was under the thing
dig me when I say what it is what it isn't
when I'm walking through the cruel world
thinking about Buddha and flower power
about rainbows and sputniks and zeros
I'm lost in newspapers wrapped around
all that phony stuff they feed us unwashed
I'm seeing the hypocrisy in the mockery
all that turning us against ourselves
all that made up malarkey about life
whose life is it that we read about
when the word turned around tomorrow
when everything is not about sorrow
when cool was cool and bongos rule
they were speaking then to the night
all those cats with big eye beautiful
moving into the alleys with feeling
looking for the wise stuff hidden in looks
we carried them in our back pockets
little books filled with magic & word
isn't it absurd at what occurred

I liked ON THE ROAD in its first format. I enjoyed reading this fine poem.

I enjoyed it too, especially the use of "malarkey".........D

all that made up malarkey about life