Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

by Jack Kerouac

  Take them said the skeleton,

  But leave my bones alone.

  2. Take my raiment, now grown cold

  To sell to some poor poet old;

  Give the dirt that hoods this truth,

  If his age would wear my youth;

  Take them said the skeleton,

  But leave my bones alone.

  3. Take the thoughts that like the wind

  Blew my body out of mind;

  Take the ghost that comes at night

  To steal away my heart’s delight;

  Take them said the skeleton,

  But leave my bones alone.

  4. Take this spirit, it’s not mine,

  I stole it somewhere down the line,

  Take this flesh to go with that

  And pass it on from rat to rat;

  Take them said the skeleton,

  But leave my bones alone.

  5. Take this voice, which I bemoan,

  And take this penance to atone,

  Grind me down, tho’ I may groan

  To the starkest stick and stone;

  Take them said the skeleton,

  But leave my bones alone.

  This is a complaint of praise to all destroying time. I am not sure whether the bones represent the core of self which is the last to be given up; or whether I’m telling everybody they can do what they want as long as they leave the god-bone alone.

  I am reading a lot and writing as usual, on and off. I will write you next time more coherently; the truth is, I would have, today, but I had to deal with all of that rainy weather in your letter, so I put up my umbrella and walked out into the storm.

  I am beginning to think, aesthetically, in terms of images of dreams (like the green face) and to weave (I hope to) these images into poems now, instead of using abstractions and wit-rimes. I am writing a ballad around the ditty I dreamed up a few months ago (remember)?

  I met a boy on the city street,

  Fair was his hair, and fair his eyes,

  Walking in his winding sheet,

  So fair as was my own disguise;

  He will not go out again

  Bathed in the rain, bathed in the rain.

  It is essentially an image, a beautiful white-visaged youth, walking around at night dead. From now on, also, I shall stop trying so hard to gather metaphysical implications into the image as I used to try to do (as sun through a magnifying glass?)—for to try to force all levels to meet intellectually is impossible; but it is just possible for them to come together on their own in a self-born image. (That is the secret of Dr. Sax?) So I have a method.

  I would like to go to Haldon [Chase] to see him but am afraid to. I wish he would etc. . . . I think (or thought last month) about him a lot. Oh, well, maybe someday will get together. I am in no condition to now.

  Next time I write I will send you facts and sobriety.

  Do you think I am right or wrong. sane/crazy?

  Allen

  I mean, the above, what do you think? You know. I’m really quite perplexed by a very confused situation, right now. I sometimes wonder if I could really get out of it (West to the sun) even if I wanted to, at this point. [ . . . ]

  Jack Kerouac [Denver, Colorado] to

  Allen Ginsberg [Paterson, New Jersey]

  June 10, 1949

  Dear Gillette:

  Your big letter occupied my mind for a whole day here in what was then my hermitage. In answer to your question about what I think about you, I’d say you were always trying to justify your ma’s madness as against the logical, sober but hateful sanity. This is really harmless and even loyal. I can’t say much about it, after all what do I know? I only want you to be happy and to do your best toward that end. As Bill says, the human race will become extinct if it doesn’t stop doing what it don’t want to do. As for me, I think you are a great young poet and already a great man (even tho you get sick of my evasive goldenness.) (For which there are dross-ish reasons, you know; and you know.)

  I’m no better off than you are with respect to doing what I want. I have to work on a construction job now and can’t stay up all night dreaming up the mouthings of the Lamb. (But there is something else in this business of Forest-of-Ardening around people, all day, at work.)

  If you ask me, Clem [Herbert Huncke] really dances when he says “Mother I can’t dance.”

  The Rubens I meant was not the White Arms Over the Void Horizontal Dance, but the other one of fowls beneath the church-steps and a great Netherlander field . . . but what does it matter now? No, my life is not that dance either.

  Reading over your Holier Than Thou poem last night (or “Lines Writ in Rockefeller Center” [“Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City”]), I saw something weird, in comparison to my own lines. For instance, let’s start with my recent “crazy” poem, then yours.

  “The God with the Golden Nose, Ling,

  gull-like down the Mountainside did soar,

  till, with Eager Flappings, above the Lamb

  so Meek did Hang, a Giggling Ling.

  And the Chinamen of the Night

  from Old Green Jails did Creep,

  bearing the Rose that’s Really White

  to the Lamb that’s really Gold,

  and offered Themselves thereby, and

  the Lamb did them Receive, and Ling.

  Then did Golden Nose the Giggling Ling go down

  and He the Mystery did Procure—

  all wrapp’d in Shrouds that greenly swirl’d,

  which barely He, nor Chinamen, could hold,

  so Green, so Strange, so Watery it was:

  but the Lamb did then the Mystery Unveil.

  Saith the Lamb: “In this Shroud the Face

  is Water. Worry therefore not for Green,

  and Dark, which Deceptive Signs are,

  of Golden Milk.

  Beelzebub is but the Lamb.

  Thus did the Lamb his Mouthings end.”

  I find that your lines evoke yourself, and mine, myself . . . which is proper. “Not a poppy is the rose” has a strange lecherous sound; not only that, but “upin-the-attic-with-the-bats” and the line about the superfine poppy. Not that I want to go into that . . . but, poetically, the combination of sensual hint, wink-of-the-eye lechery, dirty ditty goes with your work. This is comparable to Herrick:“A winning wave, deserving note, / in the tempestuous petticoat: /

  A careless shoe-string, in whose tie / I see a wild civility”

  Picture Herrick’s picture of the petticoat, etc.

  Enuf of this. I live west of Denver, on the road to Central City.

  When I can, I now read French poetry: De Malherbe, and Racine the French Shakespeare. But I have little time. Brierly gave me Capote to read. He winked at me today during a big luncheon at high school among teachers and labor leaders and tycoons.

  As I run miserably around Denver I wonder what Pomery [Neal Cassady] would do.

  I’ll write a longer letter next time. It’s always “next time” now with us . . . why? Because there’s too much to say.

  The family is here, the furniture is here, and cats, dogs, horses, rabbits, cows, chickens, and bats abound in the neighborhood. Last night I saw bats flapping about the Golden Dome of the State Capitol. If I were a bat I’d go and get gold. Up-at-the-dome with the goldy bats. There are so many beautiful girls around. I ache. A little girl has fallen in love with me . . . a pity. A crush for an older man, me. I gave her classical records and books, and am become a dancingmaster. Dancingmaster Wink.

  I rode in a rodeo, bareback, this afternoon and almost fell off.

  I decided someday to become a Thoreau of the Mountains. To live like Jesus and Thoreau, except for women. Like Nature Boy with his Nature Girl. I’ll buy a saddlehorse mix for $30, an old saddle on Larimer St., a sleeping bag at Army surplus, frying pan, old tin can, bacon, coffee beans, sourdough, matches, etc.; and a rifle. And go away in the mountains forever. To Montana in the summers and Texas-Mexico in the winters. Drink my java from an
old tin can while the moon is riding high. Also, I forgot to mention my chromatic harmonica . . . so I can have music. Thus—without shaving—I’ll wander the wild, wild mountains and wait for Judgment Day. I believe there will be a Judgment Day, but not for men . . . for society. Society is a mistake. Tell Van Doren I don’t believe at all in this society. It is evil. It will fall. Men have to do what they want. It has all got out of hand—began when fools left the covered wagons in 1848 and rode madly to California for gold, leaving their families behind. And of course, there ain’t enough gold for all, even if gold were the thing. Jesus was right; Burroughs was right. Why did Pomeroy turn down Dancingmaster’s help to go to high school? I saw their graduation exercises last night and the 18 year old valedictorian, using a false deep voice, spoke of the fight for freedom. I am going to the mountains, up in the eagle rainbow country, and wait for judgment day.

  Crime is not what men want either. I have often thought of robbing stores and didn’t want to do it finally. I didn’t want to hurt nobody.

  I want to be left alone. I want to sit in the grass. I want to ride my horse. I want to lay a woman naked in the grass on the mountainside. I want to think. I want to pray. I want to sleep. I want to look at the stars. I want what I want. I want to get and prepare my own food, with my own hands, and live that way. I want to roll my own. I want to smoke some deer meat and pack it in my saddlebag, and go away over the bluff. I want to read books. I want to write books. I’ll write books in the woods. Thoreau was right; Jesus was right. It’s all wrong and I denounce it and it can all go to hell. I don’t believe in this society; but I believe in man, like Mann. So roll your own bones, I say.

  I don’t even believe in education any more . . . even high school. “Culture” (anthropologically) is the rigmarole surrounding what poor men have to do to eat, anywhere. History is people doing what their leaders tell them; and not doing what their prophets tell them. Life is that which gives you desires, but no rights for the fulfillment of desires. It is all pretty mean—but you still can do what you want, and what you want is right, when you want honestly. Wanting money is wanting the dishonesty of wanting a servant. Money hates us, like a servant; because it is false. Henry Miller was right; Burroughs was right. Roll your own, I say.

  It will take me a long time to remember that I can roll my own, like our ancestors did. We’ll see. This is what I think.

  So leave my bones alone. I think that is a wonderful poem. Write me another. Write me that coherent long letter. All is well.

  Go, go; go roll your own bones. Bone-bone. Roll-bone your own go-bone. etc.

  Quelle sorciere va se dresser sur le couchant blanc?

  Quelle bone va se boner sur le bone-bone blanc?

  Go, go; go roll your own bones.

  Jack

  Editors’ Note: Ginsberg must have written the following before receiving Kerouac’s June 10th letter.

  Allen Ginsberg [Paterson, New Jersey] to

  Jack Kerouac [Denver, Colorado]

  June 13, 1949

  June 13

  Dear Jack:

  No letter from you, and I forgot about you last 2 weeks, after writing. I am waiting to go to the clinic, and in the days I have been putting together my book, working from noon far into the hours after I put out the light and lie in bed dreaming up poems. Last night I dreamed more stanzas of our poem—

  I asked the lady what’s a rose,

  She kicked me out of bed,

  I asked the man, and so it goes,

  He told me to drop dead.

  Nobody knows,

  Nobody knows,

  At least, nobody’s said.

  Then more purely in our own metrical and abstract image scheme. (read the first lines fast and see how it sounds)

  I’m a pot and God’s a potter

  and my head’s a piece of putty

  Break my bread

  And spread my butter,

  I’m so lucky to be nutty.

  But the nicest stanza almost as good as “Pull my daisy, tip my cup,” goes:

  In the East they live in huts,

  But they love where I am lolling.

  Cut my thoughts

  For coconuts,

  All my figs are falling.

  “Cut my thoughts for coconuts” will someday be part of the speech of the world. Another contribution to city imagery—did you ever hear of the Alley-Mummy? I revised the poem “Who is the shroudy stranger of the night?” and the second stanza begins, “Who is the Walker, laughing in the street,” “The Alley mummy, stinking of the one . . . ?” Can’t you just see him coming out of the garbage strewn, beery dank of Paterson and Larimer Street in the dead waste and middle of the night? He is lying there among all the broken bottles and rain soaked newspapers and bags, in the garbage can, wound in the soiled bandages some old man had wrapped around his legs, bound in old Kleenex and women’s rags. Everybody knows how frightening alleys are—the dark alley, the dark corridor—think of all the street phantoms and gutter elves and roof gremlins there must be in the Kasbah. Also, did I ever tell you about the face in the television set, the poor ghost that calls to children in the living-room, “Please open the window and let me in”? I thought of him about half a year ago. I also revised the Psalms that I showed you at your house, they are almost an even poem now, and a lot of small lyrics and longer poems—all the nightingales—I retyped and cleaned up everything and in a few days I hope to have my book ready and I left a lot out, too, that was formless and passionate. Only complete poems—but even then, there are weak spots, long rhetorical diatribes about eternity and Light and Death that have no corporeal home, and no true form—but I left them in, some of them, because I hope nobody will notice that they are not truth. They are so pretty when I have finished I will really turn to something new—longer real poems about people, with plots—then poetic drama—a tragedy of light-doom-ridden Pomeroy [Neal Cassady]—Clem [Herbert Huncke] in the prison. In the hospital. But I am sorry that I did not try harder in the past to publish what I wrote, because I have small heart to send individual poems out to magazines in a full dress attack; and without previous magazine publication it is hard to get a collection of poems published. If I cannot get a publisher, and I still feel that I want to be read, I would print them up like Jethro [Robinson] did, myself—but I haven’t any money in the hospital. Well, I’ll see. Perhaps you will do me the honor of writing a preface, since near the time I am ready you will be a famous author. As I started to say, I finished the heaviest work this evening and was relaxing trying to be peaceful and serene, and I turned on the radio and picked up your last letter. The long paragraph ending with the Waving Mells of the Watched, I was surprised and moved by more than the first time I read it. The first time it seemed less like a profound call to the raindrops; and reading it tonight I felt just like a little raindrop indestructible being told by the sea to rise! Rise! and fly back over the Down-Alongs. Paterson is making some changes in me. I’m getting more thought about the Down-Alongs of the old houses I lived in, my schools, and childhood, my father. Also I’ve taken a slight historic interest in the town. You must locate the myth of the rainy night here, near New York, for do you know there is a snake hill with an actual real castle, a castle, overlooking the city? And a river in the middle of the town? The castle was built by old Mr. Lambert in 1890 or so, and has a history much like yours, but now it belongs to the park system of the County and is a vast and crazy museum of art objects imported by Lambert (great Titians and Rembrandt visions and Reynolds ladies, Italian statuettes, medieval Bacchuses) mixed with hundreds of items of local importance having to do with Passaic County—it is a treasure house with a long history—(Paterson was settled before the revolutionary war). A poet named William Carlos Williams, incidentally, is using a lot of this. There are old bronze dogs that used to hang over a shoemakers shop in 1840, maps of the great wild Passaic falls, bustles from the 1870s, lampposts from the 18th century. The castle is an immense turreted place (half of it was torn dow
n a few decades ago) on the slope of a mountain 5 minutes from town and far away—and on the top, away from the castle, is a huge stone tower, like a dungeon tower from Annabel Lee, overlooking all the valley to the dim spires of New York beyond the Palisades. You can see it from the downtown area—but nobody ever goes there, much. And on the top floor lives the museum caretaker and his wife. And also, Mr. Hammond, a silly old lady who is the principal of School 16 and Chairman of the park system, has an office there, and is a great specialist in Passaic County marginalia. (I know all these people, incidentally—it might surprise you how well known my father is here as Paterson’s principal poet—and I have met all the mayors and newspapermen and schoolteachers and bank officials and rabbis at one time or another. Someday I will be free to wander here and give an account of the growth of the demon-child in the Silk City (that’s what Paterson’s called—we used to make silk products before the depression).

  I am as I say, still waiting to go to N.Y. [the mental hospital] and it ought to be soon—there was a little hitch last week. I don’t know what has become of the other defendants—I am sheltered and isolated, and don’t need to go out of shelter. I called Claude [Lucien Carr] up last week—he’s O.K., congratulated me on the efficiency and cleanliness with which I’d seen my case through to a successful end—a surprise, pleasant—for him to congratulate me as if I were the sensible brains behind what is happening. I guess he’s congratulating me (without knowing it) for leaving my hands off and accepting whatever my lawyer does on his own in the upper spheres of legalistic huckstering. It was a nice feeling, being told by Claude that I’d done well in an affair of the world, so I accepted the compliment. Otherwise I know little of him. He did write his short story, said “Christ, you waste more time fiddling around, looking for cigarettes, than you actually put in writing. Being an artist,” he said, “is easy if you just mind your business and get it over with.” Those aren’t his words, but near—he meant, or said, it wouldn’t be so bad if you could get down to it. I will call him again soon. He says he is going out with a girl, but not completely coed or something; I didn’t get him to talk about that over the phone.