Ginsberg writes: "At dusk I went out to the pasture and saw thru Kerouac's eyes the sun set on October universe, the first sun set on the first dusk after his death. Didn't live much longer than beloved Neal - another year and half."
The Day After Kerouac Died
By Allen Ginsberg, The New Yorker
20 October 19
Fifty years ago, Allen Ginsberg recorded his thoughts about the death of his friend Jack Kerouac, and began writing a new poem.
n the evening of October 21, 1969, Allen Ginsberg received a telephone call from the journalist Al Aronowitz: Jack Kerouac had died, earlier that day, in a Florida hospital. For Ginsberg, it was the second such call in just over a year and a half. On February 10, 1968, he had learned that Neal Cassady, the inspiration for “On the Road” and, aside from Kerouac, Ginsberg’s closest friend, had died, in Mexico.
The Kerouac news deeply saddened Ginsberg but did not surprise him. Kerouac’s heavy drinking over the previous decade had increased to such an extent that his closest friends wondered if he had a death wish. Ginsberg and Kerouac had grown distant—largely because Kerouac had become less and less available to Ginsberg, but also because Ginsberg no longer wished to be around his old friend, who, on any given night, could be a belligerent, unhappy, argumentative, and nasty drunk. Kerouac had remarried, bought a house for his wife and his invalid mother, and moved to Florida, where he lived a semi-reclusive life.
Immediately after hearing the news of Kerouac’s death, this was not the man Ginsberg remembered. He recalled the joyful, enthusiastic, ambitious, prodigious writer whose work influenced his own. Kerouac had basked in the heat of spontaneity; he had put Ginsberg on the path to Buddhism; the two had shared their innermost thoughts. His intelligence had been a beacon.
Ginsberg recorded fragments of his thoughts and memories of Kerouac in his journals, as he had done when he learned of Cassady’s death. He also wrote a long poem, “Memory Gardens,” which was composed over several sittings and was eventually included in his National Book Award-winning volume, “The Fall of America,” which was published in 1973.
Those initial journal entries are presented here on the fiftieth anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s death.
— Michael Schumacher
Oct 22 130AM 1969
Two watches ticking in the dark, fly buzz at the black window, telephone calls all day to Florida and Old Saybrook, Lucien, Creeley, Louis, —“drinking heavily” and “your letter made him feel bad,” said Stella.
All last nite (as talking on farm w/ Creeley day before) in bed brooding re Kerouac’s “After Me, the Deluge” at middle of morning watch I woke realizing he was right, that the meat suffering in the middle of existence was a sensitive pain greater than any political anger or hope, as I also lay in bed dying
Walking with Gregory in bare treed October ash woods—winds blowing brown sere leafs at feet—talking of dead Jack—the sky an old familiar place with fragrant eyebrow clouds passing overhead in Fall Current—
He saw them stand on the moon too.
At dusk I went out to the pasture & saw thru Kerouac’s eyes the sun set on October universe, the first sun set on the first dusk after his death.
Didn’t live much longer than beloved Neal—another year & half—
Gregory woke at midnite to cry—he didn’t really want to go so soon—from the attick—
His mind my mind many ways—“The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind”—
Our talk 25 years ago about saying farewell to the tender mortal steps of Union Theological Seminary 7th floor where I first met Lucien—
Tonite on phone Lucien said, having quit drinking in [Indecipherable] several weeks ago, he’d had convulsions split his nose & broke out all his false front teeth, chewed his tongue almost in half—unconscious taken to hospital—
Jack had vomited blood this last weekend would not take doctor care, hemorrhaged, & with many dozen transfusions lay in hospital a day before dying operated under knife in stomach—
Oct 22—
Memory Gardens
Covered with yellow leaves
in morning rain
Oct 24 — Quel Deluge
He threw up his hands
& wrote the universe dont exist
& died to prove it.
[Indecipherable stanza]
Full Moon over Ozone Park
Bus rushing thru dusk to
Manhattan,
Jack the Wizard in his
grave at Lowell
for the first nite—
that Jack thru whose eyes I
saw
smog glory light
gold over Manhattan’s spires
will never see these
chimneys smoking
anymore over statues of Mary
in the graveyard
Truck beds packed
under bridge viaducts,
Crash jabber of
Columbia Free—
Black Misted Canyons
rising over the bleak
river
Bright doll-like ads
For Esso Bread—
Replicas multiplying beards—
Farewell to the cross—
Under the river lights shaft
shelfing on Ceramic tunnel
Eternal fixity, the big
headed wax Buddha doll
pale resting incoffined—
Empty skulled New
York streets
Starveling phantoms
filling city—
Wax dolls walking park
Ave.,
Light gleam in eye glass—
Voice echoing thru Microphones
Grand Central Sailor’s
arrival 2 decades later
feeling melancholy—
Nostalgia for Innocent World
War II—
A million Corpses running
across 42’d Street,
The glass building rising higher
& lighted, transparent
aluminum
artificial trees,
robot sofas,
Ignorant cars—
One Way Street to Heaven.
[Indecipherable two lines]
Oct 25, ’69
Gray Subway Roar
A wrinkled brown faced fellow
blue-capped, with swollen hands
leans to the blinking void, plate glass
[Indecipherable]
sways on tracks uptown to Columbia—
Jack no more’ll step off at Penn Station
anonymous erranded, to eat sandwich
& drink beer near New Yorker Hotel
or walk
under the shadow of Empire State Building.
Didn’t we stare at each other length of the car
& read headlines in faces thru Newpaper Holes?
Sexual cocked & horny bodied young, look
at beauteous Rimbaud & sweet Jenny
riding to class from Columbus Circle
“Here the kindly dopefiend lived.”
and the rednecked sheriff beat the longhaired
boy on the ass.
—103’d St, me & Hal abused for begging.
Can I go back in time & lay my head on a teenage
belly upstairs on 110’th st?
or step off the iron car with Jack
at the blue-tiled Columbia stop?
at last the old brown station
where I had a holy vision’s been
rebuilt & changed by clean grey tile
over the scum & spit & come of
a half century.
[next page] [Indecipherable]
Oct 29—N.Y. Maine
—SUNSET
I am flying into a trail of Black Smoke
Kerouac’s obituary conserves Time’s
Front Paragraphs—
Empire State in Heaven Sun Set red
White Mist
over the billion trees of the Bronx—
There’s too much to see
Jack saw Sun Set Red over the Hudson Horizon
Two three decades back
thirtynine fortynine fiftynine
sixtynine
John Holmes pursed his lips, cynic
& empty-eyed robot,
and wept tears.
Smoke plumed up from oceanside chimneys
plane roars north over Long Island
Montauk stretched in red sunset—
Northport, in the trees, jack drank
rot gut & maide haikus of birds
tweetling on his porch rail at dawn—
Fell down & saw death’s golden lite
in Florida garden a decade ago.
Now taken utterly, soul upward,
& body down in wood coffin
& concrete slab-box
I threw a kissed handful of damp earth
down on the stone lid
& sighed
Looking in Creeley’s one eye,
Peter sweet holding a flower
Gregory toothless bending his
knuckle to Cinema Machine—
and that’s the end of the drabble tongued
poet who sounded his Kock-rup
throughout the Northwest Passage.
Blue dusk over Saybrook, Holmes
sits down to dine Victorian—
& Time has a Ten Page Spread on
Homosexual-Fairies!
Well, while I’m here I’ll
do the work—
and what’s the work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow.
ast night was the first Democratic primary debate since Congress opened its official impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump. Did that change anything?
am joining Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tomorrow to officially and publicly endorse a true hero of the people, Senator Bernie Sanders, as our next President of the United States! I have supported Bernie for over 30 years. I spoke at his rally in Burlington, VT, when he first ran for Congress. I will speak again tomorrow for him at his “Bernie Is Back!” rally at 1pm in Queensbridge Park in New York City. Everyone is welcome! Everyone who cares about the true direction this country must head in post-Trump should be there if you are within a drive or train ride from NYC. There are many good Democratic candidates running. Every poll shows the top five of them beating Trump in a head-to-head contest. We are all going to vote for whoever wins the nomination. So in the primaries and caucuses, let’s all vote for the candidate who most shares what each of us believes in. For me, that’s Bernie! Because we must not only defeat Trump, we must defeat the rotten system that gave us Trump. I’ll see you tomorrow!
he news of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s planned endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders came as a shock Tuesday night, capping his comeback performance at the fourth Democratic debate. Many expected she would not endorse at all, or at least not before the New York primary. AOC, some speculated, wouldn’t risk alienating mainstream Democrats who projected their own politics on a young, telegenic woman of color. They were wrong.
alling it a “once-in-a-lifetime incredible deal,” Donald Trump on Friday
offered recently-escaped ISIS fighters a group rate at the Trump
National Doral Miami.
