Edward Coletti

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Jack Kerouac: He Who Refers To Charlie Parker

We are in presence of a cataract
the care o’ act–one,
two, or three, he who spills
his heart out before his brain can
engage any particular direction,
he who refers to Charlie Parker’s
sax as something weirdly Irish,
his pa-tootle-stick when he
blop blop the bop bop!

You Jack Kerouac, I submit, be
the modern madster of on ah ma-tah-
tah-tah-pee a bit before you see, ah
“the chess men” in Washington Square
“silent, ready for funny war, ” you Jack
Kerouac, of the cataract, also are
The master of the oxymoronic, ”
can war be “funny”? Actually, when you look
at the concept of war, it is funny.

How else can you look at mass
murder any more than at mass mass
without laughing? I mean warfare
recrucifies Christ as few other sacrificial
futilities can or ever have or will.
Fools own guns for sport and protection.
Guns own fools for sport only. Charlie Parker,
for God’s sake please wherever you be, please,
“...lay the bane off me and off of every body.”

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