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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 5 of 5. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Atticus on September 27, 2004, at 17:48:20
Sitting in a Full-Throttle Plastic Pew
Kerouac’s on the roof sucking sacramental draughts
Of sweet fever-dream nicotine
Deep into tar-stained right-brained
Shivering silky synaptic webs
As curling Holy Ghost wisps
Of smoky soul
Flow from his lips
Like evanescent exhaust haunting
Dead and dying asphalt anaconda curves
Unable to shed their sun-split skin
Along the shredded blistered surface
Of Route 66’s gray and crackled
Wind-swept snaking scales of tattered tar.And he’s leaning on a bruised brick wall
With the skeletal metallic blackened bones
Of fire escapes frozen in mid-slither
Up the dinosaur-hide sides of prehistoric tenements
Visible over his shoulder,
A ratty copy of a locomotive brakeman’s manual
Protruding like a Bible from the jacket pocket
Of a pit-stop preacher whose pedal-to-the-metal gospel
Is the revelation and elation of sheer unmotivated motion.His supercharged sleek slicked-back hair
Suggests speed even as he slouches motionless,
A gearshift-muscled and gasoline-blooded
Engine of savage street Beat energies,
Captured in restless tense pensive repose
By Allen Ginsberg’s Kodak Brownie’s shutter
On an overcast long-past afternoon in ’53
Mere months before “On the Road”
Rolled off the presses
Like the roaring soaring purr
Of a V-8 engine tuned
To g*ddamned near perfection,
And transformed him from urban urchin
To highway troubadour,
The piston-driven paramour
Of pavement salvation
Leading to God knows where,
And the hectic electric ecstasy
Of the getting from here to there
Without ever having to arrive anywhere.Sitting in a full-throttle plastic pew
Wrapped in a romantic’s steel cathedral,
Playing whining high-pitched hymns
On an organ of white-walled wheels
That growl bluesy high-octane spirituals,
Chrome fiery choirs singing
To unquiet minds like my own,
As I fix my inner gaze
On the far side of secret horizons
That promise an elastic trip-the-light-fantastic
Rocket-fueled fandango with four-on-the-floor
And one blissful moment of nitro-burning rapture
’Cause, when you get down to it,
Man, that’s all I’m asking for.
-- Atticus
Posted by Jai Narayan on September 27, 2004, at 18:51:39
In reply to poem ... Sitting in a Full-Throttle Plastic Pew, posted by Atticus on September 27, 2004, at 17:48:20
what activated this in your lovely brain?
I am continually amazed.
I know I sound like a broken record but by god you are so....
sooooo creative!
Enjoyed it and got another sense of awe.
You can pivot on that creative energy to whatever direction you feel inspired.
No?
Atticus, you made my night with this new poem.
Posted by Atticus on September 27, 2004, at 20:02:11
In reply to Re: poem ... Sitting in a Full-Throttle Plastic Pew, posted by Jai Narayan on September 27, 2004, at 18:51:39
Hi Jai,
This poem was sparked by a post card I have tacked up on my bulletin board at work. It's a reproduction of a photograph of Kerouac, as described in the poem, taken by Allen Ginsberg about three months before "On the Road" was released and Kerouac became the next big thing. I bought it at a really cool museum show of photos taken by Ginsberg of his fellow Beats in the '50s. What really makes these pictures cool is that Ginsberg scribbled poetic little notes about what was going on in each picture on the prints. You even see cross-outs where he rethought a word. What really made this particular picture poignant for Ginsberg is that his friend, who looks just so unassuming on top of that New York tenement, has no idea he's about to become a literary superstar. Kerouac just has no idea how good the book he's written is, and what a long shadow it will cast. "On the Road" is, of course, about a spiritual journey as much as a literal one. It sparks the notion that the life journeys that we're all undertaking in our heads are the result of an undercurrent of discontent with a consumerist, conformist America, and that the automobile becomes a metaphor for seeking out something better, something brighter, something indefinable, that lies just around the next bend in the road or over the next hill. I see a lot of parallels with punk thinking in this, so Kerouac has always been a highly romanticized figure for me. He captures a longing amid lives of quiet desperation that is difficult to articulate. ;) Atticus
Posted by malthus on September 28, 2004, at 10:45:17
In reply to poem ... Sitting in a Full-Throttle Plastic Pew, posted by Atticus on September 27, 2004, at 17:48:20
Hi Atticus:
What a wonderful ode to Kerouac... Another Beat author that I like very much is "Ken Kesey". I read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" when I was about 12 years old and don't know really why I was drawn to it. Perhaps it was a portent for me, as the Beat Generation was a portent, the first wind of a new storm. Below is one of my favorite parts from Cuckoo:
"There had been times when I'd wandered around in a daze for as long as two weeks after a shock treatment, living in that foggy, jumbled blur which is a whole lot like the ragged edge of sleep, that grey zone between light and dark, or between sleeping and waking or living and dying, where you know you're not unconscious any more but don't know yet what day it is or who you are or what's the use of coming back at all - for two weeks. If you don't have a reason to wake up you can loaf around in that grey zone for a long, fuzzy time, or if you want to bad enough I found you can come fighting right out of it..."
malthus
Posted by Atticus on September 28, 2004, at 13:04:48
In reply to Re: poem ... Sitting in a Full-Throttle Plastic Pew » Atticus, posted by malthus on September 28, 2004, at 10:45:17
Hi Malthus,
I've always been a fan of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and his Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests. Definitely a trippy and fun part of the '60s counterculture. Too bad I wasn't born until after the party was over. I think it would have been a lot of fun to be on his famous psychelically adorned bus as he and his accolytes buzzed back and forth across the country, followed campaigning candidates for high office, and brought a Jon Stewart-snarky smart-alecky satiric touch to the fine art of social rebellion. ;) Atticus
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