


Mexico City Blues
by Jack Kerouac“Each book by Kerouac is unique, a telepathic discord. Such rich, natural writing is nonpareil in the later twentieth century.” –Allen Ginsberg
“Each book by Kerouac is unique, a telepathic discord. Such rich, natural writing is nonpareil in the later twentieth century.” –Allen Ginsberg
Kerouac’s most important poem, Mexico City Blues, incorporates all the elements of his theory of spontaneous composition. Memories, fantasies, dreams, and surrealistic free association are all lyrically combined in the loose format of the blues to create an original moving epic.
“The first clear development of the American Romantic prose since Hemingway, Kerouac’s writing is full of mad sex, comedy, widescreen travel writing, and long lyrical evocations of American childhood and adolescent memories.” –The Times (
“Kerouac’s work represents the most extensive experiment in language and literary form undertaken by an American writer of his generation.” –Ann Douglas
“Each book by Kerouac is unique, a telepathic discord. Such rich, natural writing is nonpareil in the later twentieth century.” –Allen Ginsberg
An outsider in
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STRONG>1st Chorus
Butte Magic of Ignorance
Butte Magic
Is the same as no-Butte
All one light
Old Rough Roads
One High Iron
Mainway
Denver is the same
“The guy I was with his uncle was
the governor of Wyoming”
“Course he paid me back”
Ten Days
Two Weeks
Stock and Joint
“Was an old crook anyway”
The same voice on the same ship
The Supreme Vehicle
S. S. Excalibur
Maynard
Mainline
Mountain
Merudvhaga
Mersion of Missy
2nd Chorus
Man is not worried in the middle
Man in the Middle
Is not Worried
He knows his Karma
Is not buried
But his Karma,
Unknown to him,
May end –
Which is Nirvana
Wild men
Who kill
Have Karmas
Of ill
Good men
Who love
Have Karmas
Of dove
Snakes are Poor Denizens of Hell
Have come surreptitioning
Through the tall grass
To face the pool of clear frogs
3rd Chorus
Describe fires in riverbottom
sand, and the cooking;
the cooking of hot dogs
spitted in whittled sticks
over flames of woodfire
with grease dropping in smoke
to brown and blacken
the salty hotdogs,
and the wine,
and the work on the railroad.
$275,000,000,000.00 in debt
says the Government
Two hundred and seventy five billion
dollars in debt
Like Unending
Heaven
And Unnumbered Sentient Beings
Who will be admitted –
Not-Numberable –
To the new Pair of Shoes
Of White Guru Fleece
O j o!
The Purple Paradise
Copyright ” 1959 by Jack Kerouac. Reprinted with permission from Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.