The Brooklyn Bridge Blues
By Jack Kerouac
as found in The Book of Dharmas
Chorus # 1
Winter, too cold to write
on the bolts of the beams
in the bridge steel
High,
overlooking whole auroras
of Sangsara sun dusk
down by the Statue of Liberals holding
soon to be lighted
torch to the dim dank
Atlantic famous sky
where Greek ships plow
thru sullen waves of iron
bringing tons of rusty junk
to be pressed into bales
and left on waterfronts
of splinter

I would I were a wave
and had vanished now
than bawl and blot
with pencils in screaming
rooms here on earth
so fool stupid blind

Chorus # 2
that's intro

And that's horse shit verse.
Let me tell you the truth
of the world at last.
I started in Brooklyn
and went over the Span
and at the middle hump
I looked and thought.
My mother had just told
a fib, and in the process
made me a liar in my
stepsister's eyes. I lookt
my mother dead in the face
and her eyes were hard
to find and almost hidden
behind those glasses and all
that "insecurity" necessitous
grime that had accumulated
there in the form of
Sangsara's Sorry Flesh.
to prove to her sister,
aunt, whatever Laurette is,

Chorus # 3

that all the time it's she
who sends me money she
denied that last summer
for no reason at all
except I wanted her to be
happier in moneyless
Rocky Mount and I had a
temporary surplus from
the $300 American Academy
prize, I sent her a 50
money order----Denied it!
Fibbed! didn't even wink!
My own mother! Wow!
The work of Sangsara!
This false world--and the
Lord says in the Diamond
Sutra, Keep the Precepts,
Don't be insincere, it's one
of the Paramitas (it's
one of the Four Precepts)!
(Ah you Canucks! says Lucien
Your first fight with yr mother
and it's over m o n e y ...!)
Ock! True! Wow!

Chorus # 4
I looked at the red winter
disgusting dusk of the world,
saw the alleys beyond,
Brooklyn, Wolfe's redbrick
jungle (that I'd only
last night walkt, unto
Gowanus Cana!)----O!
--& I remembered the dreams
the dreams about racks
and Joan Adams and drear
and a tear appeared
in my eye over the river
on the Bridge of Sights
that as soon as I'd
(c r o c o d i l e)
crossed it, had taken
me to the shore
I was looking for!
Svaha! I am
the perfect man
the Buddha of This World

Chorus # 5
I lookt up at the blue deep perfect
and askt Buddha Lord to perfect me
and said "What are the requisites?"
and he said "You are perfect already"
--sullen ugly Wall Street buildings
so silly & stupid, the blind woe world,
all things endlessly living and dying,
in ignorance----and I thought:
"Whether as impalpable powder
or as great cities visible from bridges
in these great universes, what
matters it?, --it is only in the sense
of cosmic unity that the Tathagata
can rightly refer to is"

*********************
(If this is the work
of a Buddha-saint
I'm a You-Know-What!)
*********************

Chorus # 6
World Without End, Ethereal Flower
----and the streets of time & grime
without rhyme or dime, all crime,
in the blue sad belows of Manhattan,
and old dirty black and orange-shit ships
with dirt white substructures,
and wharves of rusty junk, & barges,
and I felt Exuberant
I felt I was the only Perfect Man
in the World, my virtue 100%
my only sin is lust--I like
girls--I have no Self----
I have a Buddha Not-Self-----

Chorus # 7
Suddenly, looking at the high City Hall
towers with stone nymphs atop,
I realized I was going to save th'world!
I sand & marched: "This is the
Other Shore,
that we were looking for!"--
and:-- "I am the perfect man,
the Buddha of this world."----
already perfect! -- I forget the details!
------Ruined dead buildings, with signs
reading, "Varnishing" already vanishing
----Ugh! Glugh!
I wanted to call my mother

Chorus # 8
on the phone and say "I didn't say
I was going----I've crossed the river
now, I'm over the bridge now,
I'm on the other shore now, I've
reached the other side!"
The little glicks and dibbles
of returning human humorisms I may allow
--It's mountaintop for me!
I'm a glutton, I like food,
I'm irritable when hungry, I like
a good supper, I like sex----conquer lust
and Buddha will arise in me

Chorus # 9
And now that I've
achieved superhuman
perfection and compassion
and knowledge, naturally
I've lost human talents
of writing----temporarily
---Nowere to go -- All's
been done, I can only
tell you what God would
tell you -- Dry your tears
------- All women are nuts
------- Dry up your sins --- me,
I'm too sick and tired
of this world to drink in't
-------if lustful gluttony
is my only blemishing sin
maybe I oughta just
starve to death
------ I am the
Writing Buddha -----
From these Blues we'll
go H Y M N S

Chorus # 10
And that's all I can
recall of Brooklyn Bridge,
tonight, John A Roebling
and Washington Roebling
built it, and it hath cables
and it does one good
to cross it everyday----
See my eerie wiseness?
Good night, innocent children
of this mortal Sangsara
world, you have to keep
your mind empty & tranquil
and pure or the whole
Eternal Light escapes you
-----Without the Eternal Light
you're only a yakking fool
of rooms, beds, graves
and monuments----with it,
you are like the Silent
Mountains of Snow
and more than
I know------

JAN 28 1956

*******What is the date?
Twenty eight.