Kerouac is Chilling on My Couch

I.

Jack, why are you here again?

Did flying across the universe become tiresome after the mystery was solved for you?

I’m tired, man. It’s been a long week and you just want me to tell you stories, stories of the old days, when I was carefree and depressed and stoned.

And how you found me and saved me from what I was becoming, whatever that could’ve been if everything hadn’t gone right – the opposite of a cautionary tale – (you’d love her, Jack)

Your turn, Jack. Your turn to tell the stories to rattle the locks to wake the ghosts.

II.

I’m finished wishing for you to talk. You just sit there– bodhisattva of silence whose soul remains tortured.

We were young once and lived hard, pouring smoking sniffing– 1001 ways to lose your soul, temporarily of course.

No one seeks the soulless abyss that waits, stalking in the ether, haunted and haunting, waiting for you to peer in.

For above the abyss, above it all, beyond where we shouldn’t go, he sat waiting, like Orion in summer, hunting and stalking his prey, weakened and wounded.

What happened to him? Where did he go, Jack?

III.

Wake up, Jack. Time to shine. It’s early but we have places to be.

The world is too fast and I just want to watch, anyway. From up here, in this window.

Think of the possibilities while I make coffee. It’s good shit, you’ll like it.

Where do I start? Everyone is passing by, they don’t get it, doing what they have to to keep the noises at bay, if only for long enough for that one true thought– it only takes one, Jack! to get out slip through the dreams, and reawaken the mind of the world.

IV.

I won’t keep cleaning up your messes, Jack.

You can’t just lay there, stinking up the living room with your cigarettes and Catholicism, waiting for the Great Beyond to do the dishes.

I won’t tell her to go away, Jack.

You fall in love too soon, too hard for someone with your delicate constitution, always dreaming of forever but never thinking of tomorrow.

I won’t keep pretending you’re the holy one, Jack.

Sitting cross-legged, listening to Aja on vinyl and writing haikus in the air is not way for a holy man to live.

I won’t do it again, Jack.