Me and Jack Kerouac: "Repo Man" (poem)

On the Road an all-American novel that made Beat poet Jack Kerouac a household name

Pin on Buddhist quotes by famous people like Jack Kerouac (pinterest.com)

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"Repo Man"

Walked all the way down Telegraph

towards the Bay and the freeway

where I hitched a ride with Jim

driving a brand new Riviera

I had just read Kerouac’s magnum opus

and remembered a childhood event

the weekly pilgrimage to church

seven of us in a Ranch Wagon

running late checking the clocks

in gas stations racing by

passing Jim Child’s Brick on the boulevard

this 5-year-old never saw any children or bricks

until Dad explained it all about how words can have

multiple meanings and ambiguity between the lines

and that Jim Childs was owner of a car dealership

Jack Kerouac | Kerouac Society

but this Buick man was a friendly redneck from Texas

Jim Charron asking to be called JC as he grinned

the left side of his neck and face

and outboard arm sunburned red

for he was a repo man he explained

driving over this great land of ours

repossessing what was bought but not paid for

by frickin’ deadbeats

and he had just picked up this beauty in Berkeley

and I could ride with him all the way to LA

just had to pick up another repo in San Jose

but he’d hate to have to tow it

towing slowed him down

so would I like to drive it

I was pleased he could trust a college kid

so I said sure and an hour later we were

at a fancy white house with a picket fence

Sheriff’s deputy armed with writ and revolver

and a hotwire mechanic armed with a Slim-Jim

and before we knew it we were stealing

a nearly new car right out of a driveway

from a newly delinquent no longer legal owner

who’d gotten in over his head with too many girlfriends

and mortgages and bankruptcy and divorce proceedings

now way behind on payments

American Jack Kerouac and his Buddhist ethic (Tricycle: The Buddhist Review)

“Your Buddhism has made you mean Ray and makes you even afraid...orgy.” (quotefancy.com)

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You never really own anything

They started it just as the deadbeat came running out

waving a rubber check with lipstick stains on his shirt

and red slap marks on his face under tears running down

but the deputy waved him off with the court order

Didn’t have to shove the .44 Magnum in his face

as Mike the mechanic burned rubber driving it

down the block and around the corner

where Jim said Get in and keep up

I drove just as fast flying down the highway

master of the road king of the universe

blasting our way south to LA

at the speed of sound and light

at the wheel of a black Cadillac

Jim called it a big ass land yacht

radio blasting Like a Rolling Stone

time to think time to feel time to breathe

AUDIO: Ethan Hawke, Dharma Bums

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time to be here now time to live or die to groove

so very beat — an 18-year-old freshman

cruising at 80 with Jack in the back

Dean riding shotgun

What was in that little white pill Jim gave me

Said it would help me stay awake

Hours later we passed far down the 101

near Santa Maria or San Luis Obispo

a wreck off the side of the road

two cars twisted together

bodies splattered all over the pavement’s grey

police cars and fire trucks and ambulances

swarming the site emergency

personnel working and as I was getting tired

I realized that could have been me

falling asleep at the wheel

drifting across the center line

smashing into oncoming traffic

and I still had lots of miles to go before I sleep

but I wanted to go on the road drive to New York

with the Dharma Bums and fly me to the moon

around the world in 80 ways across the universe

just wanted to make it home for Thanksgiving

We are all driving rentals on suspended licenses

trying to outrun the big repo guy in the sky

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CHARLES HARMON is former science teacher in Los Angles, who loves to write, live, love, cook, and eat. He find teaching science to be like cooking and cooking like writing poetry. He is currently working on a novel. He has been published in Spectrum, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, Altadena Poetry Review, Lummox, Frogpond, Ribbons, Atlas Poetica, bottle rockets, Akitsu, hedgerow, failed haiku, Red Shift, Haiku Foundation Dialogue, prune juice, Autumn Moon, All the Way Home: Aging in Haiku Anthology... 

The Dharma Bums

A bhikkhu reborn on the road

Jack Kerouac’s classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature.  First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans -- mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer -- whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras. More

• Poet Charles Harmon remembers Jack Kerouac (Kerouac Society); Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly