Jack Kerouac, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
City Lights Pocket Poet Series #51
Introductions by Anne Waldman and Eric Mottram
I had fun sparring with Jackie K with his slapdash scripture. I am Jack, that’s for sure! Do I wanna keep suffering like he suffered? All the sutras I read and translate and write poems off of will never deliver me because it’s always and ever just this: be mindful here and now to exert right effort as regards my wayward mind.
Anne Waldman: “We’re all just conglomerations of tendencies, hopeless bundles of quivering meat bound on a wheel. We have no souls, no tangible selves” … OK, but don’t announce this on Mother’s Day.
Samsara and nirvana inter-are, might as well cultivate generosity and skillful means.
Buddha is Golden Eternity
Golden Be-Here-Now
Golden The-Present Moment
Your Golden Eternity is
Mouthwashbabbleblurts—relax!
What I and you and everyone
Who works for MSNBC has in common—
One day soon we’re all gonna stop breathing.
Only one smiling unimaginably vast golden-silver-cobalt interbeing trans-universe
Ultimate dimension and historical dimension: “There is a blessedness surely to be believed, and that is that everything abides in eternal ecstasy, now and forever.” [Well, not when you were getting beat up on NYC pavement, drunk again, that wasn’t eternal ecstasy, now was it?]
Bliss comes and goes
But I’m empty of a Separate
Rugged Individualistic Self
Knowing the thing is no-thing
To know one thing is made of of 10,000 things
Jack, your “record of Karma-earned fate”
Is just an abstract notion of mind
Nothing to get hung about
Golden Eternity Fields For-eh-vah
There It Is, the Dharmakaya
If we take off our Bono sunglasses
And look, see
with Ekagrata!
Mara can cite the Lankavatara Sutra for his purpose
JK: “It’s impossible to exist, it’s impossible to be persecuted, it’s impossible to miss your reward.” [Then why so sullen about reviews of your books?]
You say that “Plum Village is everywhere”?
I can see you’ve never been in the infield
At Churchill Downs
The first Saturday of May
Breathing in, I channel basic sociability
Breathing out, Tucker Carlson is OK
JK: “You’re the golden eternity and it must be done by you. And means one thing: Nothing-Ever-Happened. This is the golden eternity.” [Whaddaya mean nothing ever happened? The publication of On The Road never happened?]
Anne Waldman didn’t “cancel” Kerouac. I won’t either. Maybe now at the ripe young age of 62, I’ll give a few hours to Big Sur.
“84,000 teachings!
Man, I figured UMSLE Step One was tough!”
—Layla Espinoza
