RIP, Jack

“My witness is the empty sky.”

Jack Kerouac - The Dharma Bums

 

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”

Jack Kerouac - Charlie Parker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charlie Parker looked like Buddha

Charlie Parker, who recently died

Laughing at a juggler on the TV

After weeks of strain and sickness,

Was called the Perfect Musician.

And his expression on his face

Was as calm, beautiful, and profound

As the image of the Buddha

Represented in the East, the lidded eyes

The expression that says “All Is Well”

This was what Charlie Parker

Said when he played, All is Well.

You had the feeling of early-in-the-morning

Like a hermit’s joy, or

Like the perfect cry of some wild gang

At a jam session,

“Wail, Wop”

Charlie burst his lungs to reach the speed

Of what the speedsters wanted 

And what they wanted

Was his eternal Slowdown.