Mad Road |
� The mad road driving man ahead. The mad road, lonely, leading around the bend into the openings of space towards the horizon Wasatch snows promised us in the vision of the West, spine heights at the worlds end, coast of blue Pacific starry night - nobone halfbanana moons sloping in the tangled night sky, the torments of great formations in mist, the huddled invisible insect in the car racing onwards, illuminate - The raw cut, the drag, the butte,� the star, the draw, the sunflower in the grass orangebutted westlands of arcadia, forlon sands of the isolate earth, dewey exposures to infinity in black space, home of the rattlesnake and the gopher... the level of the world, low and flat: the restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power into the route, fabulous plots of landowners in green unexpecteds, ditches by the side of the road, as I look from here to Elko along the level of this pin parallel to telephone poles I can see a bug playing in the hot sun - swush, hitch yourself a ride beyond the fastest freight train, beat the smoke, find the thighs, spend the shiney, throw the shroud, kiss the morning star in the morning glass - madroad driving men ahead. Pencil traceries of our faintist wish in the travel of horizon merged, nosey cloud obfusks in a drabble of speechless distance, the balck sheep clouds cling to a parallel above the streams of C B Q - serried Little Missouri rocks haunt the badlands, harsh dry brown fields roll in the moonlight with a shiney cows ass, telephone poles toothpick time, "dotting immensity" the crazed voyageur� of the lone automobile presses forth his eager insignificance in noseplates and licenses into the vast promiss of life... the choice of tragic wife, moons. Drain your basins in old Ohio and the indin and the lilini plains, bring your big muddy rivers through Kansas and the mudlands, Yellowstone in the frozen north, punch lake wholes in Florida and L.A., raise your cities in the white plain, cast your mountains up,� bedawze the west, bedight the west with brave hedgerow cliffs rising to Promethean heights and fame -� plant your prisons in the basin of� the Utah moon - nudge Canadian groping lands that end in arctic bays, purl your Mexican ribneck, America.Going home, going home. |
by Jack Kerouac |