A Kesey explanation of a cross country trip

Kerouac meets the Soccer Mom

I hear poets talking perfection
The perfect word or guttural slur
Working on a line I think will insure
Master craft folk flaw detection
Rewrites, interjection then rejection
   So who prescribes the drug of Kubla Kahn
   Wallace Stegner or dervish mahn
   I cannot tell what made me your
   All time dandy Big Rock Candy fan

The Further Mini Van stopped today
Driven by Lee Iacocca who had this to say
“I would rather have been a race car
Hero, but I couldn’t hold a good line.
They say the K-car was my best so far.”
   Which proves you can’t be too fine
   If you want everyone to understand
   The best poem at your command
Then he said:
 “So I’d like you to meet that cracker in the back
Please meet my back slapper friend Jack.”

 “Hello, my name is K . . .

Hi. I love to a talk, my aunt once said 
the world would never find peace until 
men fell at their women’s feet and asked for 
forgiveness.
I read that somewhere so I wrote in my book
Oh, not a book like a real book, my book
You understand? It helps to copy it down
You know what I mean? It helps to write it down.
I remember when my mother told me
Write it down so you will remember it 
So I wrote it down and now I remember it.
the world would never find peace until 
men fell at their women’s feet and 
asked for forgiveness.
I like that about men at their women’s feet
I don’t think my dad would have done it,
But my mom said to write it down. I did.

 “So I’d like you to meet that cracker in the back
Please meet my back slapper friend Jack.”

 “Hello, my name is K . . .

I never quite figured out why my mom said it.
You’d be surprised how little I knew even up to yesterday.
I heard my favorite DJ say that one time.
I thought it was so cool, so original and clever.
But it really explains what I cannot tell you
You know what I mean? It helps to write it down.
My Dad grew up in the fifties in beatnik days
I don’t know what a beatnik is, he never told me.
You’d be surprised how little I knew even up to yesterday.

 “So I’d like you to meet that cracker in the back
Please meet my back slapper friend Jack”

 “Hello, my name is K . . .

I go to church on Sunday and sing songs
My husband doesn’t go though, he says,
All things are like visions beyond the reach of the human mind.
I don’t know what that means but I think its in the Bible
Have you ever read the Bible? They do it in church.
I’d rather read romance novels and sleep late.
Except on Sunday, I take my kids to Sunday School
They teach them the golden rule and stories
About God and sheep and following Jesus.
You know maybe my husband is right
All things are like visions beyond the reach of the human mind.
That’s why I go to church and he doesn’t.
It kind of makes sense in a way, don’t you think?

 “So I’d like you to meet that cracker in the back
Please meet my back slapper friend Jack.”

 “Hello, my name is K . . .

Next to romance novels, self help books are special
They always have these cool quotes
The kind you can repeat at parties. People think you’re smart.
The best I ever heard was:
You can’t have birth without existence and 
you can’t have death without birth
My sister said it sounded existential. I guess so, but
I don’t know what she meant. She’s a Chi Alpha
and a cheerleader too. She majored in Psychology.
I majored in Recreation then I got married. Had kids.
You can’t have birth without existence and
you can’t have death without birth, you know what I mean?

 “So I’d like you to meet that cracker in the back
Please meet my back slapper friend Jack.”

 “Hello, my name is K . . .

Gotta go, you know what I mean? It a busy world
Always something to do, no time to think.
Hope you guys find where you’re going
I gotta go pick up my kids. Whoever invented the minivan.
Wow it’s the greatest. What would we do without ’em?
I wished I’d would have thought of it.
I’d be rich and I’d have time to give you guys some directions.
But you know what I say, I’d rather be thin than famous!

Iaccocca never knew Kerouac either— 
He wasn’t the K-car type, if you know what I mean.
   Kerouac died in ’69 at the age of 47
   But he had further to go
   Even the soccer mom said so
Although we do not have a clue why
She only repeated what she heard
She said she did not know the guy.

Not in Sunday School Anymore - Khoikhoi

Fearless Fosdick


If cops were lollipops
I lick their sweet ass
And curse the Hottentots
The missionary class
Converted with plots
Of noble bombast
Clad in Jesus knots
For crimes the Jews got
Blamed for. The last
Time war was fought
To honor the past
Mistakes of cops,
The mold was cast
For our own despots

Khoikhoi - "real people"

"Khoikhoi social organisation was profoundly damaged and, in the end, destroyed by white colonial expansion and land seizure from the late seventeenth century onwards, which ended traditional Khoikhoi pastoral life. As social structures broke down, some Khoikhoi people settled on farms and became bondsmen or farmworkers;" (more)

History for Dummies

Apollyon had spent a great deal of his time abroad, and had failed to note how the revolution in America, the Reign of Terror in France, and the subsequent wars in Europe had materially increased the forces of the Republican Party in Hades.

from Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica by John Kendrick Bangs

History for Dummies


My arrogant earthling reality
Is not what I want it to be.

My DNA shared with worms
A death sentence is life’s terms.
To what lowly depths aspire?
A Styx river ride to Dante fire
Just to prove, “We don’t crawl.”

Our leader makes the clarion call
Our army kills and intimidates
It’s how empire dominates.

In the end, what have we done?

Repeated the way of Napoleon.

Moon with a View
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them … into the impossible." -- Clarke’s Second Law

And if you look closely down from above you can see the golden spiral encoded with the numbers of the Fibonacci series which should be a tip off that this poem was written for a purpose much larger than mere nursery rhyme parody. J.K. Burns' Napoleon is as foolish as our current boy-emperor imagines himself to be.