A Curse at the Devil by Jack Kerouac (Morning Mantras)

For Charleen Whisnant

Lucifer Sansfoi

Varlet Sansfoi

Omer Perdiu

I.B.Perdie

Billy Perdy

I'll unwind your

guts from Durham

to Dover

and bury em

in Clover--

Your psalms I'll 'ave

engraved

in your toothbone--

Your victories

nilled--

You jailed under

under a woman's skirt

of stone--

Stone blind woman

with no guts

and only a scale--

Your thoughts & letters

Shandy'd about

in Beth

(Gaelic for grave)

Your philosophies

run up your nose

again--

Your confidences

and essays bandied

in ballrooms

from switchblade

to switchblade

--Your final

duel with

sledge hammers--

Your essential secret twinned

to buttercups

& dying--

Your guide to 32

European cities

scabbed in Isaiah

--Your red beard

snobbed in

Dolmen ruins

in the editions

of the Bleak--

Your saints and

Consolations bereft

--Your handy volume

rolled into

an urn--

And your father

And mother besmeared

at thought of you

th'unspent begotless

crop of worms

--You lay

there, you

queen for a

day, wait

for the "fun-

sucked frogs"

to carp at you

Your sweety beauty

discovered by No Name

in its hidingplace

till burrs

Part from you

from lack

of issue,

sinew, all

the rest--

Gibbering quiver

graveryard Hoo!

The hospital

that buries

you

be Baal,

the digger

Yorick,

& the shoveler

groom--

My rosy tomatoes

pop squirting

from your awful

rotten grave--

Your profile,

erstwhile

Garboesque,

mistook by earth-

eels for some

fjord to

Sheol--

And your timid

voice box

strangled

by lie-hating

earth

forever.

May the plighted

Noah-clouds

dissolve in grief of you--

May Red clay

be your center,

& woven into necks,

of hogs, boars,

booters & pilferers

& burned down

with Stalin, Hitler

& the rest--

May you bite

your lip that

you cannot

meet with God--

or

Beat me to a pub

--Amen

The Almoner,

his cup hat

no bottom,

nor I

a brim.

Devil, get thee

back

to the russet caves.

- August 31, 1965, Florida