Well, a lot of people have asked me
Why did I write that book or any book?
All of the stories I wrote were true, 'cause I believed in what I saw
I was travelling West one time
At the junction of the state line of Colorado
It's arid Western one and the state line of poor Utah
I saw in the clouds huge and mast above
The fiery golden desert of evenfall
Frayed image of God with forefinger pointed straight at me
Through halos and rolls and gold folds
That were like the existence of the gleaming spear in his right hand would sayeth
C'mon boy go thou across the ground
Go moan for man go moan, go groan
Go groan alone, go roll your bones, alone
Go thou and be little beneath my sight
Go thou and be minute as seed in the pod
Go thou, go thou, die hence
And of this world report you well and truly
Anyway, I wrote the book because we're all gonna die
In the loneliness of my life my father dead, my brother dead
My mother far away, my sister and my wife far away
Nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world
A sweet attention
But now are left to guide and disappear their own way
Into the common dark of all our death
Sleeping in me raw bed alone and stupid
With just this one pride and constellation
My heart broke from the general despair
And opened up inwards to the Lord
I made a supplication in this dream
So in the last page of On The Road
I describe how the hero Dean Moriarty has come to see me
All the way from the West Coast just for a day or two
We'd just been back and forth, across the country several times in cars
And now our adventures are over, we're still great friends
But we have to go into later phases of our lives
So there he goes, Dean Moriarty, ragged in a moth eaten overcoat
He brought specially for the freezing temperatures of the East
Walking off alone and last I saw of him
He rounded the corner of 7th Avenue
Eyes on the street ahead and bent to it again, gone
So in America, when the sun goes down
And I sit on the old, broken down river pier
Watching the long, long skies over New Jersey
And sense all that raw land
That rolls in one unbelievable bulge over to the West coast
And all that road going
And all the people dreaming in the immensity of it
And know I know by now
The Children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry
And tonight the stars will be out, and don't you know that God is pooh bear?
The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie
Which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the Earth
Darkens all the rivers cups the peaks and folds the final shore in
Nobody, nobody knows what's gonna happen to anybody
Besides the forlorn rags of growing old
I think of Dean Moriarty I even think of old Dean Moriarty
The father we never found
I think of Dean Moriarty, I think of Dean Moriarty