3
And the old Worthen Bar
in Lowell Mass. at midnight
in the now of nineteen eighty-seven
Kerouacian revellers
crowd the wood booths
ancient with carved initials
of a million drinking bouts
the clouts of the
Shrouded Stranger
upon each wood pew
where the likes of Kerouac lumberjack
feinted their defiance
of dung and death
Ah the broken wood and the punka fans still turning
(pull-cord wavings
of the breath of the Buddha)
still lost in Lowell’s
‘vast tragedies of darkness’
with Jack