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