Paul Glenn
Jack Kerouac
I see him in faded images and blurred edges,
through a square lens in a square medium.
He emerges from the shadow into the light,
a handsome man of unnatural age with a complexion
as worn and weathered as the tired dirty roads once traveled.
This is the man, the legend, the genius, creator of infinite verse.
Clutching his masterpiece and accompanied by piano he
sits awkward and fidgety atop a tall stool.
Then with the bend of the spine and the turn of a page
his wailing prose begins to perforate
the empty spaces of silence that linger between
cool riffs of hip silky jazz
with the rat-a-tat-tat of a frozen trigger.
Wave after wave of free narrative breaks,
sentence upon sentence, thought upon thought,
in a deluge of surreal spontaneity that comes pouring over me,
holding me down submerged in this gathering pool of humanity.
This is Beat.
This is the percussive underscore of the championed humbled masses…
This is sympathy.
About the writer:
Paul Glenn was born and raised in Pasadena, California and holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Loyola Marymount University. Paul retired from federal government service in 2016. He now happily fills his days with poetry.
Image: Das Fernlicht by Hanno Karlhuber (1946-). Oil and tempera on hard fiber. 70 x 80 cm. By free license.
