Happy birthday Kerouac!

Ash street in march, you hit the pavement with sneakers and scuffed soles and books overdue at the library. Don't look back at the churches and the mills and the lawns and the brick warehouses. these are arms you have to hold on to now and no metaphors in their paper sleeves. grab tight and don't let go. the river will soon breach the levee and take your memories down stream to Chelmsford or Woburn or Billerica. Your child is one fuck away. the p.j. mini mart with packaged cakes and newspapers with safety cages around the scratch tickets. The river is frothy in March and the benches at your memorial are used as skateboard ramps. This is the future my friend and I want you to embrace it. there is a store called Dharma Buns that sells soup baked inside rolls on market or Prescott street and a Brazilian pastry place where cute Latina girls sell chocolate covered custard, their hair in a bun under a brown cap. We're all there, Jack, we all trod that brick sidewalk and pid those laundry bills and bar tabs at the black raven and the broadway bar and grill and the streets to Lowell high school where you played football are worn now and I got lost in the new development and the maps to downtown include your memorial. I know you would appreciate the mandala and catholic mystic cross layout of the memorial and even the two skateboarders who met up with the two girls in skinny jeans at your bench and asked, "where you been."
" You been gone. you disappeared."
"Naw, I was just under cover."
Well, that's gone."
and all this happening under, Visions of Cody, and Travels to mexico, and town and the city, and on the road, and doctor sax, and tristesse, and Dharma Bums the book that made me think of the top of the mountain as the bottom.
Jack, jack, jack, I've heard your song sung from one coast to the other. it won't die if I can help it and if I can help it it will grow.
Happy birthday, Jack.

Thought it was tomorrow, but it was friday and I was there, without knowing. I thank Claire and her friendly emails that drew me to the area along with the promise of work in Dracut or Salisbury. It was you, Jack, that brought me to the granite. Of all days in the last 6 years, I was there today. No idea. And the streets sang your name at last call.