Hello, Jack
(Jack Kerouac)

Still reading your word abundance,
and note your photograph tucked
into odd niches, dark eyes staring
from tattered posters
taped to obscure bookstore
windows.
Sad eyes. Haunted.
Canuck eyes which understood
no other could comprehend
who you were, where you had
been, where you were headed,
or believed you wanted
to go. Dislocated poets
slip from place, feel alone
in people filled rooms.
Ginsberg enjoyed that spotlight;
you didn't, unless fired
by drugs or drink. Corso
and Burroughs could not relieve
hidden pressures. No one could.
Women weren't the answer. Mamere
wasn't your salvation. Inner
conflict rots cores, Jack.
You felt clawing inside your bones.
"On The Road" wasn't a maverick
song, an anthem to ignite, nor was
it a fresh beginning, Jack.
In some mysterious way, it was
your signature song, that lonesome
wail of troubled soul, the beginning
of the end.

Joyce Metzger aka Stormey

a poem by Joyce Metzger