on his centennial
by Bradley McIlwain
Kerouac@100: The Jack Kerouac Centennial Celebration in Lowell The Jack Kerouac Foundation |
The road narrows
And widens again—
The horizon heroes
Fill their flasks with zen;
Poet bums
Seeking dharma
In mountain slums—
Wisdom that Brahma
Bore from the beating
Beautiful pavement of the road;
Slick syllables of sweat beading
From the body scroll:
When spirit meets sole
On the dusty paperback of the globe
Bradley McIlwain is a poet who seeks to capture the chorus and consciousness of the human experience. His work has most recently appeared in The New Verse News and the Origami Poems Project. In 2021, he edited the Arthurian literary anthology New Tales of the Round Table (2021). He is the founder of the independent coffee project Roasted Poet Press. When not drinking coffee, he is hard at work on his first novel, an American motorcycle odyssey across the midwestern US.