Jack Kerouac Seen Running Around The Ball Fields Of Basra

 

Jack Kerouac was seen in the Army Reserves

Sitting on a barrel of oil, weeping over coffins bearing soldiers

Killed in the Iraq Theater of Operations,

Saying to nobody in particular––

“We’ll all take baths in the holes in the road

And sing outside the cities haunted by flowerpots

Near the open fields

Where kids play baseball with apples.”

 

 

28 July 2005

 

 

[Published in Mantra Winds: Poems 2004-2010.

 © 2010 by Jim Cohn.]