Kerouac learnings redux

Here is another end-of-semester response to my request for a creative piece expressing some learning from my Spring 2016 Kerouac course at the University of Maine at Farmington. Reprinted with permission of the author. Thanks, Lydia!

We’re All Dharma Bums Now!

By: Lydia Violette-Lee

Though the Class is Kerouac,

We learned the Beats.

Wide eyed wandering into that little back alley

Just like he wrote, Cassady, Ginsberg, Burroughs.

They were waiting for us, between those pages.

They felt IT,  we felt them, and they knew time.

We learned,

the nature of travel, experience, freedom.

It was the creation of the Rucksack Nation.

Spontaneous Prose, nobody knows.

Jazzy Jazz, and the world goes

Hitching, Hiking, the Nature that surrounds.

The Beaten Path, it travels on and on.

Yet those Beats are even better than Keats.

Though they keep searching,

The True meaning of life is lurking.

Lurking inside the

campfires, meditation.

Life’s pure Intoxication.

Need Clarification ?

Lets all hop on at the local train station.

To feel the laughter and joy

To feel the fear of what if and what not, Oh Boy!

The B-E-A-T-en path is just one road not yet taken

We’re all Dharma Bums now

Or we could be, anyhow...