Billy Collins Lowell, Mass

Lowell, Mass.

billy collins

Kerouac was born in the same town as my father, but my father never had time to write On the Road

let alone drive around the country in circles.

He wrote notes for the kitchen table and a novel of checks and a few speeches to lullaby businessmen after a fat lunch

and some of his writing is within me for I house catalogues of jokes and handbooks of advice on horses, snow tires, women,

along with some short stories about the deadbeats at the office, but he was quicker to pick up a telephone than a pen.

Like Jack, he took to drink but beatific to him meant the Virgin Mary.

He called jazz jungle music and he would have told Neal Cassady to let him off at the next light.