Sketching

Over the years of being a Kerouac fan, I sometimes would try to examine what it was exactly that I liked so much about his work. Part of the appreciation I have for him as an "artist" with words lies in his ability to describe scenes in such detail that one gained a unique sense of being in the action.
This feature of Kerouac's writing he called "sketching".
Before I realized that was his label for it, which makes sense, I was doing a little sketching of my own. I was never a visual person, but I was driven with a need to explain my existence in the world through a creative medium. I have come to feel that writing is a tool for expression that has more dimensions than a visual still life.
I like my life to come alive.
I, like Kerouac, was known to my friends as always having a notebook in my backpocket, transcribing experience. I usually tended towards free verse. Here is a sample of a sketch of my own, written in 1998 in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

Sketches from a Manitou Laundromat
There's a boy,
A thinker, observer, dreamer
He sits and watches the street
Glances at the others now and then
I wonder what his meaning is
And if he finds it here
A girl pulls up in a shiny red car
Baby seat in the back
Couldn't be more than eighteen
Pensively washes her man's clothes
Twists her lip nervously
Her shorts hang low
So we can notice her navel
And its shiny adornment
Flashing above long legs

Three Mennonite women
Wearing matching silk dresses
And white bonnets
Speaking a strange tongue
Bewildered by machinery
They all wear nurses shoes
And add coins to others dryers
Just to be nice

A woman walks in
Hair a mess
She wears a nice dress
With a fanny pack
And a confused smile
Must be a nice little nut
She wears socks over her
Knee high stockings
And drools a grin your way

Another boy, loner like me
Carries all his belongings
In a duffel bag
Washes his socks and underwear
Long deep scars over his arm
Nicely dressed
He walks off down the street
To a friend's couch,
perhaps, or a welcoming girl

I pass him on the way home
He is still walking