Fresh Beauty

Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty. 

-John Muir, from "The Mountains of California- In the Sierra Foot-Hills" 1911. 

Photo: J.G. 

Ku'ing

Poem: Robert Lescatre 

photo: JG 

$.50 shampoo

$.50 Shampoo 

touch me, tease me, love me, leave me, 

half a buck worth of common sense

Julie Christie getting her hair did

flipping and flopping like a new kid

lather bound like a novel

sleekly designed, like a new age brothel

eighteen years without a bra

all you have 

is what you are 

silly rhymes 

in worn out time 

and everyone gets sleepy 

a moustache is the kind of thing 

which lures you in discreetly 

Lee Grant in anything 

leaving me to pieces

count another weekend out 

forget about the thesis 

natural light 

all I can afford

a t-shirt skirt 

posteriours preferred

what do you do with stars and stripes

one or the other

he's the type

Poem: Robert Lescatre

Photo: JG

Lost Creek Wilderness

Distant mountaintops 

as far as the eyes can see

I sit atop one. 

Poem: J.G. 

Photo: Lost Creek Wilderness-J.G. 

from XI

from XI

...

Shining spring rain 

O scud steaming up out of the deep sea

full of portents of sundown and islands, 

beat upon my forehead 

beat upon my face and neck

glisten on my outstretched hands, 

run bright lilac streams

through the clogged channels of my brain

corrode the clicking cogs the little angles

the small mistrustful mirrors 

scatter the shrill tiny creaking 

of mustnot darenot cannot 

spatter the varnish off me 

that I may stand up 

my face to the wet wind 

and feel my body 

and drenched salty palpitant April 

reborn in my flesh. 

I would spit the dust out of my mouth

burst out of these stiff wire webs

supple incautious 

like the crocuses that spurt up too soon

their saffron flames

and die gloriously in late blizzards 

and leave no seed. 

Off Pico 

Poem: John Dos Passos from the poem XI, Phases of the Moon, which is part of his book "Pushcart to the Curb" 1922.

Photo: JG

in a sense

In A Sense

most thoughts walking
and to the street beat
not listening to music so close
but maintaining exposure
to elemental truth
to the everyday hum and drum
opening upward with each egress
entitlement and enlistment
eerily enumerative
but who's counting
step it off from memory
feel it like first forays
in forrests full of foolishness
foghornish fidelities
quiet now for shames unnamed
sitting to whet with whiskey
wild wonderings while we wander
nina in native tongue
blondes blithely abound
familial memories with
this language and lassitude
what it does for my mind
(last line unintelligible)

Poem: Robert Lescatre

sieve

sieve

am I just a perception junky
wandering and wondering
through all these bits and pieces
that come through wholly
is that the fix
this randomness like the Roots
bumping empty this hamlet's
watering hole on a saturday
can you really be chasing
something you don't know
and still be considered sane
or is all real art the creation
of more horizons you didn't know
and the spell of smell

Poem: Robert Lescartre

Photo: JG

pull a string, a puppet moves...

pull a string, a puppet moves...

each man must realize

that it can all disappear very 

quickly:

the cat, the woman, the job

the front tire, 

the bed,  the walls, the 

room; all our necessities

including love-

rest on foundations of sand-

and any given cause, 

no matter how unrelated: 

the death of a boy in Hong Kong

or a blizzard in Omaha...

can serve as your undoing. 

all your chinaware crashing to the 

kitchen floor, your girl will enter

and you'll be standing, drunk, 

in the center of it and she'll ask: 

my god, what's the matter? 

and you'll answer: I don't know, 

I don't know...

Poem: Charles Bukowski, from "Burning in Water Drowning in Flame. Poems 1972-1973"

Photo: Tony Rohrbach

Youth

"Youth," said the man, "is joy. And youth is neither strength nor nimbleness, nor even youth as you described it; it is the passion for the useless." 

 

Jean Giono- from "Joy of Man's Desiring" 1935. 

Video: JG and Joe Smith. 

Holy Water

And at night the river flows, it bears pale stars on the holy water, some sink like veils, some show like fish, the great moon that once was rose now high like a blazing milk flails its white reflection vertical and deep in the dark surgey mass wall river's grinding bed push. As in a sad dream, under the streetlamp, by pocky unpaved holes in dirt, the father James Cassidy comes home with lunchpail and lantern, limping, red faced, and turns in for supper and sleep. 

Now a door slams. The kids have rushed out for the last play, the mothers are planning and slamming in kitchens, you can hear it out in swish leaf orchards, on popcorn swings, in the million-foliaged sweet wafted night of sighs, songs, shushes. A thousand things up and down the street, deep, lovely, dangerous, aureating, breathing, throbbing like stars; a whistle, a faint yell; the flow of Lowell over rooftops beyond; the bark on the river, the wild goose of the night yakking, ducking in the sand and sparkle; the ululating lap and purl and lovely mystery on the shore, dark, always dark the river's cunning unseen lips murmuring kisses, eating night, stealing sand, sneaky. 

"Mag-gie!" the kids are calling under the railroad bridge where they've been swimming. The freight train still rumbles over a hundred cars long, the engine threw the flare on little white bathers, little Picasso horses of the night as dense and tragic in the gloom comes my soul looking for what was there that disappeared and left, lost, down a path- the gloom of love. Maggie, the girl I loved. 

Jack Kerouac from "Maggie Cassidy" 1959. 

Revolutionary Letter #4

Revolutionary Letter #4

Left to themselves people

grow their hair. 

Left to themselves they 

take off their shoes. 

Left to themselves they make love

sleep easily 

share blankets, dope & children 

they are not lazy or afraid 

they plant seeds, they smile, they

speak to one another. The word

coming into its own: touch of love

on the brain, the ear. 

We return with the sea, the tides 

we return as often as leaves, as numerous 

as grass, gentle, insistent, we remember 

the way, 

our babes toddle barefoot thru the cities of the universe. 

Diane Di Prima- from "Revolutionary Letters ETC" Third Edition 1974.

Photo: JG

window sitting

window sitting   

too much to go home now 

stop for beers and bourbon at BPub 

not much going down 

'til booted bruntette with notebooks 

now someone found Black Betty 

and I sit reminiscing with my 

UNH champion on 

wondering where the boys stand 

when the next time I may skate is

just when I'll touch it 

the energy of the easiest effort 

when smiles will be passed 

with the same looks of ignorance 

connections non-verbal 

felt like electricity in watts 

missed like the voices of passion 

whatever happened to the power

you can see 

the undoubted authority 

suffused with stories of stasis 

in the midst of serendipity 

surely suspect of sour suspicion 

so safely staid

Poem: Robert Lescatre 

Phot: JG

the School Boy

The School Boy

I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the sky-lark sings with me.
O! what sweet company.

But to go to school in a summer morn
O! it drives all joy away:
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day,
In sighing and dismay.

Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour.
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn thro' with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child when fears annoy
But droop his tender wing
And forget his youthful spring?

O! father & mother, if buds are nip'd
And blossoms blown away,
And if the tender plants are strip'd
Of their joy in the springing day
By sorrow and care's dismay,

How shall the summer arise in joy
Or the summer fruits appear
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear.

William Blake, from "Songs of Experience" 1794
Photo: J.G.

sloppy organ

sloppy organ

continued messiness
surely awaits
like the harp at the end
of Bob's early laments
like my room as always
a nest of filth and ephemera
soon to be dealt with
constantly being handled
so needy, and dirty
this life
but some moments sparkle
some make you laugh by
the way they remind you of
ridiculous theatrics,
or a bad film
watching good movies to learn!
keeping reality tidy
seems a waste
I'll continue this pace

Poem: Robert Lescatre
Photo: J.G.

at the Public Market

At the Public Market
Seattle wintertime
A big shaggy bearded man
like Walt Whitman
standing still in the cold rain
with his shivering dog
a cardboard sign on him:

I AM OVER 70
MY DOG HAS THREE LEGS
NOBODY
WANTS US

The hard rain pours down
There is no tin cup

12/12/77
Ferlinghetti, from "Northwest Ecolog"

it's my sunday

it's my sunday

idle intentions imbibing
two tall T and T's
sunday so serenely supposing
my motivations mercurial
yearning yet yawning
sipped sweetness softly
understanding undulating urges
not navigable now
dropping a dime dottingly
and assuaging analysis
yes your yesterday yelps

Poem: Robert Lescatre
Photo: J.G. "Looking North from the summit of Mt. Harvard"

Hanbag

Handbag by Jenna Derge; plastic grocery bags, burlap, Tibetan prayer flags.

Heaven

Heaven

And our time just races on
dizzy like a drunken night
while the elegant seasons come and go
speaking softly of Michelangelo.
All the while, through it all like prose,
we'll maintain some sort of structure, composure,
we'll be weather'd but still a bit alive,
we'll try to dance away the days
that are dusty essays
'cause we're like that,
reckless dreamers in it together,
imagining a world that doesn't spin,
that doesn't sit angled on its axis,
of a world that just sort of hangs about
straight and quiet
like a silver ornament on a Christmas tree.

Then it would all make sense,
our numbered days timelessly decorative
like Tennyson or Poe.

Poem and Photo: James Gagnon

Piss

Emerging from a piss in the woods wearing a tuxedo? Your just asking to be caught by the lens.
Video: Joe Smith
Culprit: To tastefully remain anonymous.

slithering

slithering
so soon sunday slides
up so sweetly and
saying sophisticatedly
subtle nothings
dissuades you from
functionality
instead concentrated on
forms frothy and filling
fills not so fundamental
friends too, four and twenty
like the old rhyme goes
so will these times
and those we
held with even less effort

Poem: Robert Lescatre
Photo: JG, Airplane

The Great Mother

The Great Mother

Not all those who pass

In front of the Great Mother's chair

Get past with only a stare.

Some she looks at their hands

To see what sort of savages they were.

Gary Snyder, from the collection "Turtle Island" 1969Photo: JG, Pikes Peak.

the Pueblo

"The Pueblo sees no need for horizontal contact with the alien world without. The Anglo compulsion for lateral expansion- for more land, more wealth, influence, and power over his neighbors- is incomprehensible to him. He is rooted to a pin-prick of earth in immeasurable space. But that pin-prick is the whole universe in miniature. Nothing outside can add to what he has here; expansion can only detract from its meaning.

"Hence his contact with life is purely vertical. That is to say, his strength to live, his power to enjoy and understand life, derives from contact with its invisible forces. Only when this fails will the springs dry up, the air grow stale, and life in man wither at its root."

Frank Waters, "Masked Gods" 1950.
Photo: J.G.

lost meanings

lost meanings

talking like you sing
lost meanings on shirts
organs that you pump
milestones you jump
landings carpeted in brown
windowed but stained
for keeping families fine
still no decent kick
in Kalamazooooooooo
what do you use
situationally humorless
hugs two-tone tenacity teasers
echoed long and sorted in bins
yellowed like some paper
with purposes for permanence
fitted eagerly with flair
no lines left of lachrymals
mama's little baby loves shortening

By Robert Lescatre
Photo: J.G.

the Heart of the Sourdough

There where the mighty mountains bare their
fangs unto the moon,
There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the
snow-bright, bitter noon,
And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at
the clarion call of June.

There where the livid tundras keep their tryst
with the tranquil snows;
There where the silences are spawned, and the
light of hell-fire flows
Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violent, amber
and rose.

There where the rapids churn and roar, and the
ice-floes bellowing run;
Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood
rush to the setting sun-
I've packed my kit and I'm going, boys, ere
another day is done

*****

I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls
the whirring wings;
It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure, it's the
lure of the timeless things,
And to-night, oh, God of the trails untrod, how
it whines in my heart-strings!

I'm sick to death of your well-groomed gods,
your make-believe and your show;
I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug
shakedown in the snow;
A trail to break, and a life at stake, and an-
other bout with the foe

With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life.
the Wild that would crush and rend,
I have clinched and closed with the naked
North, I have learned to defy and defend;
Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out-
yet the Wild must win in the end.

I have flouted the Wild. I have followed its
lure, fearless, familiar, alone;
By all that the battle means and makes I claim
that land for mine own;
Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come
when I shall be overthrown.

Then when as wolf-dogs fight we've fought, the
lean wolf-land and I;
Fought and bled till the snows are red under
the reeling sky;
Even as lean wolf-dog goes down will I go
down and die.

Robert Service- 1907

barn star / granite wind

barn star

things we can't do without
where's the truth in that
identities are scrapbooks
clothes and hairstyles
pinned to the surface
dates even have lost
through counted repetition
time like a barn star
fashionable and frivolous
if precise preposterous
things we can do without

granite wind

much dreaming these days
past visions present
vivacious possibilities vying
pour venir prochain
and poorly edited at that
at least the source is known
and distrusted blithely
like the back of your hand
making the same decisions
as my earlier self
and wondering what
beaudelaire would have
for his last meal
if you are going out at
the hands of your own clock
would you want dinner or breakfast
appellations can wait
but usually get there before you
refusing uselessly to be changed
granite under water
sand in wind
all you've seen and done
like a collage of thankfulness
glazed in distance, difference, divergence
framed unwillingly between the
waning waking what do you know
and the probability of disbelief

Poems by Robert Lescatre
Painting By James Gagnon "Maroon Bells" (Acrylic on paper 25inX20in)

May Day

Hope you had a good May Day.

the prestige years

four and twenty ways wound
so loose all over
and tight in the right places
blowing billows under the lampshade
and over the porcelain sumo
reminding me in their receding depth
of the clouds an hour ago
departing doug with definition
designs on holiday inhalations
accompanied with accomplishment
personified, miles, in early expert
no one here but my keen sense
and the detective's eye
trained by Goren and Rockford
tells me they're tying rope
probably at Aubrey's
jealous a little but cognisant
of how easy it all is and small
so a trip through Brooklyn
for a sip of bourbon
something intoxicating and tall

By Robert Lescatre
Photo: Sarah Aubrey

somewhere in Colorado- photo J.G.

"Late at night, tossing sleeplessly in his bunk, the boy kept wondering. The mountain was not one great big solid rock as it appeared from below. It was a million, trillion pieces all held together without cement: some hard, some soft, in all shapes and patterns, burned brown on the outside and gray inside, some with a purplish streak, but all with a preponderant delicate pink tinge against the snow. But it had lost its benign personality. It reflected a monstrous, impersonal force that pressed him from all sides. he was suddenly, mightily afraid."
"'What keeps the Peak from fallin' down on us?' He blurted out in darkness. 'I mean-"'
"From Abe's bunk came the usual silence. Jake let out another snore. But suddenly from across the room came two testy words in answer. 'Isostatic equilibrium!' And then a moment later, 'God Almighty, this time of night!'"
"Isostatic Equilibrium: it haunted him for years, both the phrase and its ultimate meaning. And not until long afterward did he realize that each of us has his own vocabulary for even Him who made the Word."
"Thus he came to know that high realm of rock, the peak itself. Week after week the snowcap steadily receded. By day the drifts melted and trickled down into the cracks and crevices. By night the water froze and wedged the rocks apart. One heard, if only in his imagination, an eternity of sharp reports and booming explosions when the boulders finally split asunder. But to all this expansion and contraction, the rhythmic pulse of constant change, the peak remained immutable, bigger than the sum of its parts."
-Frank Waters, from "The Colorado" 1946.

Colorado Ave.

"Colorado Ave"
by James Gagnon
24in x 30in, canvas and acrylic





part-time pine street

pink skies crying
white wine and poetical prose
rain in waves
between degrees of decadence
porched solitarily
with thoughts of lifestylish leaps
left steps or long jogs
while the wind brings
sounds from street level
ambitious and homeless
every week another issue
like lou says have a tissue
melodies without microphones
found far from phoenix
where whims while wantonly
d.j. jauntily jams
no longer going over-heeled
notorious and subliminal
wine from lesser grapes last
licked from your 'stache
what does the sky say
tonight when troubles weigh
tonnage and torque turning radius
too much technique to tally
spray painted packaging
poorly purveyed petulance
made in portland
part-time pine street

poem by Robert Lescatre

augustine

augustine

high

powered by herbal rhythms

afternoon as always

in Port town part-times and petty crimes

purveyed with posits for parody

blue streaks maybe but no bleach

move on or go ogle

leave room on both sides

fraught with feathery feelings

blown out for a yard

without a fence to climb

ferns to fell a fall

terms to tell it all

with that easy dj roll

porched and puffing or

punching the 'puter

perfectly occupied pre-saturday

doin' it all for my baby

'cause she's as fine as she can be

we ensued what shy line

poem: Robert Lescatre Photo: JG, Grey's Peak

fatty

By Robert Lescatre

no such thing as lean years
golden years blah blah
they're just years
comfortable stackable flammable
maybe once I said
like so much firewood
but just as useful
some will make you warm
for a time
but the best part
is watching the pretty
curling smoke
catching glimpses of the uniformity
like so many sparks
just existing to eat
oxygen and then die

photo by J.G.

Joe's biggest catch of last summer.

Catfish- bagged with salmon eggs. Next year use cheese filled hotdogs down in Pueblo and you might catch one of these!

Not quite Spike Jonze (but close)

Beat (raw) by J.G. and Joe Smith
Video filmed and produced by Joe Smith

Spring(s) Style

Handbag made by super crafter Jenna Derge. Yes that really is tiedyed corduroy.

Ever Watchful Mother

Our ever watchful mother as seen from Waldo Canyon on a sunny Feb. day.- J.G.

Writing to Frank Waters, the author of one the finest American regionalist novels Pikes Peak, Mrs. Evelyn A. Calhoon, then living in Cortez, Colorado, observantly describes a feeling held by many of us. Her letter reflects the poignant beauty of the bare, frost-shattered hills which formed our first horizon:

..."The way those hills get to possess you in time, so that you cling to them like a child to its mother's skirts, afraid to face the competition of the outside. The way you react to the lucky escapees from that mountain spell- either a bitter, frustrated envy, or a smug prognosis that they'll be back before the snow flies. Even the doctor seems to think it a sort of treason to admit the altitude doesn't agree with some people.
"You always leave a part of you there, wherever you wander, which like an amputated limb twitches for years afterward, so that you can't forget it, ever. No matter where you go you bump into people who went to Cripple Creek once in their lives, and who inquire eagerly about men and women or the children they went to school with who are dead now or scattered from Cerro de Pasco to Baguio and the Rand. It's a fraternity with its own signs and passwords which will last until the last crumbling gallows frame on Battle Mountain falls into a water-filled shaft."

emotion leaves desires trees

By Robert Lescatre

Emotion leaves desires trees
flying east to catch the sun
bleating intermittently all the
while holding form and shape
Grace was not the first reaction
nor beauty in a truer sense
beating the devil with repetition
as if it were the only thing worth it
Dark blue to black the sky rises
the sun will be invading your taste
like citric acid on its way back
Sea landing on placidity personified
preen, preen, preen, investigate
watching the ultraviolet rays
re-coloring with the hot end
biding my time for departure north

Saint Pigeon of the City

By James Gagnon

(31x36in. canvas. acrylic, flake, pen.)

"Though they were tall of stature and handsome by their hair the lord god chose them not. But he sent and took me from behind the flock and annoited me with holy oil and made me leader."

The Master

Story by James Gagnon
Photograph by Sarah Aubrey

“I assume you’ve come to me in search of a manifesto,” the old man said as he looked up from a piece of paper lying on his desk.

“Indeed,” I replied.

“Well, I’m of no help to you. You, like the rest are wasting your time. I’m old, my voice is weak, furthermore, my pen only dabbles in Taoist poetry nowadays.”

“Your words are still strong Master. Plus I have no other choice.”

“No other choice? There are thousands of ink scribblers out there, I’m sure you could make due with one of them.”

“I’ve read their books and it’s in earnest that I’ve made this journey to you. Your words are different, they are certain, they breathe, they see, they feel.” I looked at the old man finger a small black pen.

“I no longer write the words that you speak of.”

“But you should, the people need you.”

“Who let you in here anyway? I pay servants to protect my privacy, to protect my ears from ignorant flattery.”

“Your servant Julia is my cousin and I’m far from ignorant.”

“If that be so then you should clearly understand that men change, their passions evolve, their youthful energies transform into elderly wisdoms. To expect a frail man like me to slice open a tired vein and write a new manifesto is only an ignorant plea into old, hairy, deaf ears.”

“But you must, that’s all I’ve come to say, you must write another manifesto,” I looked down at my scuffed shoes.

“As noble as your intentions may be you must understand this: my manifestos of old were written with strong muscular hands, they were crafted with healthy, keen eyes, they were written in hot, angry blood. Look at me, open your eyes boy and see who you’re pleading to!” The Master stared into my soul, “I’m old and my beard is white, I find pleasure in writing poetry that is peaceful, my daily life is far from uncomfortable, I lack nothing. How do you suppose I write another manifesto when I’ve aged and become the man that I once furiously wrote against?”

I hadn’t an answer.

“To me you are like a spring breeze that sneaks through the cracked window. You mess up my piles of paper and you sound like a giggling young school girl. Off with you, be gone! Continue your search elsewhere. If it's a new manifesto you are desperate to find, perhaps you should write your own. I’m certainly through with such.”

My mind raced places, images and words; it found pleas, faces and rank smells, it conjured up emotion and passionate realities. I stood up and my vision went dizzy. All I could do was quote aloud from one of the Master’s manifestos.

“‘And if one is certain, then he is a liar. For only those who understand the nothingness of all things will find hope. In this lies the will to change, in this lies the means necessary to progress.’”

With determined strides I walked out of the door. The bearded man slowly lowered his head and through old, watery eyes looked at his comfortable poetry scattered about his wooden desk.

passao tiempo

by Robert Lescatre

poetical thoughts
pressed between
sweet somnolence and
competing with potential energy
conservation vs. exploration
does this get accomplished
while my last sunday of the
year slips away
already at pace for pistols
sometimes abound
and bind beauty to pieces
not picked up so much as acquired
like diametrics in your soul
so Descartes can't be discarded
but like many things
time changes truths
along with everything else
in our tiny tour
one, two, three, four

"the wanderer" by James Gagnon (22x15in. drywall. acrylic, ink, charcoal, crayon.)

Feel the flow, feed the flow, glow.