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