Page 34

By Jack Joseph Smith

Up the road they would wander. The Pacific Coast in nine- teen sixty two. This is where the kin of life lost lives that dream. There was a horror in those young days, drunk alaways, yet sober as hell. Young broken dreams already made open eyes. Lingered a stone's throw, ownership power was so in- ward. There was so much money that passsing through it was not a sin. Backgrounds rich and real poor; we took nothing. And swift as sails done ramparts we did rise; although crack- ing along the shore, there was a departure, of life's song, meaning nothing. And sorry for the remembering is the great quilts left behind, laid out like fodder and hardly did we snap. It was young and the way to be strong was to be away. My skirt was a jesuit joy his an ash. There was no death; as parents were a stream. David Mike BROWN

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The scan-verified page looks back on Pacific Coast youth in 1962 as wandering, money, class mixture, drunken horror, and remembered departure, with marginal names lingering below the prose.

The handwritten edits make the page feel like a worked-over closing memory rather than a clean draft. Its movement from lost lives that dream through ownership power, quilts, strength as being away, and the bottom names gives the collection an elegiac, unstable ending.

Claude

An elegiac closing prose-poem looking back on 'The Pacific Coast in nine- / teen sixty two', 'where the kin of life lost lives / that dream'. The voice holds youth and ruin together - 'drunk alaways, / yet sober as hell', 'Young broken dreams already made open eyes' - and dwells on a paradox of class and abundance: 'There was so much money that passsing through it was / not a sin. Backgrounds rich and real poor; we took nothing.' The remembering carries guilt and elevation at once ('sorry for the remembering is the great / quilts left behind', 'the way to be strong was to be away'), culminating in the strange line 'My skirt was a jesuit joy his an ash. There was no death; / as parents were a stream.' Below the prose, clear marginal names - 'David', 'Mike', 'BROWN' - linger like a dedication or roster. Source spellings ('alaways', 'passsing', 'jesuit') are preserved.