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

Closing-voice prose poem - up the road they would wander, Pacific Coast 1962, the kind of life where you lived in areas. Young broken dreams, rich and real poor backgrounds, a Jesuit skirt and an ash, parents were a stream. Retrospective seal on the notebook's youth material.