Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

when I was 19 I left home
well I left my parents apt.
I moved up to northern Calif.
a surfer-hippie-student-retired
sea side town, that was then
my friend I moved into with
was a student musician he played
a violin, his main instrument among
others, I liked to jam with him on sax
flute, or harmonica, we were very poor
In those days there were no food stamps
we got something called food commodities
which actually was army surplus food,
or surplus food, like canned chicken, and
canned powdered eggs, and a big can of peanut
butter that you could use as cement or glue
we lived in a small cottage that was a block
away from a view of the Monterey bay
This is the environment in which I began my
journey in to the poetic realm, meanwhile
we made our powdered eggs, and cemented
our hunger with surplus peanut butter
sometimes we had a few bucks to make a real
meal and get a bottle of vino, When my musician
friend was off playing with other musicians, if I
did not go along, I sat and read Rimbaud and
Baudelaire, and the books I brought home from
the Junior collage, I had a hippie English teacher
that had been a San Francisco Police man, he
wrote a novel called 'Voices From the Bottom of
the World' that hardly anybody ever read but I
always liked the title of his book, it was about
his journey as a Frisco cop, until he took some LSD
and began reading books on eastern philosophy
This was my life in 1970, I was reading Be Here Now
by Ram Das, also Psychotherapy East and West by
Alan Watts, but I was still a beatnik at heart and
Kerouac was at hand Dharma Bums was always near
I became convinced a poet was the way to turn myself
into the revolution, to enter those realms that people
like Borges hinted at so well, and I jammed with my
musician friend, and we took long walks along the beach
with his dog called Pater, mostly I kept my poet thoughts
to myself, more to listen to my friend talk about music
He had been the first person I took LSD with at age 17
and we had had a very wonderful night listening to Donovan
Dylan, and Leonard Cohen, and this was now and that was
then....Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river
Wayne, played on one album with Crosby, Stills, and Nash
You who are on the road must have a code...teach your
children well...And then Rimbaud took me down to his
place by the...As I drifted on a river I could not control...

From top to bottom,
totally dug.
H

When I was nine past ten and pretty (green
in sap and bark and wood and shoot and leaf)--
when I was something young and fresh,
and taller than I'd ever been but short
compared to elder oaks, maturer maples,
pines that lobbed and lollied overhead--
when still my fruit was green and under-ripe
and nothing like the chestnuts others grew--
when I was tight, my close concentric rings
erected like a column to the sky,
and poets tripped initials in my flesh
and wrote me to a sculpted monument--
and even when the dogs would piss on me,
I was one who made the others green.

This is a memoir in a way. You described the experience and brought it alive for me. This is like a post-Cannery Row portrait of Monterey. Isn't there an army or marine base close by just north of Monterey?

Anyway, you have captured a time & a place.

Hester, and yeah things written in flesh like, yeah I wrote it as a memoir, I was going to continue from my first novel was a 17 year old teenager.There is an army base near Carmel which is next to Monterey, when I was 19 I was dealing with the military draft.I always seem to recall when I was first reading all that poetry, discovering who was out there, and who I was turned onto, drawn to, and chanced upon in libraries and book stores, and in second hand stores, or just found at some persons house that I happened to be hanging out in.Like when i first discovered the surrealist poet Philip Lamantia.I became a surrealist, but I always seem to write in various experimental ways.And so it goes, just putting words down in a line, and then trying to make the lines move.

A fascinating memoir of a time I missed. I borrowed your wonderful title for a silly little poem of mine written in 1950 ... thanks for the loan! Sue ♥♥♥

joel wrote:When I was nine past ten and pretty (green
in sap and bark and wood and shoot and leaf)--
when I was something young and fresh,
and taller than I'd ever been but short
compared to elder oaks, maturer maples,
pines that lobbed and lollied overhead--
when still my fruit was green and under-ripe
and nothing like the chestnuts others grew--
when I was tight, my close concentric rings
erected like a column to the sky,
and poets tripped initials in my flesh
and wrote me to a sculpted monument--
and even when the dogs would piss on me,
I was one who made the others green.

Rabbit,
I enjoyed reading your biographical narrative. I have memories from that era myself, but I'm a few years younger and never made it out to the california scene, unfortunately. Thanks for taking me there back in the day through your verse. I only recently went to San Francisco for the first time in my life. I could live there in a minute and I've never really been a city person... but I like SF! ....

Joel,
Your poetry in reply rocks! I just love your writing. It's great to have you back. I watched you grow up on the net and watched your writing develop through the years. I think you were 17 when I met you way back during the Scroll days.... 1998. Remember? Now my daughter is 17. Incredible how time flies. You really have grown as a poet and a person! What a joy to watch! It was great meeting you that one time and if you're ever down this way visiting your family, maybe we can get together for lunch or something. I hope your church knows how special of a pastor they have.... a poet pastor...... they're really blessed to have you there!

thank you Doreen, poetry has always been a refuge for me, as this piece shows,and San Francisco was a magnet a great place for artists, poets
and free thinkers, ect. everything changed in that area after silicon valley
took over, still beautiful San Francisco, but oh so pricey.Thank you, for
making a refuge for all the wonderful poets and writers here on Studio8.
Peace&Love, as we said in the late 60's.