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Jack Kerouac ( March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist and poet of French-Canadian descent. All of his books are in print today, including The Town and the City, On the Road, Doctor Sax, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, The Subterraneans, Desolation Angels, Visions of Cody, The Sea Is My Brother, and Big Sur.
Visit his website to learn more about his life and writing…. http://jackkerouac.com/
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LET’S PRETEND
When we’re young we run
and play “let’s pretend” to be
anything and everything – just for fun.
Our imagination is the key.
As we grow up we are told
by others who are very serious
That reality is time and space and gold;
that games and visions are delirious.
Life goes on and we agree
what other people think is best:
to play our part in reality
just like them and all the rest.
Every game has a start,
a middle and conclusion.
When the time comes to depart
just make a new illusion!
You are Spirit ! Life Eternal !
You’ll make a future and new friends !
Through your dreams you are immortal;
like children playing “let’s pretend”.
— by Lawrence R. Spencer
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Adrian Mitchell (24 October 1932 – 20 December 2008) was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British anti-authoritarian Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country’s anti-Bomb movement. Mitchell sought in his work to counteract the implications of his own assertion that, “Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.” In a National Poetry Day poll in 2005 his poem “Human Beings” was voted the one most people would like to see launched into space. “Most people ignore most poetry / because / most poetry ignores most people.”
Since the Vietnam war nothing has really changed except that war-mongers have become more sophisticated about sanitizing acts of mass-murder with remote controlled drones and smart bombs. More “enemies” are killed per square “peace keeping soldier”. Listen to a poem performed by Adrian Mitchell in the video below. Fill in the word “Vietnam” with the word “Iraq” or “Afghanistan” or “Iran”, etc.. Different year…. same old shit.
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Here are a few of the wonderful *Haiku poems attributed to Bash (they may not have retained their purity in the English translation, but you get the flavour of them):
An old pond!
A frog jumps in-
The sound of water.
____________
The years first day
thoughts and loneliness;
the autumn dusk is here.
____________
Poverty’s child –
he starts to grind the rice,
and gazes at the moon.
____________
A weathered skeleton
in windy fields of memory,
piercing like a knife
____________
*DEFINITION OF HAIKU: Haiku is one of the most important form of traditional Japanese poetry. Haiku is, today, a 17-syllable verse form consisting of three metrical units of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. Since early days, there has been confusion between the three related terms Haiku, Hokku and Haikai. The termhokku literally means “starting verse”, and was the first starting link of a much longer chain of verses known ashaika. Because the hokku set the tone for the rest of the poetic chain, it enjoyed a privileged position in haikaipoetry, and it was not uncommon for a poet to compose ahokku by itself without following up with the rest of the chain.
The name Basho (banana tree) is a sobriquet he adopted around 1681 after moving into a hut with a banana tree alongside. He was called Kinsaku in childhood and Matsuo Munefusa in his later days.