JOY's POEMS: Utopia

UTOPIA

- Joy Krauthammer

In the Sixties

it was a Happening

when I was arrested –

along with my peace-loving friends

Suzanne Slut, Marvelous Mike, Sweet Sue,

Terrific Tobin, Larry and Ron

– for trespassing
from our row boats

onto little Peter's Island

in the middle

of the Schuylkill River, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

I told the cops that I had NO ID on me

and that my name was

Gentle Joy from Utopia.

A bit beligerant

being booked at police station

charged with trespassing

because "ducks were mating in breeding season"

and visitors

(from New York and California

on a very rainy late winter's day)

were not allowed on the little island

in the middle of the River

by Strawberry Mansion Bridge.

We friends ignored the bullhorn warnings

the river police on their boats used
chasing us

as they blasted us

and dragged us away from our boats

and the little island

in the middle of the River

in the Sixties.

I was from Utopia.

10.29.2018
https://joys-poems.blogspot.com/2014/01/utopia.html

The scary stormy car trip with flat tire from Queens College (QC), NY to Philadelphia was one filled with compassion as my mother, z"l, had just died, and dear NY friends and one from California, spent the cold rainy winter's day with me. Tobin drove us in his '56 Chevy to our friends Sue and Ron, both in Phily graduate schools.

My gentle Sixties friends of ill repute all went onto graduate schools and fine helping professions and were probably never again arrested for trespassing on islands with mating ducks.

If this River scene had been a Love-in at NY's Central Park Lake, I would have showered the batoned cops with some flowers in my hair, as I danced with the Hari Krishnas. It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.

It was the Sixties and I braved the Sit-ins, blocking the QC President's office. I was from Utopia.

I counseled Draft Dodgers. It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.

I performed Guerilla Street Theatre, and I studied with La Mama Troupe. I was from Utopia.

I marched! It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.

I hung out with SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.
Peacefully at night I hung out alone in the Queens College ceramics basement studio on campus in deep Oneness meditation with my clay, that led to my full scholarship to graduate school and my teaching adults at a Manhattan art school, Cooper Square. It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.
Beyond the Sixties and still from Utopia, I opened an art school for the City of Los Angeles and also taught children how to express themselves and create in clay.

Utopia Parkway was a short hitchhike ride away from QC; Utopia for them.

Herstory remembered for "Utopia" theme.