1960s postcard from the Old Mission Hotel Gardens in Santa Barbara.
All of these tourists
In their summertime drag.
I feel something insidious,
Some old brand of melancholy,
A penchant for escape—
Just as the walls are peeling paint
To reveal underworld, hot & oozing.
Even the stucco is sweating.
Something is creeping,
Wisteria thick with bees
Curling round the handrail.
These nights are balmy & eternal
And it’s effect is something literary,
A phrase lifted from a Blixen paperback
On the rack
In line at
The Safeway check out.
Seems like a life sentence,
Muddled in this heat stroke lethargy,
Waiting for cheap oranges.
These days I feel too civilian
I think
I’ll pack a bag
And hop a Greyhound
God knows where to
But it’s always better than here
Don’t let it get too routine
Don’t let the mind stall
Gotta get out
Before the honey is too thick
And the wine too fermented
Gotta get free.
Irish goodbyes
Run viscous in the blood.
Guess that’s just what we do—
Think I read it somewhere once,
Something beatnik.
Regardless, it’s
A familiar impulse
But I never quite knew if it was
Instinctive in me,
Feral
Or just a faded hand-me-down
Plucked fresh from the wash lines.