Los Angeles

By: Jack Tao

 

midsummer is death

the gray something is dying

but i’m not sure

so i grab the steering wheel

as fast as a hawk rushing forward

as far as i can’t see —

San Francisco

 

my imagination flashes

barefoot

i pace back and forth

along the road where they are

those ecstatic histories

a time of shattered light

from a cloud above the Golden Gate Bridge

 

it shines down on me

i see Ginsberg napping by the roadside

Jack Kerouac like a lonely angel

head down, reading drifting haiku

 

in the night, my midsummer no longer grows

inside the day-after-day machine

slamming like a truck

 

it dies now

because i leave Los Angeles

heading for the promised land