california

franz ferdinand pounds in my ears; i
let a pale hand dangle out the window;
my gold-red hair, illuminated with the
southern sun, flies with the notion that
we are bound in chains here.

the music is
beating, beating into coastal winds as
we fly to the ocean. we are free in this
place called oceansvillewhatever.

the music is
blaring from car radios of people of every
colour; “hola mami” pedro with the boom
booming 1987 chevrolet, the african man
and the baseball game, and us, with our
killer suv and indie beats, staring at the
oddity of palm trees and sunshine at
each traffic stop.

this is a california morning,
shrouded in its own lazy haze.

they wake, they wake, those men of
every colour, to the sun, to the day, and
dreams, here, seem to rise like smoke
and hover over the cities, descending at
night to inhabit the minds of others, who,
leaning on their supper tables and shaking
their balding old heads, resent that they
ever dreamt at all.

today, i dream of dancing, of an old welsh
man who leans over the counter at a pub
wild with the victorious, and whispers just
to me: “quickly, now, with a flourish and a
dance!” i don’t know what it means, but he
does, and it is enough.

today, i dream of freedom. of men without
chains. of the life that could have been.

tomorrow, i will not dream at all; the thought
has its price, and i can only afford one day of
flourishing and dancing and feeling joy in the
pulsing music blaring from a shiny black jeep
in oceansvillewhatever.

---

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning and just had to write this (sucks being a writer... fits of passion wake you up at proper terrible hours). For some reason, I was thinking about my love/hate relationship with California (I went on holiday in July of 2006) in my sleep, and this came out. If you could critique it, I’d love you forever.