During my time here in San Francisco, I’ve been reading a lot of Beat poetry from the 1950s. The Beats were the precursors to the hippies and their writing has fascinated me since my undergrad English days back at UCT. The group was based in San Francisco and their poetry is open, loose, unconstrained verse that takes you on quite a trip (marijuana had a big influence on their writing, it must be said). By the time Samantha and I took our road trip south towards Los Angeles, I was getting into the Beat way of thinking and found my notebook jottings slipping into free-verse form, imitating the kind of poetry I’d been reading. So here’s our road trip, in Beat form:
Into a grey and gold Frisco sundown,
beating south on a freewheeling road trip,
the Californian coastline there for the taking.
Beside me Sam with doe eyes and Cheshire smile,
laughter that fills the car, the road, the whole state
and the infectious twinkle of everything in her eyes.
Bring it on, this road, this open America filled
with the promise of promises, promises, promises.
Lighthouses prick the fog-shrouded shore all
the way down to sleazy lowdown Santa Cruz
lying in twilight’s sparkling seed reflections
where a cheap motel with paper walls will have to do
and all-you-can-eat calamari, ketchup and fries
on a boardwalk where icy air puffs off the Pacific.
Through a gaudy amusement park glittering
with the world’s oldest wooden rollercoaster,
big vomit dipper, merry-go-down and thumper cars.
Teenagers itching for rides mosey by,
drugged by the lights, the sirens,
the neat possibility of sweaty action.
A pale-blue morning on Santa Cruz sand
where boarders and paddlers, dads and lads,
groove in and out on non-existent surf
while a loudspeaking commentator
tosses cheesy jokes to this tame
middle-class, middle-aged surfer crowd.
Out on a headland the lighthouse is home to
a dinky surf museum and memorial
to the fallen wave rider whose statue
stares out beyond the ragged point
forever awaiting the corduroy
of blessed Pacific swell,
the drug, the panacea,
of oceanic amnesia.
We ease south, top down, folk rock pouring
into the crisp resin air of forested shores
lined with cliff-top mansions and beach bungalows,
Capitola, Rio Del Mar, Moss Landing, Sand City,
rolling on down, laughing, singing, breathing in
the scent of this wild wide flat and beachy coast,
to a Monterey overrun with car-rally geeks
and over-fit spandex triathlon freaks,
where we find a Victorian inn with creaky stairs,
cosy wallpapered rooms and free high tea.
Oh heck, why not ma’m, the cake, the cookies,
a drop of Chardonnay and splash of sherry too
and tipsy tumbling we join the car nutcrackers
and talk mag wheels, engine size and nod
with creased brow like motoring sages
but knowing sweet fuck all.
We wander through a sprawling aquarium
where the great white shark took a bite
out of the poor old sunfish and has been sent
back to the big old deep for classes or banishment
or just to feast on more hapless sunfish,
having acquired a bit of a taste and all.
Jackass penguins, stolen from an African home,
beside dejected looking not-so-pink flamingos
and the most gorgeous jellyfish you ever did see.
The tide-swaying kelp tank is cruised by rays
and mean-faced sharks with bruised snouts
from sailing headlong into the glass
during feeding frenzies when divers dish out
salmon steaks for those who care to grab a bite.
We drift down millionaires’ row through Pebble Beach
where golf-course greens reach to water’s edge blues
and all is crisply manicured for the putter’s delight.
The houses are supersized, greenback grotesqueries
strung like swinish pearls along the road to quaint Carmel,
perched above a sickle-moon beach where hobgoblin chic
is the urban orthodoxy and homes sport melting roofs,
nook doorways, designer moss and crooked chimneys.
Sammy loves it, but too twee for me,
so a pint of sickly sweet hot chocolate
to speed us on past Point Lobos,
the sea-milk fog oozing over kelp beds
where harbour seals play endless tag
and the cutest otter regards us
nonchalantly on his back
from a bed of brown sea fronds.
Now the coast grows grander with each bend
as we soar past priapic Point Sur Lighthouse
on a road that writhes through high pastures,
the sea far below in grim shades of pewter.
We flash beneath tall, sky-tickling redwood spires
feeling our insignificance amidst the prickly shades;
then out onto yellow moors with the earth bowing
low and slip sliding west into the grey-eyed drink.
Each buttress of muscled earth is cut by canyons
that zig and zag down the mountain in pools,
falls and thick imaginings of pubic forest.
The road hangs on by its teeth as the land
bucks and broncos to toss it over the edge
and grading-dozer engineers toil round the clock
to keep the stony sky from falling on our heads.
After hours of alpine drama and tectonic who-dunnit
the earth swallows a tranquilliser or three and calms
to a series of pretty bays, lagoons and beaches
with hollow green waves and guano-white rocks,
to San Simeon where in a cove we spy a hundred logs
that turn fairytale animated, grow snouts and morph
to blubbery elephant seals in revolting moult,
their peeling bark and baritone chatter holding
a horde of snapping tourists enthralled.
In Cambria we find a log cabin that doesn’t break the bank
and stroll in fleshy light that soon turns to soup
along the comely shores of Moonstone Bay
where hippies have sculpted oversize thrones
from wave-worn driftwood, flotsam and jetsam.
We sit to watch the antics of a million field mice
who’ve made this place the rodent Serengeti of the West.
A buzzard sweeps by and grabs fast food on the wing
while a tabby cat, normally too slow for such speedy fry,
grows perplexed by the enormity of the job at hand,
simply lays an occasional paw on the scuttling traffic
but knows he stands no chance to slay this multitude
and instead takes to musing on the meaning of it all:
life, death, global warming, survival of the fastest.
A great fog duvet cools then swallows the sun
and we cruise into town for fast Chinese
then back to our cabin, our duvet, our flesh-lit dreams.
Hearst Castle is an absolute do-or-die must –
or so says Sammy and I tag along because why not –
a sprawling pile shat atop San Simeon heights from where
a newspaper baron once surveyed the marionette world
and entertained the likes of Churchill and Chaplin,
Clark Gable and a conveyor belt of Hollywood starlets.
Picture a tin-pot American state of your craziest imaginings –
African animals, a pool with polar bears, an aerodrome –
where you can ride your horses wild and free
along shores, over sierras and through forests
that are All Yours.
The palace is a crime scene of European plunder,
a treasure trove of priceless masterpieces
liberated from the old imperial masters:
panelled walls, painted ceilings, whole facades
dismembered, boxed and shipped out west.
Egyptian sphinxes and Roman baths,
Renaissance tapestries, an Athenian nude –
the whole bang shoot transposed and resurrected
in this hallucinogenic Disneyland of the high arts.
And why in heaven not: they did just the same
to the Third World.
Our time is up,
Sam has a Frisco life
that binds her back.
The road bubble is burst.
We cut inland to the aseptic 101
and veer north into the snare of traffic,
the mucous smog of commuterville and
the dull certainty of Monday morning blues.
But our imaginations are full, charged,
ready to spin the wheel again next weekend:
Napa Valley, Lake Tahoe, redwood forests,
ah heck, just about any which way is fine,
with the top down, your companion beside you
and the great, wide-open California road
lying there begging to be ridden.
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