LONG BEACH BREAKDOWN
“Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA.”
– Jack Valenti
The unclocked cruelty of time,
saudades: a yearning for yearning.
That everything you ever wished
or cared for sinks or disappears
tells time where it can go.
What you’ll get isn’t what you see
at all. If Southern California goes
the way of Santa Ana, over 700 homes
burnt to the ground from San Diego
to the Mexican border, the winds fueling
wild fires in the form of global climate
change: fires burn faster than ever before.
New flooding in New Orleans leaves water
waist-high in certain streets. The rich
will lose their homes in California, the poor
go down in Louisiana. What do we do?
Where do we go from here? What works,
what loves? Who, in nighttime operations,
can win when nooses make the news?
You know the lucid look of it: the sheen,
the products pitched and tossed like
lakefront huts in moody, wind-washed nights,
a storm antithesis to why you live offshore.
The cruelty of time melts down to this:
You lose all track of you and you and you.
You do forget how still time stands still
the very minute you’re no longer in it.
Time knows it’s just a big old funky fake.
Al Young
Copyright © 2008 by Al Young
