Golden State
Orinda
Last Halloween on a day after rain
I trained out here to storybook-land
for a doctor's appointment
Oddly a return there
came about this year during
the High Haunted Holidays
more or less
Totally wired
We no longer have to rely
on the Pony Express
Monopoly drones
deliver goods
to one's front door
It's the kind of town with
a mosaic surfboard bench
Cat on wheels
watch out, kid
It's a good old-fashioned town
A train town a toy town
The conductor he's weary
he's stillstuck on the line
It's an old train stop
narrow gage rails,
what a gas they were
Apparently
there is some sort
of night life here
A café devoted to
cinemaphilia
There's Mike Meters
he always dresses up
Looks like for Wigstock this year,
He can never forget his childhood
Halloween
Batman's
feeling hollow inside
Super Chump
as Lex Luther often called him
A hero is someone who dies young
He made three films and did some TV
in the early nineteen-fifties
the died in a car crash
outside Paso Robles long ago
We'll always be
two wanderers on Moon River
since we fell for Audrey
Electrifying Rita Heyworth
her legs just wouldn't stop,
until one day they did
America's most eligible bachelor
Hollywood heartthrob
a man who needs no introduction
The epiphenomenal
Marilyn Monroe
No man's wife for long
Center of town
like a Cathedral
It's distinctive floor
He's Thor?
I'm tho Thor
I can't thit down
The air temperature
dropped over night,
leggings are warm
Downtown
sleepy before noon
on a cloudy day
after rain
It's a horsey place
Plenty of hills
on which
to ride your pony
Here's Barbie
a brunette with a tan
A right of passage
for young girls
Walnut Creek that a way
East of Eden
Grinning through his
crucifixtion
It's a town with
cinematic panache
Time for me to retrace
my steps
back out of town
There's Miss O'Flibberty
the town's cheerleader
it's biggest booster
It is a bit of a boostful place
it is after all quite boost-able
Redwoods in a cluster
like mushrooms
It's a redwood city
Impressions and
short term memories
form a figurative mosaic
The old Tom Cat
catches a canary
A gum ball still costs
only two-bits
Wasn't that
Francis the Talking Mule
back there
The hills roll right up
to the platform as
I await my leaving train
Epilogue
After more than a month of skulls
more than the usual quotidian number
I didn't see any at all in Orinda
But when I landed in Rockridge
I observed this pas de deux
If it isn't the slings
it 's the arrows
Unfair arguments
with existence
To, like, be
or not to be
3 November 2017
