When I'm bombed, I stretch like bubble gum.
-Mark Lanegan
We sat out on the deck and watched the pass
Of fast and flashy cars move slowly down
The crowded street--why do they buy those price-
Intensive cars with a thousand ponies
Beneath each hood--to sit at lights each night
Impressing pedestrians?
Those cars would
Prefer the open, loping spaces of
The desert, only a few miles away
To the noisy hubbub of some desperate night.
Those people have turned their ponies into
Wads of chromed-up, supercharged bubble gum.
A west-coast weekend on Rodeo Drive
With old friends from the old world, spending this,
My final night in L.A. watching cars
That look like tethered ponies, tending to
The busy, inner, empty feeling--I
May never see the sun go down again
On Sunset, but I'm glad I saw it once.
One tethered pony roars, screams, and takes off--
The falling sun left behind--to the night
And the desert--headed for Las Vegas,
But until then, that pony is free to
Tear across the quickly cooling desert
As it was surely meant to do.
I raise
My glass, a toast, and look back to the sun. | 
