I killed myself on Southern California.
I ride the roller coaster to the sky
As Mansons, Wilsons, threatened Melchers, too.
I calmly cry my eyes while I do sigh
My heartfelt homeboy stranger-meeting day
Of inescapableness; seasons sold
In intermittent madness; changing times
Of sort-of-waiting warmth and totally
Expected heat. I solved equations ten-
Fold as the institutions I now live
Did gerrymander my one life as spun
To taste, and fun to show it has been done.

I figured, "Well, I'll dream myself, in due
Time, smoking mellow weed with long hair blazed
While speaking, 'Well, I figure I'll go back
To who I was before, before I was.',
While figures willingly just hate my being
In sunshined, longhaired, funny money ways."
And also figuring the typical
And lasting sludge of prudent souls gone wrong
In, yes, due time. We watch the horses run,
Who cry the sobbing sun, and feel the may-
pole stand and dance with children's noonday fun-
We're given splendid earthlands, rivers, seas.

We separate so as to glue our lives
With wiseass geographic silences.
We congregate so as to change our lives
In reassuring complicated ways.
I see my father's train and mother's camp
In dreams I took for granted, written now:
They bore my soul on Southern California.