Issue 15, January/February 1998
Perry Sams - Poem

What's stranger than a holiday alone?
So kicked out of Mike's house, maybe even
his life by his new sweet blonde wife and steaming
mad as I imagined them grabbassing with friends
in the shady backyard barbecuing beef, and the LA library
closed after I walked all the way there of course
it was the 4th of July and Sams, you wanted
'independence', you got it. Set adrift without
an anchor or compass on the road like all your
chinoed heroes and noone writes enough about
the dull spots in the road the speedbumps
the lumps in the throat that aren't potatoes,
friend, but hunger.  Fed up sick tired of lying
to myself washed up on the beach Venice, where
I swallowed my pride followed my starving nose
asked a gleaming buppie couple to share fried chicken 
and potato salad not knowing how this happened how
to twist the lonely out of my hollow gut the next day 
to San Fransisco, maybe, without a car or a friend,
LA is light on angels heavy on foot vortex sucking 
heat and blisters sand in your food.   
Did Jack really do it this way?  When roaddrift
and hunger for company mix there's nowhere
to go but deeper and hope the earth embraces
you in her hairy thighs and think about your hopeless
life and walking off the hangover and hoping you
don't hit the edge somewhere on this Bongo Coast
and walk right off into the surf of synapses  
where the idea of home collapses the World can
just swallow you up on some imperceptible
richter scale and it took Jack a few more
years to get this sad this bleak and look
at where the rucksack revolution drowned in sorrow 
at the House that Jack dreamed sliding off into the ocean
and so you go to a bar to cadge a drink.

It's no fun drinking on an empty stomach,
probably that was Jack's biggest mistake.