For my dear friend and fellow poet David L. who doubtless reveled in this awesome moment in the midst of his "California Dreamin" as much as I did.
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Neil Armstrong, July 21, 1969
I
That late July, in the terrains of endless swimming pools, barbeques, and patios ,
Sunset living's apogee dropped like flaming grit wrapped in Santa Ana winds
Shrieking past real estate developers--exchanging greek handshakes on high hills
Above their freshly terraced earthworks, their snaking freeways--who gazed through binoculars
Out to beaches thick with genuine beach boys and surfer girls--not yet hard body extras on a set--
As if all the youth from every suburb had driven west to crash upon waves after the splashdown
Of the smoldering capsule into the North Pacific ocean, bearing its ash-gray moon rock cargo.
II
Imagine the general elation in country club grill rooms that blazing summer afternoon,
The shared awe of members that surpassed even the surprise most executive golfers feel
When one of their kind, despite a three martini handicap, hits a hole-in-one on a blue moon.
Apollo 11 had landed. Angels hovered profitably over Disneyland. Across the Sunbelt, from
Houston to Los Angeles, hung semblances of UFOs, or Goodyear blimps from reverse-Earth:
Blinking mirage blurs adrift over photochemical smog: ghostly zeppelins from a detonated future.
III
So long ago. Since then only building up, and moving out, relieves these once lunatic dreamers.
Witness the eclipse of golden-eyed objectivists still putting golf balls on worn astroturf, atop
Spurs or deep into gulches, out of which coyotes emerge from dens at dusk to feed and breed.
Yet their medicated offspring have left for gated deserts where sprinklers turn themselves on….
No newspapers to clutch in wireless morning heat, no stray glimpses of moon-eyed progenitors.
Stealing water from neighbors, Apollo's children flip dream houses like pancakes on fire.
John F. Walter, Seville, Spain, September, 2007
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Comments: 112
The last line is most definitely a complete one line poem. Please post this to The Poet's Weekly Muse, John.
There are gems strewn throughout this poem of big indictments. It grabs at the bigness of this sprawling babylon.
This poem brought to mind these lines from a poem I wrote called "Drifting"
We were drifters.
Our voices had fallen on hard times.
No one heard us
As our shabbiness hid our nobility.
We wandered north during the summer
To catch the warm rains.
We went to the eastern shore and worked
Odd jobs along the docks.
The western shore was primed with the madness
Being the edge of the world.
There was little work.
There were strange conversations on the beaches
In tents and lean-tos.
Big Sur was a paradise of recycled cowboys.
Accountants (dressed like cowboys);
Hippies (dressed like accountants).
Most were harmless enough.
When the hard times found us,
We were in the endless density of Southern California
Bled altogether as a child's watercolor left in the rain.
You have Armstrong saying 'mankind' both times - I have read that that was indeed what he thought he'd said.
Hitch-hiking, I watched the sky that night, like Sting, as it happens, from a field somewhere in the middle of the Irish Republic. Incredibly it didn't rain. I strained my eyes at Apollo's sister but saw no sign of men.
An excellent poem. Of course I'm not familiar with the beaches of California or the gated communities in the deserts (except from films), but I feel the heat and applaud the tone.
Check your quote though John, me thinks you have one too many "mankinds" in there.... :-)
Thanks.
A poem of superb beauty, resonating with a feeling of forever, of the great experience--life.Each line gives an image.Wow!! You know how much this article affected me the first time I read it. A portal of California world and such understanding. The poem you picked is so rich! you expressed in such sweet, simple words about the greatest things.
Welcome to California !!!
:)
This is definitely a keeper John. Thanks.
Mariana, I'm glad this poem pleased a Santa Barbaran. Remember Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles? That's where I got the reference to the 'golden-eyed', whose children's children now do not recall their Midwestern grandparents.....referring only to the white folks that flooded into the Southern California region in the first part of the century, apotheosized by Nathaniel West in the early apocalyptic novel, "THE DAY OF THE LOCUST (1940)--an inspiration for this poem.
Thanks John for reading me and the praise. Coming from a sage poet such as yourself, I am honored.
Umar, I loved this poem Drifting. I think our two poems are complementary, in their own way, of the era. I hope you post this to your website on Gather, not just this comment thread, because it is really special. I love this line: " The western shore was primed with the madness/being the edge of the world." You were a young adult then, whereas I was only eleven, looking up from weeding the grass and thinking about the Dodgers' overall win loss record when my Mom called us in to watch the fuzzy black and white images of Armstrong on the moon.
Thanks for the excellent comment, Mike. Someone else commented on my error with the Armstrong quote, and I fixed it (I posted the poem and went to the gym for a few hours, and came back and said, uh oh) even if indeed Neil thought he said that. Man, I wish I'd hitchhiked through Ireland back then: I'm going to try to visit Dublin this summer. I love your reference to Phaeton, the solar chariot--you clearly know your mythology!
I'm glad you liked the poem, Cheryl.
Canoga Park, John? Hell, we're practically neighbors. I grew up behind Cortez Park in West Covina, forty minutes away (well, on a day without any traffic, which is never I guess nowadays!)
Thank you for such an accolade, my sweet friend Bhawana. I was trying to use Southern California as a specific example of the entire Southwest that was experiencing the maximum Sunbelt rancher growth and expansion back then, which really was the end of the Baby Boomer era and the beginning of the dystopia that came along with the aging of these wondrous new suburbs in the Seventies and a flight to the "exurbs" in the Eighties and Nineties. Now Los Angeles has extended itself a hundred miles into the Mohave desert, and up into the Grapevine: A hallucinatory growth of a megalopolis since World War II.
It pleases me immensely you caught the historical scope of the poem, Parul.
Thank you, Wilhelmine. Wonder, lost innocence--absolutely. Summer of Love turned to the ugly Demo convention of '68, Vietnam was the nightmare war that Westmoreland and the Rand Corporation couldn't win, the " best and the brightest" were either fighting (and getting wounded or dying) there, or "turning on and tuning out", to quote the egomaniacal jester of LSD, Timothy Leary. And at the same time as all this was happening with the moon landing, Charles Manson and the Family were trekking goulishly down from Spahn ranch to claim fresh 'helter skelter' victims in the canyons above Sunset Boulevard. A weird time to grow up, and for the Sixties folk at Gather, and even stranger era in which to come of age, peace sign on your back pocket, Laugh In on the TV set.
First allow me to thank you for the dedication; I'm truly honored, my friend.
With that being said, allow me to also say "Holy shit, John!". The last line of this giant of a poem just blew me off my chair.
"Stealing water from neighbors, Apollo's children flip dream houses like pancakes on fire."
Jesus H. Christ does that say it all!!! Your work here is historic and deeply meaningful to everyone, not just us fellow SoCal boyz and you have used your gift of word artistry to paint an entire era so well. Your words hit me like a 2 x 4....ahhhhh....make that a 1 1/2 x 3 1/2 these days. I have been spending the last few days using Google's latest toy, the "Street View" of their map function. Talk about taking a virtual tour of one's life. I toured my old neighborhoods in Reseda, Canoga Park, San Ramon (east side of SFO bay). I toured my old baseball parks (they're STILL there), schools, places I worked and visited, old girlfriend's houses, beaches and even went right through the famous "Malibu Tunnel". If you haven't used this new toy, you simply MUST, as they have shot almost every street in and around LA County.
If you want to see the house I grew-up in, you can just go to Google Maps...
Google Maps
...type in...
"7794 Minstrel Ave, Canoga Park Ca 91304"
...click onto "Street View" and our old house is the one with the SUV parked in the driveway and the small make-shift carport with the corrugated roof that appears to be coming apart. The carport wasn't there back when I was, as that side of the house was where I perfected both my fastball and curveball and "made-out" with my girlfriends at times. Our address was really 7758 Minstrel Ave. (you can see it on the curbside if you zoom-in) but Google hasn't perfected the address deal yet, so it's listed as 7794 by mistake.
Speaking of that era, I even went back and visited the ole Manson digs at Spawn Ranch while I was trolling around the Valley. The field where the old movie ranch used to sit, can be seen now as just another open field in the foothills on the west valley. Right before the group went on their killing spree, I attended a party up in neighboring Box Canyon at a place called "Fountain of the World". This was one of their hangouts (though I don't remember seeing any of them there that night) and I stayed long enough to go up on Skeleton Rock and inside the ranch-type building and smoke a joint or two. You can see a couple pics of the entrance and Skeleton Rock as it appeared back then here:
Fountain of the World
You can see how it appears today by using the Google "street view" function and typing-in the following address:
560 Box Canyon Rd, Canoga Park, Ca 91304
You might have to rotate the "street view" pic a bit, but you'll be able to see the entrance where the white wall has been busted down and behind it you can catch a glimpse of "Skeleton Rock" behind some trees.
I didn't stay long that night, as the company kinda creeped me out a bit. Later we would learn that a couple bodies were found on the property (at the bottom of some well?) and I was glad I left that night. Yes, I had a rather unique upbringing in a unique area of the world and during a VERY unique period in history. We both did, eh John?
Just a quick note....It was right on the other side of this ridge where Fountain of the World/Box Canyon and Spawn Ranch were located that Rocketdyne tested all the rocket engines and some missiles as well. It was quite a contrast....here was the end of an era of unreal scientific achievements, war, peace, love, flower children, murder and mayhem, sexual liberation, cultural change, social enlightenment and race riots and on Friday/Sat nights we would watch the rockets blast off behind these same hills as they left behind all their colors and contrails as each section of the rockets would separate in flight.
The time in which you reference with your wonderful poem was a time of extreme conflictions that we oft times look back on with great fondness, when the truth is, it was a horrible time of utter confusion mixed with an entire generation that sacrificed its very soul in order to be heard. I personally, didn't know whether to be proud of my country, hate it or somehow find the strength to understand that we were in a period of great change that would reveal itself as some earth shattering clash of generational tectonic plates; the word "upheaval" comes to mind here and as I read your work, John.
I also enjoyed this ditty....
"Out to beaches thick with genuine beach boys and surfer girls--not yet hard body extras on a set--"
Indeed my friend, indeed! I'm waiting for the next reality show entitled:
"American Surfer"
It really doesn't matter if they are real surfers, just as long as we can market them in that fashion. What the hell has happened to our soul? What has happened to the American Soul? Somehow we've traded-in John Wayne for Brad Pitt, Paul Newman for Tom Cruise, Audrey Hepburn for Pamela Anderson, Marilyn Monroe for Paris Hilton and somehow we actually believe we have advanced as a culture. But this is a subject for another article, not as a comment on yours.
Thank you for taking all the deep emotions and memories and neatly, and all-so deftly, placing them exactly where they belong in order that we can all come visit this work of yours, sit for a while, contemplate our lives and our times, and go away with a better understanding, and the feeling that we have seen this time through another person's eyes. THAT is what reading is all about to me, Amigo. It's a chance to learn from another person's "take" on things. To say the least, it was a complete journey and I thoroughly enjoyed what the "Tour Guide" had to say along the way.
Thank you, Juan!
P.S. You just have to do the "Google Street View" deal. What a gas!
The last line:
Stealing water from neighbors, Apollo's children flip dream houses like pancakes on fire.....
superb...I willl be back again, must go ...
BTW: an excellent prose-poem that could so easily have been set in Oz ... except for Dizzyland.
This really speaks to me - I was in Europe and not aware of this momentous moment weeks later in August when I was coming back via ocean liner and heard of this at that time - when I heard about it, it was the same week Manson and family killed Sharon Tate; I was on a boat with a young Varsovian fellow who'd clinched Poland's fencing title and was actually going to SEE Polanski the next week.
Your poem speaks to the irony of all the bourgeous going about their humdrum, fancy, messy little lives, pretty and neat as a pin, but NOT - all the while the world and moon revolved around a much larger universe.
It was that kind of irony I glimpsed on the ocean liner - that Armstrong and company achieved something so great, while all around so much was falling apart.
I was one of those blonde tanned beach girls in L.A. but I went back 'home' to the U.K. just before and was on a ship going through the Panama canal about the time of splashdown, i left Los Angeles on the canberra the 13th July 1969.
How wonderful that you commented back - yes, indeed I truly love Ray - I haven't seen him around lately though...hope he's ok - my husband's family was amongst those folks moving here from Kansas to purchase and begin a ranch and orchard! I'll forward this - he'll certainly enjoy it as he is also a California guy! Salud.
"That late July" I was on the opposite coast from you John S. and David, on the Eastern shore, in Wildwood, NJ. But I remember my father making me sit down to watch a piece of history in the making.
And when I read these lines,
"Out to beaches thick with genuine beach boys and surfer girls--not yet hard body extras on a set--
As if all the youth from each suburb had driven west to crash upon waves after the splashdown
Of the smoldering capsule into the North Pacific ocean, bearing its ash-gray moon rock cargo."
I couldn't resist adding this picture of our resident Gather surfer:
The dream of traveling to the moon has fueled the human imagination throughout history. From the Greek satirist Lucian, who wrote a literary satire on moon voyaging in the second century, to Daniel Defoe, Edgar Allan Poe, and of course Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
But for some reason I was most reminded of Robert Heinlein, who brilliantly anticipated scientific and technological advances, while also embodying the culture and politics of Southern California, especially as they unfolded during the 1960s .
While most noted for his fiction, Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, Destination Moon, and Time Enough for Love, your poem reminded me of his story, "And He Built a Crooked House", about a mathematically-inclined architect named Quintus Teal who has what he thinks is a brilliant idea to save on real estate costs by building a house shaped like the unfolded net of a tesseract.
"Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world.
They will usually concede a basis for the accusation but point to California as the focus of the infection. Californians stoutly maintain that their bad reputation is derived solely from the acts of the inhabitants of Los Angeles County. Angelenos will, when pressed, admit the charge but explain hastily, 'It's Hollywood. It's not our fault—we didn't ask for it; Hollywood just grew.'
The people in Hollywood don't care; they glory in it. If you are interested, they will drive you up Laurel Canyon '—where we keep the violent cases.' The Canyonites—the brown-legged women, the trunks-clad men constantly busy building and rebuilding their slap-happy unfinished houses—regard with faint contempt the dull creatures who live down in the flats, and treasure in their hearts the secret knowledge that they, and only they, know how to live."
LOL! Far out! Thanks for the plug, B! That's like so righteous of you, for sure. ;)
Very interesting poem, breath-taking in its cosmological expanse and deeply profound in its hydra-headed impact. It required several re-reading attempts to get at the core, which is a hallmark of a complex set of thoughts, the more intellectually challenging they are, the more attractive they seem !
Ed Nudelman's comments got me thinking -indeed, America's space ventures will remain in human memory as defining moments, even though the impetus today has gone down considerably, and unceasing diversions seem to be diluting the overall efficacy of those sci-fi like adventures. Since I regularly get Nasa newsletters and updates on technologies being used by them, it causes me a lot of heartburn to realise that US lost its supremacy for reasons I can't convince myself as inevitable.
This was a hugely successful job of compressing forty years of history into a poem, not a single loose word ! Bravo !!
Warmest
Max
Very well done !!!
The last verse of section two, 'Blinking mirage blurs adrift over photochemical smog: ghostly zeppelins from a detonated future.' brings us down to Earth (pun intended) as is perfect transitional statement to lead us into the awful realities of today's world shown in section 3. It is both ironic and sad you call people from the 'Man On The Moon' era lunatic dreamers, because of the lexical root meaning of lunatic and because we all thought that this gave us the right to seek new hedonistic heights without realizing the damage such moving forward has caused to our environment and our society. It makes me sense you are saying the return from the moon landing was a pivotal point in causing us to no longer reach for the heavens, but that of a downward spiral of various man made technological griefs here on Earth.
"The man on the Moon"
era shudder at the
realization that all
was for nought.
(Interesting new icon, by the way!)
Brilliant writing that makes me glad to come here and find things like this, however difficult the process.
Dude!
10 4 u
I watched on a black and white screen the " American glory" in 1969 when I was almost 14 years old. But one day, when I was older I was reading the book " ALTERNATIVE 3 by Leslie Watkins and even today I wonder how much truth was about this landing on the Moon and the " destiny" of the 3 astronauts.
1969 was a year of great change in this country. You do memory well and the words flow smoothly over emotion and reality. My thanks.
What do our grandchildren dream of for the future?
My congratulations! Your beautiful piece of art is currently featured on The Sound Of Poetry Review through Sunday, April 27, 2008. Please, keep submitting your poetry. Many thanks, the TSOPR Editor.
I can't believe it's taken me this long to come by this one. I must have missed the notification, as I am subscribed to you.
At any rate, here I am at long last.
Even though I was some thirteen years off the birth pace from seeing the great moment you write about, I can recognize the sense of loss and bemused deflation within this poem's crafty and crafted lines, "Blinking mirage blurs adrift over photochemical smog: ghostly zeppelins from a detonated future/...Stealing water from neighbors, Apollo's children flip dream houses like pancakes on fire."
There's no amazement lost, but the distance between event and normality was only covered returning home. A leap forward the led nowhere.
I for one find it interesting that in recent American history there have been three moments when the cultural climate was right for there to have been significant rioting; 1968 (chicago) 1992 (LA) and 1999 (seattle). And two times out of three the disconted winds were shifted by events of mass distraction; The moon landing (1969) and the war on terrorism (2001). Neither of which did anything but keep the population quiet while the country sunk a little further down.
We dreamed the dream of Gods..conquering and conquests extending beyond that boundary of Earth's atmosphere,where conditions so hostile to carbon based creatures can only mean death.
Technologically the missions were mind numbing fantastic fantasy realized! Since ancients first cast eyes heavenward ,to Jules Verne's speculation in "From Earth to Moon and all the odes and human failings attributed to the only silvery natural satellite of the earth the mystery would be unveiled. Heady stuff!
Hubris born of the lust of possession ,dominance and propriety knows not fear. All to gain nothing too lose..whatever the cost ..damn the torpedoes ,full speed ahead.
The last great unknown,the last westward ho! the Space Aged Louisiana Purchase.
The competition was for understood ownership of the moon but more than that it was of Global Dominance..we turned further outward ignoring those ills of the living Earth and peoples that cried for attention ,that begged for healing.Space was sterile ,untouched and silent but in the end not impressed.
The prize realized the novelty soon dulled. Generations following would rather have tangible ,touchable excess rather than a hyperbolic ideal. Are the situations really any different if in the end the result is exploitation? Stratospheric excess is just that!
Thank you ,John Walter ,for this amazing 'song' of examining a complex period in history that I did experience,that I did take pride as an impressionable youngster ,that I now in my experienced adulthood wonder 'why'?
I absolutely loved this, John, from the gritty, SoCal desert winds to the Al Czervek "members" you know so well from your own experience with them, to the desperate clinging to a dying dream, a vision that collapsed under it's own flawed weight. And what of the newest oasis in the desert?
One thought I had was that if we learn to conserve our resources, we could actually have something left over for others, etc. Anyway, I know this is a totally unrelated comment to your article but I did want you to know that you got me thinking....so thanks!
I've read a lot of articles about this event, but you, John, have taken it to new heights emotionally. Love your style. Cheers!
"genuine beach boys" - a truly inspired Southern California reference to awaken the good vibrations and Sloop John B in all of us. A priceless shaft of musical light to illuminate that incredible decade we call the Sixties. So this is where we land after dozens of hearings of "When I Grow Up to Be a Man!"
"where sprinklers turn themselves on..." - the onslaught of automation and its ramifications for modernity. A hard rain's gonna fall, and that part of our lives may get soaked! Shelter, please!
"wireless morning heat" - the new trend toward breakfast at Starbucks, Wall Street Journal at hand, we become the au courant crowd with trendy latte an arm length away.
You've mined some images from the Route 66 of the American soul. A road trip for the mind, past glories fondly recalled.
From Simon and Garfunkel comes the evocative line from one of their songs, "They've all gone to search for America." Yet you bring us closer than any other in insightful poetic renderings not likely to be forgotten.
Here are riptides of American experience, just as formidable as those stretched along the Pacific coastline at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Shall we make it to the beach, or be washed away or dashed upon the craggy rocks? The next scene unfolds....
Moved to the edge of a continent, we contemplate vast contours and jagged edges of the metaphysical, topographical and mental depths of the American interior. Only a small part may be evidenced by some observers, but you draw far more than the tip of this intellectual iceberg. An avalanche to fill many a crevasse!
The Grateful Dead once sang, "What a long strange trip it's been!" Ah, but Dylan told us, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Somehow, John you have exposed some inexpressible gleanings from this American historical/cultural landscape.
And just now we may begin to decipher it all thanks to this all-encompassing poem.
A '59 Cadillac evokes much the same response. It's the fins. They send us to the stratosphere, especially in pink, turquoise or poetic white. Quite a drive along the way, even if we may find ourselves somewhat "Lost In Space." Or, have we just landed?
I felt so lucky to be alive, to be an American, to be a witness to this immense event.
You have captured all that I felt and more, as if you could see into the mind of that young woman and so many others. This poem, this work, says so much about a time when the world was still ..... possible.
I was older then, I am much younger now. ;o)
Your poem is top notch as usual and entirely accessible for this socal gal. I've missed your writing immensely.
Ben Jonson 1573–1637
from
Cynthia's Revels, Act V., Sc. vi.
THE HYMN OF HESPERUS
Queen, and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep :
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.
Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose ;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close :
Bless us then with wishd sight,
Goddess excellently bright.
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal shining quiver ;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soever :
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.
I'm sorry I missed your birthday my dear - this is the big one huh!!! Ok well, the 50's go by faster than the 40's - believe me...so, I started a group called maybabies.gather.com
Please join and when I win the lottery all of us are going to have a big fiesta somewhere - exotic!!!
Have a great day and let me know what you are doing to celebrate...you know I've stretched my May 9th b-day to the limit - still having fun even if I am painting walls white and all that - in between I am painting some out there art work like a fool!!!
Ok this guapa fulana is going to go now wishing you loads of wonderful moments! Salud.
I was trying to say previously that you know how sometimes, somethings remind you of how it used to be back in those days....something reminded me of back in those days times and I remembered this marvelous piece of yours....I wish sometimes that there was a time machine and i could hop on it and witness some of the amazing things in history.....but then again I realise I do have a time machine.....in you, an amazing perceptive writer who sketches suhc vivid and complete images of the times or the tale he talks about that one feels he/she is a part of it witnessing and experiencing it on his/her own...
imagery and encapsulated histories fast-forwarded through
the "up....up....and away" mania that impulsed the expansionist
excessiveness now left with nary a place to dream of that we
haven't basted with martini bars or water-parked for the shiny
dreams of developers' outreach to overextend humanity.
This phrase (and so many more) "ghostly zeppelins from a
detonated future" alerts to the time bombs inside every
upgrade.....the pre-planned obsolescence we wield
for instant gratifications that lose their thrill before
we even recognize the impact of the former "firsts"
and the futuristic zeal that forgets sometimes to
consider the solidity of the landfills that someday
may be the foundation of everything we call "home".
The profit-hungry side-glances that supercharged the
neon momentums you prance so eloquently now impact
iron hoizons fueled by tanks that tremble at their coming
extinction....one way or another. Perhaps the red hues
of Mars will be the lure of familiar tinges for
future stark complexes that will "remind" new buyers
of "home".
Amazing poem, Darlin'!