Time off for Good Behavior

Time off for Good Behavior
 

They say it’s going to rain any day now
The clouds loom and loom as lazy as manatees,
And just as sullen grey, the mountains in the distance
Glossed white at their high points are clearer
Than they’ve been in days, close enough to touch
It seems. The wind has swept all the smog and
Dirt from the basin and sent it scurrying away.

And every breath is like pure oxygen for once.
And I’m walking around stoned and grinning and
Reaching with my mind absently in 6 directions
And straight up Pico and on into the Westside
I imagine I can see the ocean glinting and
Jagged as salt crystals. I imagine I can see all the
Way down to McCabe’s. In my mind I can see
All the way to the sea. In my mind I can see

The whole world spinning. Where Doughty played
Jeanine and I sat in the dark twenty some odd years
Ago, McCabe’s a forest of strings. Past that the Joker
That is no longer there, that smelled of feet from
Decades of spilled beer, and opened before noon
So the regulars could come to sulk and fret at their
Gloom like picking at dry skin. And past that and past
That bar after bar and past that the sea though we
Never went that far.