“That Fool was the Terror of Highway 101″
March 10th, 2006Save as PDF
Way, way back in the day (I’m thinking 1956 or -7, but I haven’t checked), a group called The Cheers came out with "Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots." It was about a teen rebel who roared up and down California’s Route 101 on his big hog and came to a bad end.
A few years ago I was in California myself on business and as I drove down to Silicon Valley in my rental car, something about the light and the landscape made me feel profoundly morose. This poem is my effort to articulate that moroseness. What it has to do with the song ain’t exactly clear except that both it and my poem use Rte. 101 as their setting. Once again, I pin it all on the subtle and interesting workings of the unconscious.
You can also hear me read this poem on an audio post.
“That Fool Was the Terror of Highway 101”
From “Black Denim Trousers” by The Cheers
[Words and music by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller]
Driving south from downtown San Francisco
on the way to San José
(another song altogether),
just as sunlight shone through fog
and fell upon a hillside
ranked with houses,
rising and falling,
rising and falling
as the seismic terrain rose and fell,
I felt such pity — for myself, I think,
or maybe for the people here
where geology’s an obvious metaphor
for life, or simply memory.
The beauty here,
created by the awful
grinding
of the floating crust of earth,
may be too blatant a reminder
of the process that extrudes it.
The way the light
slants down upon those houses –
Hopper knew
diagonals are sad.
But neither he, nor you,
nor I
knows why.
March 15th, 2006 at 11:09 am
It’s nice to quote the song, but I wish you hadn’t given me so much explanation… or felt you needed to, as you salute the (mysterious) id. (Hey! this is making me kind of poetic.)
Shakespeare didn’t tell me “this is my attempt to portray a morose Danish Prince whose Oedipus complex may have confused his sex life and his sense of revenge for his father’s murder.” he just laid out his vision so I could share it if I wanted to.
Maybe the poem should contain whatever explanation you feel is needed, thereby standing more on it’s own two feet. Anyway, that was my first reaction.
–Wally