July 4th, 2011

Driving east on Sunset Boulevard yesterday
from Malibu to Echo Park, somewhere between
Brentwood and Beverly Hills, we marveled at
broad clean streets lined with palm trees and pillars,
the striped and starred patio chairs, the
flags fluttering in the breeze coming in from the beach

We spilled cynical complaints about the patriotism of wealthy Americans
onto the twists and turns of the Palisades,
and laughed a little at the way
these people think
they can realize the philosophy
if they change the application

Today smog coats my skin,
unpatriotic, hyper-academic, brown skin,
expensive coffee shop in a gentrified neighborhood that serves
too-sweet chai,
content until the man in the glasses with the salt and pepper hair at the next table
asks me what we are doing here,
working on July 4th.

Polite smile,
but last year on Independence Day,
amanecimos temprano,
parked beside one or two cars at Horseshoe Lake,
walked the Yahi Trail all the way to Bear Hole.
The water was deep and cool and fast, we
submerged ourselves in Sierra Nevada snowmelt.
Around 10 or 11, a few other people
scrambled down the rocks, surprised to see us
early risers, already swimming

Today is L.A., and my
throat yearns for meadows and
fish darting around my ankles.
Elbows resting on one man’s SSA disability documents,
I think of how I pay my rent and buy my food
by convincing a court that he is too depressed to sustain a job,
I remember
Marcuse telling me in urgent black type
that we are all enslaved to work,
to economies

With more Marcuse in my skin, I would
ask the man next to me to tell me about all the July 4ths he’s spent
independent,
pursuing happiness