Sun-blinding vision

of a surfing state,

songs with their feet down

hard on the accelerator.

But the little deuce coupes

have long gone to the scrapyard.

The wild west is back,

if it ever went away.

Beady-eyed outlaws

who don’t like strangers

have taken over the town,

heroes replaced by villains.

Smile, the album

he never quite finished...

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Nobbut a beck to begin with.

The Esk escorted by daffodils

beside both banks, and a train

that escaped Beeching’s

scattergun. Skirts

the moorland’s northern edge,

past lambs and fields

festooned with pheasants.

Scurries over boulders,

relaxes and widens

as we approach the sea,

is celebrated by a magnificent,

redundant viaduct,

a memorial to the line

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An old railroad loco

by the side of a lake

A shocked motel clerk

greets us with the words:

Sadat is dead!

Chocolate chip pancake

late breakfast.

I almost throw up.

Disused Olympics

ski slope. Snow at the top

of Mount Washington.

Hard porn on the motel TV

in Palisades Park, New Jersey.

Bumper to bumper

at night

empty when we r...

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Our one and only trip to America

in the Fall, almost forty-five

years ago. Rhode Island, Cape Cod,

Vermont, New Hampshire, Boston

... Niagara.

We drove through Buffalo

towards the falls, passing gaudy

'honeymoon hotels' boasting

the size of their water-beds.

The view from the US side

was impressive, yes, the little

tourist boat almost under

the cascade...

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The AA, once first in the alphabet, 

takes ages to answer distress calls. 

When someone says AI

I say Ayee!

like a wounded Native American

in a curdled Sixties comic. 

Now Microsoft is offering 

to help me put words together. 

I'm analogue, not digital, 

and aware I'm being phased out. 

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