Pursuit Of Happiness Poem by gershon hepner

The people who’re afraid to merge
on freeways in Los Angeles
would in the past have lacked the urge
to sail the wide world’s seven seas.
Pursuit of happiness depended,
before the motor car, on boats,
but in LA it’s recommended
that all who awish to sow wild oats
must take the 405 or 10
or even 101 to prove
to people living on a Glen
or Canyon that they truly move
just as the earth does round the sun.
Observed by LA Galileans
exploring, without any gun,
old races, Chinese and Koreans,
and Jews who used to live in Heights
called Boyle but now prefer the Hills
of Beverly, whose Wood has sites
that fill the Orthodox with thrills,
and Vietnamese and mountain men
from Laos and Cambodia,
the new world can be found again
just like the old ones, only roadier.
Columbus would have loved the men
who drive the freeways of the sea,
and west and east along the 10
accelerating, feeling free
to drive until all gasoline
propelling shiny razzmatazz-tech
is offered to the Angels’ Queen
and burned like victims of the Aztec.


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