Leaving Los Angeles
The cars coagulate
and stretch endlessly.
This newness to every thing
swept by a constant 75 degree rhythm.
It’s the heartbeat
of a living thing.
The chairs all move by themselves,
marshaled by the obscure logic
of the octopuses. The reflections
of their desire are the gold of the desert
and the blue of the sky.
Get used to it.
I like to think that LA is an unfinished poem,
much like a performance piece in progress.
There is a subtlety here that masks fervent work,
it’s in the new volcanic ground,
dry, dusty, and intolerant of roots
yet life clings here like
splats of giant raindrops,
awaited, and prayed for.
It is a redemption of sorts.
We stretch out our roots along horizontal plains,
knowing there is no use
delving deep into the emptiness below.
Not yet time to go into those drained oil caves, not yet.
Watch the laughter and the crying,
the mill of sensuality will always answer them:
the creative winds everywhere
yet the killing blocks all.
In the waking moment
the hummingbird fabric of the city blankets
and confounds those
who fear life, who try to sum up
what happens when desires become mundane.
The purple mountains
and the lush fevered bay surround
The open O of mouth.
It waits to be filled by
/valencia oranges and kelped fish/
/semen and piss/
/cash and sunshine/
no one really wants to say.
There is no time here,
but booming echoes
that wait in blank rooms
for voices to become
singularized and distinct,
to remind themselves to be thankful.
And now is the time
to relearn tools that oxidize
in sheds and closets,
the former lives that
can not be buried in the ashes
of desert fires and the mud of drenching floods,
not be blended into the concrete that
ribbons of water cross evaporating
in the glare, disappearing
before they reach the sea.
Now is the time.
Walk across LA!
Walk from end to end,
along the path of smoking rivers.
Smell the honeysuckle,
the jacarandas purple flowers,
that reflects the scent of those
in the know.
Walk across LA.
Watch the few avoiding the cops.
See your city.
See those who walk the streets
and work the beach
to live in cars.
Throw your dead rats, LA,
into the foundations
of luxury lofts.
For you know you will never live there.
Watch the ants making
a freeway across your ivory tiled floors,
beneath the framed green palms
against cerulean blue skies.
Everyone in this town knows where they are going.
Another life crash interrupts,
absorbed into
the electric cloud chatters that fill the air.
The sky remains blue.
It is time to go.
Time to leave.
The sky remains blue.
Pentax K 7
August 6, 2010