36 Hours In LA

Southern California

June Gloom smothers us with her mercy on

the Pacific Coast Highway, a pillow

pressed down on our slack jawed faces like Will

Sampson's Chief Broom gently dispatching

Jack Nicholson's R.P. McMurphy

in the movie before making good his

escape, both characters set free while we

mill about in the day room awaiting our

relentless cloudless meds, prisoners of

our quaint notions of L.A. - a lifetime’s

worth picked up willy-nilly like bits of

leaves, twigs and dog shit stuck to a good old-

fashioned mid-western snow man:  these winding

canyon roads infested with laid back ghosts

of long haired country rockers, Neil Young doomed

to gaze forever west from Zuma Beach,

the riddled Band, addled vapor ringing

the eternal flame of a Malibu

beach fire, Gram Parsons smoldering like

a votive in Joshua Tree while a

wry Randy Newman professes his love. 

Meanwhile, coffee at the hotel where we

gawk at John Irving, our only confirmed

celebrity sighting, a dour Yankee

warming his bones on Ocean Boulevard. 

Invisible man

A Ruinous Thirst

Arvi’s black mutt-his misdirected bark,

gaze off target, vague, somewhere to my right

was the first clue, one of only two mind

you, there’d been no need for a third even

at my age, too old to feel so light on

my feet, young enough to notice I no

longer cast a shadow on the sidewalk;

Troublesome? sure, but I shake it off and

press on down the leafy street side-stepping

a meteor shower of furtive black

squirrels Un-Dog-Like, unable to detect

my presence not unlike the approaching

runner, a young woman, jaw set in sheer

determination her mouth turned down at

the corners left eyebrow arched ever so

slightly; vivid details I would have missed

had I not paced her for a block or two,

our four feet slapping in unison if

only for a moment, long enough to

Understand this new found transparency

did nothing to extend my flagging verve

leaving me bent and planted in the street

gulping great lung-fulls, hands on knees, awash

suddenly with ennui, come to grips with

the foolishness of impunity:  filched

candy bars, levitated hats, eavesdropped

private conversations, aware at last

of a ruinous thirst that leads me to

a garden hose attached to a nearby

house noticing too late the boys on bikes

agape at the long green charmed snake bubbling

in the driveway, marching wet prints in quick

succession trailing off down the street round

the corner to the front door that appears

to swing open of its own volition

up the stairs to the bathroom where I stand

for hours before the mirror, blue toothbrush

flitting to and fro like a furious

sparrow, awaiting my reappearance.