A cot to sleep on, private floor.
Urine stained memory, recess over.
Sparkle stars chromatic, zombies all.
The milk truck comes and goes.
This ancient burial land interrupts
all nursery school dreams. It, not the
clock or Ms. Betty, wakes us up.
The tumble of juice bells ring.
Ring a ling.
Soul siesta. Wipe the soot out of your eyes.
Little chica stands where little squaw has her
lunch ticket.
The bison and corn maze served only on Fridays.
Where's my momma?
Upon the ceiling, wooden planks old
as William S. Hart, are painted over
frescoes dandelion arabesque.
The brown can't stay.
Smoked chrome and glass fruitloops.
A skinless drum beats reflections
off the top of northern San Fernando Valley clay.
Just take the 405 and exit 1966.
Turn left at San Fernando Mission,
3 blocks east of 1963.
Busch Gardens still runs the evening monorail,
and the Metro Link serves the tracks below.
The tracks of me. I glance out the top of my double decker
Ventura bound, and see the glow of a
shining crystal vision over my head.
High up on electric winter cable song.
The flash of instamatic Polaroid swingers
wearing ray bans and carnuba in their hair.
A fall tram with bouffant beauty and flat top dreams.
From the aft, a spitfire hot wheel bat burn accelerator
pushes through a Geidi Prime. An aluminum siding cavern
swallows my youth and I can only peak up higher,
my nose pressed against utility,
not progress.
The no-vacancy junk yards lie dormant and unlit
as the Ventura bound kicks up black oil and tire.
Their dead husks pick-a-part and implicate us in their
metal graves.
Click a clack. Click a clack.
The big beautiful trolley slowly disappears into the dying tunnel.
The light from the rear window undulates with Brillcream.
A young girl peeking out -
looking past herself at the mystery of time.
Shamu herself declares Marineland off limits,
even to the pearl divers.
I pull the shade down and, though it's night,
the sun blinds me.
When turning my head to the center,
it becomes amazed at the carnival of souls traveling circus.
Each rider a Y-Chromosome with spats
and a bowler hat: cardboard facsimiles
bereft of life,
destined for insurance cubes,
while smoking AM radios.
The Wolfman howls at the real Don Steele.
Each rider solidifies an arcane cause celebre.
Only the lonely can play. I'm still nowhere.
Closing my eyes, the white Nash rolls past deep valley
Southwest 1959.
Lots of milk bottles lined up.
Lots of hope.
The monkey bars stand empty,
newly minted concrete and sand.
The desolate, pristine squeaky cleanliness
of a post atomic world.
Cupids hot dog stand offers aroma of Einsenhower,
with plenty of mustard and loyalty,
onions and mother's milk.
Rivets decorate my sinuses,
which fail to heed the oncoming warnings of the world,
HG Wells style,
trolley lurching to and fro with viruses which cause dizzying.
Unable to breathe, I urgently care for the sick and downtrodden.
The pressure builds to a crescendo
as the stairwell is consumed by masking dust,
enveloped by immigrant labor of North Orange County lopes.
A dah creek oh crack.
In times where innocence resides
in Bobby Darren's shoelaces,
it's best to be reminded of the grateful Kem beetle,
twisty and frothful with a rumpled bum.
Close up Demille, grotesque and comely,
with forelegs shiver and quiver changing the iris
of that one nascent crab.
Nabobs bellow with Grunion run.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know you were German".
Here's to Hilda and her many layered shnitzels.
Peanut flavored shtonk lisping its way tremulously
past Dresden.
Is this the way to the Berlin wailing wall?
"Just put your question in the glory hole
and it might come back moist",
the Kem beetle cries.
As each rusty street of crocodiles foams magnificent,
small ancient puppets retake Manhattan.
Crisp oily sacks of onion flavored rhizome
join forces with swirled and intimate smoke
rising on a bed of lightly basted heating grills.
Duct glands of port sear the back of the throat,
open to one's nearly perfect tenor.
Upload granny and her $2 dollar shoes.
Giuliani me upward, high up to the spectacular
Staten Island, Camelot of clean air,
hopeful lugubriousness, and incandescent ball parks.
Send me back to that heavenly intersection,
where freeways collide with reason to remind me
of a gentler era.
A Golden season of movable parts,
and circular dungeons.
Lick my plate over and over,
from the hammering and nailing
and unstoppable forward motion,
time stopped dead.
My heart leaps mundane life.
The music of my room is deafening.
A summer stream flows unimpeded
back into my womb.
Such glorious infection!
Such magnificent resilience!
Such microbiology!
