East of Los Angeles

I want to prove that Los Angeles is a practical joke played on us by superior beings on a humorous planet.
~ Bob Kaufman

Hollywood I salute you, artistic cancer of the universe!
~ Bob Kaufman

Outcasts and long fingernails,
bucket lists and sidelong looks from communities dead
to those on the other side of the barbed wire fences
posted by bigots who shout
DO NOT CROSS YOURSELF UNLESS YOU HAVE BEEN HISTORICALLY SANCTIONED

***

Jumble Jumble rolling sliding in and out of ears, opened valves,
and with no money to pay the water bill…
Overrun electrical plants humming under streetlamps,
a burning cathedral pump,
a blessing and a scream…

***

The hobos have new homes
in the flatbeds of tanks, modified for road-tripping – street legal.
Phillip Morris owns helicopters and
magpies and mockingbirds sing car alarm songs to wake neighbor dogs
while brakelights signal FUCK YOU in stenciled shadows
across windshields at 2 AM
when drivers just can’t wait to make their turnoff
to sniff flowered bells…

***

The poet stands marooned in the Mohavé with his peyote trip worn off,
with no more freak shows, raves, or fuck-puppets to write about anymore –

he can only masturbate to his preconceived notions of Chicana lesbian dreams
and press on the outside of pants once sold for 19.95 for its irregular stitch in the side
because it laughed too hard as the Cambodian seamstress ran it thru the machine….

***

Marines coming up from Sandiego with purple veins in their necks and purpler dicks seek out college gurls who swoon over muscles and the threat of death…

Immigrants from NorCal are dearly out of place among putty-faced snowglobe-nosed Hollywood, their innocence endearing for all their politics…

True Americans, the people standing at the intersections selling fruit to you thru your window, making
their own way from the ultimate bottom up – I wonder how many cats they’ll have to strangle before they get to the top of the garbage heap…

***

perfumed plumbs from way up on top of this hill can’t cover up the smell of ash
falling from the sky that looks like snow and smears across foreheads like charcoal,
a blasphemous Ash Wednesday:

exactly what’s expected in summertime in southerncaliforni-a,
burnt to the ground and rebuilt again, then burn, harder, bigger, faster
and with twice as much news coverage…

***

Spend two weeks there and I’ll bet you’ll be able ta kick the shit out of any New Yorker
any time, any where.