LA freeways, built in a day, couple of weeks, whatever, –circulatory system of the Golden West! car-puscles putsching their way hazily, na-zi-ly through sky-scraper needles..miles of corporate earthquake-proof nazi glass, captures: Sunrise! bounced to beaches’ sparkling sands and back, at ironclad cells in perpetual movement, workers! peeping through glass, rolling along on fresh UNI-ROYALs’ ebony fragrance, cutting a flat concrete ribbon..in twain, generous, heaving white sidewalls (SIGH!)..whites’ privilege; flashing multiplications in rear, side-view mirrors at the speed of light! cupped in chrome..reflection: million eyeballs owned by solitary drivers..ants, driving in droves! white ants, red ants, black ants, –they drive by night, ants..mixed ants’ angels flight, on metal wings of butter, sun’s light through a magnifying-glass, seeking for wood-frame homes to eat, set up goodhousekeeping..refracting rainbowspectrumbumperstickerants! touting whoever/ wherever/ whatever..back at worker-ants tail-gating in their wake, waving antennae’s at blossomy billboards, WINSTON TASTES GOOD! FOREST LAWN’LL FIX THOSE BLUES FOR YOUS..ANTS! WITH A PLOT OF GREEN (FOR YOUR NEW INNA ANT-HILL FOREVER HOME); in-the-dash AM radios pull strong signals, ploughing fields of blue deep overhead, fouled by jet-streams, contrails..transmitters, forcing strained advertising jingles on the collective eardrum, “WHAT A HAPPY FEELING! BRIGHTEN UP YOUR DAY, ‘CAUSE IT’S SO DE-LI-CIOUS..CHEWING JUICY-FRUIT!” crunching it between your mandibles blowing bubbles..blinker-signal wand in hand, cringing at the wheel! clutching shifters, push-button selectors and the like, –fiddling the knobs, SHOCK! HEAD-ON!! fire-trucks shooting tubes, tunnels through hills..dragging stents, lights flashing TO SEE! with each pulse of a modern city on life-support, –forty lanes north, forty lanes south x sixty east and west stacked twenty high*, urban renewal, — “Hi, friends, Ralph Williams!” and it’s no help. Everyday, early each morning..fearful blockages, blocking main rush-hour arteries (requiring emergency attention from the county highway commissioner, and his crews, cones, strewn about, anesthesiologies, –lend relief from the surging general-ly myrrh-jing twaffick..eh! dump a bunch of nitro pills out the tail-end of one of those ‘special’ government jets, trailing white smokes’ unison with gamma-ray voices on the whole mess and be done with it!), blinding solar flares glint windshield sheen’s: “WE CAN’T B’WEATHE!” “Here’s Sunset again, Sarge, turn LEFT, –There!” cruise old Hollywood’s streets, street-racing horsemen with no heads, stoplight-to-stoplight, pass storm drains, –signs! 101 signs..thatta-way! north&south, gas stations, lines around the block pumping clear, black gold in tanks,TANKS! SERVICE WITTA SMILE (You’re welcome), banks, pouring out cash in oily hands, newsstands, gnashing periodicals, monthlies, all the nudes that’s fit to print, PLAYBOY‘s,stacked, –High! this month’s, 1 buck! wink at swanky murals soliciting worship&sacrifice to La-la land’s inglorious past. Long gone! James Dean..Marilyn. What else? Nothing, move along, now, nothing more to see. Clark Gable you see..with those other two, he, –prob’ly never slept under a overpass (?maybe over some underpants); but he won’t be needing a four-way bypass, no, not here, nor now..why? He lives on a forever sidewalk, his name impress’d with brass struck on a star..heart of polished stone. Leaf! shall fall off..a tree, —Wheeze! beat the street-cleaners, working ‘gainst a firm breeze to the punch, managing somehow to not be intercepted in his course counting off minutes, crackling upstream, upon yon sidewalk..down to ‘is crispy end and will – gusty – blow, poetic! (naturally) over this name:
held, enchantingly – circling curly-que – will-o’-the-wisp, “TAKE 48!” to spy..perchance&dream, o! pretty pumps, pinching the spot..Sleeping Beauty’s taps, awoke! from the casting-couch (EXIT, Stage Left, –#MET00) –perusing some plaque! pointed&pointy-toe’d&pointing at the actor’s honorarium, polka-dots&moonbeams (stifle the night) rocking back on stiletto-heels of pink&velvet-blue&caramel glass..tell a tale, Yes! do tell! “Have you seen anything of the white whale?” “Who, Shelly?? ha-ha!” “No-ya dummy! Leviathan, that other..the depths’ own harpoon-bedeck’d demon.” (So..Shelly?) ‘Leaf’ will tell his friends, –READ ALL ABOUT IT! (about the shoes), all his friends are named LEIF, a-hem! for example, Leif Eriksson, #2, who,
,OOKAY WE..GOTTA SAVE THIS POEM NOW! BEFORE WE GET BURIED IN POET’S-DOO-DOO, –DR. KILDAIRE..PAGING BEN CASEY! CAR 54 WHERE ARE YOU? END WHERE’S YOUR MASK?? THANK-YOU,MASK MAN! POEM NEEDS AN OPEN-HEART HAPPENING NOW..WOW!! OH SUHUCKS! NEVER MIND. LEIF E., AS WE’RE SAYIN’,
L’ERIKSSON himself, innis’ship, Viking one, oars a-rowing..circling The Shoes, blew in onna wind ’round the 900’s, –(900 A.D., not C.E., –as they like to say, —of late) WHITEANGLO-SAXONMICHAELAGELO,emmer-effer! protestantPUNKviking-punkWHITEprivilege’d..Bohunk-Honkie, –Sir White-boy! recently knight’d,standing tall on viking platforms, pounding the keys, –“Get back! hunky-kat!” son of Eric, –no! not Carmen#1Eric, the red honkie (so-called, here, around and about these parts in the Winston Street neighborhood’s)..beat Columbus (an’alla’usotherkracker-eurotrash) to the continent by about half-a-mil..half a millennium, that is to say..Whitey! Now..but now we’re, where were we, now? Oh yeah, oh,OH! oh-oh say can you pee-ee..by the dawn’s early blight..somewhere, under the rainbow (The Overpass) us guys, blue angel’d vikings, left to the street, we..
OH YEAH! CUT THE TUNES!SOMEBODY, HELP!!YA GOTTTA RESCUE THIS..POEM!A RESCUE-POEM, BEFORE IT GOES TO CRULE EXPERIMENTS!CUT TO, –TA-TA!TA THE STROBE-LIGHT NIGHTS ON LA’s SUNSET STRIP, PROP-HIPPIES’N’PROP-MARIJUANA-SMOKE..VELVET FOG,FROM PROP JOINTS, –‘N’COPS IN PROP COP-CARS CHASING PROP-VERMIN’S,THROUGH PROP-RIOT’S, WAVING PROP-GUNS AT PREPPY PA’s, HERMAN..C.U.,HERMANMUNSTERINNACOPCARONNAPROP-COPCAR PROP-RADIO, HIGH-SPEED, NO! SCRATCH THAT..THIS IS HOLLYWEIRD!! (WE CAN DO THIS) MAKE IT..TWO-SHOT, –HERMAN MUNSTER A-A-AND GRANDPA MUNSTER..+LILY, &ALLTHEMUNSTER’S,SNACKING SOME MUENSTER INNA COP-HELECOPTER..HELECOPTER 54,WE’RE,YOO-HOO! SHADOWING HIGH-SPEED-CAR-CHASE-IN-PROGRESS,THROUGH STREETS OF LA,SOME DIED..PASS JOHN WAYNE INNA HOT-AIR DIRIGIBLE DRIFTING OVER OUR OLD ALMA MATER,THERE,JUST ABOVE THE COLOSSEUM, PHANTOM MEM’RIES–FIGHT, TROJANS, FIGHT, –HIKE!CUT..CAR,CUTTING CORNER,QUICK!TEENAGER-AT-THE-WHEEL,SKILL-FUL-LY CRASHES INNA,INTA SOLID BRICK WALL ON THE SOUTHSIDE OF THE GASOLINE STATION,ON OLYMPIC,AN’ THE GAS WARS, PRICES AN’ALL..EXPLODE!BIG, CONFLAGRATION!!NOW WHERE WERE WE? OH YEAH,HERE! (AND THEY – THE PURSUING PERSONS..THE PO-LEECE – DRAG THE PUNK OUT OF THE CAR – WRECK, WHEELS AND ALL – AND ALL THE COPS AND EVERYBODY TAKES TURNS POUNDING SAID PUNK IN PAVEMENT LIKE A COMMON Visigoth, TEXTBOOK POLICEWORK – WITNESSED BY THE AUTHOR – AS IT SHOULD BE PREFORMED, c. 1985, –AND THEN IN A COUPLE OF MINUTES IT’LL BE ALL OVER ALL THE TELE-VISION SETS..RIOTS ENSUE, BURN THE CITY WITH FIRE, “BURN, BABY, BURN!” etc., –and all of the rest of it, –“CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?” and so on, and so on,DEATH IN VENICE, EARLIER, a.k.a.,MUGGED AT THE BEACH, #MYWHITEPRIVILEGE..OH! MY KEYS BACK, THANKS), and so we, WE WERE, YEAH..WATT?
21st CENTURY (again), SAME POEM, SAME SIDEWALK, UM, DIFFERENT STAR: Jayne Mansfield’s. And her plaque-turned-to-granite in the prior millennium (same as with The Others)..petrified veins of the Hollywood Freeway and Felix’s Chevrolet’s, GO SEE CAL!: Bel Aire’s, ‘m!palas, and Sting-Rays’ nipples, “Hi Friends,RALPH WILLIAMS!” blocks..BLOCKS! and blocks of blockages, millions of blocks..All blocks, every block! big blocks, small blocks, long blocks/short blocks! turbo-charged, super-charged, blue-printed, nitro’d, –bored and broke? Plastic sturgeons, Brentwood doc’s..looking over Santa’nita’s Munchkin jocks’ lockerrooms’n’smelly socks, yeah! sock it to me..Care to wager Mister, Major..Bill Shoemaker? Wot? he’s a dog! Well, whatta we got? (Town.) Nah, yeah, well, can’t find a backer, it, it’s getting dusk..?say we hop on the 101?North, hit it for the valley and go look at a Drive-in movie? what’s playing?
(Authors’ note:I don’t claim to push the poets’ envelope, any, per se..but I would cop to nudging the parameters of said envelope, just a smidgeon, now, and again, –Nay? then a wee pair of parsec’s, let’s say..Do you like poetry? tee-hee!)
The END
ps:Oh,hey! Did the a-tom-i-cal-ly mutated ants ever get their star on the Hollywood Boulevard? The annoying noises they make when they’re about to attack sure should’a won ’em one. Plus James Arness? pre-GUNSMOKE, he gets the girl, wearing a little, army helmet.. “CAL WORTHINGTON AND HIS DOG, SPOT! IF YOU WANNA BETTER DEAL, GO SEE CAL..” (it’s the end of another broadcasting day..)
*..motoring, improbably along, upon the uppermost antediluvian pour of concrete..plastic, waving rhythically with the stratospheric breeze, high over the city, we see the sky is indeed the limit; in accordance with ziggurat KUSTOM..blinded by sun-rays, slashing! at views of sacrificial radiators, shredded re-caps and blown engine parts, hoods up! steaming by at ninety; while at the lowest levels of the automobile heap, there, in the bowels of the earth..dark, deep beneath! nocturnal glow of surface streets..schools, demo’s, hot-dog stands, convenience store what-not’s, –four-leaf clovers, all tied in pretty cement bows straddling the Little Apple’s vein clusters, drivers – pallid under rock – in these dark times used their headlamps to see, always, on account of their subterranean’s..untermensch! blare of bleating horns sounding through molasses blackness, thick and train-like, like you can’t cut’em with a knife..what’s ‘is..old septic? sewer! Call Public Works..works for me! (..didn’t want to deprive anyone of that inspiration, so there ’tis; in the appendix. Thanx)
Scruffy's..Blurgh! 