Not Even St. Christopher
Crosses the Boulevard Safely
Clouds of
dust bring scooters, three at a time
they
swerve along sidewalks
bumping
citizens like bowling pins,
jumping
curbs onto the motorways
crossing solid
yellow lines.
Automobiles
twist and swerve
around the
dangerous fun-riders.
From the far
side of the street
Stranger Things-like preteens
pedal in a
blur of spokes and gears
scooters
can’t maneuver, fall over.
Knees
scrape on gravel,
heads meet
concrete.
Imaginary
stars animate
like a
Chuck Jones cartoon.
This
situation calls for news coverage.
Had they
even thought to pray for safe passage,
St.
Christopher would have found it difficult
to bless this
rowdy wheeling crowd.
Battle of the Bands
Unreasonable
heat
of
solstice days
blasts
the promenade.
Jimmy
Java grits
yellowed
teeth
at
simmering, sand-pitted air.
Stringed
instruments
reverberate
like rubber stretched
between
telephone poles.
Percussion
rains
like
cats jogging on the hood
of
a Chevy Corvair.
Guitar
solo winds
a
rosewood fretboard.
Jimmy’s
finger bleed.
No
rooster crowed this morning
I punch the tinny
radio alarm with a thousand dogged blows for
every moment of
lost sleep
I wander through broken neon – liquor stores –
gentlemen’s clubs
Roaming gum-stained sidewalks
condensed city
shadowed by high tension lines
adorned
with billboards owned by Angelyne
Motion
picture
crane straddles
chunky morning sky
Sun rises
like a floodlight
challenges strung-out eyes
Camera
distinguishing vagrants from actors who play vagrants where dreams dry like
spent condoms
in a
nightclub back alley
Cloud hallucinations foam:
beer steins whiskey jiggers swizzle
sticks
Dirty tee shirt rousts locals
ketchup-stained rock n’ roll
epithet blurs
on chest of dispirited stoner
pigeons flap and scatter bird shit
patterns
Restless
swagger through deficient streets
boarded
building boulevards
cardboard Spanish
Once wonder boy
Now super sidekick
to the fearful and needy
lost in creases of degraded
pictures
a mother’s bleached photograph.
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