Something Different

The smell of brine and sea spray

The hum of a cricket or car

LA on fire

The sultry heat of what should be summer

But is not

An orange fireball of a moon

So much information, my head

Is about to explode

Marvin Gaye singing "Mercy Me"

Al Gore and the Nobel Peace Prize

Did the environment do this to my son

Or did I?

If I knew then, what I know now

A mantra that does me no good

I have no choice

But to change

And to take the chance

A mother approached Condoleezza Rice

With blood on her hands

They arrested her

Which I didn't understand

To lose her son

Just pick the war

This is a time of change she said

I agreed

I could feel it in the air we breathe

I could feel it in the way

You looked at me like

I was someone different

Guernica by Pablo Picasso

City of Angels

City of Angels

I bend with the sway of New Year's Eve

Seated by the heat

A summer in LA isn't easy

Migrant workers chase the Sunset Strip

The freeways

Stocked like grocery store isles with

High class SUVs

Lemon, orange and lime trees fall heavy

Fruit pushing forth like cataclysmic babies

Into the greasy palms of my hand

I worked this neighborhood out sweating

To find another with pointed steeples

Gothic arches overgrown with ivy

The succulent is a plant that replenishes

From within

A seed of life

The lore of an enabled tragedy

On top of which grows a dense bougainvillea

All is destroyed and reborn again

In the city of Angels