2016-10-07
by
Eleanor Goldfield
Enough ink has flowed over your jagged streets…but here goes:
I can still see my dreams –
scattered on the 405,
where parched in drought they stay alive –
on fumes.
The choking abated, I patiently waited –
watched, walked and dreamed.
But in a city of cars, the sprawl –
swallowed me up and now that I left,
I can come back
and bleed through the cracks –
that still know me.
Such an odd feeling –
the smoggy hills I drove through,
the afterthought spires of a downtown admired –
for the recently acquired –
Starbucks and typewriter adorned cafes –
a city mired –
a funeral pyre
that still keeps my soul warm,
on wisps of dreams
I’m sure will never die.
The Silverlake exit,
my loft on a roof,
the Hollywood hills with a wrap around porch –
the birth and the death of the bands and 12 moves.
The studio nights and days –
where you pull up the sun,
from a late night drug run,
feeling her pain as she squints through the haze –
in this overrun maze.
It’s like I never left and yet,
like I never stayed,
not just in place but in mind –
like I never lived here –
a city of make believe –
crowded like a purgatory of dreams –
some that should stay and others that leave
but the traffic’s a creep.
A slick bus stop city –
the driver like Mulholland Drive, you survive –
if you crash once or twice –
back on the bus –
the one I heard I should take,
real seems so fake –
the pockets of dreams I sewed and re-seemed,
shifted, transferred and shared –
from the hills to the sea.
The push and the pull,
the start and the stop,
the rich and the poor;
has beens and never will bes,
what’s your name again and can you help me make it,
take it –
this youth, it’s proof
that You’ve paid your dues – right?
That’s how it works,
they peddle that tune
the bitter and blue —
sing it to themselves as time passes by.
The song remains the same -
Humming in time,
Hollywood signs – y
our name in lights,
yeah it feels nice —
but landlords know better
than to take rent in highs –
so soak your vice –
in martinis on rooftops,
count your calories,
bleach blond hair,
surf rider laissez-faire,
the world out there –
can wait.
It’s not great till it’s scarred –
in the streets, in the cracks, that still know me.
(image by Bruce Cooper)