L.A. i said
isn’t that where dreams go to die
where you never say hello
so you don’t have to say goodbye
where crooks find love
and lepers fornicate
and prophets charge by the hour
and they’re always running late
where the weak find solace
and the meek find compassion
and the leeches come out to
suck on the opulence of fashion
where beauty can be bought and discarded
like stretched out brassieres
and it’s sad like a circus
but no one sheds any tears
where it’s just innuendos and chisme
overheard in bars
and conversations going nowhere
in fast moving cars
where the henchmen of faith
and the vigilantes of fear
sell tickets to heaven
but the price is unclear
where doctors and death
hide themselves in the hills
and it all drinks the same
until you pop a few pills
where everyone’s dying
or just actors you see
and reality is whatever it is
you think it to be
where the culture looks the same
like one hundred dollar bills
like the shiny chrome emblem
on your radiator grilles
where lawyers make love like monkeys
and they learn how to climb
on the backs of politicians
to have a good time
where the gangsters of hollywood
and the drunk profiteers
sell our children fantasies
they can suckle
like watered down beers
where fairy tales are forgotten
and no one can read
and chicanos venden pistolas
and mexican weed
where the wicked are blessed
and the hapless are cursed
in a doomed civilization
that’s dying of thirst
where cowboys show up like sailors
coming to shore
and atlantis once was a city
but not anymore
where priests and prostitutes get together
looking for some absolution
and it’s a thought, not a gun
that starts a revolution
where princesses
parade on the pier
and it’s all particleboard, you know
covered with a veneer
where freedom is a phantom
whispering in the dark
to drunks no one know
dying in the park
where all the migrant children
grow up to be kings
and they scratch their names in limousine windows
with their big diamond rings
where all the hipsters and these poets
of dubious repute
keep cocking their guns
but got no bullets to shoot
where philosophers ejaculate
with great words of delight
saying it doesn’t make any sense
but somehow it’s alright
where love comes on like a fever
and sticks around like a rash
and the real angels of mercy
only take cash
where all the emigrant gods
come out to dance in the night
and they take off their clothes
and they fuck and they fight
and the sun always rises
and we all do it again
walking toward grace
to stumble like men
Greg Alston is a gardener, cook, father and some other things, too.
