On Pacific Ave

There was a chunk of metal in her lip that looked like shrapnel.   Her eyes, like damaged ping-pong balls, seemed to be focused on a point slightly above & behind me.   It was disconcerting.   She laid down her rap, starting somewhere around the Crab Nebula & ending near the fading pulse in the neck of woman who would qualify as an accidental suicide.   I turned & followed the pulse halfway there just to get a taste of the total experience of the senseless.   By the time I made it halfway back I felt like Lee Marvin starring in a 1950’s L.A. crime drama based upon the life of John Keats.   Standing in the shadow of a black & white palm tree Keats is holding a .45 automatic he affectionately refers to as “The Nightingale”.