1211 Venice Blvd

Nothing really belongs to us.   We can’t afford the clutter.   If only time lags a bit between X and infinity w/late night street traffic a distant pulse.   In this zone we are given formulas to sustain crime & divinity.   Why not the tropic denial?   A game of Chinese whispers.   Streets dark w/ragged palm trees truncated by the fog, lopped off telephone poles, invisible high-tension wires.   I was raised in this marooned city, the glow of a lava lamp behind smoked glass framed by Spanish tiles & stucco.   Corinthian columns by way of Tijuana.   Any given moment doctored the script.   Beach town neon pharmacy parking lot.  Felt the heat of the midnight pavement radiate up thru the soles of my sneakers.   This must be the fourth corner, the one the earth turns upon.   It doesn’t belong to us.   My ankles are sore.   Light played on the surface of the stagnant brown sludge of the canals.   That was a memory.   It’s all different now.   Sherman Canal where I smoked hashish w/a girl who had a broken nose.   The sidewalk stained with rust, or blood.   Money would change that.   Them.   The sea breeze stalled out at the intersection of Venice & Lincoln Blvd so that I could cross the street without looking.   Heard the wave’s message whispered in a bottle at 3am the door latch broken & the still night air eaten up by a candle flame.   Incense.   No where to take it finally.   We never owned any of it.   The tide shifted.   It was too subtle for anyone to notice.   No apologies, I remember now, everything has been forgotten.   We never asked forgiveness.   Slight bend in the streetlights.   Sand in your clothes.   Drive by in an old beat-up Pontiac looking over yr shoulder.   I still consider this place to be home, although it no longer exists.   The sound of waves reclaim the distance I have traveled since.