Luster of pearl

the bamboo mirage in the gravel garden
faints dead away

at the howls in the dining room
springing up at the fairway moon

Observation pit

and the western horse shall lie down with the ground sloth
and the dire wolf
the western camel
the mastodon
all for a space of thirty millennia
the saber-toothed cat
the ancient bison
and their bones be roofed charmingly
while the decades of fashion go right by
one after another
and the ground shake
and the precipice of history
at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
 
a figure of Orpheus left outside in the back where smokers go
and the Burgher with the key
and the other backward-looking with despair
and Eve
The Shade
all wrapped in plastic on pallets
Bourdelle’s archer
Balzac

Pico

in the city
no longer a city
college
across the street
an agreeable old motel
blue as the Pacific Ocean
now a rat trap

marron glacé

he talks about the weather
of this crisis and that

a nincompoop
a poltroon
they say

but he strikes back
outlawing the light bulb

Wilshire Boulevard

we had to sit right in the by
your leave temple while the sit
right there leave nothing behind
temple went down and then we said
all of us we said to ourselves
they can’t we think again

but ourselves think little and that
with a certain sort of greed
that came of plastics and regurgitated music
so they said and took it up
the proverbial flagpole and sang the pledge of allegiance to it

all night long we hear the singing
night that is violet with stars and planes
and the golden sunrise you see
in California Impressionists

In The Fray Contributor