In LA, it might be June gloom outside but one’s interior weather can be a fun-loving, jitterbugging, non-gridlocked highway of totally high on life. A double-malted of an exalted Nirvana freebasing grace and toking on jokes that can make even a cold boulder crack a smile. A diamond-refined inner weather of deliciously heaped sunbaked servings of organic intrigues, supernatural in their natural ability to entertain life’s beautiful mysteries. No clouds of pain. No rains of strain. Just thunders of wonder and flashes of do-right lightening across our inner skies to help guide us through these days of haze.
Month: June 2023
Summer 2023
Summer flashes its shiny switchblade of long light, pries spring from its hinges, and slips boldly into its celebrated season.
Summer sings a radio-friendly popsong of let’s get it on. It rocks the mic with sugar-sweet honeysuckle harmonies.
Waves its freak flag of feeling good. Bonfires and festivals, Indigenous sun dancers and pagan revelers decked out in flower wreaths.
Summer’s when you can walk barefoot across happy lawns and feel the green grass giggle between your toes.
A time when Babylon goes bleach blonde, takes the day off from apocalyptic bomb dropping.
Slip-n-slide tie-dye high. Road trips along highways of lavender and love.
Put a seashell to your ear and let the ocean sing you into the season.
Plus/Minus
Don’t wanna Muzak your Mozart.
Don’t wanna daze your Waze.
Don’t wanna be petroleum jelly in your jelly doughnut.
Don’t wanna be a migraine in your mind’s eye.
Don’t wanna dizzy tizzy your Etch-a-Sketch.
Don’t wanna fender bender your chunky monkey.
Don’t wanna be a boogeyman in your boogie-woogie.
Don’t wanna be a loose screw in your quantum mechanics.
Don’t wanna dirty squeegee your sex appeal.
Don’t wanna B&E your R&R.
Don’t wanna be a dust bunny in your stardust.
Don’t wanna be nervous in your nervous system.
At the crossroads of my lips
where truth meets fiction, where the city ends and wilderness begins, a child rides a bullet bareback.
She hops off before the bitter end to stop death in its tracks.
Lyric, lullaby, lament.
A song can be carved from stone, river, or wind.
A fist and a heart can fit into the same size clothes; it all depends if you’re going to a wedding or a war zone.
Ashes to passion, dust to desire.
Keep my casket open when I die. Nightmare gallows are no match for these singing bones.
This one goes out to all the dads
Rad dads, glad dads, leftist and left-handed dads.
Immigrant dads, dissident dads. Dads of all races, religions, and ethnicities, yet speak to their kids in a similar language of love.
Buddhist and beatnik dads, stepdads and single dads.
Long-haul truckers and those down on their luck. Dreamers and skateboarders. Hipsters and heroes.
Ones that walk with canes and crutches, others confined to beds and wheelchairs. Homeless dads, ones with addictions.
Dads that are rabbit ears fixing the reception on broken TVs of perception.
Poets, painters, recyclers, and motorcyclists. Actors and musicians, yogis and magicians.
Single and mingling dads. Hop on pop and hip-hop dads.
War vets and pet vets. Ones in hospice and those no longer with us.
To all the dads: Happy Father’s Day!
At 7th & Esperanza
a man lives in a cathedral of begonias. On the piano, he plays a telegram to an ineffable emotion from so long ago.
The man has a daughter.
The young girl has new wings fastened to her shoulders with ribbons and wishes. She dances as her father plays piano.
On the street, just beyond the cathedral of flowers, rain doubles as holy water when the city’s lucky number comes calling.
A drenched woman walks by. Her eyes look like they’ve gotten into a bar fight where both sides lost.
She hears the piano music and pauses. It’s the sweetest sound she has ever heard—songbirds and sunshine, pearls and paper lilies.
She closes her eyes. As she does so, she notices something she’s never seen before—the instructions on how to survive a crash landing are written on the inside of her eyelids.
She can read them in the dark.
Every L.A. Alleyway
is a potential B-movie bit player in some lost soul’s murder mystery.
Up and down each boulevard cruise the filthy rich and empty pockets.
Sweat and panic in sunglasses trying to look more movie star than maniac.
Tiaras and turmoil, domains of despair and dreams come true.
On the westside, a ceaseless ocean’s salty kiss leaps across moonlit city limits to alight upon the lips of after-hours downtown street hustlers already dizzy with insomnia’s harsh tequila bite.
Panting pit bulls and police reports.
Grim shadows in love with black cats and bad news.
From Echo Park gardens, star jasmine and honeysuckle murmur all their sweet songs on a breeze.
To harmonize, one of L.A.’s last remaining pay phones rings…
The Voice On the Other End of the Line
Last night, I drunk-dialed the ocean, wondering if I could ever learn to command and move its tides.
The voice on the other end said, I only dance to the silvery sway of my full-moon lover.
But here’s a free piece of advice: don’t ever engage in a chain-letter scheme with the apocalypse.
Last night, I drunk-dialed my heart’s deepest wounds, wanting to learn which came first, the tenderness or the trauma.
The voice on the other end, all it said was, please hold for the next available operator.
Last night I drunk-dialed myself. The phone kept ringing and ringing.
Finally, a clear and sober voice on the end of the line said:
some questions are best left unanswered. Some answers are better left questioned.
Firefly Parade
If you gathered all my mistakes and set them ablaze, that fire would burn for days and days.
Sure, there’d be loads of smoke and ash, but also light—
far brighter than all the confetti in a firefly parade.
There are moments when my mouth is filled with wonder’s many verbs.
Just like now.
So beautiful the imperfect music of our lives as we endeavor towards betterment.
When One Bears the Cross of Crosstown Traffic
How the rent’s due soon, and the car’s almost outta gas.
How it feels like I’m just a half mile from nowhere but a million miles from freedom.
Or how my radio seems so much less the savior it was back when I first got my driver’s license.
And what about museum paintings? Do they touch themselves when no one’s around?
Do libraries holler and party when they’re all alone?
What does the tooth fairy do in her off hours?
Is there a special Waze app to guide one through life’s troubling phases?
Rubberneckers and road wreckers.
Deadlines and dead on arrival—all these things and more go through my mind while stuck in traffic.
RichRant 