Cali Quotes Poet

“Los Angeles”

We prayed to the engines, with beer and gins;

We prayed to the driveways, with the virgins;

To the layers of oil, those belts

of black on the gray streets of the coil,

Our parents paid for with sweats and toils;

We prayed to the fumes of gasoline

in our membranes, Give us the girls with flammable skin.

Let our fingers for just one evening be like lit matches

and not break into scratches.

“A Love Poem to Los Angeles”

To say I love Los Angeles is to say

I love its shadows and nightlights sway;

It’s meandering streets,

the stretch of sunset-colored beaches;

It’s to say I love the squawking wild parrots,

the palm trees that fail to topple in robust winds

with bunnies and carrots;

That within a half hour of L.A.’s center,

you can cavort in the snow, deserts, mountains, beaches and with the NBA players on the mid center play, you pray to stay.

“Yellow Light”

If it were May, hydrangeas, and jacaranda

flowers in the streetside trees would be

blooming through the smog of late spring,

Wisteria in Masuda’s front yard would be

shaking out the long tresses of its purple hair ring;

Maybe mosquitoes, moths, or a few orange butterflies

settling on the lattice of monkeyflowers,

Tangled in chain-link fences by the trash on site;

But this is October and I’m in Los Angeles,

My body seethes like a billboard under twilight rest;

From used-car lots and the movie houses uptown,

A brilliant fluorescence breaks out downtown;

and make fight with the dim squares of yellow kitchen light, winking on in all the side streets of Downtown Los Angeles post light, a yellow light.

“California Dreaming”

Unconditional Confusion I reckon,

The days are short, but it’s alright.

Under the mid sunny afternoon so bright.

The pool is warm, violets, red and blue.

The sky is filled with haze but never been blue.

Driving my car, I float away from the hours,

minutes rise to the western wind.

My eyes are puffy from the chlorine I Soaked in,

endless through a dusty field, long and winding road,

I close my eyes to see a black tarmac road,

sun-scorched and itchy, my skin hot and red.

Slipping down under to soften the irritation I suffered.

I drop a cinder anchor to remain in place;

time remains one smiling face,

alone in that silent abyss, I solace.