Climbing Franklin
Ave
in search of a
view
in the hollywood
hills
accosted by
signs
forbidding
trespass,
warning of armed
and
private justice,
no view to be
found
multi-million
dollar estates
commandeering
the horizon,
not an itinerant
soul in site
except for
Spanish-speaking gardeners
in coveralls and
armies of servants
hired to sustain
the elaborate and
costly american dream.
Meandering
through the back alleys and
corridors of
downtown Los Angeles
homeless and the
dispossessed, everywhere,
at night fall
they scatter like gypsies
staking claim to
park benches and
whatever space
that will accommodate,
members of a
vast itinerant army
without
leadership or purpose,
not so pleasant
reminders of the
dimwitted idea
of prosperity.
Walking the
streets of Los Vegas
in the shadows
of the towering casinos
business cards proffered
by buxom women
suggesting
sensual delights at
competitive
rates,
a slot machine
paradise
where cheap food
abounds,
the siren call
of easy riches,
a fortuitous
throw of the dice,
paradise awaits.
Beyond the
boundaries of this
make-believe
oasis of implausible wealth
squalid houses
and bereft children
clothes lines
with the wash hanging indecorously
against the
brilliant desert sky
whose occupants
are those who
service the
visitors to
this synthetic
oasis and
clean their toilets
and
change their
besotted bedroom linen,
live out their
lives without benefit of the
dilapidated american
dream.
Wandering
through the D train on its early morning run
in that city
that moves without rest
where commerce
is the clock that times runs on,
paying homage to
all those curled up on unoccupied seats
without a home
or safe place,
terrified of the
shelters
where chaos is the
norm,
where personal
safety is left at the door,
paying respects
to all those plagued by
unsavory demons
dancing in their heads,
all their
belongings deftly placed beneath their seat,
to those
speaking in tongues,
reciting verse
they memorized in grade school,
airing repetitious
arguments with those who
gave up on them
long ago,
to those made
wretched by loneliness and
wrecked upon the
unforgiving terrain of mental illness
with its jagged
peaks
deep, dark and foreboding
valleys
and perpetual night.
Wandering
through tunnels far beneath
the new York
skyline
where whole
communities abound,
a caravan of sleep-deprived battalions
digging out
uninviting niches
in the stark
underground
with rats for
neighbors,
breathing fetid
air,
a place where
hope cannot thrive
in a world that
has already
pronounced them
dead.
Above this
inferno that
not even Dante
could imagine,
there are those
who sit upon their riches
derived more
from subterfuge than
honest endeavor
and accumulate
their earnings like
hysterical and crazed
hyenas
within their
gated lairs,
they are incapable
of
meaningful introspection,
a proven ability
to build
absolutely
nothing,
a self-proclaimed
superior race
without the
capacity to
master anything
except treachery
and the
illustrious art
of subterfuge,
holding all the
cards
squandering all
the gold,
wearing
privilege
without
sufficient grace,
taking
possession of the future
without weighing
the cost of
their icy
calculations,
modern day
alchemists
turning all
things that
fall within the
slant of time
into
possibilities for endless profit
with an
accountant’s fatal logic,
they live a lie
and
barely deserve
the dirt that will
ultimately cover
them.
Investigating
the deluge
that was Katrina
and the
diaspora that
drowned
the soul of New
Orleans,
the wrecked
homes,
the devastation
and
unruly death
brought on by
such calamity.
Upon this chaos,
the
parasites
descended
sensing profit
in the mouth of catastrophe,
with voluminous
bags of money
they planted
seeds of acquisition among
row upon row of
good intentions,
sequestered
within their voluptuous airs
was the venom
that filled their disposition
and established
their grandiose conclusions,
they came in the
hope of conquest
like the
conquistadors that were their inspiration.
Hiking the
trails of the Great Northwest
once the
wondrous home to
magnificent
evergreens,
sprawling
unfettered verdant valleys,
where people are
strangely grateful
for the remnants
that have been left behind
by those who see
profit
in every scrap
of nature
in every
unturned stone,
in every wily
stint of nature,
now it is left
to the pinball wizards
and
electron-beam junkies
with as much an
affinity to nature
as a toaster
oven with internet capability.
In the shadows
of
all this
magnificent moneyed plenty,
tent cities grow
and multiply
enhancing the
human geography
with the
denizens of the new reality,
desperation a
way of life,
begging an
institution,
old men in wheel
chairs
queuing up at
the baseball stadium,
for a loaf bread
and a
free bobble
head,
young women
picking up tricks
at the
laundromat,
children
studying the
advanced art of
invisibility,
human endeavor
replaced by
machines
deepening the
pockets of
wily
industrialists
at the expense
of the worker’s soul.
Paying homage to
the nation’s capital,
wandering the
halls of power and
idle and
capricious justice,
battalions of lobbyists
agents of the royalty
of commerce,
solicitors of acquisition
their briefcases
brimming with
receipts and
promissory notes,
eyes on the
prize,
they come to
bargain
to craft legislation
with slimy
regulations
to trump
benevolence
with profit’s
wet dream,
to squeeze coins
out of the
pockets of the
many
to fill the
coffers of those
who already have
everything,
they come to
usurp the public
good
for the
investment bankers to
dismember, piece
by piece.
Not far from
this white-marbled
citadel of
affluence and
limitless power
lies the
boundary
separating privilege
from penury
paleness from
color,
lavish homes
from prison cells,
expensive
appetite from aching mindless hunger,
across the
divide
where even the
policemen are skittish
where a
monstrous bleakness resides
sucking the will
from agile minds,
shredding hope
from the
corpse of the
spirit,
into the aching
frontier
where guns are
distributed like candy
ammunition
always plentiful
death always
resident,
not far from
where committees are
forever in
session,
the news being
made,
deals being
crafted,
where power is
so
thoroughly
idolized,
lies the dark
reality of the
moribund
american dream
a corpse
ceremoniously displayed
where
politicians and their wily aides
line up for
autographs,
vital organs
removed,
the air scented
with
only the ghost
of reality remaining,
beneath the
re-sculptured torso,
beneath the
painted yet pallid features
all vitality of
life blood replaced
by syrupy
substances to
forestall but
not prevent
inevitable decay
with blank death
presiding.
At the banquet
table
to which few are
invited,
greed is
dispensed on
golden skewers,
bountiful earth
is
methodically
dispatched
piecemeal with
grave intent
into the
graveyard of the future,
the game is
defined,
the rules
determined
the winners all
chosen,
all seated,
before them lies
the entrails
remnants of the spirit
of
wizened
compassion,
all prepared for
the return
on their
investments.
After the meal
has been
thoroughly
consumed and
spoils divided,
the guests
impaled on the
sharpened edge
of inglorious vanity,
the crumbs are
dispensed with fanfare
to barely fill
the bellies
tormented by
hunger,
not enough to
rescue the dispossessed
from their
hapless future or
quell the
restless spirit of the
modern age.
