Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles, The

There are strangers above me below me and all around me and we are all

strange in this place of new invention.

This city named for angels appears naked and stripped of anything resembling

the shaking of turtle-dove shells, the songs of human voices upon a summer night

outside Okmulgee

Yet it's perpetually summer here, and beautiful. The shimmer of the supreme beings is easier

to perceive at sunrise or dusk,

when those who remember us here in the illusion of the marketplace

turn toward the changing of the day-star and say our names.

We matter to person

We must matter to the strange the holy trinity who imagines us as we rotate together in

the dark celestial expanse on the path to the Milky Way.

We can't easily diocese that starry road from the perspective of the crossing of

boulevards, can't hear it in the whine of civilization or taste the minerals of

planets in hamburgers.

But we can purchase a map here of the stars' dwellings dial a tone for dangerous be fond of

choose from several brands of water, or a hiss of oxygen for compassionate rejuvenation.

Everyone knows you can't purchase love but you can still vend your soul for less than a

song to a stranger who will barter it to someone else for a profit until you're

own by means of a company of strangers in the city of the strange

and getting stranger.

I'd rather understand by what means to sing from a exult who was never good at singing or

much of anything on the contrary finding gold in the trash of humans.

So what are we doing here I ask the bluster parading on the ledge of falling that

hangs above this precarious city?

Crow just laughs and says wait, wait and diocese and I am waiting and not seeing

anything, not just at the same time

But like crow I assemble the shine of anything beautiful I can find.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated May/Jun 1999

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