Ellipsis
If you don’t
find God on a freeway
in Los Angeles, you’ve
never had a spiritual experience.
Remote qualification took place in
a multilevel “tri-sexual” club,
where anything goes,
with a nice, nasty
dance floor for
vehement grinding
to pounding, loud industrial music.
Mommy and Daddy’s music.
Then, life in my 30’s, coming
into Los Angeles, with a Jeep was
beach air and
highway shimmer,
Church’s Chicken and taquerias,
cholos and señoritas eating
my wife’s white chili out the back,
with the biggest jalapeños
her buck could afford, pumping bass
popping screws, and
Arlo Guthrie mixes with Snoop
and Ice Cube.
God gave her to me
and God took her away, although
she said the Source would take me
first, and nothing,
nothing but this, nothing
but that I’m still most alive on
asphalt spaghetti
where breezes blow
from the West,
where ocean will boil,
the sun takes a skinny dip
and each nipple fizzles.
5 thoughts on "Ellipsis"
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Quite a story with great word choice- each nipple fizzes,
Arlo Guthrie, mixes with Snoop and Ice Cube, asphalt spaghetti!
thank you Linda
Favorite of yours this month, Manny. Love the resignation/acceptance of “God gave her to me / and God took her away”
Thank you for this. Withdrawal from life in L.A. is such a real thing, and it never exactly seems to end since I watch so much tv and always seem to recognize that street there. What a visceral vivid snapshot of the grief of so many losses. I haven’t gotten my CA losses onto the page yet so really appreciate this. I’m sorry you lost your person.
sensual tribute to a place and a time in life very good