MAR VISTA SHADORMAS

Mar Vista Shadormas


Origin-
aly named Ocean
Park Heights, des-
pues, trite, Barnes.
The post office established
1925.

Dubious
statue-cage, Myrna
Loy, silent
movie act-
ress, graduate Venice High,
mascot, Gondoliers!

Vintage fight-
er jet crashed into home
on Wade Street
North of Stew-
art, west of Sepulveda,
retardant foam spill.

Scattergood
Steam Plant, bare hands fish-
ing in grand
Ballona
Creek, Centinela Improve-
ment Corporation.

Savages
vandalize “Venus”
though headless,
in a cage,
Van Orden gallops through surf
spraycan “L.A.’s Best.”

Union troops
from close Camp Latham
used camels
and not mules
sentinel Catalina
from Mar Vista Hill.


(Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database)


Mar Vista Shadormas


Pepy’s Gal-
ley, Mitsuwa Mall,
soft ball gar-
dens, mansions
down Inglewood and Palms,
shiny commuters.

Zapotec
spoken here, Oaxaq-
ueños rule
this beach hamlet.
Se visten niños dioses,
popular placard.

Beach bum wake
walks Venice, Ocean.
Lounge under
four-o-five,
ten-lane shadow embankment.
Plant flag in sidewalk.

Mar Vista
Gardens, el Super
South of Cul-
ver, grass walk-
way, Ballona Creek Bike Path,
Sawtelle to Del Rey.

Detour through
Horrid 4-way stops
Sixty miles
An hour, through
Studio executive
hills, plots of ranch shelves.

U-S-A
Donuts, Sabor de
Oaxaca
library
Mar Vista Branch used to be
douchebag bookstore front.


(Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database)

Mar Vista Shadormas


Back-door screen,
portal construction.
Workers ham-
mering riv-
ets into pomo vigas,
indivisible.

Laundromats,
retirement pods.
Cadillac
Semper Rome.
Infernal bus, drive-thru crowd:
the cue at Menchis!!!!

New comic-
Bookstore on Old Ball-
ona gas
station turned
norm-core curiosity,
Geek Charcuterie.

Well Baby
Center, Douche Johnson—
signed-copy jail—
Post Office
on Grandview, city’s first planned
community, gated.

The softball
stinky, burnt, trashpits,
when Grandview
stopped at Palms.
The saline air in alleys
making ravens green.

Print shop spores,
in the maw, typewriters,
piñatas
of Sponge Bob
alongside los niños dioses,
child divinities.

HIGHLAND PARK SHADORMAS

(Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database)

Highland Park Shadormas


Nestled
between Debs and Ox-
y College,
South Pass-Uh
and Mount Wash.,
Highland Park plug-and-plays
dry corridor-living.

San Rafa
Hills of nooks and shelves.
Brown Craftsmen,
Mission-style
section 8—Lummis from O-
hi-O, pioneer.

Land of Tramps—
bars spill out York. Fig.
gallops gin.
These channels
exceed most tread of bunga-
lows—stowaway toes.

Masonic
Chicken Boy, U.S.
Office Ma-
chine Arts, Crafts
exiles from city entre temps:
highest densities.

Shadormas
for your Spanish genes
for your burnt
sleep cycles
for blinds slicing white-hot shade
from another din.

2 council
votes distort our girth
mordida
collusion
rampant under Renewal,
both ways before led (this time.)


(Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database)

Highland Park Shadormas


Rancho San
Rafael fissures
for the rent
the rent split
between family and
threat of friends,
abandoned couches.

Annexed and
annexed and taken
from the Spanish
from Mexkins
even Martians. Spoil the rod:
barrio bounty.

Why so man-
y hits and runs? Why
not slow down--
brake pads grind
brake pads shouldn’t save more lives
than bright bike corrals.

Christmas on
York proves barrios
feed themselves
choicest cuts.
The loam I cut is tender—
water-cut, old roads.

Doing the
wash on damn day off,
pyramid
dirty dishes
let’s hope el virus no me catch
unawares y que?

Elephant
Figueroa bones,
street horse trough,
Sycamore
Grove public bowling green lawn,
Sparklett’s oasis.


(Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database)


Highland Park Shadormas


Let’s move in!
City’s first suburb
north of smog
arroyos
invaden tus neighborhoods
bien lomos.

Elephant
Figueroa bones,
street horse trough,
Sycamore
Grove public bowling green lawn,
Sparklett’s Oasis.

Arroyo
Street pole erection
Origin-
Al Libra-
ry, railroad tracks in flood sod,
detonated books.

Judson Art
School in Garvanza,
stained-glass shop
three brothers
regulated with fifteen
craftsmen at a time

Glassell Park
Hughes Aircraft, Chrysler
Air Raid Si-
ren, Optimist Home for Boys,
mud seeping through wall.

Patio
of grand Lummis Home
El Alisal
eon home-
stead to last a thousand years,
built by looking back.

GHAZAL FOR JAMES FOLEY

“Mr. [James] Foley converted to Islam soon after his capture and adopted the name Abu Hamza”—Oct. 25, 2014 N.Y. Times article, “The Horror Before the Beheadings”

 

 Hard for me to believe Jimbo didn’t convert under duress.

Although, I have always known him spiritually curious.

Easier to believe he proved syrup at fangs of alien vampires

intent on making him pay, leaving us lot spiritually curious.

Jimbo adopts name Abu Hamza because Hamza’s famous

for riding into Battle of Badir with an ostrich feather in his turban.
(how spiritually curious of him, no doubt!).

Hamza was late convert to Islam; Jimbo came to journalism a seasoned teacher.

Both proved paladin interlopers, distinguished ball-busters of spirit: curious.

También, the manner in which both are cut down early in life, apenitas

after egress of civilians on H.D.M.I. proves too easy, of little spiritual curiosity.

Tell me Abu, how does an Abyssinian slave gamble on their manumission

by chucking a javelin into the abdomen of an O.G.-General, spiritually curious?

How does one roam into a sitch so egregiously far from Lake Winnipesaukee?

How does one prevent their liver from turning into jewelry of spiritual curiosities?

Jimbo picks Moe’s right-hand man (I’m talking about Hamza here) because Jimbo knows Gabriel only shows himself to deniers of emerald escalators, not the spiritually curious.

Tell me Abu, why should I forgive the rabid—the rabbled, wracked with graphic cabals?

Estos matadores en balaclavas tyranny the Just, pimp Justice, and claim spiritual curiousity.

Torture ain’t stop Jimbo programming: specialist lectures, tournaments of Risk, faux

wrestling matches between the captives. For what? Morale, and to not lose spirit and curiosity.

Abu is kindness performed with militance; Jimbo is witness subsumed with service.

Quizas, juntos, as adjuncts they eradicate flags, shatter cisterns, dissuade countries to stand behind their spiritual curiosity.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY JAIL SONNETS 11 & 12

This is one is based on a little segment I did with KCRW's Sonic Trace called "Use Big Words." You can listen to the segment, here.

In this one I am speaking directly with the ghost of Frederick Douglass, and directly to my students inside the L.A. County Jail.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY JAIL SONNET #8

No. 8 in a series. Heavily told me that a series is called a corona, and I have yet to confirm that but Heavily knows his shit so it's more than highly probable. I have No. 9 and No. 10 in the register of my typewriter. in this corona, the speaker is teaching "Life of Frederick Douglass," to English classes of women inmates at CRDF and male inmates at TTCF in the Los Angeles County Jail.