Lines, lies, lights where the listless thrive/ as others drive this town./   An old man stands at a fence on a hill surveying  (this seen from my car along Mulholland Drive), while I chase thunderclouds up and back.  I pass through hailstorms, derailed cars, orange cones and red turning hazards.    Most other times there’s a mean ole sun what beats on my face.  Lives lived leaving.  Loved and Left./  But I like it here./  Liked it here/  Like to hear the hot midsummer taut/ line of singing cicadas./  Waiting in a room with the rain outside and time and people and the world, even, filing by.  I stare at a ceiling fan.  Without sending a word or note of import or impact out into those throngs.  Is this to be the day to day until your skin and walls are yellowed to the shade as some of those mid-sixties buildings that pepper the towns along the valley freeway? A worn line of clothes left to dry in the sun and forgotten.   Align lies like lights in a line, Alight. A light to the tip and away./  Weighted and waiting./   Wading at the edge of the pacific/  Looking north or is it west the eye folllows/ that land’s horizon line as it traces/ the old pull down map from your young girl’s classroom and here on these streets you realize that tragedy is not being able to trace the arrival, the sudden turn which brought you to moving through each day unquestioning the daily timed stall of you and all these other cars./   Where is it they are going to, what will they do there?/  This is the secret tragic, mundane that is shared. It lies between the crossing beams of the spotlights planted on certain street corners joyously and the ones from the plastic birds in the sky tracking. Nothing really matters in this town./  Unless, it’s the noise.      (Back)