I left my city for San Francisco
Took a free ride off a billionaire's jet
LA, I'm from nowhere, who am I to love you?
LA, I've got nothing, who am I to love you when I'm feeling this way and I've got nothing to offer?
LA, not quite the city that never sleeps
Not quite the city that wakes, but the city that dreams, for sure
If by dreams, you mean in nightmares
LA, I'm a dreamer, but I'm from nowhere, who am I to dream?
LA, I'm upset, I have complaints, listen to me
They say I came from money and I didn't
And I didn't even have love, and it's unfair
LA, I sold my life rights for a big check and I'm upset
And now I can't sleep at night and I don't know why
Plus, I love Zach, so why did I do that when I know it won't last?
LA, I picked San Francisco because the man who doesn't love me lives there
LA, I'm pathetic, but so are you, can I come home now?
Daughter to no one, table for one
Party of thousands of people I don't know at Delilah where my ex-husband works
I'm sick of this, but can I come home now?
Mother to no one, private jet for one
Back home to the Tudor house that borned a thousand murder plots
Hancock Park, it's treated me very badly, I'm resentful
The witch on the corner, the neighbor nobody wanted
The reason for Garcetti's extra security
LA, I know I'm bad, but I have nowhere else to go, can I come home now?
I never had a mother, will you let me make the sun my own for now, and the ocean my son?
I'm quite good at tending to things despite my upbringing, can I raise your mountains?
I promise to keep them greener, make them my daughters
Teach them about fire, warn them about water
I'm lonely, LA, can I come home now?
I left my city for San Francisco
And I'm writing from the Golden Gate Bridge
But it's not going as I planned
I took a free ride off a billionaire and brought my typewriter
And promised myself that I would stay, but
It's just not going the way that I thought
It's not that I feel different, and I don't mind that it's not hot
It's just that I belong to no one, which means there's only one place for me
The city not quite awake, the city not quite asleep
The city that's still deciding how good it can be
And also
I can't sleep without you
No one's ever really held me like you
Not quite tightly, but certainly, I feel your body next to me
Smoking next to me
Vaping lightly next to me
And I love that you love the neon lights like me
Orange in the distance
We both love that
And I love that we have that in common
Also, neither one of us can go back to New York
For you are unmoving
As for me, it won't be my city again until I'm dead
Fuck the New York Post
LA, who am I to need you when I've needed so much, asked for so much?
And what I've been given, I'm not sure yet
I may never know that either until I'm dead
For now, though, what I do know
Is although I don't deserve you
Not you at your best and your splendor
With towering eucalyptus trees that sway in my dominion
Not you at your worst
Totally on fire, unlivable, unbreathable, I need you
You see, I have no mother
And you do
A continental shelf
A larger piece of land from where you came
And I?
I'm an orphan
A little seashell that rests upon your native shores
One of many, for sure
But because of that, I surely must love you closely to the most of anyone
For that reason, let me love you
Don't mind my desperation
Let me hold you, not just for vacation
But for real and for forever
Make it real life
Let me be a real wife to you
Girlfriend, lover, mother, friend
I adore you
Don't be put off by my quick-wordedness
I'm generally quite quiet
Quite a meditator, actually
I'll do very well down by Paramhansa Yogananda's realization center, I'm sure
I promise you'll barely even notice me
Unless you want to notice me
Unless you prefer a rambunctious child
In which case, I can turn it on too
I'm quite good on the stage as you may know
You might have heard of me
So either way, I'll fit in just fine
So just love me by doing nothing
And perhaps, by not shaking the county line
I'm yours if you'll have me
But regardless, you're mine
Two blue steel trains run through the tunnels of your cool blue steel eyes
Vernon
Rock quarry
The vastness of which has nothing on your beautiful mind
Dylan
I hear Dylan when I look at you
I can see it in invisible ink like a tattoo
The ying to my yang
The toughness to my unending softness
A striking example of masculinity
Firm in your verticality
Sure in your confrontation against all elements
And duality
The sun to my wilting daisy
The earth to the wildflower that doesn't care where it grows
Vernon
Everything's burnt here
There's no escaping it
The air is fried and on fire
I've never really fallen in love
But whatever this feeling is
I wish everyone could experience it
This place feels like a person
Familiar
Like someone I've stood next to before
But never while I was standing next to you
Thank you
For being here
For bearing witness to my vastness
Through the year I've called you in and out of my orbit
You, in your madness
The satellite that constellates my world
Mimicking the inner chaos that I've disowned
A mirror to my past life retributions
And a reflection of my sadness
If I'm going to keep on living the way that I'm living
I can't do it without you
My feet aren't on the ground
I need your body to stand on
Your name to define me
On top of being a woman
I am scared
And
Ethereal
And
There are seven worlds in my eyes
I'm accessing of all them once
One to draw my words from and my muses
Another one I try and harness late at night that lies somewhere
Off of the right of Jupiter
And then of course there's this one I live in
The land of a thousand fires
That's where you come in
You
Vernon
Dylan
Two blue steel trains
Running through the tunnels of your
Cool blue steel eyes
To guide me far from the world of my early days
That I can't quite make out clearly
That beckon me towards high sea cliffs
On long car rides
Towards a future place
A world unknown to me
Made up of something surreal and dripping
Flowers in solar systems oversized
You Vernon Dylan
No words needed to sponge up the
Dark nights
No explanations for the globes in my eyes
Shoulder to shoulder in the factory light
Letting me be who I would have been
If everything had turned out alright
Three alternative endings
Now course through my blood on ice
But I thrive because I say I do
And because it's what I write
But honestly if you weren't here with me
I don't know what things would look like
That's my why no matter what world I'm in
I'm accessible by only one satellite
Vernon
Dylan
And you in your madness
With two blue steel trains running
Through your cool blue steel eyes
I went to a party
I came in hot
Made decisions beforehand
My mind made up
Things that would make me happy
To do them or not
Each option weighed carefully
A plan for each thought
And then I walked through the door past the open concept
And saw Violet bent backwards over the grass
Seven years old with dandelions grasped tightly in her hand
Arched like a bridge in a fallen handstand
Grinning wildly like a madman
With the exuberance that only doing nothing can bring
Waiting for the fireworks to begin
And in that moment I decided to do nothing about everything
I saw you in the mirror
You were wearing your hair differently
Carrying the air differently
You said you wear your hair long parted in the middle
Long in solidarity just like all his women
In Long Beach
Aimless
Your fingers wiping oil on the paper with precision
With decision like an artist never seen yet with a vision
With a reason
Stared with venom at the ceiling
Not the grass
But straight ahead
Just At the skyline
With precision
Laser vision
Time was stopping
Moving through you
You dictated
By what moved you
Only moving never thinking
Match the sun that's slowly sinking
At the height of the afternoon
In the heat of the summer evening
Like a phoenix like a chem trail like a wavelength No
One's claiming
Georgia o Keefe
Georgia peaches
Doing nothing but your painting
For forever
Forget teachers
Forgive him for ever leaving
Love is rising
No resisting
Cheeks are flushing
Now you're living
Say goodbye now
No resisting
Live your life like
No one's listening
Be the art the life is breathing
Be the soul the world is living
For you only
Not for giving
Just for taking
No one's listening
At the end of Rose and Rich
Down the street that's green and winding
Past the bushes cypress thriving
Past the chain link fence and driving
Further down the road less travelled
There you are athleisure wear unraveled
Now I see you clear
Standing stoic blue and denim
Eyes not blue but clear like
Heaven
You don't want to be forgotten
You just want to disappear
Get out of my blood, salamander!
I can't seem to blow off enough steam to get you out of my head
Soul cycle you to death, run you out of my blood to San Pedro
And yet, everywhere I go, it seems there you are
And there I am
I don't want to sell my stories anymore, stop pushing me
Some stories aren't meant to be sold
Some words aren't meant to be told
I want to leave them underneath the nightstand to be forgotten
Or remembered should my thoughts come upon them in the middle of the night after a long beach day
Or by you, some afternoon, to thumb through with your worn warm after-work hands
I love you, but you don't understand me, I'm a real poet!
My life is my poetry, my love making is my legacy!
My thoughts are about nothing, and beautiful, and for free
You see, the things that can't be bought can't be evaluated, and that makes them beyond human reach
Untouchable, safe, otherworldly
Unable to be deciphered or metabolized
Something metaphysical
Like a view of the sea on a summer day on the most perfect winding road taken in from the car window
A thing perfect, and ready to become a part of the texture of the fabric of something more ethereal
Like Mount Olympus, where Zeus sent Athena and the rest of the immortals to play
May my eyes always stay level to the horizon
May they never gaze as high as heaven, to ask why
May I never go where angels fear to tread
So as to have to ask for answers in the sky
The whys in this lifetime I've found are inconsequential
Compared to the magic of the nowness - the solution to most questions
There are no reasons
And if there are - I'm wrong
But at least I won't have spent my life waiting
Looking for God in the clouds of the dawn
I'll be up early to rise though of course
But only to make you a pot of coffee
That's what I was thinking this morning Joe
That it's times like this as the marine layer lifts
Off the sea from the view of our favorite restaurant
That I pray that I may
Always keep my eyes level to your eyeline
Never downcast at the table cloth
You see, Joe
It's times like this that the marine layer lifts
Off the sea on the dock with out candle lit
That I think to myself
There are things you still don't know about me
Like sometimes I'm afraid my sadness is too big
And that one day you might have to help me handle it
But until then
May my eyes always stay level to the skyline
Assessing Long Beach's glittering new development
Never higher than the tallest building
Never to heaven or revenant
'Cause I have faith in man as strange as that seems
In times like these
And it's not just because of the warmth I've found in your
Brown eyes
It's because I believe in the goodness in me
That it's firm enough to plant a flag in
Or a
Rosebud
Or to build a new life
I took a flying lesson on my 33rd birthday, instead of calling you
Or parking on the block where our old place used to be
Genesee, genesee, genesee
Pathetic, I know – but sometimes I still like to park on that street
And have lunch in the car just to feel close to you
I was once in love with my life here
In that studio apartment with you
Little yellow flowers on the tops of trees as our only view
Out of the only window
Big enough for me to see our future through
But it turned out I was the only one who could see it
Stupid apartment complex
Terrible you
You, who I wait for
You, you, you
Like a broken record stuck on loop
So that day, on my birthday, I thought
"Something has to change"
You can't always be about waiting for you
Don't tell anyone, but part of my reasoning for taking the flight class, was this idea that if I could become my own navigator
The captain of the sky
That perhaps I could stop looking for direction
From you
Well, what started off as an idea on a whim
Has turned into something more
Too shy to explain to the owners that my first lesson was just a one-time thing
I've continued to go to classes each week
At the precious little strip off Santa Monica and Bundy
And everything was going fine
We were starting with dips and loops
And then something terrible happened
During my fourth lesson in the sky
My instructor, younger than I, but as tough as you
Instructed me to do a simple maneuver
It's not that I didn't do it
But I was slow to lean the sports cruiser into a right-hand upward turn
Scared, scared that I would lose control of the plane
Not tactfully and not gently
The instructor shook his head, and without looking at me said
"You don't trust yourself"
I was horrified
Feeling as though I'd somehow been found out
Like he knew me
How weak I was
Of course, he was only talking about my ability as a pilot in the sky
But I knew it was meant for me to hear those words
For me, they held a deeper meaning
I didn't trust myself
Not just 2500 feet above the coast of Malibu
But with anything
And I didn't trust you
I could've said something but I was quiet
Because pilots aren't like poets
They don't make metaphors between life and the sky
In the midst of this mid-life, meltdown, navigational exercise in self-examination
I also decided to do something else I had always wanted to do
Take sailing lessons in the vibrant bay of Marina del Rey
I signed up for the class as "Elizabeth Grant"
And nobody blinked an eye
So, why was I so sure that when I walked into the tiny shack on Valley Way, someone would say
"You're not a captain of a ship, or the master of the sky!"
No, the fisherman didn't care, and so neither did I
And for a brief moment, I felt more myself than ever before
Letting the self proclaimed drunkard captain's lessons wash over me like the foamy tops of the sea
Midway through my forehead burned
And my hands raw from driving
The captain told me the most important thing I would need to know on the sea
"Never run the ship into irons"
That's nautical terms for not sailing the boat directly into the wind
In order to do that though, you have to know where the wind is coming from
And you might not have time to look up to the mast
Or up further to the weathervane
So you have to feel where the wind is coming from
On your cheeks, and by the tips of the white waves from which direction they're rolling
To do this, he gave me an exercise
He told me to close my eyes, and asked me to feel on my neck which way the wind was blowing
I already knew I was going to get it wrong
"The wind is coming from everywhere, I feel it all over" I told him
"No", he said, "the wind is coming from the left. The portside"
I sat waiting for him to tell me "You don't trust yourself"
But he didn't, so I said it for him
"I don't trust myself"
He laughed gentler than the pilot, but still not realising that my failure in the exercise was hitting me at a much deeper level
"It's not that you don't trust yourself" he said. "it's simply that you're not a captain. It isn't what you do"
Then he told me he wanted me to practise everyday so I would get better
"Which grocery store do you go to?" he asked
"To the Ralphs in the Palisades" I replied
"OK. When you're in the Ralphs in the Palisades
I want you, as you're walking from your car to the store
To close your eyes, and feel which way the wind is blowing
Now, I don't want you to look like a crazy person crouching in the middle of the parking lot
But everywhere you go
I want you to try and find which way the wind is coming in from
And then, determine if it's from the port or starboard side
So when you're back on the boat you have a better sense of it"
I thought his advice was adorable
I could already picture myself in the parking lot
Squinting my eyes with perfect housewives looking on
I could picture myself growing a better sense of which way the wind was blowing
And as I did, a tiny bit of deeper trust also began to grow within myself
I thought of mentioning it
But I didn't
Because captain's aren't like poets
They don't make metaphors between the sea and the sky
And as I thought that to myself
I realized
That's why I write
All of this circumnavigating the earth
Was to get back to my life
Six trips to the moon for my poetry to arise
I'm not a captain
I'm not a pilot
I write!
I write
No one ever touched me without wanting to kill me
Except for a healer on 6th street in Ridgely
Tessa DiPietro,
Recommended casually by a medium I no longer know
She said my number-one problem was that my field was untrusting
When asked what to do, she paused and said nothing
Which sent me right into uncontrollable sobbing
Because there's never anything you can do about the important things
She said "Okay, one thing you can do is picture the floor rising up to support you,
And sink into the back of the bed that's behind you
Too much of your energy is in front and above you"
Which, for some reason, made me think of a live show I'd seen
Jim Morrison at the Hollywood Bowl, 1968, check date
The blue trellis lights gave him an unusual aura
Like a halo or something
Made him 8 feet or taller
I remember just thinking he looked out of his body
But definitely like a god on stage
So I told her "Maybe an artist has to function a little bit above themselves,
If they really want to transmit some heaven"
And she told me
"A singleness of focus is the key to transmission,
For an emphasis on developing inner intuition,
Close your eyes and feel where you hold your attention
If it's in the back of your eyes
Walk it down to your heart's centre
And make that the new place from which your thoughts enter
Clairvoyance comes mostly from this simple function
Oh - and Jim died at 27
So find another frame of reference
When you're referencing heaven
And have you ever read the lyrics to 'People are Strange'?
He made no sense!"
You move like water sweet baby sweet waiter
Making the night smile to no one you cater
Silent wood worker from midnight till later
My lover my laughter my armor my maker
The way that I feel with you is something like aching
Inside of my stomach the cosmos are baking
A universe hung like a mobile
The alignment of these planets unique
In me the earth moves around the sun
No land all sea
Water world
Sun chaser
Tropic of cancer
Southern equater
I'm the crying crustacean
Sunbathing on paper
Moon
Let's rewrite the beginning of this primordial ooze
Shall we my love
Am I being brazen for saying this year makes me feel
Like we could've wrote it better
Than him?
But who am I
Just a girl in love dreaming on paper
Rearranging the salt for the pepper
In love with you
My quiet waiter
Summer
Blue
Forever
Call me when you're done with work
I'll pick you up later
The darker the better
Perfect petals punctuate the fabrics yellow blue
Silver platters with strawberries strewn across the room
In Zimmerman with sandals on one summer dress to choose
Three girls
Eyes rolled
Loud laughter
Dust specs lit by afternoon
My life is sweet like lemonade now there's no bitter fruit
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
No thought of you
My thoughts have changed
My voice is higher
Now I'm over you
No flickering in my head movies
Projected in Bellevue
Because I captured the mood of my wish fulfilled
And sailed to Xanadu
The grief that came in waves that rolled I navigated through
The fire from my wish as wind to future trip to Malibu
Now everything I have is perfect
Nothing much to do
Just perfect florals
Green embroidered chairs
One dress to choose
You thought I was rich
And I am but not how you think
I live in a Tudor house
Under the freeway in Mar Vista by the beach
When you call I take my phone to the picnic table
That I bought from the Rose Bowl
And I listen to the rushing cars above
And I think about the last time you visited me
The last time we made love
How the noise got louder and louder during rush hour
Until it sounded like the sea
And it felt like the ocean was the sky
And that I was flying because you were two feet taller than me
Until you took me in your arms
And I could touch the stars
And they all fell down around my head
And I became an angel
And you put me to bed
Happy
People think that I'm rich and I am but not how they think
I have a truck with a gold key chain in the ignition
And on the back it says: happy, joyous, and free
Happy
And when I drive
I think about the last time my friends were driving with me
How the radio was so loud that I couldn't hear the words
So we became the music
Happy
They write that I'm rich and I am but not how they think
I have a safe I call the boyfriend box
And in it every saved receipt
Every movie theater ticket just to remind me
Of all the things I've loved and lost and loved again
Unconditionally
Happy
You joke that I'm rich and I am but not how you think
I live in a Tudor house under the freeway
Off of Rose Avenue, 12 blocks from the beach
And when you call I put your sweater on
And put you on speaker
And chat for hours underneath the trees
And think about the last time you were here lying next to me
How the noise from the cars got louder and louder
During rush hour
Until it sounded like a river or a stream
And it felt like we were swimming
But it wasn't just a dream
We were just
Happy
Last year, when I wrote you my last letter
The beginning of my future poetry
I acknowledged who you really were for the first time
I didn't call you by any other name
I let you know that I knew the true nature of your heart
That it was evil, and that it convinced me that darkness was real
That the devil is a real devil
And that monsters don't always know that they're monsters
But projection is an amazing thing
After you left and burnt the house down
You tried to convince me that it was I who was holding the matches
You told me that I didn't know who I was, but I do
I love rose gardens
I plant violets every time someone leaves me
I love the great sequoias of Yosemite
And if you asked my sister to describe the first thing she thinks of when she thinks of me
She would say "camp fire smoke"
I'm gentle
I'm funny when I'm drunk
But I haven't been drunk for 14 years
I go on trips with my friends to the beach who don't know that I'm crazy
I can do that
I can do anything
Even leave you
Because my bedroom is a sacred place now that there are children at the end of my bed
Telling me stories about the friends that they pretend to hate, that they will make up with later
And there are fresh cut flowers that I grew myself in vases from the yard on nightstands, hand carved by old pals from Big Sur
And the longer I stay here
The more I am sure
But the more I step into becoming a poet
The less I will fall into being with you
The more I step into my poetry
The less I will fall into being with you
The more I step into my poetry
The less I will fall into bed with you
Paradise is very fragile
And it seems like it's only getting worse
Down here in Florida
We're fighting red toxic tides
Mass of fish kills
Not to mention hurricanes and rising sea levels
Back in Los Angeles, things aren't looking much better
My treehouse that'd been standing for 80 years succumbed to the woolsy fire
Who would've thought that this year at 33
You would've been taken out from under me
After all those years?
Built from the ground up, by hand, by your very first owner
Quiet World War One, aviation pilot
I tried to save you but the German Shepherd seemed more important
Paradise is very fragile
And it seems like it's only getting worse
Our leader is a megalomaniac
And we've seen that before
But never 'cause it was what the country deserved
My friends tell me to stop calling 911 on the culture
But it's either that or I 5150 myself
They don't understand
I'm a dreamer
And I had big dreams for the country
Not for what it could do, but how it could feel
How it could think, how it could dream
I know
Who am I to dream for you?
It's just that in my own mind
I was born with a little bit of paradise
I was lucky in that way
Not like my husband
Who was born and raised in hell
I always had something gentle to give
All of me, in fact
It's one of the beautiful things about me
It's one of the beautiful things about nature
But lately I've been thinking that I wish
Someone had told me when I was younger
More about the inhabitants that thrive off of paradise
That should they take too much
There would be nothing left to give
Not everyone's nature is golden and green
And you can't fight what's in your nature
I got to thinking about it as
We were fighting the fires in Agora
But I'm tired of fighting you
Paradise is very fragile
And it's only getting worse
And every time I think of that
I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve, that fateful eve
She took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree
And this summer night, you in front of me
Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil
Because you take and you take and you take and you take
But you taste like the beach and a kiss
Candy from my eyes
In my veins you run citrus
Watercolor images of serpents on orange trees
Arise in my midst
Kundalini, you breathe me
I could do this forever
But my heart is very fragile
And I have nothing left to give
Stay on your path Sylvia Plath
Don't fall away like all the others
Don't take all your secrets alone to your watery grave about
Lovers and -
The secrets you keep will keep you in deep like Amy and -
And brother
And all of the people you meet on the street will reiterate lies
That they uttered
Leave me in peace, I cry
In the middle of the night
On a slow boat bound for Catalina for no reason
Tiny drops of perspiration dot my forehead
Could be mistaken for dew drops if this were photo season
But alas this is a real life – and it's been a real fight just to
Stop my mind from committing treason
Why you ask?
Because she told the townspeople I was crazy, and the lies, they
Started to believe them
But anyways – that's all over now
I've moved on, gone scorched earth
And now I'm left wondering where to go from here
To Sonoma where the fires have just left?
South Dakota?
Would standing in front of Mount Rushmore feel like the Great
American homecoming I never had?
Would the magnitude of the scale of the sculptures take the place
Of the warm embrace I've never got
Or should I just be here now
Bare feet on linoleum
Slicing vegetables onto water that I will later turn
Into stew
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