Once upon a time while I was creating my
Visit to Old Los Angeles blather, I--somewhat active as a poet
--was inspired to write a poem.
source:Wikipedia
No, not
that kind of a poem
source: Wikipedia
There, that's better.
Someone actually dredged it up and complimented it today--OMG--and I thought, "Heck, why not share it at NLA?--it's appropriate in its way." So, for better or worse, for your maybe pleasure and kind of delectation, here it is:
— Salute —
So proud, those soaring towers stretch
To point the sun to us.
Their peaks, their stretching lines
Proud boasts, bold gambles won.
You too can hear his angels sing
Who built these monuments of joy
So long ago, his gift to us.
Yes, they still sing
To those without deaf spirits,
They sing,
Their grimy faces raised in niche, at coign;
Festoons adorning, though darker now,
Pilasters rich with fluted rills
The streaming rainstorm streams there,
Thrills to spatter off a satyr's nose,
Or, intimate with Venus' clothes,
Whose face shows tears of seasons past,
Pools within her draping folds,
And runs off straining titans' arms,
Whose muscled stone still holds aloft
Their mighty builders' dreams.
But we fail them.
How many masts
How many poles
How many staffs
Stretched out, stretched up—
The bugle-calls of builders' dreams—
Jut naked now
Our unresponding flesh
More cold than builders' brick
More flint than builders' stone?
These naked flagpoles say to me
There once was joy in dreams.
Are we too impotent, too weak
To honor masts that call to us?
You cannot proudly flaunt your dream to me,
You,
Who cannot fly those given you.
You,
No flags, but only wind!
Inhabit first the house once built
And raise its banner to the sky,
And in the living of that dream,
The catching "now" of your dead "seem."
Prev
the guy in the apron looks like Jack Larue.
)
Whatever their shape or shapes, are there any still standing along Cahuenga or have they all gone the way of Monkey Island?
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