Los Angeles at a Distance
at Griffith Park
Carlos Cabrera
silence doesn’t last long here.
soon the earthquakes from a motorcycle
or a pickup truck hiccupping up this hill
will carry it away in its mouth.
only the life of color seems to persist,
birthing in the crimsoned fire of dry leaves
that languidly nudge at their embers like
phoenixes about to soar once more.
yet not even the sky can hide its blue –
a hue as delicate as onion skin –
from the city stretching, open-mouthed,
for its hanging, elusive expanses.
soon the sky will wear a necklace of brown fog
and support itself with outstretched arms,
lest it fall onto the tempting lioness,
that concrete toothless maiden waiting below.
everything’s ephemeral in los angeles,
the service entrance to paradise, the city
where the furtive veil of smog is
made of everyone’s abandoned dreams.
there, in that land of walking stars
and where life is led
like a leashed dog across a stage;
in that city where at a distance
she sleeps urban and catatonic,
and there are more flies than flowers in her hair.
in that tragic misnomer without angels,
where our memories ensconce themselves,
painted on the ribs of a building
or caught between the jagged teeth of downtown;
here, in this city, where streets are littered with broken hearts
and where you once loved me.