Los Angeles (Excerpt from Real-Life)

We street walk and our bodies crack and fall apart, into pieces and particles down Broadway through downtown Los Angeles. We walk across blood and glass and plastics. Smelling like human defecation and dog.   Trash cans and dumpsters overflow from an overpopulated city, from the production of the city and mass consumption of product within the city. Aluminum balloons stuck on the telephone wires and all the different kinds of shoes swinging and the stuffed animals swaying from powerlines. We walk across old busted up monster truck tires, scrap metal yards, and spit-wads the size of cats. We walk across rocks and rubble and gravel, boxes and shoes and big trash bags pulled inside-out, full of wastes; animal wastes like intestines and guts and anal canals or food scraps, expired food, food with fungus and mold growing tall and taller like skyscraper building.  Binging and purging, with extreme in-and-out, our insides exposed to our outsides. The city in complete and total hemorrhage and the accumulation of fluid, pus, blood, gas, and neo plastic tissues. This is a high frequency city, city of high voltage, city of marked and unmarked laboratories, of fabrication like slaughterhouse and meat packing plant, sand-blasting warehouse, machine shop, stainless steel mill, titanium, lead, rubber, and iron factories. City inhibiting anatomical and physiological functions. City of a woman forced to eat manure and then cut-in-half, city of a decapitated head near the Hollywood sign, city of LSD motorbike accident, city of the famous movie stars, city of build-up, city of let-down, city of suicide and high-speed pursuit, city of live television broadcast with 7-second delay, city of high magnitude earthquakes, city of the Santa Ana winds, celestial blue city, city of end-of-the-world effusion. This big dirty cloud looming over the city, this thick bright fog pressing against fat calcified pavement, leaning on houses, sitting on cars.  The city pungent, perfumed by rancid stink. Car exhausts and car service slipping oil cement lawns, the Los Angeles ether. An overwhelming amount of noise vibrating into every cell, echoing off all objects. Sounds of the sub-compact tractors and compact tractors, utility tractors and bulldozers. Sounds of the colorful train cars. Sounds of the leaf blowers and the chainsaws and the wood chippers. Unmarked government HazMat dump-truck  feeding onto corrosive, flammable, toxic, and reactive wastes, feeding onto the make-shift furniture in alley ways and abandoned buildings.  Dumpster truck dumping metal, microplastic, nanoplastic, and intestines. Cement pavers paving over dirt and worms and trash.  The sewage system backed up and stuck, the constipated piping of our hometown. Coyotes bloated corpse obstructing underground pipes and drains, a mass drainage of the collection.   The sun illuminates a rainbow of all grey, a smog field.    In other towns birds fall out of the sky or frogs or it rains blood, but here in Los Angeles we hide behind big dry oak trees, or telephone poles covered in tar, dipped in penta or arsenic, stabbed with staples and nails. When we walk outside, we walk with skin protectant, eye protectant, and respiratory protectant. The sun so bright and so hot, slow cooking our crackling pork skins. The sun bleaching all the advertisement signs and all the garbage, burning holes into our largest organ, our skin. The sun-bleached piñata, the sun-bleached car and the sun-bleached pale green Christmas tree incense hanging from our car mirrors, the sun-bleached baseball game, the sun-bleached construction cone, and sun-bleached stop-sign. California’s national parks and beaches before catching on fire from lightning or arson or cults or telephone wires or trains. The sun-bleach buildings before the buildings go up into flames.   Red Fire, Orange Fire, Blue Fire, Green Fire. Apple Fire, Carmel Fire, Soda Fire, Bitter Fire, Lime Fire, Candy Fire, Avocado Fire. Marshall Fire, Railroad Fire, Cemetery Fire. Deep Fire, Rim Fire, Hollow Fire, Grizzly Fire, Muck Fire, Slink Fire, Slough Fire, Aurora Fire. Creek Fire, River Fire, Pond Fire, Lake Fire, Beach Fire, Happy Camp Fire, Hills Fire, Gulch Fire, Valley Fire, Oak Fire, Pine Fire, Smoke-Tree Fire, Rock Fire, Volcano Fire, Lava Fire, Sky Fire, Skyline Fire, Lightning Fire, Snow Fire, Sun Fire, Day Fire, Mineral Fire, Gold Fire, Diamond Fire, Sage Fire, Wood Fire, Copper Fire, Glass Fire, Horn Fire, Feather Fire, Salt Fire. Catholic Fire, French Fire, Nuns Fire, Witch Fire. Sheep Fire, Hog Fire, Fox Fire, Quail Fire, Coyote Fire, Scorpion Fire, Mosquito, Bull-Frog Fire, Frog Fire, Elk Fire, Badger Fire, Rabbit Fire, Antelope Fire, Bear Fire, Cowhead Fire, Rattle Snake Fire, Viper Fire, Chicken Fire, Goose Fire, Fish Fire, Whale Fire, and Diablo Fire.   Black trees, black sidewalks, black rust with black mud and black slag. The sun-bleached city streets of Los Angeles, with our shadows burned into the sides of buildings, our shadows burned into the ground. Shadow people on bath salt drinking black soda-pop peps-cola, licking black salt out of sidewalk cracks. The sun sets a bright dark brown orange until it dies into the deep black water.   A mountain of muck and smut and scum, a mountain of broken glass, a mountain of compressed glass into breathable shards, another mountain of beach sand, one of rocks, one of plastic, one of metal. A mountain of scrap metal; metals from old school buses and taxis and retarded car batteries and retired cars. Mountains of microscopic fragments, mountain of dirt, mountain of plants and burnt trees, mountain of weaponry, mountain of dynamite as far as Agua Dulce, mountain of the landfill, mountain of the Hollywood hills, mountain of inspissated secretions, mountains in the far away distance, acid run-off mountain, controlled and prescribed burning mountain, mountain of the collapsed.