L.A. Anatomía

Mogushi Beach (Kumamoto, Japan)

What was once molten
is now frozen.
You’ve kept your faces so long to see me!
Goggled eyes and agape water-
mouths–depressions, obsessions
of features: noses, ears, feet,
all discarded as the inspiration of an
era “posh today, gone in a
millenium.” Your toothless lips
apologize. Don’t.
I love you all. For so
long, I’ve faced the guardian
of two samurai boys poised
in combat. I’ve been apart,
been a dream in their periphery
of topography that I would
kiss you even as the sand is
black and the waves break
to scare us.

    After a long day of being flooded with work, Shelby’s head popped out of the waters like a mountaintop. The sea of work was being drained away, since it was already 6pm and it was time to go home. Emerging from the sea foams of forms she discovered that her hand and turned into a wooden block.

She could not be concerned with this right now, because she had to be on her way to her daughter’s piano recital.  Swamped by post-its knee deep that leeched onto her DKNY pant suit, filled with passwords she could never remember, short cuts to programs, and “MUST DO” memos, could not stop her from seeing her little girl play the piano.
Shelby sloshed through the quicksands of her managers, Mr. Brash, unending demands that kept pulling her back into the abysmal dark Congo that was work. But she was determined to make it past the corporate boogie-traps, get to her car and make to the recital on time. Because no amount of guilt or deadlines that keep getting stacked up on one another could compare to the possible disappointment she would see in her daughters big blue eyes if mommy missed yet another performance because of work.
She couldn’t bare hearing: “It’s ok, Mommy, work is important too…”
Not this time.
She was prepared to face the tidal wave of setbacks and machines suddenly jamming up and people generally messing up and needed her help because they’re a bunch of incompetent buffoons, ahead of her. Right when she turned off her PC, and brushed off the post it notes off her suit, Janet came by her workspace.
“You think you have a minute to help me with this? It’ll only take a sec…”
Shelby picked up her wooden- block hand and bashed Janet’s head in. “No” Shelby whispered and crossed over Janet’s collapsed body, making sure she didn’t step into any spilt blood and ruin her shoes. She soon turned the corner and would be entering what she called the “cubie-trap.” It was a danger zone.  If she could make it through this part unscathed, she would home free. Shelby walked the path slowly and steadily. Slithering through silently tiring to go unnoticed, when she heard the beeps, clicks and chirps of the fax machine.
“Why wont this thing work,” she head Frank shout and bang the side of the machine. Frank couldn’t work the fax machine if his family was taken hostage by the Russian mafia and all he had to do was Fax them a piece of paper…His family would get it, execution style. Frank was just that dumb. And by some sort of black magic every time he worked the fax Shelby would always be there and he would call her his “guardian angel” in that insufferable tone of his. Frank turned around and immediately, Shelby stood frozen in her tracks. Though her stance was a little awkward, she knew how to hold it because of that one yoga class she took once but couldn’t continue the session because of work…Besides being dumb, Frank didn’t have depth perception and so when things stood absolutely still he would mistake them as being apart of his environ. After a few moments of vigorous head scratching, Frank stepped away from the fax machine and went to look for someone who could help him.
Once he was completely out of sight, Shelby let out a sigh of relief and continued on her way through. She hastened her pace a bit, her heels clicking softly on the office carpet. She was able to pass Shelia who watched you-tube all day, that never did any work, and thus it was dumped on Shelby’s desk to do and finish, successfully.  There was one more trap she had to pass before she was in the clear and that was Mike the Sexual harassment monkey. He would swing from cubicle to cubicle making inappropriate jokes with all the female employees. Mike thought that a woman who chose to work was a Feminist and Feminists were women who wanted to be treated like men rather than with respect. Shelby had thought about filing a complaint but she was always too busy to do so. That Balding Bastard. What was worse was Mike had an in with MR. Brash. They were golfing buddies. Every Sunday they were at the local country club.
“Hey there, where do you think you’re going pretty lady?”
Shelby cringed when she heard the voice. It was the Monkey. She slowly turned around and found him standing too close to her, as usual. She could smell his breath: coffee and tacos. He was eyeing her. Shelby felt it. He was also playing with his belt buckle. That was the last straw. Shelby wound up her arm, like she did when she played softball in college, let her wooden block hand loose and straight into the fuckers monkey brains. Mike gasped for air, grabbed his smashed coconuts and fell face forward to the ground.
Shelby let out a sigh of relief and didn’t realize how good it felt to do that. She decided she should sign up with a local team. But after her daughter’s recital, of course. She was finally in the clear and saw the exit doors to the office head of her. She pushed the tall glass doors and was about to reach the elevators when the receptionist, Becky, stopped her.
“Oh, Um, Mr. Brash, wants you fill out these reports before you leave tonight,” Becky said pulling out a stack of papers piled at least a mile high. Shelby considered smacking Becky upside the head like Janet. Not because of the late notice with the reports, but because one time she over heard Becky make fun of an outfit Shelby was particularly fond of and thought it made her look smart and stylish in.  But on second thought, taking into consideration the destruction Shelby had just left behind she decided to lower her hand-mallet and told Becky that it would have to wait. She was already late to a very important engagement.
Shelby walked towards the elevators again and just her luck one was already open waiting for her.
“But, what should I tell Mr. Brash?” Becky called out behind her.
Shelby stepped in and as the doors were closing said:
“Tell him to kiss my – “

I’ve found myself here again.
The place we vowed never to return. Somehow it happened.
The exit map on my palm is smeared with your cryptic words
I can’t decipher them now.
How did we lose each other, Al? We were going along so famously. Where are you now?
Be my friend, Al.
I’m calling for you — why aren’t you picking up the telepathic phone?
My dime can’t stretch that long — it’s going to cu-
I need a friend, Al.
Hopeless-ness
Has made a bed
Of my face….
Fold me up
Put me in your pocket – next to your leaky pen
Let me rest my ear against your, warm, beating heart
I want to hear
something
other than my own
break-ing….

 I pick my brain

Rumage through trash thoughts

for a satisfying morsel, a deep adjective.

“Spare phrases? Got any phrases to spare?”

They race through the mind and cramp when I pick up a pen

It just drips ink

Blots on the page

In obscure and obtuse ways

What does it look like to you, Al?

Word bank-empty

memories - liquidated

assets- frozen

Is this what it’s like to be homeless?

Have I reach the proverbial bottom?

Does my head rest against it?

Or is that your boney shoulder I drool on?

 The Virgin appeared in a window at Mercy Hospital in Springfield MA. The some locals went to “witness” her. Others had to see her on the front page of next days news paper. The picture was blurred.

“A photographer nun I know says that pictures don’t capture miracles well,” one lady said, tipping over her high heels while pouring soy milk into her venti 4-shot latte at the local Starbucks.

“Did you see it?” a man with an orange construction shirt in line asked the lady, overhearing the conversation.

“No, I didn’t” she replied.

“Oh, I did.” he said with a proud smile.

“Have you seen today’s paper?” an elderly man, asked the Batista as he was handing him his coffee. The elderly man was a regular there. Came in everyday and did his crossword. He had lived in Springfield all his life and watched the rows and rows of vineyards that stretched till the river, be bulldozed for the Starbucks that stands here now.

“No, John, I haven’t yet. But I know about the Virgin.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, they say a son was praying for his mother who had just come out of surgery in that very room,” said the young Batista.

“You don’t say,” said the elderly man.

The out of towner, who was sitting in the corner watching all of this commotion about the Virgin of Springfield, couldn’t tell if the chatter was all in mockery or in true belief. When they asked her if she had seen it or the picture in the paper, she answered in the most vague response as possible, not knowing how the locals would react if she told them what she really thought.

After a few hours, the buzz about the virgin was beginning to get sensational.

The out of town-er, decided to leave the Starbucks and go do her work else where. Away from the Virgin.

Stepping into the sentence

Is dipping into a rush of thought.

Where boulder stand in the way, interupting the flow

they are signs for wet moss,

a cautious hinderance.

This is what grammer is

It keeps from stepping into the stream in whole leap

AH

Why did I think that it would be cool to write about the history of the Long Beach Aquariaum?

At first, I thought, what a great transition this will be! writing about rivers to full tanks of aqautic life forms. And then, after spending a whole day on their website I discovered all these great programs, exhibits, tours, educational programs for both kids and bigger kids. The place is amazing from what I can tell on their website and so I thought the history of the place, the structure, the fight for the animals would be the same. It would somehow instill a sense of wonder, like their mission statement, of the bravoto of the man who walked into the Mayor of Long Beach’s office and said : “Damnit John! this palce needs a cultural attraction what the sea and all, and the LA River’s mouth dumping its guts in our nieghiborhood!”

“And you do you suppose to make that happen Jim?” the Mayor might have said, looking up from his offical forms and judging this guys brashness.

“I’ll tell you how, John,” Jim would’ve said backing off a bit, tonging down the intensity a few notches, “by building an Aquarium. The Aqarium of the Pacific!”

“You mean a fish tank? What are we going to fill it with? Goldfish?” The mayor wanted to know, mocking this fools idea.

“Oh no, Jhon, not just any ordinary Aquarium where you might find these fish at your local exotic fish store down the street. Oh no. Im talking about the biggest Aquarium this sode of the country Bigger than the one up in Monterey. A zoo of the aquatic! Will have programs, exhibits, peopl from all over the world will want to come to out home town Long Beach just to see it. We’ll be the first to successfuly breed near extinct speieces! Sea world will have shit compared to us. Fuck Shamu John! We’ll have the freakin’ whales. With wild whale watching programs. And people with AAA memberships could get a discount.”

“Uhu, I see,” the Mayor would’ve said warming up the idea more and more, he would’ve leaned back in his leather chair and asked “And where do you suppose we get all the money for this Jim?”

Jim would’ve just smiled and pull out a check book and say, ” How much you think it would cost?”

But, alas, for my time spent researching I couldn’t find a great story to tell about a man and his dream. To build a multi story aquarium with that “features a collection of over 12,500 animals representing over 650 different species.” The over the facilities focus, “on the Pacific Ocean in three major permanent galleries, Southern California and Baja, Northern Pacific and Tropical Pacific,” because people he said he was crazy to have something of the sort. Yeah, crazy. Like a Shark. which has its own gallery too and a pool where you can touch some of the harmless ones. This and much much more…

No I found no such thing.

www.aquariumofthepacific.org

There was a time, a week or two I should say the card eluded me. I was intuitively chasing it. At the time I had sculpted the perfect man in mind. The replacement. The ONE or at least the next one.

(more…)