NaPM April 27 2015

[RiverNotch]

Greetings from Sunset Boulevard

I've got
sixteen candles lighting up the line,
sixteen bright green candles
glowing sweetly like your eyes,
sixteen gifts -- sixteenth birthday,
sixteenth record from my grandpa the musician,
ever-playing that old Stratocaster,
with its sixteen strings of metal,
with his sixteen notes of rebellion,
and sixteen bars across his door --
sixteen candles lighting up the lines
of my cubicle in Christmas:
a final taste of what I leave behind
before all these papers fly away tomorrow
to LA.

I've got
long white lines of plastic
flowing from my ears to my phone,
drowning out the noise of the landing,
playing in this lonely cabin
Joni's songs of hard regret,
of liquor-love and California,
of rivers -- skaters on the freeway,
coyote heads and verdant eyes,
two young lovers listening live
to old Joni's best jive yet,
too young to understand how one
becomes a drifter, becomes a prisoner
of the long white lines of the freeway --
and I'm here, I'm finally here,
in LA.

I've got
an hole in my schedule, a pen in my hand
and a sixteen dollar laminated photo
bounded by four long white lines
of ink -- lovers in a bedroom,
sixteen long white lines of semen
all over your frustrated face:
sixteen bars across the door,
our last hurrah before this flight tonight,
before I ride a paper plane
for this damned Christmas job --
so here I am, filled with hard regret,
imprisoned on the long white lines
of Sunset, looking for our hero,
old Joni, with a pen in my hand,
and a sixteen dollar laminated photo
of LA.