Los Angeles, I'm Yours

It seems my heart has no cure.
It seems that L.A. has provided a bed for out of town ingenues but has forgotten of the children it grew in its concrete like crops.

Do you write in hope of something?
I write to understand my thoughts.
My emotions.
I write down a sentence and from there unravel the ball of yarn.

In the discovery of my being I understood why Los Angeles was the core.
Why the city coursed through my veins like dirty motor oil.
How without it I withered because only the desert knew my curves, my harshness,
but in it my fire extinguished because I never really belonged.
As always, like unlearned lessons, it took time to understand the importance of L.A.
There is a beauty in the grittiness of Los Angeles.
True Los Angeles.
Raw Los Angeles.
The piss stained alleys, where torn down couches take the places of bushes.
And liquor stores outnumber gas stations. Where potholes only get filled up during those off chances we get rain. And the anger of drivers rises with the heat.
Los Angeles with its ability to hold so many worlds but only be recognized for the one,
Hollywood.

City of flowers and sunshine, with its alluring scents of hopes and sunscreen.
Where ideas and dreams get torn into pieces and rot away like leaves in a gutter.
Lotusland! One bite of her and you’ll forget everyone back home.
And yes, my view of Los Angeles might seem grey and cold and bleak to an outsider but I was born here.
Birthed on the floor between surgeries and the morgue.
Brought home to a small room in a house shared by many.
How can it be anything else when I have seen past the neon lights and into the soul of a pregnant woman overdosing on Skid Row?
If I can still see the red of my blood on Melrose and Orlando from the night I snorted too much coke and drank too much whiskey and fell flat on my face? Its green splendor reflected on my night stand, $200 just for me, payment for acrobatic maneuvers and sloppy kisses while on my knees .

Los Angeles,
City of Angels,
full of ingenues and drunken prey.
Los Angeles help me put on my red light and dance the blues away.