School Us

School of hard knocks, they say
But name one that be soft in L.A.

All these cops trying to press with your day,
In our city it’s the price that you pay,

But you’ll learn how to make it, okay
Yeah, you’ll learn how make your own way

To be true in this city so blue,
And still be you during,
Each of its hues.

J.T.

Gold Line, Chinatown; Winter 2019

Look up from the deep, the static

All you see is what was,

what is
apparently,
enough.

Lungs inhaling, people slipping
past a line.

Space collapsing on itself;
time churning, slipping, sulking.

Light pulsing,
passing,
placing,

itself

on a face it’s seen before, or a billion of them

Only to leave them,
fading endlessly
into darkness.

Or what’s called darkness,
death, or a dead end. The abyss.

A dark point; or a point within itself.

A point not going anywhere, trapped within itself, drained of all its time.

A point alive only when it’s named, but at no other point in time.

No other–
What’s the point

Getting larger and larger into emptiness.

Universe unfurling into a mute minor nothing.

All forms of life fading, disintegrating from light, proceeding into decay

Fragmenting into space

outer,
void,
space.

Amid a billion other empty spaces just like them.

A point nearly breathless, though still heaving.

A point nearly obliterated, but still funneling

A point, then a consciousness

A point still percolating information

and transmitting noise into

this.

A point abandoned. Until now.

A point breaking ground until IT’S BROKEN;

Then a howl throttling from eons away,

Then a vision spiraling from the blood of these open veins,

Then a dream:

HOW tomorrow we rise again.

Look up from the deep, the static

All of time and space,

The stars.

They are still OURS.

J.T.