-- Morituri te salutamus.

                        Los Angeles Times, 1927



Maybe it's not the city you thought

it was. Maybe its flaws, like cracks

in freeway pylons, got bigger, caught

your eye, like swastikas on concrete stacks.



Maybe lately the dull astrologies of End,

Millennium-edge rant about world death

make sense. Look. Messages the dead send

take time to arrive. When the parched breath



of the Owens River Valley guttered out,

real voices bled through the black & white.

The newspaper ad cried, We who are about

to die salute you. Unarmed, uncontrite.



Gladiators: a band of farmers, entrenched.

And how many on the Empire's side recognized

the bitter history of that Bow? Greed drenches

itself in a single element, unsurprised.



Like strippers, spotlit. Tits and asses

flash red-gold, while jets shriek above.

Rim-shot. History, like a shadow, passes

over a city impervious as a bouncer's shove



to dreams. Images tell you what's imaginable.

Here comes another ton. We bathe in

what's re-routed from the source: a fable

of endless water in a dipper made of tin.