Down comes sunshine and rain

Standing straight with my hands out I can catch it all. You should see me, thick black hood hiding the tired smile as i come down the dirt path in Elysian Park, where I walk weightless in a city filled with a million other names.I take slow steps like a beat dropped into a syrupy kick drum, and I breathe deep the poisons and passions pressed out of every inch of concrete stepped on, in this, the most desperate city on earth. I have few destinations, no appointments, only blessed purpose and divine motivation as I meet and make friends with people who move fast and make their way through the funny money maze that you find here. Overhead at night a cannon fire spotlight strafes the ground from the ever present ghetto birds, or points to the sky from the innocuous event thresholds, the lighted fingers mingle and clasp the sky until the rain comes and pushes everything indoors again. Waking up, the city is washed, but never clean, and hills are lush and green in this, their time on the far side of the summer scorch and the ravenous wild fires of fall. I can’t say that I love it here, or that I belong here, only that I have made my own version of the place that I am, like a richly imagined childhood pillow fort, I am possessed of a city of my own making and slip silently for now into a fortunate place for the strange naivety of the wandering pretender.
When I sleep, I dream of waves being born, far out in ocean by a storm that no one ever sees, every night they draw closer to shore gaining gravity and speed as they swell across the sea floor wanting, waiting, working for the exquisite moment they crash upon the beach, crushing castles in the sand, stealing shovels and pails, and propelling the revelers in it’s embrace, careening them into momentary bliss. When I wake up, there is rain coming down the window, and sunlight pressing the drops, shooting off at strange velocities and making a microverse of momentary rainbows as each color dies on my eye. I walk in my sore man’s street shuffle out to the park slope and up into the dirt path wonderland high above downtown. I look up into the misty morning as the sunshine and rain mix together in an unlikely way, falling down onto this unlikely face, that tucked beneath it’s thick black hood smiles and stretches out his hands.