By Alan Hanson
look at you in the light of an oil lamp
traditional not trad, glowing and glad,
not knowing the tongue can tie one on
with words like chevron or exxon or
whatever, that life that we led is gone.
vroom, fuck!, vroom—
porno breakfast:
men from Detroit
with double martini breath
wiping you out and naming
automobiles after your ancestors.
we’ll tangle hot sweat
dripping pitch slicked ocean,
encroach El Segundo swallows
the home you grew up in
the AC spitting smoke
like foiled heroin.
no more fillies from Florida!
no more hunks from Hermosa!
sheets descending ash
cannot cover the love I have to give
and the love I will accept I will eat sudden
sinkhole gulping down the playgrounds we
tumbled out of splitting our first Silver Bullet
groping in the dark.
and I’ll sing into your chest yes I will buzz your ache, I will
burrow in your bristle as the mountains wilt— for this is
all we’ve ever had and this
they cannot take.
and the Earth will remain,
the mosquitos and cockroaches
learn to breathe methane.
there is no swan, there is no glove,
they too will burn with the Amazon
fulfillment centers
but they will burn
without love.
Alan Hanson is a poet and amateur historian in Los Angeles. He has a cat with thumbs and rarely pays his bills on time. Google "LASD gangs." You can follow him @iluvbutts247 wherever those websites still work.