A Few of My Favorite Streets

National Blvd. Making good time on my way to nowhere I’m suddenly lost (and this is not a bad thing) at the intersection of National and National bent to the perpendicular. Some are in dread of you, National how you’ve colonized the neighborhood, claimed all four corners, violated the grid. But I admire the way you meander; a trickster, appearing and disappearing, like a great idea that explains everything, breaking the lineal sequential in your fits and starts. National, you are a mind that refuses to make itself up, a contrarian paved in doubt, interrogating yourself, hubris burning off at the stop sign. You were the trail Odysseus took, a cork on the wave following his nose into trouble. Bless off-ramps and National Blvd. where a man can leave the unrelenting rush of his life and take a subversive turn, meet himself coming and going and ponder how once he was a Euclidean line and now he’s an afterthought, a riff on Charlie Parker’s sax, broken-field runner, rider-less horse. National, you are the fly on the still life that won’t hold still, the apple that overthrew the bowl and bopped Newton. The one Einstein ate. National, Oh National, you are the twentieth century drunk on lost causes, detoured dreams, down but not out on the open road. *************************************************************** 

 Where Everybody Drives Because It's So Empty 

Psst. I love you, Walgrove but don’t let it get around. 

Such an alternate route you are, 

so un-congested and heedless of lights, 

I love your contours, your long stretches, 

the way you rise and dip. 

Maybe we should stop meeting like this. 

People will talk as if I’m taking advantage. 

If word got out you could be ruined, 

trafficked by the young and the reckless, 

choked by foul emissions and abusive honks

like those other mean streets. 

Look how coy you are starting as modest 23rd St., 

fifteen blocks east of Lincoln 

and when you’re done at Washington, 

re-named and re-born, in your mysterious way 

which admits no impediment, 

so stealthily and svelte you have slithered 

ten blocks west. Walgrove, Walgrove, 

your name alone takes me away -- descendent of Walden Pond, 

as arboreal as a grove of eucalypti, 

so cerebral with two schools at your feet. 

My own path less traveled, 

the one that brought me this far, 

stumbling but still on my feet, 

Whisper to me, Walgrove, I’ll follow you anywhere. ********************************************************** 

Lincoln Boulevard 

 

You are the north and south of us, 

the missionary’s road, before colonized by the car, 

old sins paved over for new ones. 

Ugly as a mirror, beautiful as a Rauschenberg collage. 

Lincoln, the emancipated street conceived in liberty 

and dedicated to motorcycles and cars,

pre-owned and junkyards, quick lubes and Sig Alerts,

billboards and signage for paychecks cashed, 

shiatsu massage, palmists and thrift stores.

This is Americana where nobody walks. 

Whitman’s ear is listening hard for bumper stickers singing. 

O Captain, my Captain, turn away; 

sprigs of lilac no longer bloom. 

We’ve emptied the wetlands in your name 

and filled the open road with torrential traffic. 

Lincoln, you are gasoline alley thick with exhausted air. 

Yet there are still some who lean and loaf at their ease. 

Salesman and surgeons mingle at the Cock & Bull saloon. 

A dentist stops a street vendor for a rose. 

School kids with backpacks, like day laborers, 

haul their load and day laborers line the lumberyard. 

The taxi driver keeps a screenplay under his seat; the crowd scene got away. 

Where the created equal eat Sushi and Salsa, pad Thai and pastrami. 

Here is our body electric, neon diners and all-night Laundromats, 

Pollack’s drip and Ginsburg’s Howl, clear as a dusted Frappuccino.

You lead to the airport and take off to Californificate the world..