la paz
la paz
by oswald james
LaPaz is Truth! the queen and king three floors down
shaving their beards. Weird. Dont Dont forget. Farmers
Market in downtown LA. the ghastly gaze of sunken
cheeks and dark eyes of an old woman coming alive,
alone in a parking lot; old dress. And she howls. I
left my friends chanting on the roof in long beach.
the snow fell on the general against the wall, too
intense to fix a glance upon. do people bury
themselves in the snow. It’s pulverizing me into the
alley. that Bull just brought a blizzard across the
huge valley of the west. just sleep out here indian
style and in the morning you’ll be a snow buddha. and
the animals just try to survive. the deputy told me
they’re gonna clone jesus; all those southern demons.
is there a reality somewhere hiding in a chrome cobweb
out there. forget it, it’s midnight time to shoot the
one and only shot, all the life left in the world all
the ghosts of existence shot like a cannon out the
peephole, for a quarter get your rocks off for the
next quarter century, at least. Let it go.
I love the instructional poems which lump our lot into one, fly high and delve deep for the quick-fix human salvation scavenger hunt!
This piece spits out creative bullets in stacato ‘tearing the fabric of the universe’ asunder awareness and peeking into the secret places to espye the naked beauties of life. At first i had thought ‘La Paz’ to be more of a place (as in Bolivia) or perhaps a local club or hangout in California where the poem takes place. But ‘la paz’, or peace, can take on a very personal meaning and i believe that’s what the poet has expounded upon here–as if it were a thing and a place within the mind. Certainly, however, ‘la paz’ does not refer to the Queen of Spanish soft-porn, Paz Vega [see ‘Sex with Lucia’].
The structure was different than the typical poem–block style with sentences running together in same lines–but it seems fitting for the quick delivery and idea plucking from all the various nooks and crannies of consciousness in the poet’s imagination.
I loved the ending: ” forget it, it’s midnight time to shoot the
one and only shot, all the life left in the world all the ghosts of existence shot like a cannon out the peephole, for a quarter get your rocks off for the next quarter century, at least. Let it go.”
*This is our life. It’s crunch time. We might as well enjoy it. Thanks for sharing!