Predatory Shade

(illustration by Bigrk)

by Jolie Blond

A Crosby , Stills & Nash song plays loud on my car stereo:
"It's getting to the point (pause)
where I'm no fun anymore."
I can relate to the male middle-aged angst in that lyric,
homeless, car-dwelling derelict that I am.

A dirt-smudged young woman, maybe 23, 24,
is pushing a trash bag-filled shopping cart
down Sunset Boulevard
wearing nothing but skimpy panties and a half bra.

Middle of the day.
Busy street.
Past thousands of eyes.
Pushing that damned stubborn cart over
curbs and jutting chunks of sidewalk.
Clattering down the boulevard,
half naked.

She's darkly tanned with dirt-matted blond hair.
None of the hundreds of Salvadoran bus stop commuters
are paying her much attention.
Crazy white girl.
Someone else's problem.
Mijo, don't look.

This is Sunset Boulevard east ,
where people have enough of their own troubles
to bother with some crazy white girl.

She doesn't look crazy to me.
Just tired.
Too tired to put on clothes
or give a shit about people seeing her half naked . . .
just pushing that heavy cart full of shoes and shorts and
last month's laundry
to some place of safety . . .
wherever THAT may be.

I start my Chevy's engine.
I've got a trunk full of freshly washed shirts and underwear
and I don't want any trouble, either.
I've already been complained about in this neighborhood.

Some old busybody named Mary
complained to her landlord about me.
She didn't like me watching The Simpsons in my
car under the shade of a grand old tree across the wide,
four-laned street in front of her second floor Los Feliz apartment
about 150 feet away.

Seems she thought I might be
some sort of potential threat or
portent of other car dwellers
planning an invasion of the high trafficked neighborhood.

I was just trying to get some shade.
Maybe that's what the crazy white girl
was looking for, too:
a little shade from the oppressive city heat.

The girl pushing the shopping cart
naked down Sunset Boulevard
didn't look like a long term druggie to me.
She was still reasonably attractive,
still had meat on her bones in the right places.
My intuition says
that she was turned out by The Industry.

There is a machine here,
a palpable, predatory thing,
that waits for immigrants
(from Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, etc).
It waits to drain our blood
and devour us,
gleefully crunching our bones in public
for that extra measure of humiliation.

It's institutional,
built into the L.A. system.
I've seen it chewing on carcasses
early Sunday mornings
and late Friday nights.
I've seen it in fancy restaurants
gnawing on the open minds of
the L.A. elite.
I've seen it defecating undigested Europeans
in the alleys behind Melrose.

It grins at me
when I watch it going about its
excretory business.
It has no modesty at all.

Tags: predatory shade, poem, poetry, poet, Jolie Blond, middle-aged angst, lyrics, derelict, bum, homeless, living in car, car dwelling, pushing a shopping cart, Sunset Boulevard, bag lady, half naked, bus stop, mijo, crazy white girl, a place of safety, Los Feliz, druggie, The Industry, crunching our bones, L.A., L.A. elite, undigested Europeans, Melrose Avenue, excretory business, James Jarvis