XI
An extended mobile of galaxies. A prided installation. The dark, invisible matter of a riot in L.A. Three thousand buildings ripple out flame in the city of Lost Angels. And then an open sky, a banquet of beads after fire hoses roll out the light on any upright surface. Hollywood Hills are alive with the sound of security locks. The CNN anchor-team is too well dressed for the maddening flames, in the sear, ongoing segment of a news flash. In the break, gathered the rain as pure as static, unseen, but imagined whitely and curfew-wide. Along the crippled streets in the blood blare of sirens, night arrived under the guise of the National Guard. Heat rises from the grid of these sidewalks and the spirits of the Indian, afraid enough of death to die, whoop it up around the big campfires. I wake, uncomfortable in the lurk of a dream, and my breath draws up hope like an anchor, lifts my thoughts into the day where I follow. Let us go (you & I) into the glow, hand in hand with Virtual Reality and idly make up war-games. Let us pray that a supreme silence will be down-loaded at last. Moonrise, and a luminant coal sifts through the western grate of the world.
In cornfields elsewhere, so remembered though not so high as an elephants eye, images pressed round as a hotplate suggest some mystery or midnight vigil; this is what we wish, to stamp threat onto the inexplicable, seeking out totems and to hold the dance of the primitive sacred: this city, too, let it stand as Icon.