A Good Thing

The reports are in. It was a down year for poetry and short fiction but an up year for songs which exceeded all expectations.

            I like to take inventory at the end of the year. I’m a little late this year. It’s already January the sixth. Some people collect cars or like to have money stashed away. I collect poems, fiction and music. As the years pass and I look back on my collection I’m reminded of where and when I wrote a poem and the state of my constitution at the time. Some poems are bleak and others are down right quirky. But that’s the nature of poetry and why it’s so damn exciting. You never know what you’re going to get, or how many you’ll end up with when it’s all said and done, which is a good thing, a real good thing. 

The New Year

I spent New Years Eve at James M. Cain’s old house in Beachwood Canyon, I was in Hollywoodland, and it felt like it. The house was spectacular. It was built in the late twenty’s and it had old Los Angeles written all over it. The tile work was something to behold.

            The matron of the house liked me, and at one point she asked me to dance with her. You don’t say no to the matron. I got on the dance floor, and sure enough her husband was threatened by the events, and he started to dance as well. No big whoop, I didn’t want dance in the first place, so he kind of saved me. 

            There were people singing Karaoke at the bar, the house had its own bar. All and all it was a pretty good time, although I’m not much for Karaoke. On tis night it felt like a false excitement. 

            I went to bed and was awoken in the middle of the night by the sounds of sirens. It sounded like fire trucks going back and forth. I found out later that the arsonist was captured on Fairfax and Sunset later that night. The arsonist was going nuts. He was lighting cars on fire and setting carports a blaze. He must've not liked cars. He started over fifty fires in four days before he was captured. People were really upset about it. There was a foreboding in the city, a mystery that brought in the New Year.