There’s oil pooling on the streets,
and I’m on my way to some dive bar
surrounded by the glittering lights
only success and fame can afford.
Neon signs threatening epileptic seizures
hang like 21st-Century gargoyles
above the heads of my brothers in harm.

There’s girls in neon everything,
halter top, hot pants, fishnet tights.
They’re calling out for a good time,
but they haven’t been seen here in years,
the nights are too long to appreciate
the memories in the short days.
They never give up hope, though,
that’s why they’re so beautifully broken.

There’s a kid on the street covered up
with an old jacket left behind
by another societal failure who died
last winter in a doorway lined in snow.
Next to him, a musician plays a guitar
that plays no old blues notes,
no idea it’s playing by a grave.

I find a quiet little street, no life,
no blinking lights offering salvation
from a life of complete boredom.
I’ll take the boring and the quiet,
I’ll take screaming into the air,
lost syllables and juxtapositions
flung up into the dead air
of a dark and silent LA night.

We don’t deserve to be lonely,
but being alone all the time is fine,
it’s perfectly healthy to keep
your own company but not healthy
to not enjoy the time to yourself.
Extrapolating meanings from last night’s dreams,
finding comfort in fractured scenes,
looking for answers to our selves
in the morning smog of repression.

But I still beat these same paths,
still see the same sorry faces
illuminated by those awful neon signs,
garish intrusions into the neighbourhood,
fake happiness and promised sorrow.
The homeless kid is gone, stabbed for dimes,
but traffic keeps moving, drinkers keep
gambling away their little pay checks,
and the cold dark of these LA nights
keeps holding on to my echoes.