Los Angeles

dozzina (double sestina)

Los Angeles, 2022 — photo by Jonathan Potter

At the age of sixteen, I first traveled
To the city of the angels, with some friends.
Like me, they were skaters and seeking the thrill
We found on curved concrete and ocean waves.
They were there to get high and celebrate
The end of high school, and I was there
To get serious and compete for a pool-riding prize
At Lakewood Skatepark, towards the end of its life.
My friend Todd, over beer the night before
The event suggested I should use 
My martial arts training to calm my nerves
And find my inner California flow

To carry me through the contest’s flow
Without missing a trick, and win the prize:
Bragging rights and a first-place trophy that traveled
Back to Washington with me before
Skateboarding almost died, when even the thrill
Of Tony Alva faded out so that he had to use
The coins under his floormats and bits of food there
To survive the early ’90s and celebrate
Skating’s rebirth in X-Game waves —
But not until many a skatepark owner’s nerves
Had been sorely tested and skating life
Had turned to backyard ramps with friends.

When next I recall visiting L.A., it was friends
Living in Pasadena that caused my flow
To channel south in search of an elusive prize:
The nuns of Mount St. Mary’s chanting there
The O Antiphons in the silken vocal waves
I’d read about in Cloister Walk and the thrill
Of drawing close to mysteries that used
To hide in the Hollywood Hills before
The swirling hurricanes of fire traveled
Through like Hell’s angels meaning to celebrate
The destruction of angelic life,
Doing damage to contemplative nerves.

I was thirty-two years old and my nerves
Had grown somewhat taut from their
Entanglement with heartstrings and from standing before
What felt like a strange and useless life.
Thus I arrived and stepped into the L.A. flow
And felt the weather a cause to celebrate,
With the light that flowed in particles and waves
Landing on my eyes like a paradise surprise
I didn’t quite know how to use
But found I could enjoy with my friends
Sitting out on their patio as the ebb and flow
Of the Pacific Ocean induced a gentle thrill

To be alive within the California thrill
And the California calming of my nerves.
In years that followed, I found myself flow
Through and around L.A. as I traveled
By rail, by car, by plane, with family and friends,
Still in search of some kind of missing prize,
The Coast Starlight taking me from rainy life
Up north, through Oregon and down to the golden waves
Of Santa Monica to momentarily celebrate
The ocean before lying down then and there
Under the sun and over the moon before
The sunset pointed me to thoughts I could use

To create a map of the future and recuse
Myself from the self-recriminations of my life
And its many doubts lingering there
Until I could vicariously celebrate
The charms of the happiest place on earth before
The childhood of my children escaped the flow
Of Caribbean pirates and Indiana Jones’s nerves
Jolting with the twists and turns of friends
Enjoying the rides together and the thrill
Of Tinkerbell and Peter Pan, the prize
Of parenthood with many vacations traveled
Where memory paves the radio waves
 
Of the fondest times and the simulated waves
Of rollercoaster rides reliving the endless thrill
Of the yin and yang of life here and there
And the repeated wish to win the prize
And somehow grasp the good life
Others seem to have effortlessly traveled,
The illusions created by Facebook friends
And the times when it all gets on one’s nerves
And you can’t keep drinking from the firehose flow
And you’ve used up every trick you could use
To pretend to laugh and sing and celebrate
The time before the time before.

All of that happened long before
The dawning of a strange convergence of friends
Celebrating their wedding day and the use
Of UCLA’s facilities in a scene that unnerves
My sense of synchronicity’s there is no there
Like some shadowed nut Jung might prise 
From a California shell and the latent thrill
Of surrendering to unusual crisscrossing waves
When you’ve given in and traveled
To begin a reckless rearrangement of life,
Allowing love’s unfettered flow
And your decision to succumb to celebrate

A new life with angels seeming to celebrate
The dangerous sparks and sudden overuse
Of too many you’ve got a lot of nerves
And violations of poetic license before
Simply embracing the high-intensity flow
And gently caressing unexpected waves
Leading us on a downhill walk to celebrate
Mass at St. Monica’s as if we traveled
From the far corners just to go there
After experiencing thrill after thrill
And a picnic near the pier among angelic friends
Witnessing the beginning of a luminous new life.
 
Fast forward to the navigation of this life.
If I am a pebble, my daughters are the waves
That ripple out from the splash I celebrate
Life with, generally speaking, and the mysterious reuse
Of my blood and DNA that has strangely traveled
The Washington and Oregon coastlines before,
Metaphorically speaking, entering the flow
Of California’s highly energized nerves
And the city of Los Angeles the prize
To be shared with them and their friends,
To observe the gigantic and majestic thrill
Of the Hollywood sign and the hills seen from there.

Then there was the cherished trip we took there
With my girls and my parents a couple of years before
My father took his angelic leave of this life.
We stayed in Huntington Beach and followed the flow
To the surfing school where we caught some waves
And watched my father capture the video to celebrate.
Another time in Redondo, having traveled
From pale-skin winter land, the thrill
Of the sun turned into the sunburn of fiends
With licking tongues turning delight into the abuse
Of skin sizzled red down to the very nerves —
Not the hoped-for spring-break suntan prize.

And now Los Angeles is burning its own prize
Like a twenty-dollar bill it can no longer use,
Holding it up like a mad poet to his friends
In a gesture of despair that masks a thrill
Of ferocious fire weather and raw nerves
That bring Lynchean nightmares to vivid life
And death across Pacific Palisades before
The devilish gale-force Santa Anna flow
Begins to subside leaving nothing there
But ashes on sea foam and breaking waves
And no place to gather to celebrate
The end of the fire on the streets that it traveled.

My memories traveled back to L.A. with my friends. 
I remember the thrill of Lakewood, the smell of the waves.  
I celebrate my many memories of being there.
Let the angels of now bless the prize of this life
Because nothing will be like it was before and we could use
A miracle and nerves like raindrops starting to flow.

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