the THELMA & LOUISE MOMENT by D.Doph

beyond beyond . 57

It's finally come
The Thelma & Louise Moment Yeah finally
After 31 years of living in LA Loathing it
He & I looked into each other's so-alike
Pale blue eyes and said
Let's get the fuck outta here

We're moving to Santa Barbara
Small city with history and quiet and real culture
and quiet People with manners and quiet
A conspicuous lack of young adults on skateboards
Wearing all black Mouthing Awesome
as a response to everything
No teenagers on every corner
Cellphoning teenagers on the next corner
No crippling gridlock traffic in a traffic grid
Where one out of every five cars is stolen

Los Angeles is a city suffering from gigantism
Mentally it is still in Kindergarten Allowing
Atrocious billboards 200 feet high On unaffordable
Condo buildings which may never be built
Disgusted by our gladhanding wife-abusing
Loose cannon of a mayor Amused as all hell
Now we're locked in a gas crisis
Jewish matrons who one year ago
Gleefully cellphoned from behind the wheels
of their gas guzzling SUVs Now rush about
Like fish out of water in the trackless underground
of the Red Line and the Purple Line
Frightened
To be faced for the first time in their privileged lives
with People of Color other than maids

I work with the core voter registration team
of the Democratic Party Out on the fringes
of the Gold Line in Pasadena Registering
People to vote who've never voted before
Registering Republicans who knelt at the feet
of Rough Rider Ronnie
As Democrats Registering fifteen hundred people
In one day between Sierra Madre Villa
and Chinatown Always looking around

Looking around saying to myself
This is the last time I will be doing this

The last time I'll have to hear sports wonks
At that very good Szechwan restaurant in Chinatown
Getting their rocks off about some non-event at Dodger Stadium

The last time I'll have to listen to some hawk-faced
Former Soviet grandmother hang up the payment line
at Smart & Final over the issue of payment in pennies

The last time I'll have to watch fat-bellied Nebraska moms
at Motel Six mingle with blue haired junkies Walk helplessly
into the street Wondering why the big black dominatrix
Across the street is carrying a whip

The last time I'll hold my breath going into the john at Canter's
Because the night crowd has smeared the walls with feces

The last time I'll hear braindead young women
in their twenties beating each other up in the street
at 4:30 AM Beating the shit out of each other
In the middle of Franklin while traffic Same unending traffic
Surges on about them

The last time I'll see a huge reproduction of Angelyne
taking up the sky above Hollywood Boulevard

The last time I'll see Hollywood Boulevard

Fleeing fleeing fleeing
This semi city with its semi culture To which I had
To be dragged kicking and screaming in the first place
Only because they were shoving forty large in my hungry face
All the fruitless years we tried to buy into
This crappy boob oriented music and film culture
All of our great actors paying lip service
to Significant Art
Doing voiceovers for stupid animal movies
All the pumped-up young gay men with college degrees
Rushing to see the stupid animal movies

Sick of it

We're approaching the Thelma & Louise Moment
We'll get into his Prius Drive silently to the old city
Way out there on the continental shelf
We'll luxuriate in the endless quiet And return
to Los Angeles only for Philharmonic dates
The occasional probing session of acupuncture
Just to keep our plunging tesosterone
Tweaked