The Silent City of Angels

[tun]

City of Angels/Screens

I awaken breaking the glass behind Los Angeles
From sidewalk to street, block to building, script to scene
My dreams just passengers in the perception seat 
Tracing my fingertips past the liquor stores
Thin, icy glass caging my dignity while sirens stare
These two palms tiptoe from bonnet mascots to broken doors
Sipping songs from the cloudy sun, my mind is a shooting range
I sink under the pressure of people forged from change
Siphoning salinity from dreams and strangling my invisible beliefs
While my actions chant, “I will ALWAYS be ordinary”

City of Angels/Somewhat

Watching waiting libraries churches
skipping liding sticky purpose

Stay Awake, Los Angeles is the break
Watching, waiting on the faith of libraries and churches
My cul-de-sac is a crowded minefield of purpose
Skipping and sliding through sticky concrete
Locality gets lost in my pale image of grease
Culver Steps, Santa Monica Pier, PCH,
Are enclaves that fortify sleepless days
Yet are frozen in the fringe of "kind of" LA

City of Angels - Silence

sweaty lips curving up
was that poodle her own pup

I lay awake woken into the sheets of Los Angeles
Seeing, Sorry, sorry
Sweat lining chapped lips that curve up
Attached to an Abbot Kinney walker
Was that poodle her own pup?
Her bomber jacket is such a shocker!
Glittery green, a gaping tear, drenched in water
Silence is my SCREAM, so that’s how we speak


City of Angels - Same

I have awakened with the little Los Angeles
With boba shops paying minimum wage (is that okay?)
Spending every second scouting different days
Just to get through, a higher pay, a PERFECT grade
“Pay respects, then pay up” they all internally say
We brush it off, blinded by being safe, but the life map stays -
Burdened by sacrificial expectations about now and late
So why should I indulge in the present like a treat to taste?

City of Angels and Centuries

Los Angeles: Wake UP
To this centuries-old city we inherit
The past isn’t a mirror, it’s a staircase of merit
I am the sum of an immigrant mother
White skin covers my Asian roots under
So why am I seen as the system that kills color?
“I can feel all I want, I just can’t suffer”
“And everything I inherited made me other”

City of Angels and Sections

I awake in this City of Angels, without a choice
Knowing changes collects without a final voice
As power shifts from skin tone to skin tone
Racism blends like the colors on the rainbow
With every cycle of human history as my defense
Surface level revenge is wrong in every sense
We all boil down to more than our skin
Boil skin down, and we are ALL skeletons

City of Answers
Santa Monica Sunsets should surround an air of action
We should drown in the drought of happy accidents
In this almost ideal world, let us be the accents

City of Action
Learners burn out hour by hour
Their actions really objects of power

City of Action
Let us lead in inspiration not expectations
Lock away the ever evolving key of despite
Embrace the sadness keeping everybody quiet
And be proud of the people who “aren’t quite”

So focused on becoming you forget to be
So in the quiet ones we shouldn’t always believe

City of History

City of Reticence

City of Dreams

I awaken in a Los Angeles I hope we never leave
Living through the middleground I strive to see
Children sprinkling poppy seeds from Hollywood to Venice Beach
Let’s turn this city of silence into one of screams
WAKE UP, it’s EVERY street’s time to speak

City of Angels (Come To Me)

I like the idea of the titles and then after each title, all I need is a single rhyming couplet with one driving image. So you get - title, image title, etc. This would give the whole thing a unity of direction and force. 


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City of Angels/Screens

Waking breaking script to find
sidewalk to street concrete mind

City of Angels/Somewhat

Watching waiting libraries churches
skipping sliding sticky purpose

City of Angels - Silence

sweaty lips curving up
was that poodle her own pup......

So it would go on like this - a series of baton rounds to pepper and to quell the restive citizenry.