The Silent City of Angels

[busker]

City of Angels/Screens

I awaken banging the glass breaking Los Angeles
From subway to street, block to ceiling, score to scene
My dreams are parents screwing in the perception seat
To the family carriage of cages, bittersweet, legacy ….. by this point I’ve already lost interest. The problem is 'screwing in the perception seat'. I don't know what it means, and I'm not invested in the poem adequately at this point to want to know more. There is no buildup to what is a pretty hard to understand sentence.
In the next line, 'family carriage of cages, bittersweet, legacy...' is just sheer nonsense. Literally. And with a long poem, you can't afford to bore the reader.

Tapping my nails past and four liquor stores
Icy cracks keeping my dignity while sirens stare
One, Two palms tiptoe with bonnet mascots and broken doors
Sipping, slipping, sagging my eyes are a shooting range … same problem as highlighted previoulsy

Pressure boiling my climber born with change
Siphoning ideas salinity, strangling invisible beliefs …. ‘Strangling invisible beliefs’ could also be ‘smothering inaudible fears’, ‘murdering bland orthodoxy’…all rather banal metaphors that don’t work 
While my actions chant, “I will ALWAYS be ordinary” …. The capitalisation is somewhat cringeworthy 

City of Angels/Somewhat

Stay Awake, Los Angeles is the break
Waiting for the faith of libraries and churches-
My cul-de-sac is a dumping ground of purpose
Skipping and sliding through sticky concrete
Locality is lost in my pale image of grease
Culver Steps, Santa Monica Pier, PCH,
Are enclaves that fortify sleepless days
And frozen in the fringe of "outside" LA

City of Angels - Silence

I lay awake woven 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?
That bomber jacket is a hero’s cape but smaller
Glittery green, a gaping tear, drenched in water
Silence is my SCREAM, so that’s how we speak
Why is it February 14th?

City of Angels - Same

I have awakened with the little Los Angeles
By boba shops and thrift stores wars of wage
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 expectations about now and late
So I can’t indulge in this 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 change collects without 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
A dance in the disco ball of American 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
Lead in inspiration not expectations
Lock away the ever evolving keyhole of despite
Embrace the sadness keeping us quiet
And be proud of the people who “aren’t quite”

So focused on becoming we forget to be
So why do quiet ones still believe?

City of History

City of Reticence

City of Dreams

I awaken in a Los Angeles, I hope we never leave
Lighting 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

So I let dust collect my diary
AWAKEN, Awaken, awaken, sleep
Cap a corked up week
Lie, down more than I eat
Feel the length of time
Brushing one cheek
Knotted by sublime in heat
Nape frowning in fiery defeat

City of Angels (To Much To Be)

City of Angels/Come/To/Me

The poem is too long, too rambling, too uninteresting as it stands
Maybe cut it down to a fifth and have a bit more showing, not telling