Clean Up by Robin Wyatt Dunn

And you who seek to die, what are you?  Only symptoms, or messengers?  The pained of the world, written for us to see and witness and remember?

Oh you thousand suicides of my latest Los Angeles month.  I clean up the blood.  Sometimes I dream of it. Sometimes I work to regulate its exposure, the camera of my mind, but my heart is beating for a waking world of wrought things, meanings we can understand, to work our weapons in, our words.

Today was Georgia Pannaque, 48 years old — electrocution. The cat seemed electrocuted too, had perhaps been that way for years, like it was ready to molt.

All flesh is grass for the great lawnmower of God, of course, I grant you that immediately, and we can quite properly statisticate her entry for our planning purposes:  so many overweight bodies rendered into meat per capita as the effluents of air and water rise, as the decay accelerates, as our government threatens, as our minds are worried into some new shape we cannot see.

And you who choose to live, I amongst you, who are we? What fell world do we make now? If we are building a nightmare, we had best prepare our masks.

Politics, of course; I’m sorry but I speak of politics. Not social planning. I do not accept dioramas or plastic volcanoes.

Polis, Pole Star of the West Coast, our dream of Lem’s Solaris in California, our tight-winding dream of horror. Los Angeles: our duties are fast increasing. I call out to you:  I count your flesh, and watch your words, hoping that tomorrow it will be revolution.

© 2012 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park.

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