Florence Avenue
The one eleven bus slices through
the layers of Los Angeles
and lays bare the sinews
and marbled muscles of her thighs
City Bus Center
Inglewood Crenshaw
Western and Vermont
Normandy acid
of anger and hate
etched into the intersection
Broadway and Avalon
Central Avenue
Central Avenue
The black South
come to work the heavy metal
of the booming Southland
And live to sounds of
Big Joe Turner
Lionel Hampton
Central Avenue Breakdown
drifting from the
now quiet Dunbar Hotel
Alameda Santa Fe
Pacific Boulevard
an artery swelling
with the post war
white blue collar
California Dream
then collapsing with
the shuttered factories and
boarded up store fronts
to fill again with
vibrant multi colored
horns and guitarrons
spices and sweet language of
the fruit of the Americas
On through Downey
and finally Norwalk
as the tides of people
move around the globe
and beneath the asphalt
the earth shifts
Take the Metro Green Line
for the return trip
