Screenwriter's Blues - Soul Coughing

Exits to freeways
twisted like knots on
fingers.
Jewels cleaving
skin between
breasts.

Your Cadillac breathes
four hundred horses
over blue lines.
You are going
to Reseda
to make love
to a model
from Ohio
whose real name
you don't
know.

You spin
like the cadillac was
overturning down a cliff
on television.
And the radio is on
and the radioman is speaking
and the radioman says
women were a curse.
So men built Paramount
studios.
And men built Columbia
studios.
And men built
Los Angeles.

It is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles.

And the radioman says
it is a beautiful night out there!
And the radioman says
Rock and Roll lives!
And the radioman says
it is a beautiful night out there
in Los Angeles.
You live
in Los Angeles
and you are going to
Reseda; we are all
in some way or
another going to
Reseda someday
to die.
And the radioman
laughs because
the radioman f_cks
a model too.

Gone savage
for teenagers with
automatic weapons and
boundless love.
Gone savage for
teenagers who are
aesthetically pleasing,
in other words,
fly.
Los Angeles beckons
the teenagers
to come to her
on buses;
Los Angeles loves
love.

It is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles.

I am going to
Los Angeles
to build a screenplay about
lovers who murder each other.
I am going to
Los Angeles
to see my own name on a
screen, five feet
long and luminous.
As the radioman says
it is 5AM
and the sun has charred
the other side of
the world and come
back to us
and painted the smoke
over our heads
an imperial violet.

It is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles.

You are listening...
You are listening...
You are listening...
You are listening...

...to Los Angeles.

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