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THE TENT PEOPLE OF
BEVERLY HILLS Faceless on the Boulevard of Mirrors, north along the flats of Rodeo Drive's stripped bald head mannequins, they come treading on the fears of high fashion, tents on their backs and on their cheeks the beach black tar of tasteless chic.
As if to dress were not enough, we would have them wash our backhand slap from their Rimbaud faces.
And all through the supple stick lash wands of their eyes, all through the wind whiskers of fishbone and sour cream curdled by fame, they see along the fruit stalls and deli box bins of Wilshire Boulevard,
the world in the room of their small walk-space; they are never certain whether they are merely asked to fill a role like memory in a thoughtful dream of place or live always short of major in a dying minor sort of way.
As if to live were time enough. We would have them end beyond their means.
Hours long they scrabble onto walls and mirrors the words they would like to leave us, the haunted prints of thought-falls drifting out of mind's possession like nostalgia or grief. The world has lost its face.
There are no hobo kings or pioneers late to live by. When they lie above the windy steam of sewer grates, dream-still and all-mind gone, they warm their body holes to sleep. They wake to be awake. In the dreams of many who never took the road to gypsy sorrow, breathing is enough.
It is a mistake to feel themselves alone, to fill their skyholes up with dark.
There has never been a need for crying, the dying say. Once we move within the final inch of breath, there is no other. There are a million tents in the universe with holes we mistake for stars. "The Tent People of Beverly Hills" ©
1990 James Ragan | |
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