Love Letters from L. A. : Poems from Before.

A poetic journey through Los Angeles: a place that decries memory may only be the stuff of it.

Known worldwide, Los Angeles is an actual, real place full of people: mostly defined by the quest to leave behind damage while simultaneously healing it with fame and money. Sadly, America's second largest city may have lost it very identity during the Year of Covid. Once the world capitol for tolerance, joy, and frivolousness, it has become hardened and encrusted with a kind of religious militancy so foreign to its original nature the San Andreas and North Korean missiles could do no worse to the soul of the city. High rises are built amongst homeless encampments. Something profound is broken in a way that even San Francisco and New York City haven't lost: it's reason for being. It was the city that embraced everything and everyone, the weirder, the better. Nothing was going to be repaired anyway, but that was okay. And that was the point after all.

Take a trip through L.A. cheaper and safer than Star Tours these days, and remember what you used to think about it and its role as world stage. The screen we projected hopes, wishes, and derision upon.