Los Angeles 1982

Los Angeles 1982 my piece got me out of many a jam (but I mostly just pointed it) and the bad guy always said “I didn’t want to do it”, or “I’m misunderstood”, or that he wasn’t bad at all and when I showed him my badge and my integrity and called out “hands up!”,(if he was still with us) he would offer me a bunch of flowers, or a bunch of lies, or a bunch of fives or some story he’d made up (like a poem) and I’d see him off to the big house for half a lifetime or forever, or even worse and in there, there’s no milkshake, or TV Times or walks on a Sunday morning to the deli and they all laugh at you like you’re crazy or lazy or need a fix but they like your tattoos and scars and the stories (lies) that go with them and after a while you can hear the sound of the storm drain washing away the money from your last job along with your self- respect and self-neglect and they’ve all got a sister and a mother who writes to them (they say) and the family you were never sure about but who liked you in a funny kind of way disappear from view, maybe moved away, or became astronauts, or politicians, or just got tired of writing: now… do you want all of that? No?...so come quietly