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Los Angeles

Los Angeles
a mystical land
I'd heard of
mostly in song
film
poetry
then that one day
we were there
gazing through the rain
at the vast expanse
of city far below
stretching away for miles
what is LA but
a surreal place
fashioned of dreams?
As the streetwalker
in Pretty Woman proclaims
"Everyone who comes
to Hollywood
has a dream
What's your dream?"
Indeed
Dream to walk the red carpet
or the red light district
So much about LA
I could not see
as I looked down
from atop the hill
surrounded by
a theater of mountains
yet as I took in the sand,
desert, neighborhoods
and mountains
so unfamiliar to me
stories of LA floated through my head
similar to the Florida I know
yet beyond comparison
in so many ways
Laurel Canyon
a community of
1960s hippie love
the juxtaposition between
crudity, violence and death
the drive-by shootings of
Compton and South Central
to the renaissances of art
blooming in Venice Beach
and the bastions of style
throughout the city
the opulence of Rodeo Drive
Beverly Hills
And I left it all behind
as I continued east
across the nation on I-80
back to Florida
the place where
I am always wont to return
leaving dreams of LA behind
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