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La Brea Tar Pits


I came to Los Angeles for the Strip,
the nightclubs, the famous restaurants

where celebrities gather, picking
at their salads, and sipping wines

that would cost me a year’s rent.
In the heart of the city I found

something less common: tar pits
bubbling, as if waiting for drunks

to mistake them for spas.
Whole populations were swallowed here:

dire wolves, a mammoth, snails,
and millipedes whose feet

couldn’t walk away
from the gooey asphalt.

Were animals dumber then?
If a ground sloth was sinking

under a seething surface,
why would a saber-tooth follow it?

Because it couldn’t help itself?
The way my uncle couldn’t leave

his wife--though he knew
where their marriage was headed:

acrimony and alimony
consuming years of his life.

As I look at these creatures
from the safety of thousands of years,

I wonder, how many more years
will I live? Not nearly

as long as these tar pits....
I'll surely be forgotten long

before the legendary starlets
of the 30s were lost sight of,

their names swallowed
by Hollywood long,
long ago...

Death troubles us this month
I blame myself for my death poem IBPC March.
But this is an original take, Michael is writing on it too,
there's no getting away from it.

A few questions, does LA have famous restaurants,
maybe it has changed since last I visited 1966.
Or are they well know restaurants, just an inquiry.

Is 'whole populations' too much, could it be thousands or hundred or many.

Perhaps 'gooey stuff' other than repeat asphalt (tar).

I like the switch to modern marriage, the sham of many.

Also the meandering thoughts on being remembered and
the switch to the stars of yester-year, who remembers them
and will anyone remember our work.

Of all your good poems this month I am rather tending to this
for a nom.

Well done.
I will have to look up those tar pits in the centre of LA.

Thanks, Frank

Hi Bob,


re

"I wonder, how many more years
will I live? Not nearly

as long as these tar pits...."

Actually, those tar pits have never been alive; never lived.

You & all other humans will live forever.

We are only here on earth temporarily.

"I wonder, how many more years
will I be here? Fortunately, not nearly

as long as these pits...."


Admirable, your skillful way with metaphor -

your uncle's marriage & legendary Hollywood starlets -

^^ resurrecting life from the pits

as only we humans creativity are able



names swallowed but not the Light of our lives

^^ echoes of

"the candle burnt out long before,
the Legend never will"

^^ written by a fellow creative

I believe Sir Elton John would like the experience of your poem

maybe find a song




Michael (MV), I don't write of death - the body is only electric. I write of just dying to live: I sing the life Immortal

Late to this. I like the juxtaposition of boozy Hollywood and oozey La Brea. Good backdrop