THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

Today and most likely tomorrow feels like Zelda Fitzgerald passed out in a backless bathing suit from an overdose of Absinthe splayed like defeat beneath a striped umbrella that looks like a just sprouted daisy planted like a moon flag in the lunar beach surface of the Riviera. In these times of sorrow when the earth  and my country  no longer feel welcoming or safe I board any number of waiting steampunk rocket ships The kind that Jules Verne once imagined which sit on launchpads at the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences that are aimed at the infinity of quivering stars which between you and I, are secret way stations where everyone who we want desperately to hold;  wait for us to come home like our moms and dads  who once upon a time  stared at a night winter window in the grief-stricken hours past midnight until they heard the symphonic jangle of our childhood keys which gave them permission to finally breathe a sigh of relief because they loved us that much.

After my dad died leaving in his wake a courageous tuna fish sandwich that sat perched  like a headstone with garnish on the observation deck of our refrigerator I was able to unearth  a few small seeds of secrets,  that  felt as heartbreaking as the Valentine’s Day card  addressed to my mom which wediscovered during the archeological dig of his sock drawer.   After they perish, the hidden universe of the lost parent  is visible only through the telescope of wanting  which does little more than  magnify  the constellation of their pain  and the fallen meteors of possibilities which perished  like them in a streaking flash of light. Now,    at this late stage age of mine, after spending half my life trying to understand  what cracked his eggshell heart  I have reached the conclusion that all I can do is accept  the never ever knowing which keeps me close to him, touched by his frailty, moved by the ...

Infernos as Virgil knew hurtle us  against our will  into the deep end of the far away where we do not belong and should not be. Time betrays us. Safety abandons us. and hope forgets our name. Houses with their welcoming light and songs of rattling dishes mumbling televisions and tumbling towels turn as silent as a sinking ship’s telegraph key. Closets  where cargo pants  and cocktail dresses lived side by side above a battalion of stilettos and sneakers are decimated, as sculpted roses chirpy bird feeders and Little Tykes cars  turn into black ash shadows like the 40,000 acres of family album ancestors  who smile and pose with Coney Island rascality  as they perish like the ignited ghost images  of nitrate film. In the end long before this hell can be contained, we are left a congregation of despair; too young to die too old to start over on the dark side  of the vanquished moon where  for now all we can do is gather  in this lifeb...