RSS SPIRIT

Get on at Beverly walking up to Melrose,
Mister Pizza, CBS and Jews mingle.
A pedestrian life here, an oasis,
busy, dirty, people brush against.

Where to begin with Freaky Fairfax?
Mister Pizza makes a nice slice,
the sad second hand stores make one pause,
Hollywood wannabe insanity at the Irishman's club.
Fairfax here gives no quarter,
rather many flyers stapled into palm trees.

Back to the secondhand stores, some so sad
enormous piles of crap nobody wants priced to move.
Let us go into Canter's Deli and forget about it.
Go in the back and stare at the autumn lit ceiling,
ordering reuben, matzoh ball soup, cup coffee.

What about the skankhole bar next Canter's?
Go in there only during the day or on drugs.
The tiny bar across the street lets you smoke,
skanky ambitious chicks run it, might do you if you are worthy.
Past the worn down strip mall there is a nice old bookstore,
obsessive, open late, first edition poetry disturbing or delightful.

Something seductive and repulsive runs up and down Fairfax.
Go to the outdoor magazine kiosk and lollygag.
Think about going to the silent movie theater up the street.
Instead go into another sad secondhand store, up the stairs
are piled high under naked bulbs cheap books.
All the stores have something to do with Jews. It is all
rather vague. At night Jewish 13 year old hoodlums will
hassle you for a light for their cigarettes.

Existential crises and other wandering pleas for help
are facilitated nicely up here. For even in the bright light
a natural dimness lurks in the empty bakery and dusty glass coves.

The inklings of a hill fill out the street, up the hill is Melrose and
the promise of snakeskin drinks and other tourist distractions.
Pull up before that tawdry crossroad at Fairfax High.
It boggles the imagination that kids go to school here.
You think, if I had gone to high school here I
would have been eaten alive,
or still wander a strip of Fairfax,
chasing that shiny bit at the edge of vision.