The Nineteen Visions of Paola

Submitted into Contest #96 in response to: Start your story in an empty guest room.... view prompt

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Friendship Romance Western

"Only a few know the sweetness of the twisted apples."

-Sherwood Anderson






The writer is here, well I'll be, finally sitting in the red booth again, fourth floor of the Bonaventure (describe the hotel) Hotel lobby setting downtown, just having had the thought to write a story (hypothetical, jeez, I mean, I'm criss-crossing off of Hemingway and Anderson fer krissakes) with a chapter for and written on each and every floor of the lobby of the Bonaventure (it's wonderful, dear). It's lobby- it's just great (& Lo! though not as grand as the D.C. Gaylord). The hotel lobby, the Bonaventure Hotel's, is one of the writer's favorite places to write in the city of Los Angeles.


The wind blows through the top vents of the glass-ceiling's window panes.


I don't want to give it away, but this is another prologue, another one of those prologues which the writer uses as an introduction to his experimental prose-poetry pieces.


The wind blows through those high-framed panes and one hears from below the waterplay and the wind and the people's laughter and the fountain and the water-pressed sounds, lovely, and the muffled, pigeon-winged flapter and what not.


He sits on the red-booth sofa, yes, and feels the nice wind on his nice face. Yes.


He, the writer, had written a poem to his beloved a few days before his sitting here on the fourth-floor red sofa, poem-writing yet again, & to the verysame someone, yes, a few days before this particular, while sitting on a bench on the north side of the lobby's second floor, from which he leveed the colorful elevators' goin' up and all about the lobby's makes and wares, the writer had written those prior ones, with that secret scribery of his, which he always uses, very much to his poetic sense's liking, yes, and those prior ones led him to these Diciotto poemas, which he plucked from off of the leafy branchworks of the entire city, and which lead him, dearly, to the timely nineteenth poema....


Yes, he, the writer, was ruminating upon the strangely futuristic sight of the flashy glass elevators while sitting there upon the red sofas, looking at the elevators as they passed up and down and up and down, thinking about his future children and about getting and then being old, and all that stuff.


He, the poet, is as happy as ever that all the red sofas are back in their 4th floor over-head overhangs. Airyness. He is also happy as ever to have the voice of his beloved Paola still ringing in his ears, telling him to hurry up already, and come to their room already.


From his notebooks on May 29th:

1

....feeling, seeing, in a bookstore by the University,

a book which I've read, there on the shelf,

the author, I won't say her name....

I'll only say that she has a nose similar to yours, and the same smile, though the expression she is pulling on her author's front-flap photograph doesn't resemble anything close to a smile, still, the author's photograph calls out a smile not yet seen there that talks of smiles ringing, smiling....


2

And I, on the shaded benchwork hearing the birdsong, listening, & whispering, thinking, under our sun, I love you....


3

Now it's been hours since I've seen you or smelt you, smelt you, or been with you:

just some hours now.

And only a few more: a few more hours, seconds, minutes before I have my hands around your skirt's waists.


4

Once I had a nice friend who once told me to always rewrite poems and canticuttleries and I said, no.


I write and I do not rewrite and my poems stand as they are in their loveshine.


Paola, I'm in love with you & I'm sayin' it all on

this paperslip.


5

Veins of treebranches

work their noon sorrow

up & unto another daybreak,

and then yawn until noon

again, yo

& I say shop,

winds fly by the by

& I am in love with you

& there there's no sorrow, with you my love,

dear sweet, scarred, & foolish one,

insanely bubblicious and frolicsome one- my lubbadub- mmmmmmhmmmm- 'O-mine, sweet baby smilin'-


6

Shapes dancin' dark

yet flashin' dull-lights always

Los Angeles's forlorn streets making for

hacks and nobodys, all rolling somewhere,

I seed and wave,

passin 'em, and head to the sands of the beachstone beachtire beach-one, of the

beachtime

sunny & cold

sunset news


7

THERE:

FOUND

HEAVEN'S

NAME

IS:

ENTER

(ing) (yes, I should've known, Paola means entering in entering)

She, no wonder, where the Earth shares the sun, the sunlight

faring, enters the

Leafshapenness.


8

....and at the bus-stop adjacent to Union Station's Patasauraus Plaza, under the overhang collections and shit-pigions, here sits me (me loving you, P.) knowing the young woman who sits next to me on the bench doesn't have a clue about you!


Sitting beside her, the girl, is an old man, who is himself sitting beside an old woman. They, the old man and old woman, are speaking to each other in Español, the language of the streets of Los Angeles (....there is more, like about the couple and their little, little daughter, and about them holding the dayweek's pretty grocery bags).


9

You are the one, Agh! I want to hold the bright day's bags with enjoyment. With you.


10

....Enjoyment


11

yes, my bus arrived (my love). That poor girl back there by Union Station was spared her dreams.

Sweet reliefs, Boyle Heights: artwork splayed, cultured brickstones worked brickwise: Guadalupe's surprises, sun on the wall, I sit, I sit, bus ridin', headin'

home

& further


12

Nach du, du


13

&further

mit du

and also

mit du

mit du

mit du

mit du du du du


du, du, du, du....


(written in notebook 6:12 P.M. May 29, 2021)


14

I want you to know

when I ride these busses

sometimes I see

those summertime young women

all singing, "match-maker, match-maker, make me a match!"

really, though, while on the bus, some days,

all those girls, that's all I can hear them saying, singing: & it's just beautiful.

& all the while I'm Krishna thinking about you, my love, his mmm mmm mmm.


15

heartfelt-

I walk bound toward downtown

for the night

Eastside neglect is what is felt here-

this inspirational etiquette we artist's call loud noise; here.


16

I hear you in the night's morning

Calling hello with your fingertips; and there goes another little you.


17

....and there passing a parking structure

wherefrom the sounds of a trumpet are heard displaying tragedy, in their own unheard of unpracticed way

-smoothest trumpet-

-tolled and totterred-

another artist at play -practicing- Agh!


I stop, & lean against the wall, & listen.





Agh!


18

....just thinking about how much you weigh, oh, say, for the page, yes love,

as I want to carry you places, agh, yes....

May 30, 2021 08:00

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