Chateau Dreams
I picture them all, in different positions,
And the same positions,
And I, like a sculptor, would position them, and mold them.
Or like a choreographer put them through the same paces,
Again and again.
At the center of the arrangement of chalk bungalows
There is an oval pool like a blue pill,
Huddled by ferns, palms and banana trees
Tended to be wild,
Webbed by a nexus of stone walkways.
In the day,
Mermaids and hairy mermen drape the brickwork.
At night the underwater lights electrify the pool zinc blue,
The surface cradles the oven-red reflection of the neon Chateau sign
Above Sunset, above the paparazzi and miniskirts.
There is a painting of a blond sailor,
Dressed in blue and red and white,
A stoic version of myself.
For nine months in â06, while fixing my house,
I stayed in the bungalows,
First in 82, next to the little Buddha in the long fountain
Trickling.
Lindsay Lohan was about.
The Chateau was her home, the staff her servants.
She got my room key with ease,
She came in at 3 a.m.
I woke on the couch, trying not to look surprised.
I read her a short story about a neglected daughter.
Every night Lindsay looked for me.
My Russian friend Drew was always around like a wraith
âHe, like the blond painting, was my doppelgangerâ
Writing scripts about rape and murder.
A Hollywood Dostoevsky, he gambled his money away.
We played a ton of ping pong.
â¢
In â82, John Belushi died from a speedball in Bungalow 3;
In â54, forty-three-year-old Nick Ray
Fucked fifteen-year-old Natalie Wood in Bungalow 2;
In 2005, Lindsay Lohan lived in room 19 for two years
Because âshe didnât want to be alone.â
Ambulance calls were the regular antidote to her demon nights.
Midway through my stay,
I changed to Bungalow 89.
In that room,
I read a bunch of Jacobean plays
About revenge, seduction, and lust.
In Bungalow 89
There was the sailor on the wall,
Glass eyed and pale.
The room was on the second level,
The exterior walls hugged by vines.
Every night Lindsay looked for me and I hid.
Out the window was Hollywood.
Marlon Brando
I remember when I first watched
Brando in his wife-beater
And thought I had discovered him.
And then realized three generations
Had already succumbed to his power.
He has the strength of all that America
Has to offer from its art,
He is the bull and the ballerina.
I love Stanley Kowalski and Terry Malloy
Because they are the brutes
Puppeteered by a genius.
Instead of performances
They are manifestations of a wild mind
Wrestling with its crude incarnations.
Marlon Brando is man vs. nature
And that is what we want in a man.
Like Tennessee and Blanche
We want our poetic selves
Destroyed by handsome brutes
In wife-beaters and oiled hair,
The poetry of being fucked to death.
Los Angeles Proverb
The bricks of LA were mortared with thick Indian blood,
Girls so gorgeous brown, pounded into mush and then made into stories.
Then the Spanish blood flowed in the rivers, down south, and was gone, except
In Sepulveda, Van Nuys, Los Feliz, Pico, San Vicente;
The streets of the City of Angels tell stories.
The movie palaces were built with the bones of ten million actresses,
And the great mansions of Bel Air and Beverly Hills and Brentwood and the Palisades
Are the mausoleums of naked, drugged, stupid, happy, young actors,
all gone.
There are deals made, and they all mix and stink like the tar pit at La Brea.
LA sprawls:
Gangs, cars, palm trees, beaches, strip malls, 7-11s, smog, beaches,
Secret hideaways in the hills above Sunset,
There are four square blocks downtown, around Los Angeles Street
and 4th
That are nothing but crack addicts.
Hollywood is an idea.
I want to get into the thix of it.
Movies wonât be around forever.
II.
The Best of the Smiths
Side A
1. There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
I waited in the shadow of my stupid house.
The Mustang rolled up in the low black
I picture them all, in different positions,
And the same positions,
And I, like a sculptor, would position them, and mold them.
Or like a choreographer put them through the same paces,
Again and again.
At the center of the arrangement of chalk bungalows
There is an oval pool like a blue pill,
Huddled by ferns, palms and banana trees
Tended to be wild,
Webbed by a nexus of stone walkways.
In the day,
Mermaids and hairy mermen drape the brickwork.
At night the underwater lights electrify the pool zinc blue,
The surface cradles the oven-red reflection of the neon Chateau sign
Above Sunset, above the paparazzi and miniskirts.
There is a painting of a blond sailor,
Dressed in blue and red and white,
A stoic version of myself.
For nine months in â06, while fixing my house,
I stayed in the bungalows,
First in 82, next to the little Buddha in the long fountain
Trickling.
Lindsay Lohan was about.
The Chateau was her home, the staff her servants.
She got my room key with ease,
She came in at 3 a.m.
I woke on the couch, trying not to look surprised.
I read her a short story about a neglected daughter.
Every night Lindsay looked for me.
My Russian friend Drew was always around like a wraith
âHe, like the blond painting, was my doppelgangerâ
Writing scripts about rape and murder.
A Hollywood Dostoevsky, he gambled his money away.
We played a ton of ping pong.
â¢
In â82, John Belushi died from a speedball in Bungalow 3;
In â54, forty-three-year-old Nick Ray
Fucked fifteen-year-old Natalie Wood in Bungalow 2;
In 2005, Lindsay Lohan lived in room 19 for two years
Because âshe didnât want to be alone.â
Ambulance calls were the regular antidote to her demon nights.
Midway through my stay,
I changed to Bungalow 89.
In that room,
I read a bunch of Jacobean plays
About revenge, seduction, and lust.
In Bungalow 89
There was the sailor on the wall,
Glass eyed and pale.
The room was on the second level,
The exterior walls hugged by vines.
Every night Lindsay looked for me and I hid.
Out the window was Hollywood.
Marlon Brando
I remember when I first watched
Brando in his wife-beater
And thought I had discovered him.
And then realized three generations
Had already succumbed to his power.
He has the strength of all that America
Has to offer from its art,
He is the bull and the ballerina.
I love Stanley Kowalski and Terry Malloy
Because they are the brutes
Puppeteered by a genius.
Instead of performances
They are manifestations of a wild mind
Wrestling with its crude incarnations.
Marlon Brando is man vs. nature
And that is what we want in a man.
Like Tennessee and Blanche
We want our poetic selves
Destroyed by handsome brutes
In wife-beaters and oiled hair,
The poetry of being fucked to death.
Los Angeles Proverb
The bricks of LA were mortared with thick Indian blood,
Girls so gorgeous brown, pounded into mush and then made into stories.
Then the Spanish blood flowed in the rivers, down south, and was gone, except
In Sepulveda, Van Nuys, Los Feliz, Pico, San Vicente;
The streets of the City of Angels tell stories.
The movie palaces were built with the bones of ten million actresses,
And the great mansions of Bel Air and Beverly Hills and Brentwood and the Palisades
Are the mausoleums of naked, drugged, stupid, happy, young actors,
all gone.
There are deals made, and they all mix and stink like the tar pit at La Brea.
LA sprawls:
Gangs, cars, palm trees, beaches, strip malls, 7-11s, smog, beaches,
Secret hideaways in the hills above Sunset,
There are four square blocks downtown, around Los Angeles Street
and 4th
That are nothing but crack addicts.
Hollywood is an idea.
I want to get into the thix of it.
Movies wonât be around forever.
II.
The Best of the Smiths
Side A
1. There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
I waited in the shadow of my stupid house.
The Mustang rolled up in the low black
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