Paul Hutchinson
21 Poems and 16 Pictures from L.A.
2023

farewell

heading home on sunset
watching the sun set
roaming through another night
and all its lights
been thinking about what you said
that last time
when you promised
it will be tough
but it will be alright

this city of hollow ghosts
and broken charms
made each day seem far
though the way you sounded on the phone
made me certain I am
clearly gone
but I am not alone

so I continue walking amid
empty stares
of a tired man
listening to his screaming
about how things were
and how things are

about how things used to be
for him
and his kind
living against all odds
being told
everything is fine

they say it doesn’t rain here
but I saw thunder in his mind
clouds in the palm of his hand
a wrinkled face, torn
like the streets of this town
scars on his forehead
and blood from his mouth

empty gloss trying to shine a light
on someone just trying to get by
a landscape of tents
red shadows and me walking by
the man still sitting there
what’s your name I say
when he asks me for a dime
he goes
I am the quake waking you up at night
the hundred purple shades that dawn shines each time
I am another lost soul waiting for the dole to arrive
a father with dry tears in his eyes
I am another one of those failed tries
of an army of hopeless scattered in the streets left and right
you’ve been bathing in sunsets my friend, he says, and that’s fine
but don’t you dare think you’ve seen anything
of me
or of my insides
you walk blindly here
in your rented car and with your sunglassed eyes

go home now boy
it’s time