I haven't written anything in quite some time, but I'll stick on the last thing I did and finished. Have several more in this series but none of them completed.

on the paint line - '63

dust & noise on
the midnight shift
the hiss of sprayers
blasting overspray
machines roaring around
the lot, skidding corners

madness in the pomona night
the mexicans bring
hot burritos & tamales
for breaktime
sing spanish songs above the roar

laughing madmen
good guys who befriended a young
hillbilly newlywed
from a world so different

old gil chavez likely a
dead saint now
slap a sombrero on his dark head
& he could have passed for every
mexican bandit in any western movie
you ever saw

paco the singer throwing down
his grinding wheel to pose in song
arms spread wide as he yodels out
a lick that should be spinning on
sixties acetate
a smile wide as t-town splitting
his mustachioed face

booger manzito sneaking to
the locker room to hit on quarts of
thunderbird wine smuggled in
going down one night behind his electric
wire brush which spun
inside his coverall fly before choking down
drunken seizure victim

bald "curly" champa the dago nodding
behind a big heavenly beer
after shift change grinning 'til
his forehead wrinkled
lifer on the paint line

cowboy in the main spray booth
bigmouth with his honda 50 newfangled
little jap iron trying to drag terry
with the new ford 427 after work
slaughter on reservoir blvd
the putter of one tiny cylinder &
the squall of rear wheels turned by
425 horsepower pulling a fiberglass body

sometimes the little dwarf woman
a tiny marilyn monroe clone perfect
in every tiny dimension
strutted past the outer fence under
the lights & when she did the tools went down
& everybody dug her moves until she
faded from sight behind the bushes
laughter & jokes about just "stickin' her on it"
& spinning her around

big ed in his golf cart smiling drunk all night
cruising the darkened alleys inside the complex
his face beet red from whiskey
he didn't care much what you did
long as you did something & didn't
break too much & you didn't get his stool
at ellie's lounge for long morning drinks

a year of it & i was gone
pissed off one night i took a walk as
22 yr olds will do & i went on to other things
& wondered about the place i was
decided that the golden west was just
another armpit like most places

and remembered that when
i first moved there i thought
the palm trees looked so exotic until
i learned that rats lived in

the top of them