Roman Noir

A macabre twist

to my usual tranquil

 Sunday outing

A scarlet dahlia

The day had a strange

color to it

Broken glass at

the XO location

 Someone smashed

last Sunday's XO vessel

Expected it would happen

much sooner

An acceptable response

 

Then the lurid

distasteful spectacle

of American Idol auditions

had seized the day at

Jack London Square

 The scene was crawling

with Oakland cops

star-struck in make-believe

television land

So I hopped on the #12 bus

and rode it over to Lakeside park

I was bound for the fountain

to have a relatively wind-free smoke

But when I got there

 I found it difficult

to believe my eyes,

I saw someone there in repose

and as I approached it seemed

as if it was a woman with

remarkably large breasts

 and no shirt,

As I got nearer I saw that

she was wearing a shirt,

an approximate skin tone shirt,

She had a cloth over her face

and seemed somehow

discombobulated

almost disarticulated

A large display of Dahlias

in the park's garden

She seemed rather

dangerously naïve

in her obliviousness,

this being a rather louche

 and fairly deserted area

 One must remember

Nature's strong drives

the industrious bee

The tableau recalled for me

the ultimate Los Angeles

Hollywood's precautionary

unsolved mystery

The Black Dahlia

In the 1940s

the body of young woman

which had been severed
into two pieces
like the woman-sawed-in-half
magic trick only real,


The story has became an archetypal one
Films and books
theories and conjecture
including author James Elroy
who believes the Black Dahlia killer
 murdered Elroy's mother as well,
Another estranged son published
a book putatively proving
that the murderer was his own father
a doctor and madman

Her name was Elizabeth Short
and she was from the Northeast,
Her remains are here in Oakland
buried at my old hang-out
Mountain View cemetery,
My ex and I once visited it
using a guide-book entitled
Permanent Californians

The bee wants in

I was slightly stunned

and decided to sit opposite her

where the fountain precluded spying

for my momentary pause,

I saw a black guy pass her

and slow down to have a good look,

Can't blame him

 that surgically enhanced figure

would slow down most men,

She seemed to trust her fate

asleep and unprotected in public

When he shifted a bit I was

relieved to have evidence

 she was still alive,

As I proceeded toward the garden

I stopped for a few image captures,

After I did I noticed three young guys

had seen me as they approached

 when they got even with her

they twigged on and laughed

I wasn't getting randy

I was scratching instead

my head

Later on it dawned on me

that she would be perfect

bait for a police sting,

that maybe that was what was

going on with her in fact,

if so they must have

perked up at my behavior,

Sorry to disappoint

but sooner protect her

than interfere with her

There's that bee again,

Get you some

Mr Bee

20 August 2017