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
