Palisades Fire, LA, Jan 2025
I'm again watercoloring the apocalypse. And experimenting with what art can do to save us. This is an entirely computer-generated poem I just made, assembled from the Live Feed of the New York Times' coverage of the Pallisades Fires Jan 8 2025.
And dryness swirling
and dryness swirling into
eight oh five pm
eight oh two pm
LA soared dry
winds blow
flickering lightning
eight minutes swirling
Times, photos, pinned updates
someone said it was biblical
swimming in emptiness
sirens afloat, if
the orchard of illusions
vanishes so quickly
evacuation labyrinth:
Hollywood illusions swirling
the thread of nightmares
dripping from hillside mansions
buddy actors with hoses
water swirling to steam
“It’s
unprecedented,”
“unrecognizable,”
the
worst
flicker
seen
in
decades
in the dryness
something unsettled
stretches to Pasadena,
the fierce Santa Ana embrace
scorches illusions:
pool deck one day,
a memory of
ash
the next
Update
eight oh five pm
sirens again
like stinging embers
the blackening hillside
glowing
like neon bugs
in a swirl
of smoke
those jacaranda-lined suburbs
stir with anxious breath
the new 20-acre sunset
where wealth
and
wooden trails
collide
with
flame
unleashed
helicopters churn overhead
someone waits for an Amazon Fresh
someone tries to salvage
thirty-one years of life
with a powerless garden hose
gasping
under red skies:
LA is never the same
fear
approaches
the corridor
of fame
Eaton fire tangles
with a monstrous dryness
Malibu’s windy roads
become claustrophobic labyrinths
Flames overshadow “Hollywood”
like a rampaging myth
“like lightning bugs
in black night”
the fabled sign stands
evacuation orders swirl
the capricious dryness
makes
no distinction
coastal mansions or
little houses
it’s biblical
eight oh two pm
eight oh five pm
eight oh six
numbers flicker
like glimmering cinders
on phone screens
sirens overhead
the swirl of ash
the year of
terrible dryness
-MT January 9, 2025
