PRATIK SPECIAL CITY WRITING HIGHLIGHT: AMERICAN POET JAMES RAGAN POEM, "The Tent People of Beverly Hills"

 JAMES RAGAN

The Tent People of Beverly Hills

 

Faceless on the Boulevard of Mirrors,

north along the flats of Rodeo Drive’s

stripped bald head mannequins,

they come treading on

the fears of high fashion, wandering

homeless, tents on their backs

and on their cheeks the beach

black tar of tasteless chic.

 

              As if to dress were not enough,

              we would have them wash

              our backhand slap

              from their Rimbaud faces.

 

And all through the supple stick lash

wands of their eyes, all

through the wind whiskers

of fishbone and sour cream

curdled by fame,

they see along the fruit stalls and deli box bins

of Wilshire Boulevard,

 

the world in the room

of their small walk-space.

They are never certain

whether they are merely asked

to fill a role like memory

in some thoughtful dream of place

or live always short of major

in some dying minor sort of way.

 

              As if to live were time enough.

              We would have them end

beyond their means.

 

Hours long they scrabble

onto hotel walls and mirrors

the words they would like to leave us,

the haunted prints of thought-falls

drifting out of mind’s possession

like nostalgia or grief.

The world has lost its face.

 

There are no hobo kings or pioneers

late to live by. When they lie above

Beverly Drive’s windy steam of sewer grates,

dream-still and all-mind gone,

they warm their body holes to sleep.

They wake to be awake.

In the dreams of many

who never took the road

to gypsy sorrow, breathing is enough.

 

              It is a mistake to feel themselves alone,

              to fill their skyholes up with darkness.

 

There has never been a need

for crying, the dying always say.

Once we move within the final

inch of breath, there is no other.

There are a million tents in the universe

with holes we mistake for stars.

 

 

American poet James Ragan is the author of 10 books of poetry, including The Hunger Wall and Chanter’s Reed. With poems in Poetry, Nation, LA Times, and 36 anthologies, he has read for the U.N, Carnegie Hall, CNN, NPR, PBS, BBC and 7 Heads of State, including Vaclav Havel and Mikhail Gorbachev. Honors: 2 Litt. D’s, Fulbright Award, Emerson Poetry Prize, NEA, 9 Pushcart nominations, Poetry Society Citation, and Swan Foundation Humanitarian Award. With plays staged in U.S, Moscow, Beijing, Athens, he’s the subject of “Flowers and Roots,” awarded 12 Documentary Festival recognitions, and Platinum Prize at Houston’s Int. Film Festival. Director/Emeritus of USC’s Professional Writing Program (25yrs).

 

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