new poem: ‘went looking for ‘ink alley’
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010 | news&Events, subtle juxtapositions
recently i attended a salon put on by my friends at ‘wordSpace’ , a writer’s studio here in L.A., that was centered around the 100th anniversary of the bombing of the L.A. Times bldg., as part of the ‘direct action’ dynamiting campaign waged by members of the iron workers union in 1910
…i presented this piece that evening, which was written after my research on the subject both in books & on the street
…i rarely write ‘on assignment’ as it were, but i found the subject intriguing & inspiring
*went looking for ink alley*
went looking for ‘ink alley’,
in los angeles under the midday sun,
on the corner of 1st & broadway,
squinting at a digital snap shot laser paper print-out of a map from 1910
…looking for ink alley,
& realizing that after 100yrs,
some streets had grown longer, or gotten shorter,
or wider or thinner, or moved uptown,
or disappeared completely,
re-shaped or swallowed up by time,
& notions of progress
…here in the city of angels,
so much of the past cannot be visited;
only exhumed,
& then sometimes,
only at the library
…looking for ink alley,
& conjured up from the research & intent
a vague apparition;
in ink stained coveralls & a square hat
made of folded paper,
ashen & covered in brick dust,
it’s mouth falls open
& the sound of roiling war drums
& a building collapsing in an inferno
issues forth
…the message is clear:
ink alley is beyond reach
…nothing on this corner now but a fenced-in empty lot;
an overgrown foundation on the inside,
w/ a ramp leading to an underground parking facility
built many years after the ‘old chief’, ‘general’ otis’s,
open shop blew up & burned down
…rebar now welded in a grid over the car park entrance,
all bombed out w/ graffiti,
the mouth of a man made cave,
leading to some indistinct hades
…on the outside of the fence,
set at an incline off the sidewalk;
some low-maintenance desert landscaping
…behind the trespass warnings,
in the meager shade of low brick walls,
sickly stray cats nap in the cool breeze
wafting from a vent of the underground car park
…passing thru the fence like smoke,
the phantom linotype press operator pauses,
scratches the belly of a cat,
it wakes & stretches
…press operator surveys the corner lot,
the years passed erode away in his steady, sad gaze
…one can’t comb the ground here for arrowheads,
spent brass, or belt buckles,
the way one can when visiting other battlefields
of north america
…no evidence here of the struggle,
no marker, no sign, no plaque
…the current news paper building across the way,
an architectural patchwork of decades between disasters,
faces the empty space once occupied by its ancestor;
says nothing
…100yrs ago, somewhere behind the fence off broadway,
a narrow passageway once crooked
round the bindery & storage bldg;
this was ink alley,
where barrels of the liquid ammunition waited to be pressed to service
…make no mistake;
the Times bldg. was a fortress in a warzone
from which salvos were fired at the enemy,
& here at the end of Ink Alley was it’s munitions dump
…a war being fought
in this town for ½ a century by 1910,
in the newspapers, in the back rooms,
in the meeting halls,
on the sidewalks ’round the factories
…a war fought
w/police truncheons, picket sign sticks & axe handles
…a war fought
w/ sleazy injunctions & firm resolve,
righteous anger & desperation,
mere pawns & battling belligerents,
freedom fighters & terrorists,
hired goons & crusading lawyers
…the press operator comes to the end of the alley,
stares inward at the magic lantern flicker
unfolding forever in his brain,
dull eyes weary w/ his100yr old sorrow,
he watches the interloper’s entrance
…into the fortress sneaks the sapper,
the saboteur, an ironworker, a laborer, a union man,
an agent behind the lines
…& when he leaves again, unnoticed,
16 sweating sticks of 80% are resting in a suitcase
among the barrels of ink,
whose usual inflammatory intention
would be subverted to a new & terrible purpose
in ‘direct action’,
when the alarm clock accidently goes off at 1am,
instead of 4 in the morning,
when the crew & the paper
would’ve been put to bed
…barrels of ink, vaporized into flame,
borne on gas fumes from the broken basement main,
roar throughout the shattered building
…half a dozen explosions,
& the firelight dances on the cobblestones,
& the south wall collapses,
the 2nd floor falls down to the 1st,
all of it crashes into the basement,
trapped souls scream from the roof top
…back out on broadway,
the press operator points
across the last century to the place
where the bodies piled on the sidewalk,
after making their last desperate decision,
between flame & blunt trauma,
between slim & none
…the sort of choice oft made necessary
for soldiers & civilians backed into a corner of hell
by the tactic of terrorism
& the rule of fear
…then the specter vanishes
like embers swept up into a night sky
in the heat above a blaze
…now ink alley is unreachable,
buried by the slow avalanche of time
…now, a searing breeze cuts thru the sunshine
& animates the weeds that break thru the cement
of the crumbling foundation,
in the otherwise vacant corner lot
…they wave in the heat
like the arms of those buried so long ago,
reaching skyward thru the rubble
for answers to questions;
champion of labor? or cowardly murderer?
working class hero? or midnight assassin?
good soldier? or anarchist scum?
…& does the whole damn world
believe in dynamite?
