Ben Dunk                                  February 2001

                                              405 FREEWAY BLUES                                 

From the San Fernando Valley to the Orange County Y                     

One can feel, hear, smell and see the traffic                                       

Where Angelino’s come to live, love, hate and die

Ten thousand autos flooding north                                                      Above those “giant argosies of the air”

Plus ten thousand more flooding south                                               Dreamed from imagination by Blake

Where they’re going who knows                                                         Rise and glide to and from their lair

No one else besides themselves                                                           Making fumes, noise and ground shake

One can lookie-loo to the other side                                                    Then, on a warm and sunny New Year Day

Where ambulances, firemen and CHP’s                                              Top down to enjoy the clean ocean breeze

Are hauling off crashed and crimped cars                                           The four ‘o five FREE WAY is true to say

And crumpled and crushed human bodies                                           And paradise comes alive to please

Counting glinting cartridges spent                                                      From the San Fernando Valley to the Orange County Y

A ‘midnight sun’ circles a body                                                          One can feel, hear, smell and see the traffic

Sprawled disheveled on the ground                                                     Where Angelino’s come to live, love, hate and die

Seeing concrete through a pool of bloody

The carbon, oil and smoke trails of diesel trucks

School buses, taxis, shuttles, surfer wagons

SUV’s, limos , black and whites and cars 

With Wilmington sewage adding to the stinks

Days and nights on and off the lights

And on and off the brakes at LAX

Stop and go, slower to slow then creep

Is it up or down senses the carriage at Sunset

South Coast Plaza shopping lit up on the east

To the west, a brilliant edifice to Christ

Somewhere by Long Beach Tongva Indian spirits

Emerge from graves to haunt the university campus

Chased by pulsing police with strobes and sirens

The wrong-way driver in the pool lane is racing fast

To doubled eighty miles an hour collisions

Then unaware poolers are driving to their last.

Man made metal gasoline jungles of Carson’s

Ooze and squirt to maintain spinning tires

Exuding their noxious fumes after hours

Into the effluent system and the environs

The monster Getty asylum does overlook

Real and surreal treasures and the basin

A generous guaranteed theme park

Dedicated to a mean but very rich person