How I get there from here
I walk Hollywood Boulevard from Highland to Argyle like a soldier guarding something I can’t see.
This is 1070 and the soldiers I see all got scars in their eyes from killing gooks.
They love the war less than I do, but will beat me up if I say anything against it.
The war is all they have.
Some people got Monterey Pop. Some got The Summer of Love.
The soldiers got Vietnam and they aim to keep it.
Me, I got the Boulevard, stumbling over gold stars as if the bodies of close friends.
I know the name of everyone one and where each one is placed, shocked only when some fool puts a new name out and I have to get acquainted.
I know the drug dealers and pimps nearly as well, although not by name, and I can chant Hari Krishna in my sleep I hear it so much.
The cops and bikers look at me as if I’m crazy because of that they don’t beat me up like they always do to the gays. I guess they figure I’m crazy enough to get even with them and when they lease expect it.
I’m not like that.
All I really want to do it walk.
I don’t talk much because I don’t have much to talk about.
I try hard to forget where I came from or how I got here, or why I came.
I really don’t want to think about anything or anybody, although sometimes I think about where I’m going to sleep and what I might eat and whether I’ll be lucky enough to do both.
Sometimes, if I think too much, I count the gold stars, losing myself in their numbers rather than their names.
When I started all this, I think I liked what I saw along the way, all that tourist stuff like the wax museum, the Chinese theater and such. After a while, all that stopped meaning anything, just markers along the way and I figured the only markers that really mattered were the ones under my feet, the gold stairs with names on them, so I paid attention to them.
Some people call me colorful, one among a load of characters that makes Hollywood unique.
People even take my picture to show people back home the strange world to which they traveled.
Some people ask me if I’ll every stop and I say I won’t know what do or where to go if I did.
I’m making these blocks, this count of stars, trying to forget everything else I wanted to do or where else I intended to go.
Sometimes life isn’t where you’re going, but how you get there.