After foreseeing the Second Coming in 1919

Yeats warned of the Darkness dropping again…

But could not imagine this Dark Apron of Dread

Unfurling across the City of Angels.

Indeed, in 1943 the darkness fell over Chavez Ravine

When the Zoot Suit Riots were instigated by men with clubs

carrying badges.

In 1947 the Darkness fell over the Black Dahlia

A fun-loving girl named Elizabeth Short,

Who rode West looking for fame, fortune, and a little fun…

She is still looking for her Hollywoodland, all these years later.

You can hear her mournful wails as you stand on the sidewalk in Leimert Park,

Near the field where her bisected body was left to rot in the Sun.

In 1965 the Darkness woke us once again from our Stony Sleep,

Falling over Watts this time:

Marquette Frye was confronted by the police

Emotions ran deep and boiled over the line.

Simon Rodia’s majestic Towers

Were trampled by Yeats’s Rough Beast.

The same men with badges and dark intent

Hoping Yeats’s Beast to resurrect

would return in 1991 to menace Rodney King

And drop the Dark Apron of Dread once again….

Can we imagine a true City of Angels

When the Darkness is lifted?

Only when we heed the dead man’s words:

“Can we all get along?”