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California Clone
We both smell of sex even though we've slept on separate sheets for several dozen sunsets
We both watch the wicked waves wash our wishes away, just off the coast of different oceansWe both run in frantic figure eights, flopping like fish out of water…gasping…for our last breaths, just to come full circle with only silent shadows by our unstable sides
We both taste the truth tiptoeing off the tips of our tongues, yet it seems as if only lies are able to somehow spill out
We both hear the lone wolf's contagious cry in the distance off the periphery of a peak...I just cant tell if it's from the Rocky or Appalachian Mountains
We both touch the train tracks that separate our souls as we walk on this tragic tightrope…but I know she'll never meet me halfway
She-
Poses for the camera and feigns a subtle smile while simulating how to suitably showcase pseudo sentiments and sensations
She walks the red carpet like a robot
Except there are no wires
She still shows some slight and auspicious signs that she was once a human being
Like the tear that fell from her eye that frigid night in mid December
When she boarded that train to the Pacific and told me
"Dakota, my darling…I don't think I'm ever going to see the Atlantic Ocean again"
All the agents and assholes out West have now transformed and molded her into what she promised she would never become
A contaminated, comatose clone continuously crashing cars in her cranium
She even dyed her hair platinum blonde…and died a little inside too
Hollywood has taken her hostage
And made her a premature prisoner of her own prima donna perfection
But what she does not know
Is that for her, there is a feasible way out
It's called Arizona
It's called Nevada
It's called Oregon
Hell, it's even called Mexico
But her heart hibernates in Hollywood now
And the spotlight always shines on her
And the spectacular stage is now her claustrophobic cage
And all the hormone happy teenage drama queens mold themselves into an identical copy of her figure and form
And all the world is a theater…and all it's citizens merely help act out this traumatic treachery
Someone once told me that it never snows in Saskatchewan
And it's never hot in Hawaii
And it never rains in Washington
But I could see the storm clouds suffocating Seattle even from the Atlantic Ocean
I could smell the sex on her mattress from seventeen states away
I could taste the truth on the tip of her tongue as she sucks the celebrity status out of her director's million dollar dick
I could hear the lone wolf's cry high in the Rocky Mountains
I could touch the train tracks while the light at the end of my tunnel inches closer and closer
I see her on the screen and scream
I see her holding her harlot heart in one hand
While her other hand holds an Oscar
I decide that this needs to come to end
That she needs to open up her eyes
And realize what the Golden State has done to her
I need to save her from herself
I start to pack my bags with nothing but band-aids and second chances
And prior to the subsequent sunrise, this solitary soldier will march out of his one room apartment
and will parade all 2,883 miles from New Haven, Connecticut to the City of Angels
Without hitchhiking, without stopping to take a shit…hell, without even blinking or breathing
Satan's extravagant city soon will be in my sight
But before I can even cross the invisible line
She's right there waving and greeting the west coast wasteland
Like she's the freaking queen bee of this horrible hive
I pull her off her plastic pedestal and plead for her to please come home
But she pleads with the police to please take me away
I came all the way here with a purpose
But now that purpose seems to have slipped my mind
Perhaps I've become a California clone too myself
Perhaps it wasn't her fault after all
Perhaps it was the Pacific
I grab her by the hand
I hold and kiss her in a way even Ron Jeremy would have applauded and approved of
But I don't have the heart to look her in the eye and tell her
That she's the worst thing to happen to the world since the invention of the word "love"
That she's become more dirty and disgusting than downtown Detroit
That our relationship is a bigger mistake than America's invasion of Iraq
That the chances of me and her overcoming the obstacles are less likely than Chicago Cubs winning the World Series
That she is more overrated and glorified than God
I finally lift my head and stare at the stranger
A distasteful, counterfeit version of my former soul mate
I almost vomit over the sight of her fake tan and acrylic nails and hooker heels and ten tons of makeup
I breathe again for the first time since Bridgeport
And blink again for the first time since Brooklyn
And speak again for the first time since Santa Fe
And as an ounce of oil drips from her eye
I ask
"What the hell has happened to you?
Is this what you truly want to turn into?"
Her tears
Turned to ice
Her heart
Turned to stone
Her diamond ring
Turned to coal
My blood
Bled black gold
I can not continue this sadistic charade for even another second
So I wave farewell to forever
And say goodbye to the goddess of the Golden Globes
Because this is not where I belong
This is not where people belong
This is a whole different world here
The air tastes different
The people act different
The rules are different
And I must escape before I get sucked into the Beverly Hill's Black Hole
Before the red carpet turns into a tongue and swallows me whole
Before Hollywood has a hurricane and the only remaining letters on the huge sign are "H-O-L-Y"
Before California separates from the rest of America just like the scientists said it would
Before the mannequins start to move
Before the clones start to cry
I step on her star on the walk of fame and I sprint toward salvation at the state line
And when I get there, I don't even look back
And I hope she doesn't assume that I'm ever going to come back
Because the only time I will ever see California again
Is on an enormous silver screen a million miles and a million memories away its bedraggled border
Maybe she'll make a cameo appearance in one of my dreams
But the only thing I have left to say to the wicked witch of the West is:
"I hope that the Hollywood sign doesn't fall from its mountain and crush your corpse you while you're crushing another actor's heart"
…So I hang my head low and stare at the train tracks as I walk back to the Atlantic alone
Forcing myself to accept the fact that my former ally is now merely another Beverly Hills Barbie Doll, another Malibu Mannequin...a corrupted California clone…
