I once saw someone at a party in Los Angeles wish on a star

We were up on a remote hillside in late night,

Or early morning Echo Park where supposedly

The Hillside strangler had plied his evil trade

And dropped some of the bodies of his unfortunate victims

We were watching the meteor shower from several years back that was heralded as the greatest one to be seen in our lifetime.

I was too high at the time to remember much of it truth be told

Although I do remember the sky being very clear that night

I remember marveling at the barrage of shooting streaks

I couldn’t help but to be distracted by the macabre notion that someone who died prematurely

And murderously was dumped like so much garbage over the bluff where I now unsteadily stood

Must have a lot to do with why the real estate was so cheap

Well, that and the fact that it was Echo Park

I liked very much visiting my friend Ryan who lived there

He was my truest bohemian brother I had from another single mother

Living in that disheveled row of bungalows clustered in with a colony of like minded loadies, junkies and starving actors

It was like a Hollywood stereotype that lived and breathed

His girlfriend, an eastern European actress, who waited tables to pay the rent

Oddly,

Was the anchor in the midst of the broken bits

Loyal to Ryan and yes seemingly aware of his stumbling through existence

While Ryan, an independent filmmaker, did more drugs than

movie making when it was all said and done

We would find ourselves chasing the monkey’s breath all night

Until the lesser narcotic ne’er do wells dropped or went home

You would have been hard pressed to find someone who could out hang Ryan and I

When the dark early morning surrendered to the new day

Lifted above the L.A. smog barrier by the dope,

Then we would talk about real things, and laughed as we blew smoke rings and steadied

our over stimulated nerves

It was cool to be high we thought at least

But it was uncool to seem high; or at least as high as we usually were

We found we were more than just drug buddies

We were real friends and I thought of him as a brother over time

I came to platy one weekend with another buddy of mine

Bragging about Ryan during the hour it took to make our way to his hillside home

We found his house littered with the same junk

Empty bottles on the porch and a Resin smudged bong

No one answered the door although we knocked as loud as we could

So loud one of the neighbors came out and spoke to me

She said Ryan was found dead on his kitchen floor from an apparent overdose

On November 16th 2000 @ 11:30am

I didn’t talk the entire ride home

©2010 J. K. Bradford