LA, be my London.
Angeleno, be my Dryden.
Potomac be my river Styx.
2025, my 1666.
Part 1: FIRE
1.
In abusive Arts long had Hatred swelled,
From fetid backwaters to full mainstream.
Now this year delivered its overlord.
And a near-mortal blow to Martin’s dream.
2.
Suddenly best are last, and worst are first.
And Resistance is barely a murmur.
As foulest of the fowl come home to roost.
In disaster. And terror. And Murder.
3.
And so we go back to the smallest hours
Of birth of the year when all came undone.
The spawning, in darkness, of two fires.
One in parched hills, one in tormented son.
4.
Both burn unnoticed, for days, or seasons.
Till they detonated, and extended
To the farthest reaches of our demons.
Two fires, one vilest year bookended.
5.
In far badland a dust devil spirals,
Painting bone-dry air with burnt sienna.
Ballooning the wind until it barrels
West, as a withering Santa Ana.
6.
Now the desert heart of the city beats,
With the coldblooded pulse that deep-down lurks.
Murder and ruin prowl the hillside streets.
LA, straw house inside a tinderbox.
7.
But here? Not in striated westside shire
Of the inner sanctum who have it made.
No wildness here, so no wildfire
Could ever despoil these Palisades.
8.
So when dry wind stokes the smoldering coals
Of the New Year’s blaze, and shoots jaundiced threads
Of smoke above chateaux, and charter schools,
No screenwright could dream up what lies ahead.
9.
A home office: salesman takes Turkish
Tea, with his sister at mid-morning break.
Windows moan, and mirror something freakish.
Tongues of flame that well-groomed terraces, lick.
10.
Man and wife: on one of their dreamy walks
With vistas across all Pacifica.
Look back, and see the cannonade of sparks
Cascading down Piedra Morada.
11.
Alarms shriek, from already fire-intruded
Homes, to great buzzing hivemind of LA.
Now the scramble starts, as blaze denuded
First Palisades Drive, then Enchanted Way.
12.
Now the serpentine canyon roadways jam,
From The Summit down to storied Sunset.
Now cornered rear-view mirrors bloom with flame,
And there is no out-driving fire’s onslaught.
13.
Worlds away from these unfolding horrors
Or even plush next-door Pasadena,
Lies a hillside town that starkly mirrors
The dark side of LA: Altadena.
14.
When Black Angelenos fled sundown laws,
Like Burbank flaunted, and La Cañada.
And redlining that all of LA scars.
They found sanctum in West Altadena.
15.
North and away from this leafy refuge
Came a buzzing like gigantic hornets.
Along high-tension-wires, power surged.
And from blown transformer, a sparkler spits.
16.
Hiker fumbles camera from pocket
And first efflorescence of fire films.
That fierce Santa Ana soon skyrockets.
To cloud of combustion that townward storms.
17.
And once more the alarms and sirens brayed.
But to eastside and south, not to the west.
More than eight hours were red flags delayed.
More than enough, for fire, to do its worst.
18.
The Pitmaster father figure, sleepless,
All night with the Santa Anas screaming.
Now wheels his chair to the bedside, boundless
Worry for his son, fitfully dreaming.
19.
Anthony Mitchell Senior is his name.
Quick to “flip a steak” as to “drop a joke.”
Now hears shutters from roaring wind complain.
Now eyes his one good leg. Now smells the smoke.
20.
Crosstown, shedding their Teslas and Rovers
Palisaders make a run for the beach.
Downward, seawards, to somewhere take cover
In Venice, Topanga, or PCH.
21.
But fire like a reverse tsunami
Deluging boulevard and avenue,
Breaks high over horror-stricken city,
And streaks to the borders of Malibu.
22.
None can fathom how much fire consumes.
Of wealth. Of life. Of culture, and its kin.
Too many markets torched, and charred classrooms.
So — cut from wide. Zoom in on the Reel Inn.
23.
Malibu haunt with shaggy beach shack’s soul,
Between wide ocean and sheer cliff slumbers.
Where surfers hang out till they hit the swell.
Or nurse beers to kill the endless summers.
24.
And fish, cheap as it’s fresh, tacoed or broiled.
And snaking line of famed somnambulance.
And the floor with sand so liberally soiled.
Reel Inn, relic of surfdom’s innocence.
25.
But now, most cruelly, at happy hour,
Fire tunnels down Topanga Canyon.
Bone dry brush and stunted trees devours.
Exhales like exterminating dragon.
26.
Braised in that hottest breath, the fish shack reels
As fingers of flame through restaurant grope,
And each memory-scarred table recoils
From less like wildfire, and more like Rape.
27.
In a thumbnail of the year’s disgrace
The Reel Inn is soon ashen skeleton.
Though the mocking fire spares iconic piece.
Candy-colored neon sign, now blackened.
28.
A tiny luminous pod in the dark.
Bright shrinking, dimming window of escape.
The Pitmaster works it like flipping steaks.
While closer and closer creeps the hellscape.
29.
He punches in the lifeline, nine one one.
A harried voice says, “Help is on the way.”
While his nephews now drive, and now they run
To him, as daughter, in Arkansas, prays.
30.
And the sirens scream, but come no closer,
As nephews are summarily rebuffed.
So he dials again, gets same canned answer
As flames, at his yard gate, ferally cough.
31.
He looks at his one good leg, and one false.
And two strong arms to power his wheelchair
To Pasadena, or anywhere else.
But now gazes, at bedbound son, with care.
32.
Care fatherly, unfathomably selfless.
Wherever he goes, together both do.
So he makes one more call to Arkansas,
“Baby, I love you, but I got to go.”
33.
And he enwraps Justin in those great arms
And every last loving word left, imparts.
Now holds his breath as insolent fire swarms.
And Pitmaster, on sturdiest legs, departs.
34.
So fire, like misbegotten year just born
Heaps insults on the gravest injuries.
As the powers like ruthless wildfire turn
On our Reel Inns, and our Anthonys.
Part 2: TERROR
35.
Palisades and Eaton wildfires still burn
The day the flabby hand gropes the Bible.
As steaming mountain of Shit hits the fan,
Bad-omened year turns Abominable.
36.
Now we go rudely through the looking-glass.
Immigrants, refugees, are pariah.
Insurrectionists get a gold, free pass.
Mad Hatter becomes grotesque Messiah.
37.
The bright Beacon on a Hill: cuts to black.
Good Samaritan to the world: undone.
Miss Liberty: to Europe turns her back.
And this is just the wreckage of Day One.
38.
Soon wounded city swims into the sights
Of predators homing in on fresh blood.
Like Combat Barbie in her tailored suits,
Who with her fawning goons, our streets now flood.
39.
Beefy, beery, and bent on harrassment
And yet too chickenshit to show a face.
These rejects and dregs of law enforcement.
These agents of chaos, these men of ICE.
40.
Way down in OC is one more IHOP,
Where father, of three Marines, tends to planters.
An unmarked white van comes to shrieking stop.
Doors fling wide. Out pour masked bounty hunters.
41.
Narciso Barranco freezes in fear.
Weed-whacker, unmenacing, in his grip.
Then he makes hesitant move for his car.
And the ICE men, their insensate rage, let rip.
42.
Stun-gunning, shoving slight figure to knees.
Whaling fists and kicks on submissive man.
Rip shoulder from socket, and shatter nose.
Then frog-march the bloodied father to van.
43.
Glutted like so many blood-feeding sharks,
ICE men take their prize to detention jail.
Where Narciso crosses his river Styx.
And plunges in newfound circles of Hell.
44.
Cut to downtown: LA’s Fashion District.
A young woman steps out of mother’s car.
Off to work she goes, only to be plucked
Out of restive crowd by kidnapping cur.
45.
Andrea Lupe Vélez is her name.
Born and raised and bred, an Angelena.
As American as any strong-arm
Would-be cop, from Fresno or Fontana.
46.
“Citizen!” she pleads in her common tongue.
Though they spit at her in pidgeon Spanish.
“I’m a citizen!” she shouts long as lungs
Have breath. Then, Andrea, too, is Vanished.
47.
¡La migra! Echoes the cry of terror
Across fields of fruit that feed multitudes.
¡La migra! ICE! From car wash, to daycare.
From Boyle Heights, to Bell, to East Hollywood.
48.
Immigrant, Dreamer, citizen, or not.
Pregnant, student, sous-chef, electrician.
All caught in the scabrous, scattershot net.
All hurled into jerry-rigged detention.
49.
Here’s a reeking cell, standing-room only.
That any Russian Gulag would do proud.
With a single toilet for seventy
Men, Narciso Barranco in the crowd.
50.
Here’s another, both men and women hived.
Here’s LA’s daughter, Andrea Vélez.
Of phone and food, even water deprived
As in one more Stalag, or Alcatraz.
51.
But everywhere, always, videos play,
Of masked thug manhandling Andrea.
And now like hissing cat torn from its prey,
La Migra unhands the Angelena.
52.
But Narcisco hears his name misspoken.
Forced to knees, shackled from ankle to hand,
Now to ghost van by stone-faced guards taken
And launched into LA’s vast hinterland.
53.
First stricken Altadena leaves behind.
Now Glendora, now San Bernardino.
Up wooded mountains, and down to wasteland.
To the netherworld of Adelanto.
54.
Ghost town of a prison on Biden’s watch.
Now thousands of souls, squalid barracks cramp.
It’s the cut-rate Führer’s fever-dream hatched.
The All-American Concentration Camp.
55.
In blood-soaked clothes of his last free morning
Into one of the concrete bunkers thrown.
Narciso looks at faces surrounding,
And in their fear, and loss, he sees his own.
56.
He sees them chained, and herded, one by one.
And to far-flung southern exile, Vanished.
Sees mother from daughter, father from son,
Torn. Families splintered. Souls extinguished.
57.
And still, sleepless sadist on other coast,
Tiring of his self-made horrow show,
Now inflicts on LA still greater cost.
Indulging deepest fetish, Martial Law.
58.
Now with National Guard spray-paints downtown
With desert camouflage, and Army green.
And now the graffitist, doubling down
Tags scarlet and gold of U. S. Marines.
59.
This: not just slur on city, or nation.
Or to greater Democracy, a blow.
This is to all troops humiliation.
Cast in such sleazy reality show.
60.
For all must know, deep down, they’re shameless props.
Merest guinea pigs, and trial balloons.
About to go down the slippery slope
To Portland, Washington, and New Orleans.
61.
Vanished: Narcisco fears his name is next.
But juggernaut deportation machine
So cocksure, monolithic, gets perplexed.
How to disappear dad of three Marines.
62.
Desert Gulag does its best to break him.
No doctor for shoulder, dislocated.
Brute lights and shouts, at all hours to wake him.
Unbathed, starved, just shy of dehydrated.
63.
Good as gone, now, but not near forgotten.
As Narciso’s oldest, Alejandro,
As unflagging as he is soft-spoken
Keeps the harsh spotlight on Adelanto.
64.
No good dad deserves such degradation.
From his dignity, and family torn.
No father gave three sons to the nation
Who was so disrespected in return.
65.
To highest heaven, depravity stinks.
To farthest reaches of the barrios.
Under greatest pressure, La Migra – blinks.
And from iron-sheathed claws, unclutch Narcisco.
66.
He breaks his long silence, but not to share
His own immeasurable sufferings.
But to offer plainspoken, selfless prayer.
“Don’t separate families. That’s the thing.”
67.
Narcisco saw the iron fist unbound,
In all its cruelness and impunity.
Gone was his freedom, but somehow refound
Our lost, demoralized Humanity.
68.
Still, thirty-one died in ICE’s clutches.
As did thirty-one die in LA’s flames.
But Death now its full momentum reaches,
And bullets hissing, knives out, for us came.
Part 3: MURDER
69.
For untold years, snub-nosed tree skyward worms.
Bloated, branchless shoot of camo color.
Then overnight bursts into hideous bloom.
Into one monstrous, stinking Corpse Flower.
70.
For day or two, at most, the thing appalls
With gothic colors and carrion’s breath,
Then just as quickly, it lurches and falls
Back in featureless, lurking, living death.
71.
So like the Corpse Flower, murder erupts
From straight out of nowhere, and back again.
And our hardest-won peace of mind corrupts.
Though we know not Why. And we know not When.
72.
For the whys and hows have been done to death,
And cause is another quaint fallacy.
For Motive is just an old shibboleth,
But Murder is All In The Family.
73.
Now we come to most gruesome Corpse Flower
That germinated for many a dull year,
Or slow-smoldered, like the Palisades Fire
Till flaring when the Santa Anas roar.
74.
We come to hollowest of holidays,
Where we gamefully go through the motions.
For in the year when Hate has come to stay,
Our appetite flags for celebration.
75.
But this gala dazzles on the surface.
With seeming half of brightest Hollywood
Illuminating Conan O’Brien’s house,
On cliff of Palisades that fire spared.
76.
Here’s a sprinkling of the almost-famous
Among the much-laureled and iconic.
Here’s a writer hitting on an actress.
A surgeon trading punchlines with comic.
77.
A glaring paradox of high success
In a year so degraded and bloodied.
Gleaming people, mostly oblivious
To the sullen young man in the hoodie.
78.
He glares with cold, contemptuous malice
At the glitterati round Bill Hader.
And when animus builds to some crisis
He storms off to look for famous father.
79.
Some say there is a fight nearest violence
Where the host is urged to call the police.
Some say, “Bullshit.” A tale, to make sense,
Of the murkiest of monstrosities.
80.
The son now vanishes into the night.
And parents take their leave not long after.
Shrugging off what’s just one more ugly fight,
Telling last jokes to uneasy laughter.
81.
Through long therapy, rehab, and relapse.
Through long struggles most public and private.
Through stretches of calm that straight off collapse.
Such is their terrible, open secret.
82.
The scourge, the brain fever, it comes and goes,
With a cocktail of the latest pills.
But now it’s rekindled, and now it grows.
And the inner wildfire outwardly spills.
83.
– That thought again. Like recurring nightmare,
That consumed you as long as it lasted.
With no fantastical detail spared
By auteur as painstaking as twisted.
84.
It’s Grand Guignol post-apocalyptic.
It’s that painting by Heironymous Bosch.
It’s the Tree Man’s face, so coy and cryptic
In the crush of demons and their debauch.
85.
I look into this forbidden nightmare
Deep into this graphic depravity.
As if into shadow-laden mirror
Only to see the monster that is Me.
86.
And yet — I see Another, the Tree Man
Morphing into some long-gone therapist.
Who commands me to do the ancient sin.
And me, I am powerless to resist.
87.
How did I get here? In this dark hallway,
With my baby sister’s room at one end.
And at the other, the dead end doorway.
And what feels so hard and cold in my hand?
88.
The hall elongates, and then foreshortens.
And my one free hand cracks open the door.
And then the other on the thing tightens
As I hear that butterlike, Bronx-tinged snore.
89.
A snore. So rich with fame, and accolade.
Susurring all those celebrated lines.
A Roar. So disappointed and dismayed,
By son so much loved, but so misaligned.
90.
Now all’s a red blur. All is fearsome noise
That I need to stop, now, forevermore.
Now, all I can hear is thundering pulse.
And spattering my hands – what awful gore?
91.
Now that the ghastly news is emerging
From wide valleys to high Mulholland Drive,
What room, if any, for more soul-searching
With non-stop shocks of twenty twenty-five?
92.
Are you stunned, or horrified, in the least?
Or in sluggish apathy, sleepwalking?
Or could you see, like Nick, an inmost beast
In the tragedy of his own making?
93.
For highest Tragedy is that the prince,
Who gave us Spinal Tap, and Princess Bride,
And those other touchstones, before and since,
Is taken by such sordid Parricide.
94.
And now we take leave of this monstrous year
But like father breeds damage into son,
Immemorial crimes will reappear
As the old year bleeds into the new one.
95.
Not yet are nations so crudely ambushed.
Not yet a good woman gunned down by ICE.
Not yet all of Democracy vanquished.
Not yet War. But still more threadbare Peace.
96.
But what this year, now barely past, has shown
Is how much Hate and Bloodlust are undimmed.
Twenty twenty-five the wind has sown.
So now, brace – for one hell of a Whirlwind.
January 19, 2026. Martin Luther King Day
Craig Constantine has been a day laborer, bread baker, furniture mover, factory worker, and TV producer. Now a poet, his hardest, worst-paid, best job.. His poems are drifting like his younger self, now in the UK, now in the US, now in Australia. He has just been named Editor-at-Large for Poetries In English.