Part 03: Short Poems About Los Angeles in Too Busy 4 Heartbreak
Reading short poems about Los Angeles is like flipping through a pocket-sized city map where every fold reveals a new seam of sunlight, smog, and longing. In a few spare lines you can feel the grit of Cahuenga under an Uber’s tires, the hush of palms swaying against glass towers, the sudden intimacy of a curbside taco stand at 2AM, and the ache of someone chasing a dream that keeps slipping west.
Each concise stanza distills neighbourhoods into sensations—heat, neon, freeway hum—while leaving room for the reader’s own memories to complete the picture, so the poems become both a mirror and a doorway: familiar enough to recognize, brief enough to let imagination roam the vast, fragmented city between two quick breaths.
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In my poetry book, Too Busy 4 Heartbreak, there are many LA poems to choose from. In this post, I’m featuring one of my favourites. It’s called The Myth of Manifestation and is about dreaming of someone but having them always be just out of reach.
Short Poems About Los Angeles in Too Busy 4 Heartbreak
The Myth of Manifestation
I used to walk into a crowded restaurant and wish I’d see you at the bar. Or I’d arrive, groomed and glamorous, at a girlfriend’s party and hope you were there; a friend of a friend. When I’d walk down the street, I’d wonder if you might drive by and recognize me. Would you stop? Say hello? Offer me a ride? Or just keep going? But now I’m not there and you are and I’ve missed my chance. Not that I really had one to begin with, if we’re being honest—which, at least part of me hopes to stay. Honest. If the universe is listening, maybe I’ll see you again. However, it’s doubtful. I think the universe has me on mute. You’re spun throughout my mind like a web from a spider but even stronger than my arachnophobia is the fear that my manifesting isn’t working and never will. No matter how hard I think about it, how many stars I wish upon or dandelion puffs I blow into the field, no matter how many times I see the clock tick towards 11:11, you’re still heartbreakingly unattainable; behind my screen but never just you and me: at the bar or the party or the cracked sidewalks in my old neighbourhood. Maybe the world is saving me from myself and my foolish fascination. It’s better if you’re there and I’m here and there’s no chance to be missed.
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Two other poems about LA in Too Busy 4 Heartbreak are Driving ‘Round and Feels Like You. Pick up a copy of the book online, worldwide on Amazon.
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