In a town full of famous streets like Sunset Blvd, Melrose Ave and Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles street names are among the most widely recognizable in the world. Maybe it doesn’t have the same cachet as the Sunset Strip, but for Valley rats like me, Ventura Boulevard is a big one.
It travels along an ancient pre-Columbian route used by indigenous tribes like the Tongva and Tataviam peoples. It occupies a section of the famous 600-mile California Mission route which was part of the historic El Camino Real, a road system used by the old Spanish Empire throughout the Americas.
These days, Ventura Boulevard is a semi-hip drag of restaurants and shops with classic spots like Mel’s Drive-in and Casa Vega Restaurant. The old road is a San Fernando Valley icon and the setting for my recent poem, “Blood on a Bichon on Some Beautiful Day.”
BLOOD ON A BICHON ON SOME BEAUTIFUL DAY
Pink trumpet blossoms on Ventura Boulevard,
harbingers of spring under a clean sky
Clear and bright, and whamo
This is not a fair fight
What insult could this man have committed
walking his pompy white bichon,
What trespass to warrant a broom handle axe-chop by the other
Broad daylight, forearm busted open,
blood spatter on the bichon frisé
And here I ought to say
something clever about violence
or crack the code on aggression,
show I’ve got some insight on the human condition,
but wouldn’t it be more awesome
to just write a poem about trumpet blossoms
or maybe commit a few flotsam lines
to pompy white bichons
Carl Robinette 
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