I’m the parched Arizona desert.
By day a blaze of flames dawdling
over an everlasting emptiness.
Desiccated sand cauterizing
busily scratching and being scratched.
Garigue vegetation thistle-stiff.
Cacti prickling amid fumes mounting
like a dream curdled off the ruddy earth.
A dream like a mirage.
A dream like thirst.
Blood rounding up with a tam-tam in the scalp
a tam-tam for the freedom
of insatiable fountains
In the distance barkless trunks
tremble like dismembered skeletons
I’m the parched Arizona desert.
By night a dream of rest and poetry.
Cacti blooming in a red swoon.
White branches
with their arms wide open becoming harp-strings
for the candied breeze.
Like a guitar groan
kindled by moonlight
out of me
a song is drawn.