“Desert Dunes Sandstorm” by nagualero
tragic travelers
clamber among
desert dunes
vainly seeking
soft flowers the
thornless red
innocent rose
while forgetting
the garden lies
buried beneath
human histories
Desert
All posts tagged Desert
“Egyptian Revolution” by Hani Zurob
it’s been a hot century
mummies have melted
their binding dry
gauze catching fire
igniting rebellion
informed by dead
dynasties burning in
scalded sand agony
waiting for signal
that cruel Amun-Ra
has been vanquished
the curse of the sun
lifted giving to cool
cosmopolitan minds
a new future of
ambient liberty
(originally posted December 2013)
“Golden Scarab Beetle” by Angela Ooghe
scarabs dig under dunes
bellies burned by the sand
too hot to die today
(originally posted January 2014)
“Cohabiting” by Amy Tuso
desert skyscrapers
repentant fingers upstretched
beseeching heaven
“Ancient Jewels – Superstition Mountains” by Heidi Searle
mystery maps the holes in a skull
where a gold weaver’s needle
points shadows of legend at
treasure concealed by unlucky
Dutch fingers in mountains that
loom from Apache mists heavy
with visions by scions of Spain
rich lavender skies cast botanical hues
beneath knees of mute bluffs
splashed by deep orange sunsets
watered by the Snake run with tears
shed by warrior ghosts
Shoshone and Paiute and Ute
keeping vigil on rituals
practiced for ten thousand years
here in the hauntings
color dances with texture
across ballroom landscapes
where moccasins made gentle injury
where buffalo skins swaddled tentpoles
and spirits spoke portents in pipesmoke
but to see them today takes a shamanic gaze
into killing field shadows and riverbank mists
tracing grounds of a once sacred world
whose future will never match history
The Sailing Stones of Death Valley
Photo from whenonearth.com
mysterious motion
invisible forces
pedestrian stones
telltale trails marking
death valley sojourns
mythology courting
a barren lithology
hidden hands moving
metamorph chessmen
stealthy indifferent
progression across
a parched board
where nothing can live
but quaint questions
of wanderers wondering
why is low desert the
suitable place for
atonement where old salt
and alkali peel away
skin from the sins in
a game without rules
without tactics a chaos
of stumbling aimlessly
under a blazing hot
punishing ceiling of sun
imperceptible penitent
movements of sinners
confirmed by their
imprinted shadowless
tracks dragging pace
with the scored
playa racetracks of
slow sailing stones
Joshua Tree in the Mojave Desert
Photo from wallpaperseek.com
rain shadow
basin and range
dryly edged
by the joshua
sunken dead
valley aflame
with conquistador
ghosts miners
burned by
their fevers
rude settlements
brief in their
life left to ruin
abandoned amid
yellow creosote
tendrils of cholla
forbidding globes
barrel-barbed
stab at the heat
for the least
trace of moisture
this climate
extreme with
geography scorched
sparse and hostile
yet somehow
possessed of a
terrible beauty that
captivates spirits
who worship a
searing adventure
“Desert Shadows”
Painting by Colin Bailey
From ryepress.com
I bend into the earth
as a pig might set
nosing for truffles
except I am snuffling
for remnant scents
recently left by the
passage of virtuous
souls eyeless groping
for unrealized roots
burrows secret with
promising clutches
of eggs fingers tuned
to the dry deep baked
soil alert for the least
hint of moisture that
might just attract and
revitalize weak buried
burgeoning seeds eyes
peeled for the winged
iridescence of beetles
the track of an insect
the scrape-trace of
snail shell or scorpion
tail something anything
giving some life sign
beneath the dead floor
of this capitol desert
where even the bleached
bones of history seem
to have crumbled and
and found themselves
carried away by an
angry wind like the
friable flecks of great
parchments too long
left untended
unloved and unread
“Painted Desert”
Painting by Carol Nelson
From dailypainters.com
in its shadowfold skin
creased by telltales
of too-ancient rains
inhospitable desert
conceals vinegarroons
at their pincering forage
wanting for moisture
if only from inside
some exoskel thorax
life lower and slower
to serve and sustain
at the pleasure of
higher forms such is the
custom of eons become
law of nature adaptive
Darwinian only one
creature equipped to
effect truly momentous
change with one stroke
of a choice alter habits
and predispositions of
feral existence how oddly
remarkable is it
to find he is me
Poesy plus Polemics 