Desert Song

I came to fast and purify, not gulp

The pickup's rusty antifreeze

Scorpion's corkscrew kiss

For higher things

Not this

Headache that rings

Hard shit and burning piss

I came to drink the sacred text

But Vegas is a dry three hundred miles.

I hoped to wipe my life's slate clean, to look

Into the eyes of hollow sky

The emptiness of bliss

In any case

Not this

Coyote's face

Whose rotten orifice

Humming with sand flies, opens wide

And spreads a smell of cancer, foot, or fish.

I came to hear the one-hand-clapping sound,

The vulture's universal Aum,

The rattler's carnal hiss

The soul's low moan

Not this

Boom box of bone,

Static and avarice.

My skull still hosts the old talk show,

My head's still tuned to habit radio.

Jackrabbits jump and humans crawl upon

This empty table in the sky,

And then, paralysis.

The old bones dry.

Not this

Can justify

The act of Genesis.

The battery's dead, the gas is low,

Vegas too far for this old wreck to go.

send in by vv (04-21-2000)

07/06/2008 10:11:42 AM

...brought to you by helmut s.