The Arid Garden


Modern monsters our homo-sapien, sane, same
men as ever, ever as cleytche'd on green and blue archipelago
and island grey,
spout dry-heat summer, blue sky dust track, dirt clot in fine thin heath! Pinched in May,
a year without quench, a day,
a day, a day.      A day
without slip or slither of liquid
flux, of glistening cool transparency
in smart jackets and dresses, here they come, they come.


                                  Clean is
the deadpan desert floor. But ho: we imagine in the drought
a liquid flow,  shimmering
thin springs, a temporary refresh for the gills; some brilliance of droplets, and joplets
and glistening, jewels in shards,
but massive in force compact;
burst leak in the earth, burst leak forth of vibrant
vibrations in all shapes and variations, wrecked
and coiled in form, spouting
in the streets of a dead-end-up town, sacred. Delicious, to swelled cracked lips


Life giving to
the life-wasted, life ending, and dying.
The red-paint joker is laughing affably in his red devil costume
and a joy to the bare-footed children
who play in, around, over and under
the rattlesnakes and Scorpio in San Fran City Aboriginal,
from Nov to Deck
Nav to E — I — E — I — O — U, and
O — N the sands of the blacking ebb
tide, Luna
shifts the waves you know, and
the view from the quay is spectacular
this time of night. Dance, dance!


Dance with the passion, move with two feet right and
left, in the sandy snow tangent
on the shore of the blonde beach island ashtray,
amidst the havoc
of the desert dance.