Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Watch burnt strata lay out, living rock, longsuffering atmosphere-- each strain, fold, rift and current a potential defining storm in deep calm. Measure space, its measureless face against a road sign shredded by buckshot on glow, under blue and then sprinkled black, no breath, shattering quiet. "AUSTIN-- 149 MI"... Potential is a ribbon and peace reclines on a leaning sign ruined by a shotgun.

The strata are fluid and motionless. Lulled by oceans' steady advance and retreat, silent crush of sea floor and undetectable laying up of red rock treasure, we're never far from fire. Welded tuff came down as a fallen angel, grotesque molten terror. I see its serrated edge slip under dust devils, unheard only sensed. Strata slip quietly into the desert generally, pyroclastic only when the land must be remade. Imagine flying over telephone poles snapping in Phoenix, armed with blood and aluminum skin, maybe a white hot hurricane. Vague tensions between deep peace and fire reside in the strata.

Last night through ruined floorboards I noticed I was perched on a spinning lump of silica and iron hurtling through black. I prefer ruined motels for their whiskey-shaded eyes and cracks in the inertia. I wrote poems in 1918 smoke clearings. Now I see powerlines out to a vanishing point and I'm hung upside down by the knees on a transmission tower. See the whites of clouds before they shoot. Darkman watches the inverted fusion planet, considers the profound void between here and there. How is a hot breeze possible?

Cattle country drifts over a luckless, blind desert, over narcotic seas of poverty and Frank up in lights, the intensity of arid-pure light, wisdom drug taxed only by mind-altering heat and death by profit. Whatever happened to the mob? Hoo hoo, mourning doves remain unseen in bullet-bound neon ruins. They bombed the Sands, took it down, buried it somewhere in that intensity. It's out of our hands now, on-screen, fiftieth floor gleam and the money's spent. Their tipping points multiply for us. Give me that old time religion, give me the keys. My enemies are scheduled and I'm obliged. In the middle of famished deserts I am my own shade.

apologize for some of the repetition from previous entries.. just "blended" some things together into a hazy, dark-ish reflection..

damn the apologies!! this is splendid work that fuses prose with poetry.

Thanks Dino. As I explore the limitless and discover its limits, seems my writing follows a similar trajectory.

Anyway, here's the rest of it (got tired of typing)...

Sun is spray painted dust. Why is a country mile long? You see them end to end plain as day unless dust is up that day. A city mile is long. Empires occupy mere blocks and crossing them takes years off your life. Look for vertical canyons, the right storm without a sky. One wrong door could mean a hundred years, much longer than a country mile. But you can't run to the strata, you have obligations now, and the desert shrinks anyway, spread over fresh blacktop foothills.

Odd, the view from one side of a ridge to the other, on the last dry-boned spine I stumbled up. I drifted too far west and the mountain is nearly gone, sunk into its own slope. Light storms press down and nothing withstands that intensity. A soft roundscape lays out on my right, as vague as here appears from there. I see myth curving down. On my left are speckles on a valley floor. Someone keeps a light on. I must be home, but if you said I was sick of this place I would listen. If you said let's go we would find a new road, be our own pain to the rhythm of wipers in a rare desert rain. We'd find some place different against the wind and make a life of it I'm sure. It's damn quiet except for the wipers.

sun is spray painted dust.
the strata are fluid & motionless.
i am my own shade.

thank you sir. i enjoyed this walk.