the motel papers desert poem

[mnaz]

small rocks the size of boulders
blinding ocean on thin-skinned powder sky
can’t tell the size of anything on blinding span
try the shore for relief, it is naked and burnt
wondrous mounds, scarred chocolate complexes
soothing, radiant misperception

on the playa, no life or sound
only giddy whiffs to wick moisture
intensity in the interval, still as cracks on the floor
ringing quiet and mercurial wind, span but no scale
only heady lurch of rare arid air, lurch and lull
lull to wreck your ears, a baseline unmatched
maybe the moon? too many craters.
the ocean? water slosh

rain drifts from billowed bellies in vain
silver streaks in phantom shrouds turned away
and when it comes it is clumsy with vengeance
impetuous, wasted blood froth in the arroyos

yet they run a few cows, not sure how
picture her on a cloud, one of those gone-scapes
root for a rebel, root for a cloud
root for a stray to get loose

on the valley floor you approach a lake
blue enough in july to overrule reckoning
as it stubbornly recedes to white, still in doubt
now you see vehicles making dust on the playa
no, only dust devils, closer now, no, one of them
must be a truck, plume sent up from a black dot
no, it was a dust devil over a rock

---------------
the desert was infinite
until hands began to point at a landmark
you might see beyond the desert from up there
it was better when the desert had no landmarks
up so high and pompous as to shrink the horizon
nor water, nor silver and gold for that matter
they give too much away

map shows a pen stroke through blank
it knows not power poles like a picket fence
must be something in the span over end point
journey over destination, line over next circle
some fantastic ruin, marker to a lost gold vein
jeep trail windmills, nowhere is never nowhere

can’t outrun mountains, too much span
like freighters standing on the open sea,
dimensionless, adrift, motionless

[mnaz]

quiet makes no living, but noise
you conclude no living is being made
expired cattle country and hard peace
though in the highlands it gets tricky
can't thwart every storm up that high
backlit amber against malevolent sky
blackened ridge rims the battlefield
it comes quickly, cover your head

no limits on a boundless mineral sky
weathered men once lived on the arc
sear wind sings through rotted planks
shot riddled scrap, a ’48 flatbed chassis
tires go brittle in the sun, fissures open

hard rock fortune lay just out of reach
but hardship came with blasting caps anyway
deep enough in rock to lose your sense of depth
grotesque cottonwoods watch buff tides roll, recede
humboldt range a snowcapped tsunami about to break
on a lucent sea where no sea can exist

dimensionless, motionless
but the mountains jump here
lie still for untold millennia, build up tension
jump up in one terrible instant on a fault line
on a campstool one night, medicinal chalice in hand
counting ravens or clouds, mighty corrugations rising
scribbling some disposable manifesto
under the influence of arid light
soundless immensity setting in

then a sudden rumble of deep energy
booming locomotive, the mountain unzips
down basin, fissures spread closer, spill your drink
in 1915 a sixteen foot gap opened in the sagebrush
between tobin range and pleasant valley
quiet ever since

[mnaz]

basin and range
mountains jump here
jumped for eight million years
mere toddlers by a rock clock
no foothills on their faults
the scarps are too young
profoundly battered, fresh
the crust here is stretched
broken into behemoths
tilting at fractures

on the rock engine
in the deep white-hot mantle
boils up cauldron springs in the margins
the hymn says build your house on the rock
not on the sinking sand

the rock is unstable too
compressed, folded, lifted
beaten, washed out, laid up
buried, compressed, lifted again
mountains here rise as fast as
wind and rain take them down

tobin range jumped
gained twenty-thousand years
spilled your drink

reflect on time
last seventy years of insanity
six thousand year fuzz of history
two hundred thousand years of prehistory
eight-thousand-thousand year old toddlers

fluid, fallible rock
what comes up when it jumps?
untold further eons, mishmash bits
rise and fall of the immovable
life spans of the immortal
meaningless spans
deep time

[mnaz]

vegas interrupted a fine dirt road
in biblical palisades, rolling roundscape
in the crags and creosote bushes
a powerline dissolved in the great arc

you came over a rise, there it was
stratosphere tower like a funny little pencil
choked in brown haze
so you went down
because it's there

beat the dust from your jeans
slung a bag over your shoulder
walked a mile to the casino
a little slow in town
$29.95 for a room
the slots were loose

next morning
ragged trundle on the strip
madness shoots up everywhere
dust caked on the truck in thick gobs
in every crease, on the sleeping bag
layers of road detritus, stubs, wrappers
squashed empty containers, all dust
all from that strange backdraft
across those dead dry lakes
dwarfed under towering gleam
under billions, song of the west
way out rockers cranked up to ten
augustus pablo no match for gleam

[mnaz]

everyone goes in criscrossing arcs
the over under, place bets, ping peaks
react, refract, go there until it's here and back
go back, young man!

sometimes you need to get away
see places from which others get away
to see the place from which you got away
seek the ultimate road, no less, of course
make sure your vehicle has a good hum

moments after launch
fuss over its terminus
how much time to return
escape drains from nascent sojourn
limitations of skin, here-there strain
fuel and time
chains

otherwise
we'd travel at will
over a moon’s dark ice
over a boiling lava spine
rollers crashed on sunny atolls
in a trade wind eye

or two feet from john the baptist
near the crowd around mona lisa
timeless arrest of non-state
here-there recedes

travel alone
lest you be pulled in circuits
to plaques and museums, itineraries
masterworks, exalted artifacts
colonial ruins and such

more here, less there
you, the anti-itinerary
europe took itself seriously
rip it off a wall

[Steve Plonk]

Your poem reminds me, indirectly, to: "Catch a Falling Star"
See link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t_PDU5R ... re=related

We're good to go...

[mnaz]

thanks Steve.
..............

she insisted we visit spanish ruins in new mexico
and so we ran from ruin to ruin, diligently, tensely
crumbling 17th century missions, your basic
euro-subjection vignettes from that period
convert random savages to the church at
sword point or else

there’s so much history in new mexico!
and a wandering mind between pressure points
somewhere on a now ocean dotted with then
somewhere between get there and back
a little history goes a long way

[mnaz]

you had your drunken fun in vegas
rented that room with a funny smell for a week
jogged the strip with jim beam in the water bottle
got as far as the lady from illinois with a log cabin purse
and a giant slot machine, jokers with satanic goatees
jumping out of the bubble

not sure what they put in the jim beam here
the casino was a clatter of deranged bells, hissing sounds
and the towers seemed a little serpentine
and the gold sky filled up gold facades
gold funhouse mirrors a hundred stories
high

[mnaz]

imagine the first nineteenth century cowhand
on a rolling red sea of red soil, blackbrush and juniper
the herd trudges into mystic overflow until it drops away
and his canyon is instantly all there, no slow revelation
he is a speck on a shore of mineral eons
something happened here!

he could hike below the rim
glimpse unimaginable epochs flitted over
the visionary inner eye, or he shouts at the sky
vertical travel is tricky traversing a plane
why go down when you could go up?
things in the sky ordain and foretell
and the earth is mere dirt

[hester_prynne]

What a read...what a read.
Really love this Nazzy

H

[mnaz]

thanks, hest . . .

oh my! poem - a - thon! I been poeming!

maybe I'll just keep adding on . . . .

[mnaz]

you know some badlands out on route 23
weathered down, streaked in minerals and time
strange mounds, you’ll see them over the next rise
you know a place where you can watch them dissolve
darken into sooty structures and fallow concrete
no guard dog around, nothing to guard
stain and ruin, fences gone

you sit for hours, watch heat waves
simmer on sticker vines, fissured pavement
the rust belt hemorrhaged but held its own
the rust belt? a joystick cartoon (copyright)
but we held our own

you call it a house of cards
teetering mouse-click economies
the global banking ruse, downer man
and you got your left-right-left-right

stick to badlands, rusted girders
jimson weed graffiti, mop up the resistance
roll a six lane hangover to the south end of town
shot-up factories, down the vines from hangar nine
the boys wired their war birds, wired bolts to the blocks
mammoth pratt ‘n whitneys, wiped oil from their brows
fed the sceaming raptors, won the goddamned war

built some highways, art deco gas pumps
roadhouses, a little neon swoop, some factories
a lot of factories, the strip is everywhere now
oil slicked over a hundred rotted rail spurs
the desert rising rusted on peeled billboards
broken barstools, cracked formica, taped vinyl
bacon grease and black joe, tangible, pre-digital
before it all changed

stick to badlands
write of hell fire mills in the best of times
snow-blanketed toxic debris, in soft bumps
gabled production houses starved on a steel sky
checkerboards of shot-out panes
teenage raves and wild dogs
soft mortar and grunge
filthy literary tombs

detroit, youngstown, sometown
mass–producing rust, we built the damn things
in factories moving around like drunken walls
at the zircon lounge, went south
sold out, moved on

[mnaz]

reflect on scale
a speck on a boundless sweep
painted in pointillist sagebrush
in turn a fleck on a planet’s trek
confounding trek around the star
in turn a molecule to the nearest star
in turn a particle on the nearest galaxy
in turn a particle on that particular particle
of universe, less than a particle on infinite

presumably also the equilibrium of you
with “that which cannot be divided further”
essence in equilibrium with infinity of you
not only here do such conundrums arise
eyes in the flicker look back, wonder
wonder the same things in reverse
scale is tricky

[Steve Plonk]

Outstanding flow of consciousness! Great stuff to fire up the grist mill in
our minds to grind out a few more particles of wisdom & observations...

[Arcadia]

yeah..., the tricky-side is posible! Enjoyed the reading, mnaz!!, gracias!!