Desert Poems

Kindled
I’ve left my mountains behind for the sun and these flatlands,
but still, there are thoughts of you.
Fire that burns, smoke signals rising from the mountains,
the flames lick the salt of my skin.
I am kindled, in this heat, a glowing ember of memories.

The rain falls, but it is so hot here that it evaporates before it lands.
Maybe I will evaporate.
Maybe, like a larger body of water,
there will be enough of me to remain.
I am lost in this heat, left to wander the cool places of my mind,
like this winding road before me,
unraveling the mystery of my soul.

I think of someone I used to love,
friends I used to know.
Like the little boy in Australia, “I will sing you to me.”
If my voice will work in this dryness.
If it ever did.
It is in this heat, that I become aware,
the hardest part of loving you is letting you go.
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God’s Good EarthWe, at least I, often think about the Creation Story, and imagine a faraway place. But God created this place too. Wherever we are we are living on His land. This is God’s good Earth, the same one He created and declared good.
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Precipitation
I try to sleep,
but thoughts of you spill out of my mind
and scatter themselves between my breath and my dreams
and like the cycle of precipitation
you evaporate back into me.
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A Desert Psalm
These desert rocks cry out to You,
a testament,
in the heat,
of Your glory.
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Desert TravelersWe ride through the heat like well worn travelers now
So much that
I feel we are becoming part of it
A cactus or rock left soaking in the sun
While thirsting for rain.
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Mirage
I used to think you were an oasis,
but maybe you were merely a mirage in this lonely desert.
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My Love for You
My love for you is like this desert, long and hot,
stretching out for miles with no stops in between.
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Bare
My soul is bare like the desert earth.
I have laid out all I am before you.
Compared to what you seek, it seems silly,
like a little girl’s hands holding a painting or flower.
Things of no consequence to most people,
and all that matters to me.
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To My Pablos
Twisted limbs,
turning bodies,
faces crowded into cubes,
into battle scenes,
into the confines of a canvas.
Surely, Picasso, you have locked away a truth,
a tragedy,
a story of lovers that could never be.
Instead, you paint them here, dripping wet,
bleeding blue,
forever a mystery.

Words that pierce my heart
no matter what its shape,
fragile, hardened, jeopardized.
I wish they still made men like you,
for surely, Neruda, you speak the truth
when you say you love ardently,
as one,
forever,
that there is no other for you,
for you yourself are she.
No beginning or end between the two,
unraveling the paradox of becoming one with another.
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Billboard“You can play the field, burritos don’t get jealous.” The billboard displays its slogan proudly. What has become of us, I ask myself, that playing the field is a good thing, that we want “open relationships” and no commitment? Advertisement reflects and bolsters our existing culture, rather than mandating it. In this reflection I see that we are throwing ourselves into hedonism, serving the god of pleasure and sacrificing our souls to him in the process.
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Untitled
The earth stretched out before me,
like the body of a lover
some things known well,
others still to discover.
The heat,
burning like a fiery passion
wraps around me,
the touch darkening my skin,
until I am thirsty for the taste of cool, blue water on my lips,
streams that divide themselves
moving between two halves.

The smell of salt and sea and a desert storm brewing,
mixed together, they are the fragrance I have grown to love.
Still moving, I pass road signs and reservations
and a band of abandoned towns,
the deep scars of his heart
set against the fierce beauty of mountains and mesas and wild flowers,
as if the earth is baring the deep things of his soul to me.

The sounds of owls and ocean water, laughing children and native tongues,
they are the song he whispers
here while I lie in the expanse of his arms. *************************************************************************