The Desert City

There is no greater darkness now than the desert sun, …no sorer sight for her mournful eyes than this, An apocalyptic jumble of craters and rippling dunes, The corpses of skyscrapers, the fetuses of malls, All of them half-buried by the shifting sands… It speaks to her of Hell, this yellow-ochre world, Of demons and death and slow decay It whispers in her ear, a death rattle, a death knell, Until she shudders and retreats into her earphones, Into those two slender cords that are her only escape… Obedient the music rises, drums in her ears, Rumbling like the thunder of the distant sea she misses, It is a grateful reprieve… And yet nothing can drown out the visions she sees, No matter how much she wishes her eyes sewn shut, no matter How she squints and peers, searching for beauty, a scrap of it, A morsel of loveliness for her starving soul amidst this abyss, These devouring dunes of ugly marching doom dominate, Oppress, they loom over her like titans, ready to collapse in a wave Of golden fire and swallow her whole, until she can see the sky no more…