Thank God those
febrile nightmares of
youth are gone.
I long for the
numbing fog.
The dust of dreams
linger when I awake,
like a fly in
a glue-trap.

My mind is nebulous as
I try to recall
the nocturnal visits.
Legs tired from running;
**** sore from *******.
I've played doctor for years
trying to reverse this curse,
prescribing: women, drugs,
***** by the barrels,
searching for that ambrosia,
that nectar of the gods that
makes life less vivid and sharp,
and puts the sleep back in
my eyes.

Punished by the sun
in a desert of our love.

Slipshod the sailing stones,
how dispassion speckles the playa floor,
salt pans dissolve motivating force.

I'm a man returning to his ground.
You're a woman seeking refuge
in the cracked crevices of my rib cage.

So far below sea level,
where does love go from here to survive?

Perhaps, Chloride City
and the grave of a James McKay?

Maybe at Bottle House in Rhyolite,
the "Queen City"?

Either way, this sensation has become an unsacred mirage:

the watering hole, a leadfield,
with which we can only look back from.

Praying the sulfur in the sky
passes on from this place,

before we turn into something sodium, something akin to
Lot's careless wife.