In The Desert, and Again
dusty is the dark beneath endless stars
From the novapops* archives, circa 2011.
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In the Desert
The desert air refreshes as it sweeps away the dust of other realities, scrubs you clean with its exfoliating sands.
When you’re howling with the wind, singing and laughing, the sands come whistling in to clean you from the inside, happy grit between your teeth.
In the desert we have many things. Some deserts have tortoises; this one has lots of dogs. Wild coyotes with their beautiful keen eyes and low tails and dusty coats; scruffy pot-lickers who will also clean your toes if you let them. The cactus here are prickly pear, round and succulent with big spikes that are easy to avoid unless you happen to fall over or be carrying a trifold crash pad. In the desert we have rock of all sizes, windblown water-formed rocks with dried-out huecos in their sleeping fertility and flaking skin. Red like the dirt like the sun like our noses with their desert drip drip. Trailers sprinkle the landscape, cars and trailers dusty red with the cleansing sands and the sound of the bombs echo the walls rumble.
In the desert we have coffee, brewed every morning black and thick, opening our eyes to the sun like a white-clad bride on the horizon, beckoning with her lacy garter as we shiver in the desert cold, cold desert nights without her warmed by skin and sex until we sweat beneath our rough sleeping bags and our bodies are soft and warm but our noses, silly noses, are desert cold. Sometimes the wind whips away the bashful bride’s heat, jealous wind. Sometimes the wind walks elsewhere and she sneaks to lay upon us, naughty bride, sweetly stroking gentle kissing forget-me not with blushing cheek-burn sun heat.
In the desert we have sand, and it is clean, and we have dogs, and they clean the dishes, and sweat, and it cleans the soul, and rocks that clean the mind and cactuses that clean the air and trailers that are cleaned by the sand, and the sun who white-washes it all.
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In the Desert Again
In the dessert we have ukuleles and wolf-dogs. Red ukuleles that don’t take much to make the air fill and the wind still. Howling wolf dogs that bend their necks back and close their eyes and their song takes over sweet and lonely and when they stop you can hear, far off, the sweet soulful answer and maybe it’s just the wind but it makes me think of love.
Water can go quick in the dessert; this morning I took a big swig off an old jug and looked down to see it swimming with green algea; clever life-seeking life. Nothing a bit of whiskey can’t kill, or so I tell myself and enhance the potency with a string of curses. Follow with straight black coffee for good measure.
Tattoos look good in the dessert. They race across skin and change with the wind and the way that bodies flex.
Trucker hats also look good in the dessert, and serve to keep the low sun from spreading more wrinkles from our smiling eyes, though those smiles keep creeping and when we laugh the lines laugh too, so we wear them with reluctant pride, wrinkling smiling eyes.
In the dessert, we tell stories. Sand stories, far-off land stories: Thailand, Chile, Burmeses days and the books we read too. Friendships gone wrong and the way that people change: too much money, not enough conviction, the right professor, the wrong boyfriend.
Bodies bust and cheese goes missing in this barren land. Crash pads serve many purposes and dusty is the dark beneath endless stars.
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Let’s go back to the desert.
xoxo
ali