In the Desert in the Night
2022
the desert in the night is like the ocean any time:
too vast to care for you at last,
the human dreams which the light of days seems to grant meaning to
are set aside
in the desert in the night
as no grander or greater
than the longing for water of a wolf dying of thirst
or the longing of a cub for its roadkill mama.
And it is ancient too,
and the weight of time emerges
in the desert in the night,
the full burden of time passed
and it deforms you as it humbles you
like those deep sea things
which for lack of light
and for the weight of unfathomable fathoms
of all the water above
become like aliens
in the dreams of a futurist.
This happens to you also,
in the desert at night.
You are like any other consciousness,
amoeba or galaxy,
and you are very small
and very young
and very brief
and very scared
and get back in the car
and forget the last half of the cigarette,
the night is too huge and too dark
and that shade could rush you
and there could be eyes
in the dark
glowing at you
and that mess could rise
like another woken giant
and come for you--
Some animal squawks a mile off and another howls in reply.
Both seem to be discussing you.
the arroyo rock crunches under foot,
don't look back,
don't look behind you.
what's in the dark,
oh you don't want to know.
go to America's Drive-Thru 56 miles away,
leave this place where you are as all else,
get to Sonic and go now,
that is what matters, go now.
the stars are endless and the desert lets them shine.
the irreducible world waits
(it does not wait, there is no time)
in the dark in the wind in the arroyo on the mesa
and in the canyon
where the river runs dry,
the irreducible world waits for you,
and for our fluke of a species to extinct itself at last,
our species which the irreducible world is taking overdue vengeance on now.
it knows you will return,
everything returns,
when the consciousness and the human dream flash out
like the magnesium on the contact sheet
in an instance of total light and total burn,
you will return in the humbling world when the time comes,
when the hallucination ends,
when the time comes sooner than later,
it is waiting for you
with the plants and the animals
and the wind and the sand
and the rock and the dust,
it is waiting for you,
that irreducible world of which you are a part yet
from which you believe you are apart,
it is waiting for you,
out there in the dark in the desert in the night,
it does not need to argue with you,
it is always and completely beyond you,
and it is that eternal vast of the irreducible world which welcomes you
as it humbles you
which sparks the terror as you return to the car in the desert in the night
as the cigarette stubs out under walking foot on the asphalt and desert sand,
and don't look back,
my god child don't look back,
get in and go,
back to the drive-throughs and to the pay stubs,
get out and don't look back,
it will show you yourself and the world which holds you
and you will crumble like a child
when their painting is laughed at,
and you will never make it back
to the warm swaddle of the human psychosis.
the coyote in the gulch beside the state road watches you
and is never seen by you.
it watches you drive away
and it feels your fear,
smells it on you,
the unique reek an undiscovered body,
it smells it on you and then it turns
reenters the dark,
the irreducible world,
the desert,
it turns and returns to that which you fled,
to the irreducible world where it belongs,
into the dark and the wind and the sand and the stars,
it turns and it walks back
into the desert in the night.