Dry Ice

In a Desert Landscape

I have known some cities and I can 
name them all, cities large, and cities 
small, cities of the plain, cities of the 
sky, cities that sit where mountains 
split to draw the painter's eye, cities 
of day, cities of night, eternal cities, 
cities of light, cities of sand, cities of 
dust, cities of rivers, red as rust

I have known some cities where pastel 
skies hang above asphalt cries, where 
lips of dust whisper lies to tenements 
and slums that rise like tarnished filigree 
embracing its diamond

I have lived in cities piled up on the edge 
of forever, like last-chance casinos where 
snarling natives wait behind the gate
to fold, spindle and mutilate

I have seen cities where peddlers of 
fashion and bloodless passion raise 
panopticons of pity, while purveyors 
of praise surround themselves with 
perfect sun, 
perfect skin, 
perfect teeth, 
perfect days.

I have lived in cities and learned to 
despise the oiled shoulders and 
screaming thighs, the fan boys with 
their velvet claws, the sycophants 
and hangers-on, the curious passing by

I am weary of cities where housewives 
live in desperation's shadow, draping
their days with plans to escape their
timid men battling the uncertainty 
lurking below their tan-lines

I walk alone the darkened streets and 
listen to the shuffle of anonymous feet 
as shadows of the city fall on concrete
and slowly spread out over the land, 
pressing down over cornfields, brown 
with rust, 

across fence posts in long rows, standing 
transfixed in sockets of inexhaustible 
corrosion, along pine groves fronting 
summer lakes where moonlight once
 frosted apples, across flooded river 
lands, the farms and quarries, small 
towns with a single church, swallowing 
every cathedral of solitude I have ever 
known,

 cities that gather like moisture waiting 
for rain to take shape, ghost towns of 
the heart, dry ice in a desert landscape.