Powdery grey dust

cushions dusky mules

snooping past coyote haunts

thatched juniper trails.

High, pink-winged smudges

billow puffed-up plums

branding hoo doo pillars

domed cobalt shadows.

Pinon scented wind

coaxes lacey orbs

whistling through cholla groves

fringed lightning fingers.

Slurry glass droplets

moisten velvet buttes

weaving wet moire threads

veined silk shot blankets.

Since laying around for nearly a year

preening my space, devouring fear,

at home, now in situ, self-exodus rules

turning me inward, seeking the blues.

Splayed wide with a turquoise dream of down under

is my newest best friend, a bed nest to slumber

firm as cold fudge, a stiff whipped meringue wonder.

Binge everything powers our daily agendas.

Mindful consuming? Do we need a Miranda?

Like Pac-Man devouring the latest arrivals

or branch blasting Audrey seeking survival,

the sensational grubbing for real and fiction

from a bubble of screens somehow seems insufficient

to satiate our compulsive, misguided missions.

If you’ve had it or haven’t, just look to the stars,

play special numbers or scratch offs in cars.

Vague tea leave predictions along with your mask

should keep you through summer until your new task

as the country’s Poet Laureate of Covid Affairs,

you’ll mix it up anew with a Zoom bunch of squares,

tanned ghosts from the past sporting blue and pink hair.

Ocean warmed shores,

elongated days

slip into 

something casual,

luxuriate 

amid blustery 

bookends

and confer us

a thousand

tip toe 

reasons

to 

tramp

through

temporal lands.

Etched

in 

bronze

penned

on 

parchment

and 

welded

to 

the 

enlightened

elusive

equality

hovers 

like

a 

teasing

drone

darting

just

outside

our

grasp.

Mind-cluttering 

torments

decade aching

indelibly tart

echo

life’s losses

to

road weary hearts.

Time’s still at hand

to right the rig straight,

counter our fears

and

sink the self-hate.

Enclosures can hear,

absorbing little more than cracks and rats.

Fear not the “listening” kind as

they do not exist and are but

projected prognostications and/or

anthropomorphic fantasy

brought to us by

empty-headed editors of

literary smut.

The core of war:

corruption

capsizing

a withering

wise constant.

Social order

over,

commoners

coerced,

roll on

open water.

Ogre woes, 

weakening oars, 

worsen,

drown

in 

oceans of

world apathy.