A record-breaking heatwave in late September

There is no basis for basilisks
extending glances slyly wayward
from a dark cove. A rare September
heat baking rocks along streams
welcome lizards to lay.

I've never met a gila monster
but I wished I wore his skin.
A September like napalm swells
like summer and neon suns.

I have no birthright with skin
like this. Scaly, poisonous pieces
slough off in tiny fragments.

For once this heat feels nice
capturing time in the waving
horizon of asphalt emissions -

because I am not ready for winter
when estranged loneliness creeps
along a molting spine.

Africa settles as an abstraction
in my heart. The desert monster
doppelganger of my likeness
sits near an Arizona soundstage
on a well-crafted movie set
(like the Three Amigos
after leaving Hollywood).

The doppelganger watches me
as I watch television dispassionately
and google philosophical fragments:

"alienation" "postmodern"

"borges map" "loss of the real"

"Steve Martin" "wild and crazy guys"

"solitude" "suffering"

"Wisdom of Silenus"

"Obama's health care plan"

"right wing political violence"

"1968" "political memory"

"Algerian sunset"

I think about basilisks dispassionately
turning me into stone and feel
slightly grateful that they are mythological.
They then dispassionately turn
toward my doppelganger that
dispassionately turns away.


As Albert Camus got older
he lamented the loss of landscapes
appearing in his notebooks.

He married several times
and died in a car wreck.

I, too, love the desert landscape
and can lose myself in the
scintillating refractions
of sun and stars off the sea.

And simulated desert landscapes
feel almost as desolate
sparkling ironically in pixilated
Las Vegas hues.

There is a place for me in the desert
beyond the basilisks by the lizards
and the blinking text marker
of my word processing program.