Desert Madness

The desert eats up everything
including shadows and rainbows
eats the bones
the thoughts
the dreams
eats desires and memories
eats everything
except intensity
this it increases
with the heated passion
of the hysterical laughter
of sun strokes

Dried flowers, dried flesh
dried blood in the sand
dust in the shriveled sky
cactus mummy
corpse of thorns
longing, stiffness
isolation, struggle
crouching, close to the ground
searching for a crevice
a crooked rock
an intangible shadow
Perhaps the earth will
swallow them up
save them
from the rapacious mandibles
of an insane sun

It sometimes comes into my mind
that the desert is not a place at all
the hand print of a demon
a nightmare’s emotion overcoming clouds
light slashed against a parched canvas
ground glass bowing under a withered wind
an abandoned delirium growing inside itself
inside of myself
with no regard for anything else
spilling over its devouring appetite
following me everywhere
carrying everything into it
like a helter-skelter dust devil
dancing
under
a meteoric sand storm
inside
a mirage
spun out of nothing
in my mind

The desert is something to struggle against
composed of extremes
crackling stones and cackling lizards
rocks, barking like a mad coyote
rumbling tunes of tumbling sand dunes
changing the textures of my being
outrageous sunlight stinging my skin
and hideous frozen stars
dictating the colors of my thoughts
and rearranging my emotions

The desert distorts me
rolls me over
rolls over me
with heat waves and grit
gets into my stomach
gets in my eyes
in between my thighs
It needs to be viewed
like a sculpture
from all of its sides at once
from all of its angles
all of its tangles
from underneath
from over and above
upside down
inside and out
from anywhere and everywhere
if you can get there
You will find this is exhausting
requiring almost all of your time

There is no expectation here
that anything will be fair
Everything is just as it is
Without exception
When it comes to the soul
the desert brings no peace
the images it casts before you
often are not real
but the objects it throws in your way
always are

Someday I plan to go live in the desert
because it is extremes which keep the soul alive
Then today and tomorrow will be the same
with no divisions
Yesterday will have ceased to exist
and no one will be paying attention

I will forget the differences I have with the world
the differences
between reality and my beliefs
between the run away tumbleweed
and the hysterical road runner
between the glint of gold
and the stinger of the thousand year old scorpion
between the eyes of the vulture
and my heart

Everything I experience then
will be something that no one has known before
I will become the same as the elements
illusions and phantoms
a dry, dust devil, dancing
I will become who I really am
sand beneath my fingernails
without words to explain myself
and, no one will object
because
insanity is, after all, just a disagreement
over reality
and madness
in the desert
is a normal state of mind

[April 2015]

Reviews

[marcus]

Yes! I loved the ending especially!!

[Vishuddha]

A good thing about being alone is there is no one there to tell you you're crazy.
I have found there are places, which have their own auras, which may themselves be insane and cause you to change your perspective completely. These seem to be places people shun, far from buildings and roads, or places deemed sacred and enclosed by stone circles or encircled by mazes. Add the element of time. The longer you stay the more your soul is affected. Then, the next thing you know you are writing a poem.

[marcus]

Where were you?

[Vishuddha]

In this case I was in Quarai, which is deserted nowadays. Even tourists don't go. It is surrounded by salt flats and apple trees. To me it is the secret heart of the southwestern desert. No mazes or even stone circles but the most desolate ruins. Haunted me for years. "My Desert" & "The Wailing Woman" also inspired by the same place although I am way more fond of other places in the southwest this is the place which inspired poems. (I lived in the southwest for five years.)

[marcus]

Interesting how some places have certain energies about them!

[Vishuddha]

I think all places have their own energy, some are just more apparent than others. Tune in.

[Avinash]

It took us on a tour to a desert which has its own philosophy. Despite its barrenness it appears a place where wisdom of life is aplenty.

[Vishuddha]

The emptiness sets your thoughts adrift. There are no barriers, no limits, no constraints. You are free to go wherever you want yet everywhere you go it is the same. Thus, you end up inside of yourself.

[Marie]

You certainly got away from the swamp, didn't you? But this poem makes the desert just as interesting as the swamp, if not as pleasant. "A demon's handprint"? I like that image. My preference is for the desert, but I can see how it would lead to madness.

[Vishuddha]

Only if you stay too long or think too much. The desert can be calming in its own sort of way because it is so empty. Maybe, because there is nothing there to disturb you, after a while you start to disturb yourself.

[Workvio]

Perhaps you will find yourself an oasis to sit sipping cool tea beneath the shade of an over shadowing palm tree to view the days latest mirage of what is not really there ... Who knows, even the rain forests of the Amazon, or the jungles of Africa have their own harsh brutalities and realities of extreme, where life is one moment and consumed the next ... Madness is not relegated to extremes of environment, but to the cranium within which it resides ... What goes on between the ears can be harsher than any desert or environmental extremes upon any planet anywhere, for, to that person within that mind, it is real to the one who has gone mad, is mad, and has lost (at least for a time) sight of sanity and all concept of what sanity was and is ... One can go mad within the confines of any given environment, if and when the proper chemical combinations take place within ones cranium ... What drives one man mad makes another man excel and become stronger ... I can easily see where, in comparison to the wonders of Florida, a desert might appear to hold forth such extremes as to bring one to madness, but then if one finds oneself happily mad what is to be lost, but a sanity that previously held one captive and unhappy ... An interesting journey into desert possibilities ... Me thinks I've gone happily mad talking about it ...

[Vishuddha]

Oh, I do enjoy your review! So true. Insanity is part of one's personal landscape, yet, the sirocco winds which carry positive ions out of the desert and into our habitations are notorious for arousing all sorts of emotional conditions including insanity. Thoughts engender emotions. Emotions motivate thoughts. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? I am uplifted by the ocean's waves, by waterfalls, forests and fountains. The emptiness of the desert leaves me deserted and this is the door to my own irrational thoughts. Life anchors me to life. The absence of life makes my soul shutter. This is my personal experience but, of course, my poetry can be about nothing but.
Can someone who is completely alone go mad with no one else there to define reality? Can someone alone be anything other than mad as theirs is the only reality then possible and will be whatever they choose?  Cats, such solitary animals, make up their own reality, and thus the Cheshire Cat is mad in the way the Hatter who went mad due to the chemicals he used in his hattery could only imagine. And, I think the cat is a perfect example of your happy madness.
I did once live in the American Southwest desert, which is quite an experience, and, I started this poem there (along with 2 others which I will be posting soon). I now live in an oasis, green and happy and filled with life instead of shadows and, perhaps that is why I can finally finish these pieces, standing far enough away that they stir memories and not emotions.

[Workvio]

LOL! ... Clearly the chicken came first, for without the chicken to lay the egg, there would be no egg, and hence no more future chickens ... Never in scientific history has there been an example, evolution or otherwise, of eggs being or as a species of creature ... Love your thoughts ...

[Vishuddha]

You could say the entire universe came out of an egg, of sorts.

[Workvio]

So are you saying God is a chicken? ... LOL!

[Vishuddha]

Not just chickens. I've laid a few myself.

[Rudi J.P. Lejaeghere]

Wow, very deep, Lily. I never thought about the desert, but this is a whole lot of thinking about it. Will read it again some time, there so much in it, I think you can't see it all the first time. Thanks for sharing this wonderful poem. :) Rudi

[Vishuddha]

The desert is quite a haunting place, so full of death. Not the death of cemeteries, the death of everything yet life also always there, underneath everything. Makes you think. Makes you grateful.
I have two more desert poems which once were all one. Watch for them soon.

[Rudi J.P. Lejaeghere]

Okay, will look for it. Have a good day, Lily. :) Rudi

[andrew mitchell]

so enchantingly written and I love the last 6 lines that give this write perfect closure

[Vishuddha]

Those are the lines the poem started out with. Everything else is backup. I tend to get carried away. In fact, it got so long I wasn't sure anyone would even get to the last six lines.

[Gene]

Amongst the most intelligent poetry I've had the pleasure to read. Proliferation itself.
GREAT POETRY, thanks for sharing your art.

[Vishuddha]

What a very nice thing to say. Thank you. Please stick around for more. I have plenty.