Vegas
Across an open trackless waste
of nothing, big emptiness of sand and grit
bare, featureless but for random
rocks, burned-brown mineral wilderness
tinted yellows, golden ochres,
burnished reds
small, sharp shadows etched
into the earth by a relentless sun that scorches,
torches out its solar energy,
unchanging, fierce and blazing
crumbled endless horizon, heat-hazed
beyond the cactus-pocked wasteland,
desert spikes the only
landmarks in the monotonous sprawl
fit for snakes and scorpions,
bleached-white bones scoured and scrubbed,
sand-blasted testament to
creatures that once expired, fried alive, tired and shrivelled
beaten by heat and thirst, exhausted
years before
in vain attempts to cross the
arid expanse
the dust eddies and whorls aimlessly
tormented, driven by staccato wisps
of wind, mindless in their rolling, roiling,
un-tamed in their blowing,
drifting, piling, through the thin air of nothingness
scraping, scratching all
before them, hot-raked, roasted, parched and toasted
in this waterless wasteland of
nowhere
and the vast-canvas painted
azure mid-day sky a painful, brittle, acid-hard mono-blue
shimmers unending, clear and
cloudless, oxygen-free and static-loaded
an all-embracing carapace of
glare mantling over distant concrete structures
The Strip, Caesar’s Palace and Luxor, white and crimson neon ads rolling
enticing punters from hot sidewalks to step inside their cool and dark
interiors
for cold beers, slots and
tables, the flimsy-dressed hostesses shivering
in the chill of dam-powered
air-conditioning
Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2021
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