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Monday, 18 May 2015

Vegas

Vegas

Across the open trackless waste of nothing
The big emptiness of sand and grit
Bare and featureless but for random rocks
A burned brown mineral wilderness
Of yellows, oranges and golden reds
Small, sharp shadows etched into the earth
By a relentless sun that scorches
And torches out its solar energy
Unchanging, fierce and blazing

A crumbled endless horizon, heat-hazed
Beyond the cactus-pocked wasteland
Its desert spikes the only landmarks
In the monotonous sprawl
Fit only for snakes and scorpions
And bleached-white bones
Scoured and scrubbed, sand-blasted testament
To creatures that once expired
Fried alive, tired and shrivelled
Beaten by heat and thirst, died years before
In vain attempts to cross the arid expanse

The dust eddies and aimless whorls
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 and scratching all before them
Hot-raked, parched and toasted
In this waterless wasteland of nowhere

And the vast-canvas painted azure mid-day sky
A painful, acid-hard brittle 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 2015

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