OUT WEST

Out West

Every Joshua tree in the desert sags a smile and waves its oversized hand

The patchy desert symbolizes Empty America

Land of the Free

Because there's so much real estate nature is leaving up for the take

You don't know where you're going

Encircled by mountains glittered with rocks that take us out of the deindustrialized oilfields

But it feels like time stops and we're at the end of the World

At least we're getting close

Layers of peaks and troughs

Layered like a cake

Candy-colored fungi that decorates eroding rocks like a Christmas tree

Complemented by yuca plants, the pineapples arid cousin

Ashes dissolve back into the soil

Aside fractures of a dead tree

Put down by a short half-life

If you take one foot off the faultline

It all comes crashing down

So do your expectations

Even at the smallest elevation

You wash your armpits with a quartz of gold

And the nearby cactai mirrors your behavior

The wind

A ventriloquist that slaps your face with its own hair

Out West

anything is possible and you feel it

As you drive by the Adopt-A-Highway sign

Shoutout to the Choctaw Muskegee Nation

Every thread of cheetgrasa you pull out to make way for the native only uncovers more empty real estate

A plot of land that's yet to unfold

Out West

Geography matters more and less

Connecting us across lines that only constellations can map out