It’s been a winding road,

Of golden heat, tumbleweed and dust devils,

Burnt orange sienna sun setting shines on the scorched splitting soil,

The reaper spitting sharpens his bevel,

 

All along brown speckle leafed trees and no stopping,

No stopping on this train ride,

Fluorescent lights flashing past at incredulous speeds,

Sowing seeds in my minds garden wrought from the books I read,

 

No stopping,

It’s been a long ride,

And it’s only bound to get longer,

Almost a third past birth,

And that’s assuming all goes well,

But assuming makes a damn fool of all of us,

 

Golden heat and skin peeling sunburns,

My mother’s voice echoing,

That’s not how to get a tan,

But I can’t help cooking myself raw,

Whether it be under the broiling pan of a midday sun,

Or in the acidic burps of a drunken nights adventure,

Cooking myself raw,

 

Cocaine cigarettes and tequila has got a nostalgic ring to it,

A shiny chromium plated wild dream allure about it,

That is until it’s nine a.m.

The next morning and you’ve run out of everything,

Run dry with no more gas stations in this desert,

Yellow heat,

 

Sipping coca cola battery acid under the awning of a dusty road side shanty,

On a ripe steamy sweating pot hole riddled track under eucalyptus trees somewhere in India,

Golden heat,

 

Have you ever been so thirsty for love your tonsils bleed,

Problem is, love only ever leads to your heart bleeding,

 

Tell me about crystal clear skies,

And crystal clear water,

And a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,

And I will tell you about golden heat,

 

These lungs have held many kinds of air,

Their favorite,

A balm of red hot sponge cloth salty water saturated tropical humidity,

Breathing in golden heat,

 

Seaweed dust devils and crispy clean waves,

Talk about riding,

Like a circus on a moving train,

Hopping from one train car to another,

Just searching for that perfect rush,

Fellow wayfarers of the odd mans route,

Telling me yarns about their footsteps that brought them to this part of the never ending train track carnival,

Strangers who are friends I haven’t met,

Telling me about their yellow heat,

 

Salt shakers full of suspicious substances and pepper grinders of nasty dark lies,

If you're talking to me you better be telling the truth,

This is no place for scaled lies,

I want verbatim and quotation when I’m listening to your flapping trap,

Especially when we are sitting in this yellow heat,

 

Sticky sweltering crusty flaking burnt toast and over cooked eggs laid out on the bonnet of a black rusting Cadillac,

In the African sun,

Peeling oozing plasma from blistering skin that fell asleep on the beach for six hours right on through midday,

 

A dusty barren heat-wave covered expanse of desert,

The ruins of a tractor slowly falling to a pile of crunchy red flakes,

Every rust munched orifice on its sun baked carcass creaks as it crumbles slowly dying,

 

Or maybe it’s just being reborn,

 

Reborn as a hard packed desert tundra that my grandchildren will some day walk across trying to escape,

Escape the cantillion poisoned post apocalyptic destitute disease festered throbbing masses of the old fiat cities fallen to chaos,

 

And yet, not too far in the distance,

An orange light shimmers upon the horizon,

Lighting the sienna sun setting sky,

With golden heat,

And I believe, in fact, I know.

 

They will make it to that citadel.

 

- Asanoha